Archive for March, 2008

No, She Can’t

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

…can’t let Neal Boortz get a single sentence out of his mouth without interrupting, that is.

Of course she managed to do it, finally, after he pointed that out. Ah…good to see.

Ayn Rand on Phil Donahue

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

I stumbled across it here. You’ve really got to watch this.

I wonder what she’d say if she had lived to see all the events that came after her eventual demise in 1982, especially Bill Clinton’s presidency. All these presidential trends that came post-Carter. The crying for the cameras, the thumbs-up — surely she’d have to amend this thing about suppression of male emotions. We’ve started living, since she passed on, in a Phil Donahue type of world, and I have to doubt she could be quite so chummy with him if she could see all the wreckage from the consequences of his ideas.

I know exactly where she’s going, though, and she’s right. A big manly man way out in the wilderness goes out to protect his family from a bear, and if he has fear he doesn’t show it — that’s being tough and strong. Then he comes home and, rather than thank him for shooting the bear, the wife yells at him for tracking blood and dirt in on her nice clean floor…which hurts his feelings…the natural thing to do, seems to follow-through on being tough and strong, and not say anything. Which shows the kids that real men kill bears, but then they do whatever their wives tell them to do and if they’re unappreciated — or even insulted — those real men should learn to live with it.

Here’s where I disagree: It isn’t the suppression of emotions that is the problem. It’s some of the crap women fling at men that is the problem. If a bear is nearby and has shown itself to be dangerous, for a man to defend his family is a logical, rational thing to do. For a woman to open a can of smack on her man for getting the floor dirty, after he’s saved her life, is not. Society has created the problem of which Ayn Rand speaks, not by insisting he suppress emotions, but by denying him all other options: For him to point out that it’s inappropriate to berate him for dirtying the floor after he’s just finished protecting everyone, is seen as something on par with back-handing her. We’ve embraced a false dillema: He can beat the crap out of her physically, or hunker down, accept her insults, and beg for more. We’ve deprived men of all options in-between.

In Installment 2 she makes a lot more sense, I think because Donahue allows her the latitude to state where exactly the problem begins — the problem being in “western civilization” we think you have to sacrifice in order to be a decent person. (I would call that arena “the world,” Phil, eastern half first, western half last). You really have to keep your hand on the volume dial because the audio in this chapter is all gunnybags and bollywonkers. She says it comes from spending lavish portions of finite resources on “special” children, for example, the handicapped — what we’re really trying to do is make everybody the same, when they’re not. She sounds like a character out of one of my favorite movies, The Incredibles: If everybody is special, the nobody is.

Her atheism is troubling to me. She does such a thorough job of substantiating all, or at least most, of her other beliefs. But when it comes to atheism she says it is the one true religion because we shouldn’t doubt the evidence of our senses. I know of no Ayn Rand statement, in written or in voice medium, providing an explanation about how that critical chasm is bridged: Senses being unable to provide any evidence supporting any religion, the atheism religion included, how does it win out? Like so many atheists who have engaged me on the innernets, she seems to just pull it out of her butt: There is no God because I just woke up one day and decided that.

Donahue says she’s very close to the dictators she deplores. He illustrates the folly of post-modern liberalism right there: Her resemblance to dictators is that she’s figured out what she wants everybody to do. That’s exceptionally weak. Everybody who has an opinion, regardless of how they have come to it, resembles the dictator in this way. People of Donahue’s persuasion escape this scrutiny by putting on little theatrical puppet shows, in which they pretend to extrapolate their instructions from some fuzzy phantom, usually “The Will Of The People.” Or that if we don’t do what France and Germany want, our “allies” might get cranky.

Hmmm…maybe that’s the real genesis of this destructive altruism in which we find ourselves submerged. Conservatives and liberals both have ideas about what people should do, and in that sense both resemble dictators very weakly — but liberals busy themselves with compiling excuses, and put on a convincing show that they’re just acting in the interests of somebody else.

Americans vs. Citizens

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Rick thinks commenter XtnYoda’s words are worthy of emphasis, and so do I. Looking long and hard at the Obama/Wright mess, he says…

I’ve been thinking about this today some more. Words mean something.

I think we use the word “American” in much to generic a manner. I think we need to deal with this in an honest manner. We need to do away with the hyphenated American moniker and form just two classes in this country. “Americans” and “US Citizens”.

“Americans” are those who are here to take responsibility for their lives. Red, Yellow, Black, or White. “Americans” are here to strive to better their lives and those around them. “Americans” live to not just better themselves, but they also live with a sense of gratitude for the price paid for their opportunity. “Americans” are proud to be “Americans”. “Americans” don’t live with their heads in the sand. They know that there have been mistakes made, yet they have a dogged determination to not repeat those mistakes and are willing to embrace all who have like aspirations. They know that by advancing and achieving they can give back, be a contributor.

“US Citizens” seem to have a tendency to castigate blame and seek ways to look to the faults of others to deflect their own shortcomings. “US Citizens” attempt to gain their strength by focusing on what they feel they are owed rather than what they can achieve.

