Memo For File V

“May all your wives be like her.”

The speaker is Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey (1768-1854) and the parting shot takes place immediately after his own grudgingly-spared blessing to his political enemy, Queen Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821), consort to Great Britain’s King George IV (1762-1830). The union between King and Queen is a loveless marriage between first cousins who dislike each other immeasurably and are revealed in posthumously-discovered private correspondence to have had sex only three times. The Queen is loathed because of her own intense dislike for King George, for her infidelities, for her lack of hygiene, and for the massive debts she leaves in her wake when traveling abroad.

Anglesey appears to be one of her most vociferous critics, and is somehow prevailed upon by Queen Caroline’s following to give her the blessing traditionally due to a Queen, so he says “and may all your wives be like her.”

What a marvelous parallel that is for all kinds of things in life. Fornicating wives, bitchy girlfriends, spartan lifestyles, socialist economic systems, pacifist foreign policies, gun control laws, anti-global-warming protocols, clothes-drying by clothesline, hiring and firing certain columnists, the “Ents” going to war: “May all your X be like this.” If it’s such a hot idea for me or for someone else, why don’t you try it yourself.

Ex-Military CEOs Perform Better

Here, contrast the way this story is put together, with the story discussed in my immediately previous post. There is a two-point drawing upon empirical data here, causation data (CEO is ex-military, yes or no), and there is result data (financial performance). Whereas in the Economist article discussed a couple hours ago, there is causation data (wealth gap) and the result data was contradictory to the message of the article. The article wanted you to think a large wealth gap, and widespread apathy of same, caused economic doom and gloom…and yet the anecdotal case about large wealth gaps & apathy of same, was the United States. The wealthiest nation on the face of the globe, bar none.

So with the resultant data contradicting the central pillar of the thesis, the Economist article cited earlier has to discard the reality and venture off into theory. Oh, this is sure to lead to something bad. Theory over practice. What is it about Americans that they aren’t worried about what we think they should be worried about? Oh boy, it’s all downhill from here…just wait a few years, and we’ll have the evidence, but of course we don’t have it just yet…

Contrasted with that, take a look at a thesis that makes sense.

U.S. companies led by chief executives with military experience have outperformed the U.S. stock market’s benchmark index over the past three, five and 10-year periods, according to a survey released on Friday.

The study by recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International (KFY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) found 59, or 8.4 percent, of the CEOs running the 500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index had served as military officers, and these companies on average outperformed the index by up to 20 percentage points.
:
“A military background gives you a more pragmatic and practical approach to the job,” Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman of Korn/Ferry International, told Reuters. “We are not saying the correlation is absolute, as there are other factors to be taken into account; but this is interesting, as it could be to do with the the type of leadership.”

I had this figured out years ago, by which time, receiving job offers from hiring managers who were ex-military simultaneously with job offers from hiring managers who were not, I had formed the habit of accepting the job from the soldiers — provided I would end up reporting to them. Is that some kind of fun? No, not always. But it’s a good job to have.

It’s not hard to see what my logic is when you think about it. Just walk up to some guy who thinks his job sucks ass, I mean, it sucks ass because his boss sucks ass, and get the disgruntled guy to elaborate. The portrait that emerges of the sucky boss, matches line-for-line with the list of bad habits that military training knocks down. Let’s see…I never understand what he’s trying to do, I doubt he knows himself, he screws things up and blames me for it, I’m confused about what I’m even doing there, he tells me I’ll get what I need to do the job and then he welches on delivering the resources, he can’t even remember what he told me he was going to do, blah blah blah. Ex-military bosses don’t do that.

They also own the turf. A base commander doesn’t say “yeah sure it’s my thing, but I thought my XO was handling that, so you’ll have to talk to him about what went wrong.” Nuh-huh, it don’t work that way. Sergeant tells the Specialist what to do, the Specialist doesn’t have the training to do it right, it’s the Sergeant’s ass. End of story. You want a boss like that? You want a CEO like that? Who, in their right mind, wouldn’t?

Of course there is one drawback — you screw up so many times, and you’re gone. But wouldn’t you rather have it that way, than to not even know if you’re doing what it takes to keep your job over the long term?

The survey found the 59 companies in the S&P 500 headed by ex-military CEOs provided an average annual shareholder return of 21.3 percent over the three years ended September 2005 compared with 11 percent for the S&P500 Index.

Think about what this means. Fifty-nine companies represent 8.4 percent. That 8.4 percent produced 21.3 shareholder return versus the 11 produced by the whole, which includes the 8.4 percent. They didn’t just squeak out over the average, they kicked it to hell & back.

I wonder how the MBAs did against the average? In fact, if you go beneath the CEO layer, I wonder how well staff succeed when they’re hired on the merits of what they have done, versus what kind of sheepskin they carry around. I’ve often observed that when positions are created and supervisors start to hold interviews to fill the positions, nobody ever says “We have to fill this position with someone who has a diploma, experienced or not.” Nobody ever says that. Nobody says “I don’t give a shit about past accomplishments, just get me someone with sheepskin.”

People act on it, they don’t say it out loud. Nobody ever says it out loud. To say it out loud would be to define that as a mission, and nobody makes any actual money just sitting around handing out payroll checks to guys who happen to have degrees.

Because I can offer experience but no higher education, I’ve ended up working for my share of military supervisors, who are remarkably unimpressed when applicants walk in with fancy degrees but haven’t actually accomplished much of anything. This is another thing about military experience I notice: Once people have been through it, when they say the mission is A, what the staff will be doing, is A. They don’t articulate a priority in one thing, and then shepherd the resources off in some other direction. The mission is what the mission is.

Small wonder they’re kicking tail by twenty points. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more like forty.

Wealth Gap

Quoth the “Standard of Living in the United States” entry under the kinda-sorta-official Wikipedia online resource:

Americans are some of the wealthiest people in the world, with a very high GDP per capita. Americans are top in the world for most material possessions. The numbers of televisions, vehicles, and other such products per person are considerably higher than in any other country. For instance, the United States has some 754 televisions for every thousand people; no other major state is even above 700, with Japan being closest at 680/1000.

So it’s beyond dispute, or pretty much as good as. Material-wise, the United States kicks ass. Got it? Good.

The Economist sounds the alarm bells that — what else? — the wealth gap is increasing between the rich and the poor. Oh, dear!

The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them
The rich are the big gainers in America’s new prosperity
Jun 15th 2006
WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

AMERICANS do not go in for envy. The gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country, but most people are unconcerned. Whereas Europeans fret about the way the economic pie is divided, Americans want to join the rich, not soak them. Eight out of ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor, if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of the American Dream.

The political consensus, therefore, has sought to pursue economic growth rather than the redistribution of income, in keeping with John Kennedy’s adage that �a rising tide lifts all boats.� The tide has been rising fast recently. Thanks to a jump in productivity growth after 1995, America’s economy has outpaced other rich countries’ for a decade. Its workers now produce over 30% more each hour they work than ten years ago. In the late 1990s everybody shared in this boom. Though incomes were rising fastest at the top, all workers’ wages far outpaced inflation.

But after 2000 something changed. The pace of productivity growth has been rising again, but now it seems to be lifting fewer boats. After you adjust for inflation, the wages of the typical American worker�the one at the very middle of the income distribution�have risen less than 1% since 2000. In the previous five years, they rose over 6%. If you take into account the value of employee benefits, such as health care, the contrast is a little less stark. But, whatever the measure, it seems clear that only the most skilled workers have seen their pay packets swell much in the current economic expansion. The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP.

Let’s take those first three paragraphs and condense them down, bearing in mind how the Wikipedia entry summarized the general standard of living in the USA.

Americans generate more wealth, being unconcerned about how it is divided up, than the Europeans do while being obsessed with who-gets-what. But nevermind that, we’re going to ignore the completely freakin’ obvious lesson to be learned here, and be obsessed with who-gets-what anyway.

Over 70% of Americans support the abolition of the estate tax (inheritance tax), even though only one household in 100 pays it.

Good! In other words, Americans have principles. Seventy out of a hundred of us have the balls to say “an unjust tax is an unjust tax, and I don’t give a shit whether I have to pay it or not.”

I expect nothing less from a nation born out of a tax revolt.

If your article had any other messages for me, Mr. Economist egghead socialist guy, I’m afraid they went way over my head. Now, why don’t you take your doom-and-gloom about wealth gaps, and go peddle it in Europe where people are willing to be a bit more receptive. But don’t expect to have any television sets or decent plumbing while you’re there.

Where Are They?

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler would like to know where the ACLU was while those soldiers, who have not been charged with anything, were shackled. You heard about this, right? Someone alleged these guys committed murder. The seven marines and one sailor were in combat. The allegations are being checked out. No trial has yet been started. Up until yesterday, the eight were in shackles, now they’re not. Good.

So on to Misha’s query: ACLU, ACLU…do you need something to do?

Michael Savage, on his radio program yesterday — just an hour or so, I understand, after the shackles came off — asked exactly the same question. Not about the ACLU, though. About former President and current humanitarian and human-rights-protester Jimmy Carter.

Yeow! Misha, your question was good. His was better.

Those who so regularly instruct me to think Carter has an abundance of redeeming qualities, often do so on the strength of the 39th-and-worst President’s stint as a Navy man. Just like Al Gore and John Kerry and Jean-Luc Picard, Carter is oh, so so incredibly smart. An engineer. And don’t forget, he served in the Navy. Wherever the defenseless labor under the oppression of tyrants and wherever injustice prevails, you don’t have long to wait before Superjimmy is on the job!

How I’d love to see someone with a camcorder and portable microphone follow Jimmy around, like Michael Moore in “Roger and Me” politely requesting this distinguished luminary to give comment about the eight soldiers in their shackles. Any plans to go down there and protest? Will you write a letter deploring the situation and expressing your personal disapproval? Any flight reservations to go check the situation over in person, as you are so famous for doing all over the world? Why not? You’ve done it before. Many times. One of the eight is a sailor, one of your own, Navy guy. Injustice is running wild!

Michael Savage’s comments go a little bit far, in my book, given how little I know about this and how little I’m able to find out. But something is bollywonkers here, and I would expect Jimmy Carter should be first in line to get things settled — and yes, with the ACLU close behind him. Odd that this is not the case.

This is a grave situation. We can get a system of oversight going, wherein marines are shackled before they are even given the benefit of a trial, on the strength of allegations alone, that the deadly force they legitimately used in combat did in fact amount to murder. We can get that massive engine of guilty-until-innocent chugging away, and then we can ask our soldiers to take the battle to the enemy, answering aggression with aggression.

Certainly, we can ask.

I just don’t know how we can expect them to.

As you study the wars in our history, the bigger the wars get, the less certain victory is while the war is being fought, and the more certainly that victory has actually been cemented when the fighting is done…the more certain it is that out of the chronicles, a hero will rise. A truly noble savage. An Achilles. A Ulysses Grant. A George Patton.

Savage, by sheer coincidence, bears the name of the central issue here. Inside the military or out, civilization has always had a tendency to rise out of noble savagery, made possible by the deeds done by the noble savage — and then pass rules against the savagery to which it owes its very existence. That appears to be what’s happened now. People like Savage, question whether we could fight World War II today, strongly implying that we could not. I think they’re right.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself… XI

Oh Dear Lord, does this not capture the whole argument about punitive taxation, and hostility to commerce for its own sake alone, just perfectly. Bullwinkle Blog’s entry speaks for itself, and all I can do is copy the whole thing in, adding very little, taking nothing out, simply giving link credit where due. Just READ.

I Was Right.