Seems it would be much simpler to identify just two classes rather than five or ten or however many.

Conclusion:

All Americans are US Citizens, but not all US Citizens are yet Americans

There is a dangerous irony I see going on here, one in which it’s now likely for an American to lose his or her American-ness without even realizing this transformation is taking place. But there’s a bit higher level of difficulty involved in a non-American citizen gaining it.

For starters, there are — for a number of reasons — those who work to make this happen. At this point, I think that would be difficult to deny. All these phrases being tossed around breezily, without thought, mostly for the purpose of indicting America for this or that transgression and expunging national pride from any soul who may still have some.

And then there are all the subtly different notions of community. It seems to me when we fail to realize how many different ways you can regard yourself as being part of a community, we set ourselves up for this easy downward slide to take place. Some of the phrases that can be targeted by the anti-Americans are “here to strive to better their lives and those around them,” and “by advancing and achieving they can give back.”

It brings to mind what I thought of as a very awkwardly written passage in Atlas Shrugged, the one right before Hank Rearden signs over the “gift certificate” releasing his trademark rights to the metal he has invented. The statist bureaucrats supply the necessary motivation for this by blackmailing him, using the information they’ve collected about his extramarital affair. Rearden agrees to sign, not because he cares about his own reputation or that of his wife, but because he cares about his girlfriend Dagny Taggart.

Ayn Rand was cheating on her husband as she wrote this, so that’s probably why the passage comes off as so messy and incoherent. But there’s an interesting point to be made here about statism. Hank Rearden tells the bureaucrat something about “you must know the way you threaten to portray us is a lie, because you know if we were the kind of people you are ready to show us to be, your blackmail scheme would not be effective.” Or words to that effect. Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, being Ayn Rand heroes, care about the individual. But they also care about others. Rearden, threatened with an injury to his own reputation and nobody else’s, wouldn’t lift a finger to prevent damage to what others thought of him. He cares about Dagny. The bureaucrats who control the state would like to expose Rearden and Dagny as people who care nothing for others, only for themselves.

Sound familiar?

And so Americans are open to attack when we regard this sense of “helping others” as an all-or-nothing thing. It’s not.

Suppose you’re a U.S. citizen and, also, you’re an American. In addition to those, you’re a farmer with eighty acres. I move in next door, with another eighty acres, and show in a number of ways that I know very little about farming. You have a lot of options at your disposal.

You could let me learn from my mistakes, that I should be working sixteen hours a day plowing my fields just like you, rather than the six-and-a-half I put in before sitting on my back porch watching you work with a Martini in hand. You could just let events unfold. That might be fatal.

So we have a predicament here. But I think most people, before they’ve been poisoned by outsiders, approach this in a very common sense way: You should mind your own business, for the most part. Maybe come over and ask if something’s wrong with my equipment, do I need any spare parts. But when my harvest falls short in the fall, let me shiver and starve my way through the winter. At the same time, though, when things are really bad and I come knockin’, you’ll offer help like any American would.

Maybe I’ll have to get an earful. I think that would be most appropriate. But the first priority would be to make sure people get the assistance they need, when they need it — confident in the expectation that the lesson has been taught, and next year you’ll see new farming habits and longer plowing sessions on my spread.

That’s a very basic sense of community. You were the ant, I was the grasshopper, and we shared a sense of community strong enough for me to learn my lesson.

But here’s the funny thing about human nature. A mile away from us, there is another couple of neighbors in exactly the same situation. And they resolve it with a stronger sense of community: The ant ended up plowing the grasshopper’s fields for him.

At the annual county fair, the four of us get together and comment on this. You and I are a community. The other pair of neighbors is a commune. They have, in a very subtle way, lost their American-ness. They are the U.S. citizens of whom XtnYoda speaks, because they no longer enshrine American values.

And here’s how it will work every single time: They will say we should have resolved our conflict the way they resolved theirs. And they’ll probably convince us. They will be more inclined to use bullying maneuvers than we will. Why would they not? When you have a stronger sense of community, you just feel like a better person.

And you want everyone, within line-of-sight or not, to do things the way you do them. That’s what a strong sense of community is all about!

But you and I might say…with our way, Morgan eventually learned to be a better farmer. With your way, he would not have learned this. It’s a good point. It will be shouted down, sneered-at, shunted aside very casually.

Every single time.

And most of the time that scenario plays out, the COMMUNE-ists will win. It’s a human flaw. Unless we pay very close attention to what is happening here, we will discard a productive and beneficial sense of community, one that embraces the value of individual responsibility, in favor of a “stronger” but decidedly inferior and harmful sense of community that derides and derogates the value of individual responsibility.

And you know what will really shove that over the top? When we all get tractors, combines, harvesters. When the farmer’s day starts to shrink from sixteen hours, to twelve, to ten. That has a deleterious effect on this more modest, but more beneficial, sense of “community.” What it does, is make you socially into a bigger butthole should you choose not to plow your lazy neighbor’s field for him — because now you can.