Me, explaining to some girlyman Liberal whimp why doctors have no business asking for tax increases, using my normal amount of tact and diplomacy (being far nicer than any liberal deserves):

Bullwinkle Says:
June 12th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Even if you aren�t a doctor the title of this post applies to you too, Chris. There�s nothing kneejerk about opposing any new tax, especially one like this that is being called for by a very small percentage of the population. I know that parastic liberals like you think everything need a tax to support your social programs, it�s even very likely that all liberals ( you inparticular) NEED those nanny state programs to survive but you�d be crying like a little girl if conservatives demanded a tax on those triple mocha cinnamon lattes you liberals like so much. That�s next even if you lack the ability to understand it. After all, Starbucks seems to be profitting obscenely at 6 bucks a cup, don�t they? You wouldn�t have any qualms about that coffee-like swill you sissies drink going up another dollar or two, would you? I know it comes hard to little jr. Marxists like you but why don�t YOU try thinking next time. Jerk.

Then, a mere 5 days later what does the news say about it?

Starbucks targeted over high-fat products

By Abha Bhattarai

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp. may be next on the target list of a consumer-health group that this week sued the operator of the KFC fried chicken restaurant chain for frying foods in oils high in harmful trans fat.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest said it is planning to campaign against the global cafe chain because of the increased risk of obesity, heart disease and cancer associated with high-calorie, high-fat products it sells.

And the possibility of legal action against Starbucks, similar to the case it is taking against KFC owner Yum Brands Inc., has not been ruled out, said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson.

“Regular consumers of Starbucks products could face Venti-sized health problems,” Jacobson said, referring to Starbucks� use of the “Venti” designation for “large.”

The group is primarily funded by newsletter subscribers and individual donors. It has support in the campaign from the small IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which has members in three stores, all in New York.

They would like Starbucks to list nutrition information � which is currently available online and in store brochures � on its menu boards.

“Customers can ask for nutrition information, but when you�re talking about a transparent business in a busy world, that�s not enough,” union organizer and Starbucks “barista” staff member Daniel Gross said in an interview.

I was right. Just call me Moostradamus. Heh. I should write this stuff in quatrains.

Beautiful.

Fair disclosure: I’m hooked on Starbuck’s myself. Venti, drip, dark, for here, in a mug, a MUG dammit, no room for cream. Er, can I get that in a MUG please? What do you mean you broke the last one?

I don’t get the toffee coffee thing…the whole mocha, whipped, chocolate cinnamon nutmeg orange spicy blah blah blah. Coffee is coffee. Candy is candy. The two are different, right?

Good and Evil

This, in 2006, is what it’s all about. Some things are good, some things are evil. Some people are good, some people are evil. Nobody disagrees with this.

That’s a pretty strong statement isn’t it? Nobody disagrees? Isn’t there someone to be found who will disagree with just about anything that can be said? Well in this case, it appears not. Sure, I use words like “good” and “evil” and some people are offended by such language. Sure, there are even people who are called “moral relativists,” and there are even people who call themselves the same thing. Moral relativist, and proud to be one. All things are relative.

But that camp only disagrees cosmetically. Nobody in that camp, nobody I’ve met anyhow, is willing to sign on to the statement “there is no such thing as evil.” Because within the perimeter of the things of which I’ve been able to gain consciousness, the moral relativists want to keep that status of “evil” available. They want to use it to describe anyone who disagrees with them and actually achieves something because of it. This, according to the relativists, is evil. Once they engage such an “evil” in any sort of contest, they behave, in so many ways, as if they’re engaged in some kind of Holy War. There may be some exceptions to this. Speaking for myself, I have encountered none.

So there ya have it. “Everybody agrees.” What’s controversial, is whether or not you should admit you believe in it all the time, or whether you’re only a “fair weather friend” to the whole thing about good-and-evil, hauling it out of the closet only occasionally, to support an agenda of apathy, anarchy and nihilism.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have convinced myself I disbelieve a concept in which not only do I believe, but use with great frequency and enthusiasm. There has to be something brain-damaged about that. It either manifests the brain damage, or it will surely lead to it. Maybe both.

Salute To Ann Coulter

Michelle Malkin has put together a salute to Ann Coulter on Malkin’s “Hot Air” media/culture videoblog website, and while it’s always hazardous to figure out what’s going on in our society based on a few snarky snippets cherry-picked by somebody else, this is still worth a look. And of course as entertainment value, which the video is intended to be anyway, it’s a decent entry. But as far as what is happening to us, there are some salient points worth repetition which I will do here:

• “We hear this all the time about how civil things were back when there were only three TV stations…this alleged disruption of civility is conservatives being able to talk back now.” Hear, hear. This is one of those points where I’d just like to hear a decent counterpoint. Hello, liberals who think Ann Coulter is wrong and vicious — it’s 1980, Jimmy Carter is screwing everything up. Where do I go to get the conservative viewpoint? Hello? Hello?
• “Her hate-filled attacks on our 9-11 widows has no place on New Jersey bookshelves.” On bookshelves, huh? What else has no place there? Is there a list I can get? It seems I’m the only one who is horrified to discover bookshelves are conceptualized as sanitary environments, home only to pristine material bearing the imprimatur of faceless, nameless censoring authorities. When in the world did that happen?
• “[The 9-11 widows] threaten her simplistic world by daring to ask questions.” Malkin has the restraint to offer this bizarre quote about Coulter, from Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), without further comment. I lack this restraint and must point out the obvious: Events have revealed the situation to be the precise opposite. Coulter’s own free-speech exercise, should she be as nutty as these people say, would be the best weapon against her. Why won’t the liberals just let her use it?
• There is a coincidence of astronomical proportions taking place, that Coulter’s book comes out within a couple weeks of Al Gore’s movie. This is a blessing because it illustrates in stark terms, even for the memory-impaired, the difference in critical styles between the two sides. I’ll expand on this later, but for now it’s worth noting that the censorship of contraband ideas has a great deal more to do with the attacks on Coulter’s book than with the attacks on Gore’s movie; I’ve not heard anyone say anything close to “it has no place in America’s theaters.” Does anyone anywhere disagree? Could anyone anywhere disagree?
• Ann Coulter said the 9-11 widows were selected for the aura of invincibility that enshrouded them, after they personally bore tragedy — you can’t argue with them in any way. Again, I’m just restating the obvious, but by attacking her over this comment the liberals are helping to make her point.

All in all, I disagree with Coulter about some things, but in this case the debate she has started far surpasses her original comments in importance. It’s high time we had it. Fake-free-speech disgusts me; give me the real thing, or don’t bother.

Quoteboy

How do I explain Anita Creamer, to the blog-reader who doesn’t live in Sacramento. Hmmm…okay, let’s give it a go.

It starts with the “Airhead Woman’s Section” of the Sacramento Bee. You know what I’m talking about, every significant metropolitan newspaper has such a section. The Bee calls it “Scene” and, if memory serves (since I haven’t double-checked for at least a decade or so) “Time & Money” on Sundays. Your local paper may call it “Lifestyles” or “Family” or “Fun” or…you get the picture. The name varies, the substance stays the same. This is where crossword puzzles go. “Dumb & Dumber,” a.k.a. Ann Landers and Dear Abby, go here. Dating advice. Pet advice. Bridge strategies. And of course my own guilty pleasure, the funnies. Stuff for people who want to read newspapers, but don’t really want to read newspapers. All this fluff is sucked into the section that bears a different name from one city to the next, like light fluffy lint into the trap of a dryer.

Creamer, depending on the day of the week, is on the bottom of Page 1 or on the sidebar of Page 2. She’s there to remind people that hey, don’t have too much fun, this is still a newspaper. So the content of her writing concerns topics that are serious, like serious as a heart attack, but the analytical style is tailored for readers who are bordering on senility, or lack the capacity to noodle things out beyond some elementary level. Not really striving for Aristotelian or Socratean logic-crunching here. She’s the Angel of Death of the “fluffy marshmallow” section, anchoring it down into gloomy reality.

But not in such a way that complicated subjects are made to be easily understood. It’s more like complicated subjects are whittled down into something that no longer resembles what they really are, so that the simpler version can then be understood.

Now, Ann Coulter has written a book on one of her favorite topics, the further dissection of “liberals.” This time, Coulter is saying liberalism is a religion. Heady stuff. Whether you agree with Coulter or not, this is a subject for some fine, surgical-precision processing of empirical fact into well-refined and well-founded opinion. But Creamer isn’t about surgical-precision thinking…she’s all about subjects that are suitable for such thinking, but she’s also about yanking such serious subjects into the land of marshmallow clouds, licorice rainbows and candy cane mountains. And once the empirical, heart-attack-serious facts have been churned through Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, what emerges is a sticky mess (link requires registration):

By Monday, Coulter’s new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” was at the top of Amazon.com’s best-seller list.

She clearly loves to cause a stir, and all the ruckus — book after book, TV appearance after TV appearance — has made her rich.

“Ann Coulter isn’t part of serious political discussion,” says Syracuse University pop culture expert Robert Thompson. “She has an act, and she plays it well.”

I have a rule about “experts.” If I’m being introduced to them in the same breath as I’m being told what their opinion is, I want to see something that gives this opinion some depth. Like another opinion from another expert who disagrees…or the credentials of the expert…or both. “He’s a pop culture expert” just doesn’t do it for me, y’know?

Oh sure, Professor Thompson is not the only one who thinks Coulter “isn’t part of serious political discussion.” He’s in great company there. The thing of it is, though, this is a matter of opinion…and there are a lot of people who have a different opinion. Therefore, logically, it becomes relevant to ask: Who is this guy?

Creamer didn’t want to tell me. This, I found to be fascinating, and more than a little suspicious. I don’t live in Creamer’s world. In my world, if I say a thing is so, and cite an “expert” who also says a thing is so, I want people to know who that expert is and what he does. It is in my interest to do so. Here is this extraordinarily controversial person named Ann Coulter, a person about whom I daresay everyone has an opinion, good or bad, save for those who have been living in a cave for the last decade give or take. And I am to take the opinion of some guy three thousand miles away as my own?

So I researched it. Wow, I’m glad I did.

I should hasten to begin by saying I don’t have anything overwhelmingly negative to say about this fellow. His opinions are so voluminous, on so many matters, that to analyze them would be a truly time-intensive task, one I have not undertaken let alone finished. And heck, for all I know maybe he’s a really nice guy. Seems to be. The beef I have with him, is this: He makes reporters’ jobs easier. Too much so. There’s no work left to be done.

Not real reporters. Phony reporters. He seems to be a “One Call Does It All” kind of guy. Indirectly, he’s responsible for sticking us newspaper readers with what are supposed to be “columns,” but in reality are nothing more than strips of meaningless crap.

That’s what this fellow found out. He was assigned to write about the Sony Playstation. Which he did, I guess, but the byproduct of his “research” is a fascinating expose on the Syracuse professor he was expected to call, what that professor does, and what this says about a once-great society now descending into a messy morass, in which nobody thinks for himself anymore.

I was desperate the first time I called Robert Thompson. An editor at Spin had assigned me to write a story about the pervasiveness of the Sony PlayStation on network TV. It was a fine idea. The only problem that was I’d never used the game console, and certainly hadn’t noticed that UPN had squeezed it into the latest “Moesha” script. In other words, I found myself in the same position as the other 1,273 hacks instructed to produce a trend piece about the PlayStation.

A colleague mentioned Thompson, who taught at Syracuse University and had something smart to say about virtually any subject related to television. It got better. Thompson ran the very official-sounding Center for the Study of Popular Television. The New York Times described him as an expert on pop culture.

Thompson returned my call quickly. I pitched a few softballs on what I decided would be a piece about product placement. He started riffing like Yngwie Malmsteen.

It was as if Thompson kept a log of every boob-tube mention of the video game character Crash Bandicoot. Actually, he virtually did. “By the time something is hot enough to be a feature story,” he said, “if we’ve been doing our jobs as scholars and academics, we’ve already done our thinking.”

Over the next couple of days, I interviewed a few obvious sources, including PlayStation fans (the creator of “Felicity,” the bald guy from “Just Shoot Me”) and critics (a left-leaning, anti-corporate watchdog named John Stauber).