Individual responsibility suffers. Individuality itself suffers. And ultimately, American nationalism suffers.

And I think that’s what has been happening here. We’re about a century past the later stages of the industrial revolution, give or take. Our sense — our SENSES — of community have become welded together so we are presented with a false dilemma, all moderate compromises artificially removed. We can become collectivist communists or individualist buttholes. To plagiarize the timeless metaphor about teaching a man to fish, this middle-of-road option has now been removed. We can let him starve, or give him all our fish.

And so the Americans of whom XtnYoda speaks, are constantly under attack, with their willingness to help others used against them. Citizens bully Americans into becoming just citizens and giving up their American-ness. Americans do not do very much, nor are they able to anymore, to encourage citizens to become Americans.

There is an accelerating quality to this sad metamorphosis. As this sense of community becomes more militant, people begin to get the idea that they are “giving back” simply by becoming an additional voice in micro-revolutions that are already several voices strong. A great example of this is one of the favorite recurring platitudes from the utterly anti-individualist social-butterfly Obama fan: “I want to be part of this.” And so across the landscape there arises a feeling that each individual has contributed, by “helping” to make something happen that would have happened anyway. This poisons the idea that an individual can make a difference, while offering a toxic disguise that what is taking place is precisely the opposite — we start to make what are thought of as “differences” by adding our support to things that would’ve hummed along just fine without us.

And so we stop being Americans, by bringing a stop to any belief in ourselves.

Which ultimately means we want everyone else to stop believing in themselves, as well.

Conclusion? The strongest sense of “community” is a relatively moderate affair, a hybrid of collective and individual values, drawing hungrily from the latter and only slightly from the former. Over time we have allowed the darker side of human nature to ensure there are more citizens than Americans, and more Americans becoming merely citizens every day. Because individuals will allow other individuals decide to be individualists or collectivists — but collectivists always have to make all other individuals into collectivists.

If You Love Me Like democrats Love America…

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

…then please, kindly, stay the hell away from me. Everyone’s talking about it and here’s your link: Barack Obama’s spin on the comments from that nutty pastor of his. The money quote comes near the end (bolded):

Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor.
:
All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country. [emphasis mine]

You know what, forget about me. Let’s instead think about women. What if the United States of America is a woman.

No let’s go one step even beyond that. It’s a hypothetical question I’d like pondered from sea to shining sea this year: If a man loved his wife the way democrats love America, how would he treat her?

Well, he wouldn’t act very manly at all, the way he’d keep bringing up things she did in the past, completely out of context. That’s a stereotype applied to small-minded, intemperate girlfriends and wives, isn’t it? Bringing up a bunch of things out of nowhere that you did ten years ago? So I guess he’d go to work, hang around the water cooler, babble away during the lunch hour — never getting far away from the subject of what a moral reprobate his wife is. You talk about sports, he’ll find a way to change the subject to a check his wife bounced a few years ago. You talk about religion, he’ll talk about his wife’s unpaid parking tickets. You talk about politics, he’ll talk about her old boyfriends — not humorously, but ominously, about the lack of character she must still have today, for ever interlocking with someone like that.

Always always always: Coming to unflattering conclusions about her, will be the point. The evidence will be cherry-picked to support this. He won’t even pretend to be analyzing it even-handedly. He’ll just be there to talk some smack.

Loving husband?

He’d surround himself with people who know her, who have axes to grind against her, who can’t stop putting her down. Right up until she caught him doing it…and then he would, I guess, yank a bunch of talking points out of the Obama masterpiece linked above. He’s my co-worker, sweetie, not my marriage counselor.

Loving husband?

He’d be at his most negative right after she had done something most positive. Scanning the landscape of domestic history, reviewing one pile of wreckage after another in the wake of liberal ideas implemented in this America that Barack Obama claims to love, one could only fairly conclude such a hapless wife would have to perform all the chores if they were to be performed at all. She’d fix the cars — her spouse would always notice they always ran better before she touched them, even if they could not have been used. The bed always looked better before she made it, even if it could not have been occupied. The food was always better before she cooked it, even if it would have been raw and inedible. Oh, he would never think of leaving all the work to her, though; he’d volunteer to help out time and time again. Thinking out this analogy with the events of healthcare in mind…lawsuits and torts…public education…the war in Iraq…the oil market…the only marriage I can envision is one where his help is the problem. She wishes he was substantially lazier than he really is. Things are done — the way he wants them to be done, for he insists on it — they turn to crap, which he notices and promptly blames her for it.

Loving husband?

Asked what exactly it is about his wife that he loves, he’d say not a single word about what she is or what abilities he has learned she has, but instead, about what he hopes she one day becomes. He’d talk about what she wants to be…never having discussed these points of improvement with her, just pulling them out of his own rear end, insofar as how she is to get better.

If you ask him directly WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT YOUR WIFE, he will change the subject to what is good about HIM! He has hope! He will change! He is Mister Hope-Change! He has a lot of hope that his wife will change! …but you better believe she has to, because she sure as hell isn’t right the way she is.

Loving husband?

He’d shower on her all kinds of glittery, awkward compliments that really don’t mean very much, and mean absolutely nothing at all in terms of what could actually be appreciated. She has the values of…equality and diversity. And she’s tolerant, or hey, at least she knows she should be, and if she ever forgets it I’ll be sure and remind her. The tolerance is a one-way street, of course. She is to tolerate anything that comes out of his mouth, even if it has to do with destroying her economically and physically, but if the bitch gets one syllable out-o-line the back-o-my-hand will have mid-course correction written ALL over it!

Loving husband?

This wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t explore defense. If she ever needs defending, this swell loving husband will make sure not only will he be absent, but he’ll put forth every excuse in the book about how nobody else should defend her either. If she needs to be driven home to that loving husband across a bad part of town, he’ll do whatever he can to make sure nobody volunteers. If someone does volunteer, he’ll call him a baby-killer. And if someone bothers to point out that giving her the ride home might be a good thing, he’ll be right there to ask “well then how come you aren’t there doing it?”

Loving husband?

He’ll chide her for not doing what outsiders agree with him she should be doing. He’ll call them her “allies.” Maybe they’re her co-workers, her family, her friends…maybe they’re his. Maybe he’ll be unfaithful, showing love and devotion to some of these “allies” well and above any magnitude of the same thing he might direct to her. The consequences and benefits involved in doing what these “allies” want her to do, he will leave everlastingly unexplored and unexplained. She should just do what these outsiders want…which is what he wants her to do…because they are her “allies.”

Loving husband?

Don’t forget the big kahuna:

After some horrible event in which she is assaulted, devastatingly, he will mock her for ever bringing it up again, insisting there is “no sexual assault threat.”

He will do everything he possibly can to fight her efforts to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

He will come up with new and ingenious ways to get sex offenders sprung from prison…in the very neighborhood in which he lives with her. He will fight night and day that these sex offenders get all kinds of “rights” to which they are not really entitled.

He’ll lobby to have the jail closed down.

He’ll come up with nonsensical rules the police have to follow when they try to arrest the next suspect who might molest his own wife. He will refuse to pay for the alarm system his wife would want to put on their home. He won’t even support the decision to put locks on the doors. He’ll take down the locks. And then he’ll take down the doors.

Of course, if she wants to buy a gun to defend herself — you know what you can do with that idea.

He’ll ridicule her at every turn, especially when she is on her way to church. He won’t let her put articles of her faith anywhere in the home. If he does allow her to keep so much as a Bible, he’ll insist that she put it somewhere he never has to see it. And, like Barack Obama, he’ll openly fraternize with — brag about fraternizing with — people who hate her.

In short, he’d make Eliot Spitzer look like a real sweetheart.

A Hallmark Card Arrived…

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

…and what a surprise it was.

I received a Hallmark card yesterday in the mail, congratulating my husband on becoming a “New” father ???

We’ve been married for 8 years, we don’t have children of our own. I have fertility issues. My husband is 38 and I’m 32.

I confronted him about the anonymous card, which only had the name of the baby girl stated on it.

What happened next has left me devastated. I am in pieces.

The baby is the result of a short affair he had with a woman at work. My husband’s a physician and I am assuming she is a nurse ( he won’t tell me). The relationship ended when she found out she was pregnant and would not abort the baby as my husband had requested.
:
Please help me please … I am devastated.

Desperate Wife

The advice columnist replies,

:
I think immediately you need to find a friend to confide in. That means today. This is just too big an incident in your life to hide from people you know. And right now you need support your husband cannot offer you. I should also let other readers know your letter has been in my inbox for a few weeks (sorry for the delay) so things may have moved or shifted since then.

I also suggest you invest in a marriage counsellor. They may be able to help you manage the chaos of this time and begin to help you and your husband decide whether you have a future.

It makes sense that your feelings for your husband did not change overnight with news of his betrayal. And it makes sense that much of your anger is directed at the “other” woman. Try to see though that the one person who is not the blame for this situation is the child and that if you stay with your husband you’ll be making a decision to accept this little girl into your life in some capacity – free from anger and blame.

Don’t tackle this alone, Desperate Wife. This is too much for anyone to bear by themselves. Talk to close friends and find a professional to help. All the best.

I notice this because it cuts to the quick of what I hate about advice columnists. It is often quite bonecrushingly bedazzling how often and how quickly they recommend professional counselors. I can’t imagine the financial arrangements that would have to be involved for them to be “on the take” in some way, but it’s a little disquieting that nobody ever seems to ask the question.

What kind of counselor ought to be sought, never seems to be explored. And if you have any experience with these counselors at all, you know it really should be. It determines absolutely everything.

Advice columnists are also overly warm and touchy-feely. Which is okay for crossword puzzles, but I think in situations like this one it is irresponsible. My brand of advice columnist would not have run this letter. Why? Because the implications of such a personal crisis are too profound and it’s too hot to handle? No. Because the author failed to say what it was she wanted done, and failing that, she further failed to state what her priorities were.