During a break in my reporting, I thumbed through a stack of still-unread magazines. That’s when I discovered why I could never again quote Robert Thompson.

In Newsweek, his name appeared not once, but twice, in separate articles only two weeks apart. Big deal? Then I tried a search on Lexis-Nexis.

Ouch. Dr. Bob got more star time than silicone-enhanced breasts at an XFL halftime show. The New York Daily News, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Orange County Register, Knight-Ridder, the Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. (He’s also been quoted by Salon.)

Thompson was on top of everything. “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire.” “Baywatch.” “Mary Tyler Moore.” Game shows. Thompson even effortlessly turned a Los Angeles Times piece on storage sheds — storage sheds! — into an honors thesis. “Behind the doors of storage sheds,” he told reporter Jill Leovy, “is really the great American story: the accumulation of stuff.”

Damn, he was good.

I promptly sliced him out of my piece.

Why? Part of the reason was the influence of Eric Alterman’s “Sound and Fury,” which I read in college. In that book, Alterman identified the punditocracy, a group that includes George Will, Robert Novak and John McLaughlin. Beyond being lazy and hopelessly out of touch, they are rotated through the talk show circuit as experts on virtually any topic. Even at my lowest journalistic moment, I wanted to avoid slipping into that kind of pack. Deleting Thompson’s testimony felt deliciously subversive.

But it was also completely ineffective. He was everywhere. In January 2001 alone, a Thompson quote ran in some publication at least once a day — not in academic journals but in virtually every newspaper in the country.
:
Thompson doesn’t coast; he has VCRs rolling constantly on each of his eight TVs. “Sometimes, when I get my paycheck and I’m feeling guilty that my job’s too easy, I just think, well, I did have to watch ‘Bette’ and ‘The Geena Davis Show’ this week.”

He turns down interview requests when he has nothing to say, though that’s rare. He has also paid his dues, having been fired from the State University of New York (Cortland) in the early 1990s because, as he saw it, the university considered the TV program expendable. At Syracuse, he found a tenured home. The dean of the Newhouse School of Journalism encouraged him to open the Popular Television Center.
:
The first quote came in 1986, a comment about “St. Elsewhere” in the health section of the Washington Post. The first big break arrived a few years later, when “60 Minutes” featured Thompson in a piece on television courses in academia. Gradually, his reputation spread.

Still, he’s not the least bit concerned about overexposure. As far as he can tell, the other side, the predictable knee-jerkers, has been getting most of the airtime for too long.
:
“At last, television is beginning to reflect the world as we really see it,” he said. “Up until the early 1970s, you could have a show that took place in the Marine Corps without ever mentioning Vietnam. ‘Leave It to Beaver’ debuts with the Sputnik and ends with the Kennedy assassination, and there’s never mention of Cuba or Communism.”

“The PlayStation,” he says, “is the thing that begins to show the texture of American life.”

Concise, logical, weighty: Somebody should quote that guy.

The point was not lost on this online resource, either. Editors there did a simple Google query, which anyone can do, and the results were striking. It seems that being an “expert” is, indeed, a full time job, but not in the way you might have thought.

You might remember Bobby T. as .. being quoted or paraphrased in at least one-third of the articles you read on media, pop culture and even gay marriage. And since you can find Robert in so many of the nation’s finest publications (which are different from those silly propaganda disseminators, of course), we like to offer a helpful roundup of recent sightings, courtesy of Google News…

…and thereafter is an impressive list of Thompson tidbits. The list isn’t that overwhelming in length, it’s the disparity of the topics that is striking.

This guy’s job, it appears, is to get quoted. Like I said, One Call Does It All. Anita Creamer writes “Ann Coulter’s a vicious halfwit,” and this is not acceptable — column not completed. She calls Professor Thompson, Professor Thompson says exactly the same thing, and HEY! We got a quote. From a source. An expert. Column complete.

In other words, lazy journalism.

I don’t mean to pick on poor Anita, maybe she works hard most of the time. But this was lazy. Lots of people say Ann Coulter has nothing to do with serious political discussions. Lots of other people say, she certainly does.

But very few people, I would suppose, are sitting around wondering “gee, I’d sure like to know what that expert on pop culture over at Syracuse, Professor Robert Thompson, has to say about Ann Coulter.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think people are lining up for that one.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself… X

Isn’t this always the trouble when you have a narrow band of elites telling a broad mass of commoners what to be uppity, angsty and fidgety about. A bullying selectivity enters into the hidden criterion, subtle at first, then as time goes on raising more and more problematic questions: Why is this thing “beyond the pale”? Why is that other thing, not? Where exactly is this “pale”? Why do we need leaders to tell us things are beyond it? Why can’t we just be told where the pale is, so we can measure what’s beyond it and what isn’t, all by ourselves?

This is the kind of thing David Limbaugh, Rush’s little brother, presses in trying to figure out what, exactly, is so offensive about Ann Coulter’s new book. Ann Coulter says Cindy Sheehan and the Jersey Girls are enjoying their newfound attention; Sheehan says President Bush is a “filth spewer” and the “world’s biggest terrorist.” I’m supposed to be far more offended by what Coulter says, although truth and logic are far more offended by what Sheehan says. How come that is?

It’s like more than a “church,” says Limbaugh. It’s like a cult. I’m inclined to agree.

As usual, the liberals’ outrage is highly selective. It is not the people or their circumstances that are sacrosanct, but their liberal positions. Liberals accorded none of their precious war-hero deference to John O’Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Indeed, they called them liars — when they weren’t — and much worse. They have savaged combat-decorated Marine Ollie North. They have no use for retired generals supporting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Not on their lives would they defend 9/11 widows or mothers of war victims in support of President Bush’s war effort.
:
Coulter’s comments pale in comparison to the nastiness that routinely comes out of liberals’ mouths about conservatives, as when Sen. Harry Reid called President Bush a liar and Alan Greenspan a hack. So please, spare us the indignation.

What really bothers most liberals is not Ann Coulter’s tone, but the substance of her criticisms. You dare not challenge liberal orthodoxy; otherwise, you are fair game for the very kind of mistreatment, abuse and intolerance they profess to decry in others. All of which further proves the thesis of Ann’s book: Liberalism is a religion whose sacred tenets may not be challenged; for some, it might even be a cult.

New Wal-Mart In Town

I don’t know what the Economic Policy Institute is, but guess what, they’re going to open a brand new Wal-Mart. I guess they are. I mean, that’s the only sensible thing to do, after what they found out…this is still America, last I checked, and when you find out some jackass isn’t running his business the best way, you show him what a jackass he is by opening up your own shop. So I expect to see an Economic Policy Institute Mart opening up in my ‘burb, any day now right?

Wal-Mart could hike pay and keep prices low: study

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could significantly increase employee wages and benefits without raising prices, and still earn a healthy — albeit smaller — profit, research released on Thursday concluded.

The Economic Policy Institute study comes as the world’s biggest retailer faces a barrage of criticism from labor unions, politicians and community activists, who say it pays poverty-level wages and drives competitors out of business.

It’s the classic little-kids’ rhyme, Economic Policy Institute people. Put up or shut up, money talks and bullshit walks.

Thing I Know #12. The word “should” rolls off our tongues easily when we talk about another man’s purse.

OJ Rove

Well, it had to happen…

Karl Rove Escapes Prosecution Over Plame Leak, May Face Civil Suit

Critics of the Bush administration are urging a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to press on with the CIA leak investigation, despite his decision not to seek a criminal indictment of President Bush’s top political aide, Karl Rove.

It also emerged that Mr. Rove may not yet be out of the woods over the Plame affair, as he could before long be the target of a civil suit.

Boom, boom, boom….

Class Act

This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, keeps a real close eye on Hooter’s and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, it’s fun to keep an eye on Hooters. That’s the whole point of Hooters, to be fun to watch. At this blog, we like to watch nice-lookin’ girls half our age wearing skimpy outfits, because we happen to be a middle-aged lusty straight red-blooded guy.

But more important than that, there are millions of people who think there’s something bad about nice-lookin’ young ladies wearing skimpy outfits. The “Cover ‘Em Up” brigade, is made up of a whole bunch of disparate, subordinate parts from different walks of life…and although many among them are nice people with golden hearts, we here at the Blog That Nobody Reads like to avoid them all. Some of them are tighty-righty religious fundamentalists who like to decide what others should find fun. Some of them are insecure pudgy housewives who like to hold everyone around them responsible for their own insecurities. Others fancy themselves to be “feminists,” and think that gives them a license to decide what men should find attractive and what men should find disgusting. Others are lefty-loosie men who are trying, rather pathetically, to score dates with the forementioned control-freak feminists, and are pretending to be repulsed and disgusted by attractive young women.

We think that is, in the classical vernacular, an abomination in the eyes of The Lord. Men are designed to like women, and if you don’t buy into that, insisting instead that only some flavors of men are designed to like women, then you’ll have to agree that such men are designed to like pretty women. I just can’t think of anything less controversial than “nice-looking is better than ugly.” Yet controversial it is, and for an explanation as to why, don’t look here.

I can’t say very much good about Hooter’s food. Sure it is tasty, and I suppose the meat could, conceivably, be greasier…but a trip to Hooter’s is a special occasion, and the food doesn’t justify the special occasion. I like the pretty girls and the cold beer. But the number one appeal for me, by far, is that the “Cover ‘Em Up” brigade will not be there. They have no business being there. Outside of the restaurant, you must realize, the brigade is omnipresent…if any one among their number is not around, someone with some authority over things is terrified that they may be around or may arrive at any second. So in 2006, if you happen to like pretty young girls in skimpy outfits, you have to pretend you don’t. It goes much further than not hanging swimsuit calendars on the wall. Nowadays, to even swivel your head around hard enough to throw your neck out, when a pretty girl with big tits jogs by in her itty-bitty jogging outfit — as all of our fathers and grandfathers did — is verboten. Stigmatized. Frowned-upon. Nowadays, we all keep our eyes-up-front, or wear glacier-goggles…or both.

That, too, is an abomination in the eyes of The Lord. We’re built to want to look at tits. Satan didn’t give us that instinct, God did. We’re supposed to have it. Allowing for the always-implied, never-outright-stated premise that this is an evil thing, one must conclude none of us belong here, for if man didn’t have the drive then none of us would be here. To coerce straight men into pretending they dislike pretty girls, is a reprehensible thing. It is denial of the machinery to which all human beings owe their very existence. It is not the way we, as a Godly conglomerate, are supposed to work. This kind of coercion is not quite up to hanging Christ on the cross, but it’s certainly on par with taking The Lord’s name in vain. It is an insult to the forces which raised us from oblivion, without which we would be nothing.

But I digress. Hooters, it seems, is guilty of false advertising. Their motto is “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.” In all the years since I have come to be aware of them, they have consistently shown themselves to be classy — not only at corporate HQ, but in the restaurants themselves. Hundreds of them. Consistently. No small feat by any means.

And with regard to this emerging FEMA scandal — you’ve all heard it, I’m sure, where a Katrina evacuee used a FEMA card to purchase a bottle of Dom Perignon at Hooters — the CEO is going to send the money back. He doesn’t want any of that dirty FEMA-fraud money in the Hooters till.

The Hooters restaurant chain is looking for FEMA’s address.

Company Chairman Bob Brooks said Thursday that he wants to reimburse the agency for the $200 bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne that was purchased with a government credit card issued to Hurricane Katrina victims.

The champagne, purchased in San Antonio, was among numerous examples of improper spending of hurricane relief money cited earlier this week by Congress’ Government Accountability Office. The bogus spending could be as high as $1.4 billion, the GAO said.

In an announcement in Atlanta, Brooks said: “It bothers me as an American that resources that were intended to help victims of this tremendous tragedy were spent this way. Even if it’s in my restaurants it’s still not right. If FEMA will let me know where to send the check I’ll get the $200 out right away.”