Therefore, the only advice you can give in response to a message like this is of the 1970’s pop-psych variety, in which priorities and objectives are entrusted to the aid, being thought to represent far too weighty of personal matters to be managed by the poor traumatized quivering mass of flesh babbling away on the couch. To the columnist’s credit, she recognizes that if a proxy has to step in and make this betrayed wife’s personal decisions for her, or give her a crutch so she can make the decisions without relying on her own internal resources, such a proxy role is outside the help that can be rendered from an advice column. But you see…that’s why the letter shouldn’t have been run.

We know very little about the woman who wrote this letter. It’s likely that she’s not even in that kind of a hole; once she’s able to put her thoughts together and recognize the ramifications involved in each option, she’ll be perfectly able to make the necessary decision and navigate competently the brambled paths that confront her in life’s jungle. Just needed to vent, as it were. Who in the world wouldn’t?

But the real disservice performed here — the goals and objectives injected into this equation by the advice columnist, having been omitted by the original author, were all of the soothing variety. To replenish the ego. To calm. To make someone feel good about themselves.

I see how someone might be inclined to visualize that as a need, missing from this situation. Trouble is, when we make decisions with that in mind, that’s when we make the wrong ones. Especially in cases like this.

On Hating America

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

Hating AmericaThere are a lot of people piping up again, or at least there is much noise made by them as they so pipe up, who hate America. Well, they won’t say that, although it’s unmistakable that they want everyone to understand that they do hate America. Their lists of issues and problems with America, just meander endlessly from one unrelated subject to another. This is inherently nonsensical. They don’t seem to mean what they say. They don’t seem to even be directly communicating with anyone as they do their bloviating. I think I summed it up brilliantly at Rick’s place:

A lot of people who live in other countries, see themselves as shareholders within an aristocratic layer, standing to gain something if their country’s currency performs more strongly against the U.S. dollar. And so they spew their anti-American propaganda. They do it so they can be seen doing it.

Sad thing is, they aren’t all living in other countries. Some of them live right here in America…and hate themselves for it.

Just remember, they aren’t communicating. They’re performing. That’s what is sad about being a dedicated America-hater — you have to worry about what everybody else is doing, and everybody else gets to butt in to what you’re doing, which means most of the nonsense you spew out is just a lot of filler designed to please others. Thinking for yourself has become an American luxury, and although they won’t admit it, this is a big part of the reason people “hate” America.

I suppose it’s time to trot out examples, since a favorite accusation of the America-hater has become an accusation of accusation…I’m accusing of hate, anybody who doesn’t like my policies, creating a…okay, altogether now…CLIMATE OF FEAR.

So I would refer the interested and inquisitive observer to scroll upward from that comment of mine, to the comment from “brenda”:

Its fascinating how the American people are so easily distracted from issues that really matter. Opposed to getting titillated by who Obama and McCain’s pastor is and what they think, you may want to take time to consider what if any of this has to do with your paying $4.00 a gallon for gasoline; 63,000 jobs lost in the month of February; the war in Iraq which is siphoning off $13 billion a month; 47 million Americans without healthcare; the Gulf coast still resembling a war zone two years post-Katrina; a gallon of milk costing almost $5.00; the astronomical number of American homes in foreclosure; American banking systems threatening to go under with your money still in it; gang violence out of control in many parts of the country especially the Mid west; the number of children in this country living two to three times below the federal poverty level; education system shot to hell –and I could go on.

What gets me “titillated” about this, is how “she” is so easily distracted from the subject at hand, in midsentence, as she accuses others of being exactly that. The question is whether Barack Obama is worthy of consideration for the presidency. And as it’s been pointed out repeatedly, if he and his long-time church pastor were white men and the pastor’s comments were as racist as they are but in the opposite direction, we’d decide that in about a tenth of a second and we wouldn’t look back. We wouldn’t have time to worry about how much milk costs, it’d be a done deal.

So that is the question under consideration — if you can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses. We need to know.

And no, that doesn’t connect to gangs, Katrina, milk, healthcare or gasoline. But it isn’t any further removed from those things, than anything out of the mouth of Mister Hope-Change-Hope-Change we’ve been hearing for the last year or so. Thousands of jobs lost? What’s Mister Hope-Change gonna do about that, huh brenda? Raise the taxes on those evil businesses? Hey, brilliant. Boy, that’ll really show ’em.

But the America-bashing is fascinating. It’s been stylish for awhile now, but who can deny that it’s in a new phase? People were resentful of America entering World War II too late. They were resentful of us entering Persian Gulf War II too early, or at all. Are those peeves from the same strain of anger?

Arguably not. They are antonymous, by nature. The distance from one to the other in terms of time, is multi-generational. And, I would assert, the motives are different.

It’s not so difficult a thing, you know, to spot the difference between the complaints of an individual and the complaints of a collective. It’s like the difference between truth and fiction, fiction being forced to make some sort of sense. The complaints of an individual have to make sense.

The complaints today against America don’t make sense. Oh, one or two of them might have a kernel of truth. But when you consider all of them as a whole, the entire structure breaks down. Consider the words of commenter “it don’t matter”:

You americans are such a bunch of sheep. You are so easily led along and just go with what the politicians tell you. If you people were to wake up and realize so many people in this world hate america for a reason maybe you could take a look at yourselves and figure out why. Who the hell died and made you the rulers of the world. If america stayed out of everyone elses business and didn’t have to have troops in almost every country on earth they would not be a target of revenge. Think about it, if someone invaded your country would you just accept it or would you fight back? Well what do you think these people are doing? Bring your troops home to defend your country and let others sort out there problems. By the way all you suckers who think you are so free, take a closer look, everyday you give up more and more of your liberties in the name of safety. Grow some balls and stand up to this government bullshit and quit being such followers. News flash your government lies to you.

Now, I know what it is like to be upset at the people of a country because they “give up more and more of [their] liberties.” If I didn’t know what that was like before, I learned it when it was brought to my attention that the Brits have to pay a special tax to watch television in their homes. You knew all about that, right? It’s a pretty big deal. They even have TV detector vans and door-knocking constables barging in to make sure nobody’s watching TV if the tax hasn’t been paid — can you imagine?

Emotionally, how do I react to something like that? Hating the Brits? No…the thought really hadn’t occurred to me. The closest I ever got to that was to shake my head, mutter something, and feel, if anything, sadness. It doesn’t get me ticked off. If I have anger toward anyone when I hear of policies like this one, I have it toward the politicians in the United Kingdom for allowing this to happen — and there, as well, I’m much more sad than angry.

So the giving up more and more civil liberties is, in my mind, a completely phony argument. This doesn’t make people angry. Someone tells me they’re angry about the PATRIOT Act, and I don’t see an angry person, I see a tool. It’s baseless political propaganda. And I hope the speaker is being paid for his propagana, because if he isn’t he’s not only a tool, but a fool.

But let’s indulge the argument for a moment, and pretend temporarily that it’s reasonable to get angry with people of a country who have decided to sacrifice their liberties. What, exactly, are these liberties we’ve given up? The argument boils down to this: New ani-terror legislation is being used to bust drug dealers who aren’t terrorists.

The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.

The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said.

It really all boils down to that. It sounds scary on the surface: We were attacked, we passed some new laws, now the laws are being used to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with the event that inspired those new laws.

But the argument dissolves — completely — when you realize the crimes that are being prosecuted, were all crimes before the new laws came into effect, which are procedural laws dealing with what evidence can be gathered, and how. Whether the crime is a crime or not — that was already decided.

That changes everything. Absolutely everything.

I’m not sure where this “liberty” is written down. X is against the law, you routinely do X but we can’t catch you. Terrorist Act Y takes place that gets thousands of people killed so we pass Law Z to bust future Terrorist Acts Y. Z makes it possible to catch you doing X as well, but you have a “civil liberty” to go ahead and do X because Z should only be used to bust Y?

Whether you should be able to get away with X, even though we can bust your ass wide open for it, I don’t think is even up for discussion. It was decided when laws were passed making X a crime. And, sorry, but trafficking is not something you can legally do here. You’re supposed to be getting in trouble when you get caught doing it. That’s just the way it works.

So the propaganda is phony. It is phony in letter and in spirit. It’s also new. Older than 2003…it pre-dates the invasion of Iraq by a good stretch. But it’s still modern. Twenty years ago we had a conservative President whose popularity was, shall we say, a bit soft. He had enemies. But the enemies didn’t rely so much on this tactic of “Look at all those countries that hate us so much lately because of our President!” Had they thought of this, maybe they would have implemented it. But the argument against Teflon Ron wasn’t that he was getting other countries to hate us, it was that he fell asleep in meetings, and wasn’t spending enough of our tax dollars to find a cure for AIDS.

So something has happened since then. Something in the global community has occurred to convince the propagandists, that they can most effecitvely make bad ideas look good, by domininating the discussion in worried tones that France might get all snippy with us if we don’t go ahead and implement the bad ideas.

What happened since the 1980’s to make this the most effective way to criticize a supposedly right-wing President? Now that we know the propaganda is phony, from where did it come, exactly?

Update: On the other question — why is Rick’s place, Brutally Honest, so brutally infested with these insects? As I said over there, “It’s almost like he left something out, and they came crawling in like ants.” His answer makes me think…

The truth of the matter is that somehow, someway, this blog tends to show up in Google more often than not and Lord knows the leftist loons and moonbats are certainly Google adept…

Okay noodle on that one awhile. There’s me — I’ve been known to occasionally argue with lib’ruhls on the innernets, believe it or not. And I have a buh-LOG. Let’s face it, that’s a little weird. Everybody doesn’t have a blog. And truth be told, I occasionally get a little mad at myself when I resolve to finish writing something by 5:45 and it becomes 6:30…then 7:00. Now and then, it starts to look like something a little bit unhealthy.

Internet ArgumentBut then again, doesn’t everything.