Following Katrina, Brooks sent one of his Hooters Air 737s loaded with supplies into the Gulf Coast disaster area. The restaurant chain also donated $225,000 to the Red Cross Katrina relief fund.

Yes, the Hooters corporation will not feel $200. That is not the point. The point is this: Bob Brooks did not have to make the offer. Bob Brooks didn’t even have to dredge the issue up all over again. He did anyway, because the delightfully tacky cash registers are too clean for that kind of money. Bob Brooks, and by extension his fine establishment, has more class in his little toe than the chubby goth chicks and religious fundamentalists and guilty-white-liberal-males who are part of the “Cover ‘Em Up” brigade, have in their whole smelly, flabby bodies.

Hooters will not point it out because — once again — they have class. They’re not about arguing over skimpy costumes, they are about service. Well, I’m all about smarmy remarks, so I’ll point it out. I’m sitting here, just speculating mind you, but I’m betting if any of the jealous frumpy housewives with hyphenated names, or the religious whackos, got ahold of $200 of dirty FEMA money, they’d go ahead and keep it. Because the “Cover ‘Em Up” brigade isn’t about higher morals, they only pretend to be. That’s the plain truth of it.

Prove me wrong.

House Supports The Troops

Earlier this month I came up with what I expect to become a meme: Picard vs. the Tazmanian Devil. That’s an incredibly odd juxtaposition, made intentionally so, but I expect if you pay attention you’ll see it dovetails with real life in a lot of ways. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is civilized, foresightful, high-minded, sensible, and intent on setting a good example. The Tazmanian Devil is none of those things. He is stupid, whereas Picard is smart, oh, so so smart. When the two square off, Picard will always lose, because in a game of chicken the victory always goes to the blind man.

The House of Representatives has voted 253-153 that, for the time being, The United States will be the Tazmanian Devil. Thank God.

…the GOP-led House approved a nonbinding resolution that praises U.S. troops, labels the Iraq war part of the larger global fight against terrorism and says an “arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment” of troops is not in the national interest.

“Retreat is not an option in Iraq,” declared House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. “Achieving victory is our only option … We have no choice but to confront these terrorists, win the war on terror and spread freedom and democracy around the world.”

My enthusiasm wanes a little bit with the Wilsonian tidbit at the end. President Freeberg’s doctrine would be, run whatever government you want to run until your country presents a credible threat and then we will do whatever is necessary to protect our interests. In other words, the international neighborhood tolerates an eyesore in your front yard, up until that eyesore is a rocket launcher, then we move in.

But I’ll take what I can get. More to the point, what the armed forces can get. How would you like to be stationed there right now, with a timeline over your head? Like, January 31, 2007? How’d ya like that? Brand new Al Qaeda troops streaming in, so they can join the Sleeper Cell Brigade, all waiting for orders to wake up and mobilize on February 1. That’d be some kind of fun, huh? I wonder how many families would be terrorized into working for the other side, how many children would be kidnapped, their lives threatened unless their fathers betrayed the American forces. That’d be a whole lot of fun for the troops if Congress had voted the other way, wouldn’t it. And they’d have the House of Representatives to thank for it…and therefore, all of us.

Kudos.

But Hopeful-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, currently the House Minority Leader, doesn’t think this is good news.

“Stay the course, I don’t think so Mr. President. It’s time to face the facts,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California answered, as she called for a new direction in the conflict. “The war in Iraq has been a mistake. I say, a grotesque mistake.”

Speaker-Hopeful Pelosi is representing, here, not only the anti-war peace-at-any-cost pinheads, but also the much larger contingent of nihilists and apathetics who chafe at any recognition of evil. Nooooooo, you can’t do that, it’s all relative. Ever notice these people never mention bin Laden except to caption our current President as some kind of an incompetent, just because UBL hasn’t yet been caught? It may be a valid point, it may not, but the point is they have nothing, nada, zilch, zero to say about UBL. Just we-armed-him and where-is-he. Their veins throbbing with a fresh infusion of moral-pronouncement-adrenaline, they can’t see fit to pronounce any moral judgments on UBL himself.

What does Speaker-Hopeful-Pelosi think of what UBL did? You know where that question would lead, don’t you. Her answer would be heavily peppered with tidbits about “what happened on September 11, 2001.” Not a single word about what anyone DID. If the questioner tried to inject that into the conversation, she’d quickly excise it. Her party represents an enormous faction of anarchists and nihilists; people who believe nothing bad ever results from anything that any conscious individual ever does. Not unless you’re talking about western civilization and/or Jews. Everything else is just something that “happened.” Watch for that word. They love that word “happened.”

Four months before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, House Republicans sought to force Republicans and Democrats alike to take a position on the conflict that began with the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003.

Democrats denounced the debate and vote as a politically motivated charade, and most, including Pelosi, voted against the measure. They said that supporting it would have the effect of affirming Bush’s “failed policy” in Iraq.

Ha! Remember that this November, boys and girls. Democrats want absolute power over everything, like they had in ’93 and ’94. If you ask them what they’ll do with all that power, about the issues you really care about, it’s a “politically motivated charade.”

There’s more than a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. Pelosi’s party is a UNION party — never forget that. Once they run the show, you don’t ask them what they’ll do about anything, they tell you. And about what the issues are, they decide that too. They’ll tell you how you feel about everything, they’ll tell you what you’ve seen, and they’ll tell you what you think about it.

Once they’re in charge again, get ready for arguing about greedy rich old people getting their free medicine at the expense of thirty-something apartment rats barely making ends meet, and a whole slew of cuts in Social Security payments that have NEVER happened, and a whole lot of propaganda about the “religious right” outlawing things the religious right has never actually been able to do anything about…while the terrorists just trot around the globe doing whatever they want.

You haven’t seen a Democrat say what is going to be done about the terrorists. And you won’t.

Taking Responsibility

I’m wondering if CNN has engaged in the rewording of articles after bloggers and other interested folks have already linked to said articles. There’s nothing wrong with that, we do it here all the time. It’s just that this is kind of interesting…

Congressman William Jefferson, D-LA, has been removed from the powerful House Ways and Means committee. The decision was made by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. House rules say a committee member must be removed upon conviction of a crime, which has not happened to Congressman Jefferson just yet. At a press conference, the Congressman took responsibility and apologized for…er, well, actually I’m not reading that last part anywhere.

To be fair to Congressman Jefferson, he only gets to decide what he says, he doesn’t get to decide what CNN is going to write about. But I have to draw conclusions from what I know, and what I see here is a whole bunch of kibitzing. Pissing and moaning. Oh poor me. An approaching-the-edge-of, and a dancing-on-the-brink-of, saying he’s a victim of racial discrimination without coming out and saying it.

(Photoshop by David Lunde.)

Asked if he thought race was a factor in Pelosi’s decision, Jefferson replied before the vote, “It’s not happened before. The first time it’s happening, it’s happening to an African-American.”

The assertion that race is a factor has already been floated by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including [Rep. Mel] Watt, who question why Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, a white Democrat who also is under investigation, was allowed to keep his seat on the equally powerful Appropriations Committee.

Mollohan, whose personal finances are being investigated after a complaint filed by a conservative group, stepped down voluntarily from his post on the Ethics Committee, pending resolution of the inquiry.

Watt warned last week that singling out Jefferson would not be received well by black voters.

Thursday, he said, “Our constituents will import their own interpretation into this, and a number of them will import that there’s a different standard in our caucus based on race.”

Jefferson also raised race in his letter to Pelosi.

“When an African American member of an exclusive committee is asked to resign his committee because of news reports or allegations of wrongdoing, it gives the appearance of unfairness and even racial discrimination if another member continues serving on an exclusive committee under Justice Department investigation as well, particularly if the other member is white, and is not subject to the same treatment,” he wrote.

You know, stereotypes about black people are ugly things. Since Congressman Jefferson isn’t coming out and saying what he wants people to think, and is so carefully limiting himself to giving people a good shove in the direction of thinking what he wants them ot think, I see no reason to look into the black stereotypes.

Let’s look instead at stereotypes about congressmen. Both Republicans and Democrats. Sleezy, slimy, filthy politicians. What are some of our ugly stereotypes about those people?

They do a lot of talking.

They tell a lot of lies, in ways they can’t be nailed on the lies later.

They take bribes and kickbacks.

When they get nailed on things, they don’t take responsibility.

They’re experts at changing the subject. They cry on cue. After a good corruption scandal, on the way to the paddy wagon they’ll start droning on and on about what their mothers taught them, or the last words of their dying sisters, or some other damn thing completely unrelated to the subject at hand — like race — while ordinary Americans wonder why someone doesn’t interrupt them and request that they answer the damn question.

And what is it we see happening here?

Anyway, speaking of returning to the subject at hand, Michelle Malkin finishes off with the one-liner, “they’ll all find a way to blame Bush somehow.” It would appear that they did, in the version I’m reading. This must have been inserted after Malkin lifted her version — you know, this stuff never seems to take too long.

The move was led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who already had asked Jefferson to step down voluntarily, a request her embattled counterpart rebuffed.

“This isn’t about proof in a court of law. This is about an ethical standard,” Pelosi said in a brief statement after the vote. “I wish that the White House would take our lead on this.” [emphasis mine]

Malkin has issued a challenge to Democrats in our House of Representatives: Conquer the final frontier of Bush-blaming. Screw up yourselves, and blame it on the President. Show us that nothing, nothing whatsoever, is too sufficiently removed from the President, and too sufficiently attached to something else — like yourselves — to be blamed on George Bush. Set the standard, so that all subsequent Bush-blaming, no matter how reckless and detached from reality, will be old territory.

Democrats have answered the call. Democrats can take bribes, stick it in the freezer to hide it, build the case against them through a wiretap, and when they get in trouble it’s Bush’s fault.

From here on out, if a weather phenomenon happens and Democrats blame it on Bush, there will be nothing new about it. If the Democrats break the law, get hauled before a judge, and blame it on Bush, that will be old territory too. It’s simply not possible to blaze a new trail from here on out, everything possible has been done. You might as well blaze a brand new trail in…in the middle of a sports stadium parking lot.

It’s interesting that Pelosi talks about an ethical standard. Taking responsibility is what that’s supposed to be about. You’re supposed to be able to sail into the midterms saying “Our guy screwed up too, but we have a higher ethical standard than Republicans so we took responsibility.” You know, if that part is absent from the sum of what Pelosi said, it really says something and it’s going to cost the Democrats dearly, or at least should. When you find a scapegoat like President Bush, and stick to it like glue, blaming everything that comes down the pike on that scapegoat and people start to get concerned about it — taking responsibility has a lot to do with that, too. The issue that arises, is, do you have a mindset going where the results of what you do don’t matter, because if said results are negative you’ll just blame the scapegoat and go back to doing what you did before?

Heady question. Democrats have been unworthy of our trust in leadership matters for six years now, and we have a lot of people thinking of putting them back in charge. How are they held accountable for their screw-ups, if they don’t hold themselves accountable? Even when they dismiss one of their own and start calling each other racists, presumably to earn back this trust, they can’t bring themselves to mention the two words “take responsibility.” They can’t comment on it. I may form my own opinion about the mistakes the Democratic leadership made, and the mistakes Congressman Jefferson made, to make things happen the way they happened. But I do not know how much of that opinion is shared by those in power. I don’t know what Pelosi’s take on it is. I don’t know what Jefferson, or any of his friends, think about it. They talk of this whole event as if it’s just something that happened; nobody actually did anything unwise, something they would do differently now that the lesson was learned. The blame lies with no one, except you-know-who down the street at 1600 Pennsylvania.

So because any discussion along these lines was carelessly left out — or, perhaps, expurgated from the statement with surgical precision — this concern is left unresolved. No responsibility taken. I do not know why it is, exactly, that I’m supposed to believe putting Democrats in charge of things, would clean up Washington. All I know is that I’m supposed to think it. As far as why things happened the way they did, it’s just another round of Bush-blaming, after Malkin predicted it was coming.

To have confidence in someone cleaning up Washington, you have to see that someone take ownership of the problem. It doesn’t seem like so much to ask, since this particular problem occurred under their roof. I wonder how many among the Democratic core constituents would have been offended by such a concept.

Protected

This is probably pretty important, and we’ll probably have to wait awhile to capture the full gravity of just how important it is:

We conclude that petitioners are entitled to the protection of the shield law, which precludes punishing as contempt a refusal by them to disclose unpublished information

So says the Supreme Court of California in O’Grady v. The Superior Court of Santa Clara County, applying the state’s Shield Law to bloggers.

Hugh Hewitt has the best encapsulation of this decision that I’ve seen today.

Karol Is Smart

On May 25 I updated the “Things I Know” with #70. Courage has very little to do with being outspoken. It says exactly what it sounds like it says, when you say it out loud. You can be outspoken and courageous, you can be outspoken and cowardly, you can be the strong silent type that is courageous and quiet, or you can be the meek timid type who never says anything because you lack courage. You can be any one of those four. There is no correlation between outspokenness and courage, or in this case, confidence.

Why, then, are there so many people whose courage is complimented so frequently, just because they are outspoken? I don’t know. You will have to ask the people who sing their praises. There is no shortage of such praise-singers.

Karol over at Alarming News writes about an article that…you know what? Let’s go no further until we think up a name. There’s scads of these articles, and they need a name. If you are a straight dude, and you are in a steady relationship or married, you will go way, way, way far out out of your way to keep your better half from reading these articles because the articles are built to make your life miserable. Guys, you know what I mean? Of course you do. They are relationship quizzes, they are articles about “how to tell if he’s cheating on you or thinking of cheating on you” — you know, that kind of crap. You look at these things, and think to yourself “Am I overestimating my own importance? Is someone really writing an article just to inconvenience me?” And the answer is, yes. It really is about making the man unhappy. There is no other explanation. What this has to do with improving circulation is anybody’s guess, but someone who writes articles, or puts them together, wants to slam straight men.

Let’s call these “Castracles.” or “Geldacles.” Or “Misandrycles” or “Amazondricles.” I dunno, these aren’t rolling off the tongue, not quite. Call them something. Let’s get back to that project later.

Anyway, we’ve defined what we’re talking about. So Karol has read one of these things and oh boy, this one’s a doozy. Get a load of this…

Want a man to propose? Be a bitch
Men want strong, self-confident women. In her new book, “Why Men Marry Bitches,” Sherry Argov says women shouldn�t be so nice.

Have you ever wondered what makes a man want to marry a particular woman? Is it about timing? Sex? Money? In her new book, “Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman’s Guide to Winning Her Man’s Heart,” Sherry Argov shows women how to transform a casual relationship into a committed one. She explains that being nice to your man won�t make him more devoted. In her interviews with men, Argov found that men want to commit to women who exude confidence and are in control of their lives. She was invited on “Today” to discuss her book.

Speaking as a straight man in a committed relationship with a strong, confident woman who is nevertheless devoted to me, I have long ago grown weary of these man-bashing women hogging the spotlight as if they have discovered something new. According to Amazon, The Rules came out a good decade ago, and the notion of “make him commit by not being so nice to him” predates that by a good stretch of time, and several other phenomena, as well as I’m guessing a few million dollars in book revenue.

It’s nothing new. Not by a damn sight.

But I have little else to say for myself, let’s instead focus on Karol’s comments.

If I only finish one of the three books I’ve started writing….

….I hope it’s the relationship one. The world needs it.

In an article titled “Want a man to propose? Be a bitch”, this story is relayed:

Kara is a perfect example of why smart, confident women come out on top. Very early on, her fianc� tried to give her his two cents on how she should dress. She was leaving for a meeting, and he told her to wear a dress instead of the pantsuit she had on. Then he told her she was wearing too much makeup. What the nice girl would have done is run out and buy a new wardrobe. But Kara playfully put him in check: “Listen here, Versace. This outfit has always been fine. And I haven’t had any complaints about the makeup either. But if you’d like, I’ll let you know when I’m wearing this in advance. That way, if you don’t want to see me in it, you don’t have to come over.”

Friends, Kara is stupid. She probably was wearing too much make-up and she probably would’ve looked better in a dress. But, regardless. The fact that she completely rejected any suggestion that she is imperfect does NOT speak to her confidence level. Being confident means you won’t crumble and die if you’re wrong about something. Confidence is being able to accept criticism. Her retardo reaction to helpful advice betrays her lack of confidence. This is a woman bred on the idea that everything she does is perfect and any man who thinks otherwise is just a big, fat jerk. Of course, when he leaves her for his secretary who doesn’t unnecessary battle with him, the cry will be that she’s too confident and he just couldn’t handle it– instead of that she’s a nightmare and he wanted to wake up.

Now to be fair, I never developed my seething disgust toward women who worked at making my opinion irrelevant until I had time to realize there was this huge abundance of available ladies out there that were simply unsuitable for me. By the time I came to this belated realization, I was well past the age where I would have been considered a prime specimen, assuming I ever was.

It matters NOT. Avoiding the ladies who marginalize the importance of his opinion to the level of near-nothingness, is what the smart man does. It’s irrelevant that I failed to become smart until I was deep into the age of grayness and flabbiness. It’s still smart. Look, if things work out with the lady and you pledge to spend the rest of your life with her, do you really want to wake up & go to bed with that until it’s time to push up daisies? Your feelings are less important than the feelings of some deranged bum who knocks on the door at three in the morning to defecate on your living room carpet? Every puppy, every kitty, every creepy crawly thing on the planet is more important to your girl than you are?

Screw that. That’s a routine for people who still labor under the assumption that life is one big practice-run.

Hey here’s a question. Is Sherry Argov married? Currently? How many times? For how long? They aren’t separated, are they? Do they actually live together or are they like Bill and Hillary? More to the point, how come nobody seems to be asking stuff like that? I just find it hard to believe, incredibly hard, a proposal can be forthcoming because the lady has proven her adequate bitchiness — would not happen otherwise — and this somehow blossoms into a happy healthy marriage that outlasts both their mortal coils. And here’s another question. What kind of guy are we talking about? Is this some raging asshole? There have been quite a few airheaded women who’ve admitted to being “stuck” on such a fella, and it would seem if this is nothing more than a way to pull those prizes in like a moth to a flame, a little truth-in-advertising would be in order.

Karol, congratulations. If you aren’t making some lucky guy very happy, I’m sure you will soon. You GET IT. That probably means a bunch of other ladies do, too.

Me, Or Your Lyin’ Eyes? II

The history of mankind is replete with occasions wherein the simple nature of truth is forgotten. Truth is what truth is. You can’t vote on it, and no parliament or king can say what it is. Wherever an institution installs itself for the purpose of telling lesser men what is true and what is not, an empire will surely fall.

That’s just common sense. What’s fascinating, to me anyway, is for how long a time, and how often, people forget this. Well, it’s just been done one more time, except this time people think it’s a really important movie.

Albert Einstein once said, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore’s new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction.

Gore’s credibility is damaged early in the film when he tells the audience that, by simply looking at Antarctic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the American Clean Air Act was passed. Dr. Ian Clark, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (U of O) responds, “This is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice.” Air over the United States doesn’t even circulate to the Antarctic before mixing with most of the northern, then the southern, hemisphere air, and this process takes decades. Clark explains that even far more significant events, such as the settling of dust arising from the scouring of continental shelves at the end of ice ages, are undetectable in ice cores by an untrained eye.

Hat tip to Varifrank, which is probably headed to this blog’s sidebar, sooner rather than later.

Let’s take all this at face value for a minute, and make-believe we will let the Al Gore band of elites dictate to the rest of us what truth is. Let’s say that we’re headed into the thick of global warming, it will only get worse, man is the cause. And furthermore, “everyone” realizes it save for slope-foreheaded red-state-leaning morons like me, high-school-educated gun-lovin’ Nascar-watching “Appliances On The Front Porch” rednecks who are too stupid to see the obvious.

From San Diego, CA to Bangor, ME, and every inch in between, all federal, state, county and municipal buildings have solar panels on the rooftops. Why not? It’s a one-time disbursement, with a negligible load of maintenance, a drop in the bucket compared to the year-to-year money all those agencies spend on other things.

There is a truly massive effort underway to relocate all residential, commercial and government facilities, several miles away from the water’s edge. That includes most of Manhattan, including Wall Street. Government agents are walking door-to-door to contact tens of thousands of coastline residents who have no telephone or Internet service.

Nobody is bellyaching about the cost of gas. Those of us who rely on it, after all, are only using it for the handful of years that remain before we trade Ol’ Bessie in an electric model. In that enterprise, cost is irrelevant. Bellyaching is instead confined to the subject of what the electric models cost, and the scarcity of charging stations and other facilities.

Of course, the Senate has sat down to vote on the Kyoto Protocols, and this time passed them overwhelmingly. The Protocols themselves have been re-written so that no countries are exempt. The official United Nations response to any country seeking exemption, is “Are you out of your freakin’ gourd?”

A construction crew cooking up a batch of tar to fix a leaky roof, is about as common a sight as a Victorian-era chimney sweeper.

Residents of states do not ask residents of other states, “what are the smog check and automative emissions requirements where you live?” This question is now pointless, as the Federal Government has declared a national emergency and siezed control of the emissions standards in all states. Nobody passes, or very few do. Repair cost caps, grace periods, temporary permits, these are all things of the past. It’s smog, after all. Smog causes global warming.

We have new programs to encourage telecommuting, the likes of which have not been seen before. Incentives for employers, regulatory oversight, seminars, the works! In fact, you have to explain to your boss why you don’t want to telecommute now, and he has to explain to the government why you can’t. None of these conversations are any fun.

Shopping mall parking lots…are empty. Except for the overcrowded bicycle racks. The mall management keeps promising everybody more bicycle racks are on the way, but it never seems to be enough. Gas stations are being torn out. Retail shops dealing in bicycle gear and equipment, go in their place. The IRS would like to know what you spent at those shops, so they can give you credit.

Soccer, for kids, is history. Kids play in the yard, like kids did back in my day. If this presents a danger of kidnapping or child abuse or injury or some other shenanigans, then the parents just spend more time watching the kids, and make the time to do so.

On Monday morning at the water cooler, people brag to each other about the television shows they missed. Reading books and newspapers is very popular among men, and crochet is popular among ladies. Teachers make more money than professional football players. Nobody remembers the last time they saw a commercial. Every household has a remote with a dead battery, if the remote can be found at all, and nobody cares.

There is a massive network of electric rail systems to transport goods across the country, as the classic eighteen-wheeler did before. Highway funding is still used to coerce states into abdicating their sovereign rights to make laws as they see fit, and do things Uncle Sam’s way instead. But it isn’t called “highway funding,” it’s called “transport funding.” The states can spend it on expanding the federal network of electric rail, and thereby qualify for an extra 10% incentive subsidy. Which, of course, they all eagerly do.

That you drive something that gets less than 30 miles a gallon, earns you more social stigma than a swastika or “KKK” or “McCarthy Was Right” bumper sticker ever would.

What we now call “roads,” are actually called “legacy asphalt” or something like that. They’re falling into disrepair. Nobody is complaining. It would be nice to have more manpower pulling the big slabs of asphalt off the ground so the hitherto-endangered species would have a little surplus space to live and breed. But whatever labor we lack the public funds to hire, we just pull out of the prisons anyway. The prisoners are happy to help out, now that they aren’t allowed to watch television anymore.

Speaking of jail, illegal immigration is punished by jail time period. If they have to live here illegally, might as well do it in jail where they’ll consume less power. Did I mention there’s no television in there?