Nevertheless — sometimes we need a reminder that there are ways to go well beyond this. The “leftist loons and moonbats” have their own stale talking points. Really, they do. “Lied about weapons of mass destruction” comes to mind first, and then “erosion of civil liberties” and one of my favorites, “there is no terrorist threat” or “you’re more likely to get struck by lightning.”

I cannot even begin to imagine firing up Google, loading those phrases in, and bringing up a search results page so I can jump in and start giving them guff. True, I am guilty when the other party takes the active role, of being unable to resist some probing…dissecting the silly argument…finding out what makes it tick. That does interest me. But to go looking for it? To just trot on out there, mouthing off, reciting my own counter-slogans at the first specimen I happen to find?

I understand completely that to someone who isn’t absorbed into either one of those two levels, they might look somewhat similar. But they aren’t…they’re not even close. What the freakin’ HELL. You use Google to find arguments.

Whisky…Tango…Foxtrot.

It gets sadder still when you think about the ones who don’t even have blogs. Imagine the implications of that. Not organizing anything, not building anything, not even doing the electronic-scrapbook thing. Which must mean, not even feeling any sort of need to do so. No substance, no input, no output. Nothing but the activity, and the instinct to participate in it — an “exercise,” in the most literal interpretation of that word.

The need to spew. And only to spew. The sound bites are tired, repetitive…they vary from one spewing to the next, far less than a given model of car will vary in shape from one year to the next.

Like I said above, I know that looks terribly silly to the non-blogger: A guy with a Blog That Nobody Reads, ranting away about this-or-that, flipping his top over the phenomenon of people who use Google to do a lot of purely stale arguing and nothing more. I’m sure it looks like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. Eh…the difference, such as it is, kind of falls into the Fats Waller file. If I have to explain it to you, you’re never gonna know.

Hundredth Birthday at Hooter’s

Friday, March 14th, 2008

What did I say last weekend?

I started noticing this a few years ago. The oldest living guy, lady, person in the world at any given time…said something about a daily ritual involving exactly one glass of red wine. And it made a deep impression on me that the news stories weren’t trying to play it up, they just saw it as a cute little tidbit of human interest to toss into the story.

The occasion was a clipboard white-coat pocket-protector propeller-beanie egghead story about how alcohol might very well be good for you especially if you want to live longer.

And what do they have to say about Pearl Harbor veteran John Persinger?

“I don’t know how I did it,” he says. “Good living, I guess. A lot of good food. Steaks, fried potatoes. I sip a little Royal Crown now and then.” Don’t get the wrong idea. He means Crown Royal.

Alcohol may be good for you after all. A little here, a little there…maybe you get to live to be a hundred. That’s what the “it” is. He’s in triple-digits now.

And if you’re lucky, you get to celebrate it. At Hooter’s, of course.

At the beginning of the story, it says that although John’s wife, Vi, has predeceased him, if she were around today she wouldn’t have a problem with celebrating at this fine eating establishment. And you know my theory? That’s got as much to do with his longevity as anything — including the whiskey. Marry a woman who “takes care” of you, stopping you from doing anything she doesn’t think should be respectable, even though you damn well know you’d rather be doing it…you can feel the years slipping off your life. Anyway. Maybe that’s part of it and maybe it isn’t, but I’m glad John Persinger’s around. It gives you cause for hope when you see men doing things they enjoy — takin’ a break from the rules-rules-rules, finger-waggling no-guns-allowed save-the-spotted-owls politically-correct nanny-state.

Yay Hooters!

Our Sanity in Decline

Friday, March 14th, 2008

You know it’s leaving us, because there’s a prevailing viewpoint that the labor market has become soft for those seeking work; there’s a prevailing viewpoint that this is due to the “outsourcing of jobs” by “big companies”; and there’s a prevailing viewpoint that, to fix this, we need to elect someone who will raise taxes on those companies.

There’s a geranium in our societal cranium. We’re rotting from the head down. It’s terminal, or curable, and I don’t know if it’s curable.

I Made a New Word XIV

Friday, March 14th, 2008

NetflixNet∙Whoops (n.)

1. The chill that hangs in the air of the living room after the Lady of the Manor opens all of those little red envelopes, which were sent according to the movie queue that was last rearranged by the Lord. Without the level of coordination within the couple that would be advisable.

2. The dimple that forms alongside one corner of her mouth as she smirks on this occasion.

3. The stammering excuse or list of excuses offered by the Lord of the Manor right after this takes place.

It’s gotta be a universal thing, folks. It’s just gotta be. I’ve only been sufficiently close to two women, since the service came out, to couple-up my movie queue with theirs, and it happens that those two women are as different as night-and-day. Generally, if there’s any one thing both of them habitually do — and there are very few of those, let’s be clear on that — it’s fair to say most-to-all women do it. I see them as bookends of the female species. Having consorted with the two of them, has been just as educational as some hypothetical otherwordly immortal serial coupling-up with everything with a verginer that ever walked the earth on two feet.

There’s a gender thing going on. I know this. I’ve seen That Smirk on both those faces.