You know those signs some hotels have about laundry? How they want to conserve hot water so if you want a towel washed, leave it on the floor because the maid isn’t going to touch the other ones? Well, now they do the same thing with air conditioning. In fact, they don’t have it. Even the nice ones. To travel, means to sweat your ass off, and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re used to. Everybody swims when they go to hotels. The hotels have all put in larger pools and hired more staff to keep things clean and tidy. You can buy some trunks in the lobby if you are one of the exceptionally rare travellers who didn’t pack any.

It doesn’t change when your trip is over. Nobody runs the air conditioner. EVER. What would be the point? It just makes the whole earth hotter to make this one room cooler. Lives are at stake here. Off it goes. Off, and out. If you have a health condition and can’t be in a stuffy room for too long, your doctor will recommend a water-cooled collar you can wear around your neck.

Special permits required for breeding cows. They give off massive amounts of methane, and nobody’s categorized them as endangered just yet. Beef goes for twenty or thirty dollars a pound for low-grade chuck, and nobody gives a rat’s ass. Microwave-cooked beef just gives you a case of the trots, anyway. Lobster-and-shrimp tacos are all the rage now.

No private jets. I don’t care who you are. You can’t get ahold of one anyway, they’ve all been scrapped.

Okay back to reality…none of the above is being done. All of it should be — okay, maybe I got away from myself and got silly a couple times — it’s fair to say some of it should be. Why are we supposed to care again, after all? Something about the extinction of several species, possibly including our own? Seems pretty drastic. And yet, none of the above has taken place. None.

I go out and ride my 24-speed hybrid, and it’s a huge rancid pain in the ass. I do not own those roads, not even close. The cars let me know I’m in the way. Which technically I am, if there is no bike path…and that is most of the time. And those cars, by the way, are freakin’ huge. To say nothing of fashionable.

It seems the more left-wing the politician, the lower the mileage rating of the SUV or limousine in which he rides.

My country’s financial center is right on the water, along with the homes of millions of people who really don’t want to wake up to ocean in their bedrooms. Nobody’s moving anything. Nobody’s even talking about moving anything.

So what we have going on here, is a story even older than the despot telling us what truth is. It is the story of the hypocrite: People saying one thing and doing something else. You know, I’ve noticed when I ignore people who do this, I never regret it. Food for thought.

Update 6/28/06: On the subject of those environmentally-dirty cows, some good, fresh…uh, lean meat. From this CNN article, summer of 2000. Subject: Scientific measurements of methane emissions from cows in Australia. Interestingly, the measurements are being taken in order to fulfill obligations under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Helpful statistics about the filthy cows can be gleaned, such as:

Vile, nasty cows. They’re a bunch of damned four-legged fartin’ whores, that’s what they are. We don’t need billions and billions of these squalid, despicable things. Let’s get with it!

Shrimp tacos.

Veggie burgers.

Goat cheese.

Rice milk.

Why are our elected leaders being so lazy about this? It’s greenhouse gases. Lots of ’em. Greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

We’re still buying hamburgers at McDonald’s for 69 cents, cheeseburgers for 89 cents. We are patronizing a market that breeds lots and lots and LOTS of these dirty animals…and in so doing, we pull up to drive-through windows that have been raised several inches higher over the last decade, to make it easier to order from an enormous vehicle that probably gets eleven miles a gallon, if that.

Global warming destroying our planet? And we’re worried? We don’t act like it, not in the slightest.

A Pithy Observation

When a new rule is made and it is pleasing to people we call “conservatives,” our reaction tends to result in a prolonged discussion about how “our civil liberties are being eroded.” There is a prevailing sentiment that this should have been stopped and we have already gone too far, even if no one can identify anything they could do before that is now beyond their capacity.

When a new rule is made and it is pleasing to liberals, our tendency is to engage in very brief commentary about how we’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet. There is a prevailing sentiment that the new rule is an overture to something larger, worthless if it is not, and the ink should not even dry before work begins on Chapter Two.

We somehow don’t seem to be receptive to the simple idea that liberals stop us from doing things. Perhaps this is why liberals have succeeded in keeping us from doing so many things. Yanking our kids out of a failing public school district, buying a firearm for household defense, and don’t forget the endless list of activities that have been curtailed by threat of civil action as opposed to hard-firm-statute. Putting up a picture of a nice-looking woman in an office, Easter baskets in city hall, “Please Speak English” policies in cheesesteak restaurants, keeping our homes when the city wants to buy us out for a new Wal-Mart, the list is endless.

What’s this “Religious Right” stopped me from doing lately, again?

Wimpy

If man is a species, and a species evolves by adapting to the struggle for limited resources through natural selection, growing stronger through the confrontation of the exigencies of nature, I wonder if the process can work the other way. If we rely on technology or whatever-else have you, to remove the struggle from daily life, can the genetic traits we have accumulated, start disappear through a process of atrophy?

In theory, I see no reason why not. In practice, it would appear this process is much quicker than the creation of those traits in the first place.

Item!

Ninety-seven percent of IT professionals feel “traumatized” at their work.

According to a survey released this month by Dublin-based consulting firm SkillSoft, 97 percent of IT professionals feel traumatized by their daily work. Indeed, 80 percent of them get tense just thinking about going to the office.
:
What appears beyond doubt is that workplace stress has turned into an epidemic…work has become so psychologically demanding because we choose to make it that way.

Duh. The article goes on to point out that “hyperactivity is now a badge of honor.” I’d say that’s right on the mark. Working in IT shops for twenty years in a variety of different capacities, I’ve come to notice some of the most esteemed and celebrated and up-and-coming highly compensated professionals, are the ones who put the most energy into showing how much adrenaline they have. It has not escaped my notice that these seem to be the people who take the most time to solve simple problems. Or, if they can somehow take all this cosmetic adrenaline rush and channel it into a productive solution to a problem, they’ve made the day far less productive for those around them. When Bob’s trying to get the index rebuilt on the database, after all, nobody within forty yards of Bob can think about a damn thing other than the stinkin’ database.

In fact, personally, I question how a real IT shop can have “badges of honor.” That strikes me as a case of choosing to make the job more stressful. After all, you’re there to make things work, or you’re there to show yourself off trying to make things work. You can’t do both.

If you try, everyone else will suffer as they wait longer before the damn thing works. But oh, what a show you’ll put on for them, trying to make it work.

Ninety-seven percent “traumatized,” huh. I wonder if this is a language problem. Like if you’re an IT professional, and at least one day in a week you get that feeling where you really, really wish it was Saturday and you don’t want to go in, you have to put down in this survey that you’re “traumatized.” Gawd, I hope that’s the case. To drive through the asphalt jungle, over the very spot where, two centuries earlier, Daniel Boone had to wrestle bears and what-not, grabbing your quick Starbuck’s Caramel-Macchiatto, waltzing in to your air-conditioned fortress, filling out a status report or two, and then answering a quick survey to report that you’re “traumatized.” Yeesh.

In the Civil War, when men had to have their legs amputated without anesthetics, there was no way to stop the bleeding without the benefit of a red-hot iron skillet. My point? A hundred and forty-one years on, 97% of the people who have to answer e-mails about why-isn’t-this-network-printer-working, feel “traumatized.” Trouble?

Item!

An office worker has suffered injury from his boss’ potty-mouth language.

A TELSTRA worker traumatised by bad language in the office has won a compensation claim.

The man was treated for anxiety and depression after his bosses told him to get his “arse” and “bum” on a seat, a tribunal has heard.

Sivanadian Perananthasivam has been awarded medical expenses and workers’ compensation for almost three months off the job because of emotional distress.

He was upset and weepy, and then later suffered migraines and nightmares and had a fear of answering the phone after he was sworn at, intimidated and branded a disgrace to his work team, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was told.

The abuse that helped trigger a psychiatric disorder included one superior telling him to “park your little arse in that chair”.

The bad language was part of the Australian vernacular and would not offend the ordinary worker, the hearing was told.

But Mr Perananthasivam was a religious teetotaller and non-smoker not used to casual cursing.

Mr Perananthasivam, of Sydney, felt bullied and racially abused at work before the incident, the tribunal heard.

He was working as a bid manager for Telstra during the showdown and had since been sacked.

Two managers, Steve King and Phillip Cornwell, apologised to Mr Perananthasivam after Telstra held an independent inquiry.

Tribunal senior member Josephine Kelly ruled that he had suffered a work-related injury.

She ordered Telstra to pay medical bills and compensate him for time off work between February 9 and May 3, 2004.

You know, my lifetime is like the blink of an eye, against the mural of human evolution. I know of no human trait that has been developed over a mere four-decade span, in the ongoing struggle of the species to survive in a competition for limited resources. If you were to lengthen that amount of time by a factor of, let’s say, a hundred, to four thousand years or so — I still can’t think of any natural strength we’ve developed over that timeframe, other than, perhaps, a nominal increase in the average man’s height.

And yet in a single generation, I appear to have witnessed the pain threshold of the office worker yanked to the floor like a whore’s drawers. Waah!

So because of that, I have the sense that the human species, and thus any species, is capable of creating a new weakness in a fraction of the time it takes to create a new strength. I do not know this for a fact and have no way of proving it. I simply haven’t been alive long enough to see us do something really cool…like walk upright, see in the dark, change the shape of our teeth, expand our skull cavities, etc. These things take thousands of years, maybe millions.

I’m no scientist, either. And the scientists don’t want to find out about this stuff. They’d much rather bellyache about how President Bush doesn’t believe in global warming.

But I suspect if they were to take the time to look into it, they’d find my theory of slow-strength-rapid-weakness holds true, or anyway, that there’s some merit to it. A weakness can appear in a single generation, maybe even less than that, if an environment fails to introduce a challenge, and thus motivate a specimen to overcome it. Strengths, on the other hand, come from said challenges. They come from natural selection, and they come from mutations that allow one line of a species to compete more efficiently for limited resources, against another species failing to sport the new mutation, thus doomed to die off. That, essentially, is what natural selection is, as it’s been described to me. And it takes a long time. Generations. Oodles of generations.

Here it is 2006, and some guy with an unpronounceable name suffers injury when he is told to sit his ass down in a chair.

Thirty years for the weakness, thirty THOUSAND years for the strength.

You realize the ramifications of my theory, don’t you, if it is indeed true? We’re living in the end times. Armageddon must surely follow such a widespread and rapid shedding of the traits that we have accumulated over nigh-on-unmeasurable amounts of time, to survive in the wilds. Furthermore, if you buy into the theory that the taming of these wilds is a mere illusion, genuine only insofar as it motivates us to weaken ourselves by living in them — and I do — the end of the world is all-the-more assured.

But hey, don’t worry. Just keep sipping that Soy Latte, feel traumatized about having to do a restore on that network folder you erased by mistake, and sue your boss for telling you to park your ass in a chair. Pussies.

Bush At 38

President Bush’s approval rating is at 38 percent, up 2 points from earlier this month.

Last month, his approval rating was at a record low. You heard a lot, lot, lot about his approval rating last month.

And now that it’s perked up again, you’ve heard about it even more, haven’t you. Why, your ears are bleeding from hearing about how high the President’s rating is. Suuuuuuuuurrrrreee they are………….

Cause And Effect

Below are two sequences of cause and effect. Neither can be completely proven, nor refuted. You may find one to be more credible than the other.

Think of it as an intelligence test.

1. The Supreme Court, from time to time, comes up with more excuses not to execute murderers. This leads to an increase not only in murder, but in other violent crimes as well.

2. The Republicans who are in charge of the government right now won’t do anything about global warming, and this leads to hurricanes.

Hmmm…

Well, That’s It For Me

I’m not sure how to put all this together and I damn sure don’t know how to hand out the credit for finding it. For introducing me to the thread the Rottweiler gets the credit, but for pointing out the redundancy, we have to give that one to DailyKOS member Wisper. Let us start from the beginning, proceed forward until we come to the end, then stop.

On April 27, KOS member CheChe had to write in with his tale of woe:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the Senate Republicans want to drain the treasury in order to give every American a $100 check. I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult – the rage and feelings of helplessnes were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words – nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, “Honey, I just don’t know – I don’t know what’s going on in this country anymore…”

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, “Daddy” she said, “why are the Republicans doing this to the country?” Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it’s too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter’s voice helped me to get through.

Bottle-feeding newborns is like forcing them to smoke cigarettes.

Kinda gets ya right here, don’t it? Well, hold the phone there, because you don’t want to turn on the water works before the story’s told. Because after the “Spying On Ordinary Americans” scandal came to a head, CheChe had to put together another narrative about the awful mood the Republicans are creating in his household.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn’t understand why the President would be spying on everyone. “Even my Grandma?” she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the President has ordered a group of spies to collect information on every American. “And yes honey, even Grandma”, I was forced to say.

I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult – the rage and feelings of helplessnes were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words – nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, “Honey, I just don’t know – I don’t know what’s going on in this country anymore…”

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, “Daddy” she said, “why are the Republicans doing this to the country?” Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it’s too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter’s voice helped me to get through.

Bottle-feeding newborns is like forcing them to smoke cigarettes.

Geez, the poor kid. She can’t even turn on the cartoons without…er, yes she can. Come to think of it, this is kind of weird. How old is this girl anyway?

Well, it just happened again…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn’t understand why the President would be going to Iraq when so many things are wrong in this country. “Doesn�t Mr. Bush care about us anymore?” she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the President seems to be abandoning his country. “Honey, I think his boss, Mr. Rove, sent Mr. Bush out of the country in order to keep himself out of the newspapers. You see, he wasn�t sure if he was going to be arrested today or not, and so he planned Mr. Bush�s trip ahead of time just in case…�

I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult – the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words – nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, “Honey, I just don’t know – I don’t know what’s going on in this country anymore…”

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, “Daddy” she said, “why are the Republicans doing this to the country?” Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it’s too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter’s voice helped me to get through.

Bottle-feeding newborns is like forcing them to smoke cigarettes.

Y’know what I think? I think the daughter is made up. And CheChe is Karl Rove.

Whoever he is, the folks here think he’s written the funniest DailyKOS comment in history. I’m inclined to disagree; the history over there is awfully rich. You can grow any crop you want over there, just don’t get any on the bottoms of your shoes.

If all this stuff is on the up-and-up, regardless of what the girl’s age is, it’s a little disturbing. As of about a week ago, CheChe seems to have an infant/toddler in the house, things are supposed to be tough on the older daughter “since we lost her mother” and the signature under each post suggests he’s opposed to bottle-feeding. So what I want to know is, was the little one put on strained carrots and baby-mush before the mom kicked the bucket, or does this guy have a pair of man-boobs?

And regarding the older girl — how about a nice rented disc or two of SpongeBob SquarePants? I mean, for crying in da sink…California special election? Alito hearings? Sobbing her eyes out over the President leaving to visit another country? What a freakin’ drama queen. She’s going to make some poor sap into a real happy husband someday.

My pet gila monster and I are going to have a good cry over this now. Seeing the strength in my gila monster’s face helps me to get through.

Well, That Was Lame II

You can have a baby in nine months. And I guess in that amount of time you can also figure out Karl Rove is not going to be indicted after all.

“On June 12, 2006, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove,” Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, said in a statement.

The question of what would happen to Rove, one of Washington’s most powerful and polarizing figures, in the CIA case had been a major topic in Washington since Lewis Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted on charges relating to the leak of a CIA covert operative’s name.

“We believe the special counsel’s decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove’s conduct,” Luskin said.

Liberals, do you have any comment? Come to think of it, how did a Rove indictment ever matter one way or t’other?

Update: Hat tip to Best of the Web for this. It’s the “Five Stages of Grieving” being meticulously observed by real, live, left-wing ranting thread-poster-people about the Karl Rove letdown, over at the Rovian Conspiracy. Very well done.

Beltway Trouble

Let me state at the outset, my opinion that in the eyes of history, the “Intelligence About Iraq” imbroglio has irredeemably turned all soft and brown. President Bush’s legacy is in the process of being decided, but the legacy of said imbroglio is not. If he is remembered as a golden-boy, beneath a negligible tarnish, like FDR, history will separate him from the imbroglio. If he is trashed, like Ulysses Grant, history will fasten him to the imbroglio. The fecal qualities of the imbroglio have been decided, and chiseled in stone.

The preceding paragraph, appearances notwithstanding, is an indictment against history, not against the imbroglio. Very few things being advanced, articulated and remembered about the imbroglio, are true. To those who bother to study the details, the entire saga is a lesson about the fallibility of history. History has an ugly manufacturing process; it is written by a pinpoint-sized selection of elites, and often by elites who have a variety of different interests in making something go away.

And it seems to be the nature of politics, to make things go away that are in fact true, and enshrine false things high atop a dais of everlasting remembrance. According to the unpleasantnesses being brought to my attention, and at this point I see no reason to doubt them, this pertains in an ugly way to the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden. According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Gen. Hayden has asserted quite a simplistic and half-assed version of events in the above-described imbroglio, on the floor of the United States Senate no less — promised in private to correct the record publicly, and then apparently welched. If what I’m reading is true.

As General Hayden would have known all too well, [Undersecretary of Defense Doug] Feith’s office has been an obsession of Senator [Carl] Levin [D-MI], who contends despite all evidence that mistakes on Iraq intelligence were all the fault of civilian appointees at the Pentagon. The truth, as a bipartisan report from his own committee attests, is that the CIA made most of the errors on its own.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Feith called General Hayden to object to his testimony. And, according to Mr. Feith, General Hayden was apologetic. He said he had not intended to say what he appeared to, and promised to issue a statement correcting the record. Arizona Senator Jon Kyl tells us he had a similar conversation with General Hayden, during which the CIA director promised a remedial letter that could be entered into the Congressional record. “He told us he did not intend those remarks to suggest Doug Feith or the Department of Defense did anything wrong, inaccurate or misleading. That is precisely what he told me,” says Mr. Kyl.

But the General’s subsequent effort, provided to us by Mr. Kyl, is no retraction or correction at all. It says only that his concern about bad intelligence methodology “is not confined to any specific program.” Both Mr. Feith and the Senator have asked Mr. Hayden to be more specific, but so far to no avail. Mr. Hayden also declined to comment for this editorial.

I can’t get too hopping mad at the politicians about the nature of politics. Politics has cast doubt on things that are true, and shone a favorable light of believability on things that are false, ever since the first time one man appointed another to represent him in something. This is just human nature; asked what happened, people like to report what is expected from them, as opposed to what really happened.

Nor am I particularly upset about the people-at-large like myself, being set up to misunderstand what kind of information is sloshing around in the intelligence community. That kind of stuff is classified for a reason; we aren’t supposed to understand everything.

What really bursts my buttons, is the kind of attention, or lack thereof, that is paid to how things like this actually work. How the mechanism actually functions, is the business of the country. If any of that should be obstructed from We, The People, there’s certainly no reason to obstruct same from the view of the legislators who are supposed to be overseeing it.

For Chrissakes. It’s an even-numbered year. We’re about to start a long hot summer of arguing over how the government should steal dimes and quarters from thirty-something apartment rats like myself, and spend it on free Viagra for wealthy, comfortable old farts with summer homes, swimming pools and Winnebagoes. And Al Gore’s bullshit about global warming. And stem cells, exit exams, minimum wage, and SUVs.

Meanwhile, gathering intelligence on bad guys who want to kill Americans, is one of the few things government is really supposed to do.

It appears that the truth is teetering on the brink of being discarded for all of the future foreseeable recorded history, and that a lie is about to be enshrined as the truth. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats are all supposed to be uppity and cantankerous and grouchy over the fact that “mistakes were made,” so to speak — and after the dust has settled, there will be not one single rational, logical reason to expect things to turn out any different next time. The difference between good intelligence and bad intelligence, is PEOPLE DYING. Not just any people; the people we think about on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, some of whom willingly sign up for foot fungus, rotten underwear, months-at-a-time away from their families, and possible loss of life and limb, to make the world a better place. Better people than me. Something is busted that gets these people killed, and we’re not fixing it.

If Gen. Hayden is really telling two different versions of the story to two different sets of people, dancing back & forth depending on who he’s talking to — not, I’m given to understand, an unusual habit in the beltway — he needs to be fired yesterday. That’s assuming I have the story in front of me as it really happened. Which I hope is not the case.

But regardless of that, the time has probably come to let our delegates know we care about this stuff.

Thing I Know #89. Since biblical times, what we have come to call “news” has always been a curious hybrid. It blends whatever is written in the messenger’s scroll, with what the Emperor is ready to hear.

Showdown

On Friday, I wrote about the unfolding situation out in Philadelphia involving Joey Vento, 66, owner of Geno’s Steaks, one of the city’s most popular cheesesteak eateries. Mr. Vento has put up a little sign on the front of his shop that says when you’re ordering, please speak English. This appears to have become an issue in the neighborhood lately, as prospective patrons walk up and spew their nonsensical non-English syllables, expecting to get a hot sandwich. Actually I shouldn’t use the word “prospective,” as Mr. Vento says nobody has every been turned away over the policy, and nobody anywhere has taken the effort to contradict him. In point of fact, if you watch his interview from beginning to end, he seems to have a lot more open-mindedness and tolerance than a lot of the hard-left-wingers I know who hope to monopolize such positive human attributes.

Well, local busybody Rachel Lawton has announced that tonight or tomorrow, Geno’s Steaks is to be served with an official complaint for violating the city’s, um…oh, where is that article. Here it is. For violating the city’s “Fair Practices Ordinance.” The ordinance is supposed to prohibit discrimination in employment, public accommodation and housing. And Lawton is the acting executive director of the city’s Commission on Human Relations.

Fair Practices Ordinance. Prohibits discrimination in public accommodations. That sounds pretty harmless, huh? Just remember this next time some anti-discrimination law comes up and your local busybody liberal demands to know how, oh pray tell how, could you vote against an anti-discrimination ordinance. Think of Joey Vento. Joey, and his little 8″x5″ or 11″x8�” or whatever it is, his little cardboard sign.

Can’t have that now. We have an ordinance.

Geno’s owner Joseph Vento posted two small signs at his shop in south Philadelphia proclaiming: “This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING ‘PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH.'”

Lawton said that violates the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination in employment, public accommodation and housing. “It’s discouraging patronage by non-English speaking customers because of their national origin or ancestry,” Lawton said.

Vento, 66, whose grandparents struggled to learn English after arriving from Sicily in the 1920s, said Monday that he is not discriminating and has no intention of giving in. “I would say they would have to handcuff me and take me out because I’m not taking it down,” Vento said.

One more time, with feeling, all together now: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Does anyone with any authority anywhere give a rat’s ass what this amendment was originally intended to say anymore? I say Joey Vento should get a written apology from the Commission of Whateveritiz, or else big giant marble crosses should go up on every city hall and state supreme court, from sea to shining sea.

Watch this tomorrow morning…see what happens…

Reformed Leftists

Two years ago, by reading the Wall Street Journal, I expanded my pool of knowledge and thus my personal fortune.

I had to wait an additional four months for the elections to be over so I could collect on a friendly wager. I got a couple of cheeseburgers out of the deal from a Kerry-voter who was suffering from a bad case of False Consensus Effect and was sure that our current President would be a one-termer. He was sure it would be a landslide. “Nobody” — nobody he knew — would vote for President Bush.

What did I read to expand my horizons, and help to glean what was about to happen? Stuff like this; comments from people who voted for Al Gore in 2000, and had made up their mind by mid-summer 2004 that President Bush would get the nod for a second term. More than two or three; an impressive number, representing a silent but voting even-greater number.

I’m a Gore voter who’s long since moved through the center to the right after 9/11.

I suspect Bush will garner quite a few people who normally vote Democratic.

…having watched news clips of recent Al Gore speeches, I suspect that more than a few Gore voters feel a shiver go down their spines when they think of how close the Tennessee Nut Case came to serving as our commander in chief.

…we believe that the left, as epitomized by Gore, has gone off the deep end and can’t be trusted with the reins of power, especially during wartime.

Turning it around, could anyone possibly have voted for Bush, witnessed Gore’s subsequent meltdown and said, boy, I sure wish he were our president?

Exhibit B, courtesy of blogger Michael Lopez-Calderon, is his essay which he wrote in October 2001, “The Fall of My Leftist House of Mirrors.” It appeared some four years later in Front Page Magazine, which left the unfortunate impression, he indicates, that it took him all that time to come around. As you read his comments, you see he was instantly turned-off with disgust by the reaction of high-profile leftists to the attack itself, and his Journey To The Dark Side was mostly completed back then.

To write more would run the risk of putting words in his mouth, so I’ll let his overture speak for itself. You are strongly encouraged, here, to click it open and read the entire thing.

That crashing, piercing sound you hear is the fall of my Leftist House of Mirrors. A worldview that purported moral truths, cloaked itself in the language of arcane academia, venerated its doubtlessly dedicated, sincere intellectual stalwarts and activists � Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Benjamin Spock, Howard Zinn, Edward Said — and preyed upon alienated young idealists who like me were in search of a workable Utopia, proved a chimera of monumental proportions. That my Leftist House of Mirrors produced an illusion on such a massive scale is now evidenced by the reaction of the Left�s priestly class to the horrific Islamo-Fascist act of mass murder on September 11, 2001.

The Leftist response to that wickedness bordered on the anemic at best, collaboration with evil at worst. That what�s left of the Left would hesitate in condemning this monstrous act; that it would even countenance the rubbish of �chickens coming home to roost� or as Chomsky quipped, �a nasty response to U.S. nastiness around the world,� unequivocally betrays a hatred of the United States, democracy, indeed even Western civilization, that is as equal parts lethal as it is irrational.

It’s the oldest story in the world about philosophical blunders, and we all fall prey to it: An epiphany precedes an opinion, and he who holds the opinion thinks his opinion is the only one that can arise from any form of enlightenment — we are tempted to believe an epiphany can precede no other opinions. But if epiphanies were expected, there wouldn’t be anything epiphanic about them, would there?

This road is well-trod. You come to learn about pain and suffering in the world, you become liberal…you come to learn about other things, and you become what today we call “conservative.” Once there, few people ever go back again. What are those other things? Too many to mention here. The knowledge, for example, that there really doesn’t seem to be any ideology that embraces love, as liberalism is supposed to — it seems even the best-intentioned movements, subsist over the long term on a steady diet of resentment and jealousy. The knowledge of bad men doing evil things, determined to keep on doing them long after the bones of good men have crumbled into dust. The knowledge gained through life experience that when Capt. Jean-Luc Picard negotiates with the Tazmanian Devil, Taz always wins unless the exchange is scripted.

Essentially, that ill-will is contagious, and good-will far less so. Facts are facts, opinions are opinions, the two are not interchangable. Unfortunately, the nature of such ideas is that they cannot be convincingly explained to someone. If you don’t know them already, it takes a jolting life-experience for you to become aware of them. And of course, once that happens, you’ll never forget.

This Is Good VIII

This is as good an an explanation as any, although by no means an all-encompassing one, why Neal Boortz is listed in my sidebar. He gets a hat tip for this. You might want to watch the video linked below before chowing down on that roll of Mentos and following it up with the 44-oz. bucket o’ Pepsi.

Or not…

Source

Update: If you go there, you have got to follow the link on one of the other pages to here. Find out what happens when you really, really do drink Pepsi and pop Mentos. Not for the squeamish…

Outrage! II

Anyone else notice how difficult it has become to simply make a point, and have that point considered on its merits? Or, when someone else makes a point, to consider that point on its merits alone? Sure you can still do it, but not while remaining tuned in to the broader debate-at-large; somehow you need to wear earplugs. It seems distraction, consternation, theatrical indignation are more the order of the day.

In her new book, Ann Coulter has pointed out some of the 9/11 widows who would like to point out what a doddering dunderhead our current President is, and are using their widowed status to give some extra boost to that message, seem to be enjoying their newfound celebrity status a little too much. Many an attack has followed against Coulter none of which, to the best I can ascertain, have to do with the merits of what she said. NBC Anchor Brian Williams introduced a segment with,

“just when you think that it seems that there are no limits on anything, someone comes along and makes a comment that goes over the line � the line that is shared by just about everybody because some things are, it turns out, still sacred.”

The Hartford Courant intoned in an editorial that Coulter should apologize, leaving unmentioned exactly what might happen to anyone, Coulter included, should she fail to do so:

To make such cruel and tasteless statements offends the memory of all who died in the World Trade Center attacks. Republicans and Democrats across the country been quick to condemn the remarks. Ms. Coulter should apologize for her outrageously insensitive comments.

Clearly, there’s some kind of line that can be crossed, and to suppose that such a line remains static throughout the decades would be ludicrous. Yet if there’s some kind of process by which we get to vote on where that line is, I must be missing the registration forms and sample ballots. No, this line is for the elites to draw…in such a way as to serve the whims of the aristocracy.

In 21st-century America. Who’d have thunk it.

And now two assemblywomen in New Jersey, home state of the women so described in Coulter’s book, have called for a boycott. That’s right, a boycott.

Assemblywomen Call For Boycott Of New Coulter Book

Two state lawmakers are calling on New Jerseyans to boycott a book by conservative commentator Ann Coulter that calls some outspoken nine-eleven widows “The Witches of East Brunswick.”

Democratic Assemblywomen Joan Quigley and Linda Stender say Coulter’s characterizations and remarks are motivated by greed and her desire to sell books.

In “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” Coulter writes that a group of New Jersey widows whose husbands perished in the World Trade Center act “as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them.”

Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza have spent the years since the 2001 terror attacks supporting an independent commission to examine government failures. During the 2004 presidential race, they endorsed Democrat John Kerry.

This is exactly what I was writing about here and here. What do we have here, four 9/11 widows who happen to be Kerry supporters, or four Kerry supporters who happen to be 9/11 widows? Those are two manifestly different situations.

Some three thousand people were killed on September 11, 2001. It ought to be pretty damn easy to find someone who a) supported George W. Bush right up to and including 9/10/11; b) lost a close relative during the attacks; c) learned something in those attacks, or subsequent attacks, causing them to change their mind. That should be easy. I’m sure there’s someone like that somewhere.

Those who seek to proliferate the message, have chosen not to do that. Chosen not to do that. We are left wondering about my question: What’s the real motive? Could it be this is just an innovative way to spread the message?

Coulter has offered a sound theory as to why this choice was made: To make the designated victim bullet-proof. The women about whom Coulter was writing, and their supporters, seek a monologue in the disguise of a dialogue. They have something to say, and they want zero challenges, zero disagreement, zero discussion. So to promulgate the ideas, spokesmen are selected who bear stories of grief, and with them, auras of invincibility. The spokesmen speak, and in our “quasi-free-speech” society, anyone with any reputation to protect whatsoever, is for all practical purposes prohibited from saying anything in reply.

The theory makes sense. And now energy is spent to keep it from resonating. The New York Times — refusing to consider Coulter’s message on its merits — says “Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom’s basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us.” Leonard Pitts writing for my local newspaper The Sacramento Bee, says “The nation’s political discourse has never been as polite and decorous as we like to think…When, however, even widows become fair game for a viperous harridan with an ax to grind and books to sell, maybe decent people should wonder at the lines we have crossed and the type of nation we have become in the process.”

Ah…so “news” isn’t about telling me what’s going on in the world, now it’s about rapping me on the knuckles if I choose to learn of these events from the wrong people.

To the extent that the effort to silence Coulter involves the free exchange of ideas, I support the effort. I even support their right to boycott, to the extent it involves an exhortation to others to join the boycott. The thing of it is, and it’s a big thing: Logically, in order to support this, I must also support Ann Coulter’s right, and her ability, to say what she said. As well as the ability of others to hear what she has to say, should they so choose.

In other words, supporting Freedom of Speech up to, and including, the point where it actually leads to a reasoned discussion of ideas. And whether or not someone lost somebody close to them in the attacks, or in the war, or in anything else, does nothing to diminish this. If this crosses some kind of “line”…let me be the first to state that obvious. Lines have been crossed. Decorum has been lost. People have been made to feel bad to make other people feel good. Products have been sold, involving excruciatingly personal events that certain people might find offensive.

People have eaten bugs on television in order to get ratings. Couples have been sent to islands with good-looking studs and strumpets on said islands, so that temptation can split them up. The parents of our war casualties — the ones that are pro-war — have been ignored, methodically, while Cindy Sheehan preaches on her soapbox endlessly. We have consumed things that raise reasonable questions about what kind of society we really are. All this stuff is “line-crossing,” and it has been going on for a long time now. It’s a little late to be taking ourselves to the woodshed over things like this; if Ann Coulter has awakened somebody somewhere, I have to ask what kind of a nap they have been having.

So let her have her say. If this is disreputable talk, it is reflects on nobody except her. If she’s wrong, let her talk all the more freely, for this would be the best way to point out how wrong she is.

Yeah, that’s pretty radical. Pretty looney-tunes on my part. Heady stuff.

We could call it my nutty little “Freedom of speech is for everybody” idea.

I’m wondering, in fact, why anyone would disagree. Why use the phony outrage to duct-tape Ann Coulter’s mouth? Sure her voice is shrill, but the same is true of many other pundits, some of them even more prominent than Ann. Why boycott this? What are you hiding?

This Is Good VII

Hat tip to Rossputin for this. When sarcasm is used judiciously and effectively, sometimes the product that results is so just-plain-good you have to stand back in awe. No matter what your feelings are about unions, the preceding applies here. You’ve got to check it out.

Net Neutrality

The House of Representatives rejected the Net Neutrality rules; the floor vote roll call is here.

According to a consensus amongst the FARK community, or at least a rancorous portion thereof, this is supposed to kill our freedom. That would be the first time, in my recollection, that government regulation would add to our freedom, or a setback to that regulation would take it away. Struggling to think of a precedent that parallels Net Neutrality, the closest one that comes to mind is the FCC regulating television and radio stations and fining those stations for incidents of obscenity and indecency.

Interestingly, among the FARK user names protesting the defeat of Net Neutrality, insisting that we somehow need this regulation to preserve the freedoms we have, I recognize several that are known to me to have bristled at the forementioned FCC regulation. The question I have for those angsty souls should be obvious.

Sarbanes Oxley has worked out extremely well for us. If you follow the hyperlink in the previous sentence, you will see I’m being sarcastic. SOX was not entirely uncalled-for; SOX had an inspirational anecdote, that being the Enron mess. Now that SOX is here, perhaps it’s a fair assessment to state that we feel the laborious effects of the regulation, more keenly than the purifying effects of same.

So the Net Neutrality people are asking me to believe the following, as I understand it: Emerging freshly from tinkering with something that they could perhaps have argued was busted, and having made a thorough hash out of it, Congress is about to tinker with something nobody thinks is busted which is the “innernets.” We need new rules to keep what we’re keeping just fine & dandy, without the new rules.

The FAQ for the “Save The Internet” political lobbying group, refers to Net Neutrality as “the First Amendment of the Internet.” The question that naturally arises as a result of this, is, doesn’t the First Amendment already apply to the Internet? I have the impression that the most critical reason why the Internet is so universally loved, and there’s such across-the-board concern about saving it, is that the answer to the foregoing is yes. How then does this situation change when a new rule is drafted, and then not passed?

As is often the case, one would think it would be easy to get an answer to such an innocuous inquiry, and it is anything but.