But I don’t think this time we can blame it on the man-bashing feminist movement, or the industrial revolution. It’s in our wiring. It’s inter-species. The caveman drags in a carcass…the cavewoman pronounces yea or nay on whether it is suitable for cooking. The daddy bird brings back a worm, the momma bird chews it up for the chickies. Dudes bring things to babes. Babes accept-or-reject. That’s the way it is.

We tried going the other way…with some apple or something. Didn’t work out too hot.

I’m now up to nearly a decade of envisioning this fun family ritual of, right after the last batch of red envelopes is sent off, “sitting down in front of the queue together.” I have not yet seen it happen. Not once. I’ll bet there aren’t too many other guys who have seen it happen either.

Gals don’t hunt. I think back on women I’ve seen looking for things…and they can certainly produce some bounty that takes us guys somewhat longer…but you know what pops up? The whole ask-for-directions thing. They do it. We don’t. And so the comparison is flawed. Flawed by a contaminant that is, in all likelihood, related to what we’re trying to find out. Whether the females outperform looking for this-or-that thing, correlates strongly — and is probably on average determined by — whether this-or-that thing can be located through a process of inquiring directions. Women ask for directions and men do not, because both sexes are laboring under the time-honored proverb of “when you have a shiny new golden hammer everything looks like a nail,” and there are two distinctly different shiny golden hammers.

And so we manufacture, and the ladies apply quality control. Use the profiles or don’t use the profiles, share the password, do whatever you want — it will not be, very often, a truly collaborative effort. Netflix is here to stay, I’m convinced of that. But it is fated to fall short of its slogan, “The Perfect Movie Every Time.”

Yes, there are exceptions. Once again: Comments about groups, comments about individuals. Know the difference. Netflixers do not treat the queue the same way as the Netflixettes.

Race Nonsense

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Ever notice the racial tensions between blacks & whites are consistently brought up to bolster ideas that have nothing whatsoever to do with black/white racial tension…and that, seemingly without exception, are spectacularly bad ideas?

I was noticing that when, fresh off watching this video from over at Rick’s place (which you can really watch just about anywhere by now) concerning Barack Obama’s race-baiting whitey-hating spiritual advisor Jeremiah Wright…

…I stumbled into an article about this guy, Van Jones, who is considerably sweeter. At least on the surface. But like Jeremiah Wright, he seeks to inflame racial tensions within an issue that has nothing to do with race. At all.

You know, I don’t think that’s very sweet. At all.

“Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta really big problem!’ ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but we gotta save the polar bears!’ ”

Mr. Jones then just shakes his head. You try that approach on people without jobs who live in neighborhoods where they’ve got a lot better chance of getting killed by a passing shooter than a melting glacier, you’re going to get nowhere — and without bringing America’s underclass into the green movement, it’s going to get nowhere, too.

“We need a different on-ramp” for people from disadvantaged communities, says Mr. Jones. “The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points.”

Mr. Jones, who heads the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, which helps kids avoid jail and secure jobs, has an idea how to change that — a “green-collar” jobs program that focuses on underprivileged youth. I would not underestimate him. Mr. Jones, age 39 and a Yale Law School grad, exudes enough energy to light a few buildings on his own.

One thing spurring him in this project, he explained, was the way that the big oil companies bought ads in black-owned newspapers in California in 2006 showing an African-American woman filling her gas tank with a horrified look at the pump price. The ads were used to help bring out black votes to defeat Proposition 87. That ballot initiative proposed a tax on oil companies drilling in California, the money from which would have gone to develop alternative energy projects. The oil companies tried to scare African-Americans into thinking that the tax on the companies would be passed on at the pump.

I know it sounds very positive and productive to “[help] kids avoid jail and secure jobs,” and maybe I’m cynical but that just raises enormous red flags with me. I don’t know a lot about Van Jones, but one thing I know for certain is that he isn’t cool with the idea of helping a kid avoid jail and secure a job…and then go on to evaluate, independently and free from coercion, whether or not the polar bears need saving. He’s just used an elaborate salesmanship technique to connect environmental-socialist causes with skin color. He’s got a big beef with the fact that the “big oil companies” managed to point out that gas taxes are passed on to the consumer — and when you think on it awhile, how in the world could they not be? — and the argument was found to have some merit. By the wrong color of people.

Van Jones, one may soundly conclude, thinks that if your skin is dark you are his. Something is terribly wrong if you, a black person, decide the polar bear thing in a way different from the way he would…if you decide the gas tax in a way different from the way he would…and what else?

I don’t see a lot of difference between Jones and Wright. One’s slicker than the other; that’s all. From where I sit, the oppression of Jesus by the Romans doesn’t have any more to do with a racial divide, than saving polar bears. This is a problem. This is a sickness. There are reasons why it’s an exploding epidemic, but the fact remains it’s an exploding epidemic and we need to treat it.

Now that we’re exploring issues of racial divide all over again, I think 2008 would be a great year to demand out of anyone with an idea they think is worth arguing, at least, an idea unrelated to blacks-n-whites: Let’s see if you can make it sound convincing while leaving skin color out of it. If you can, maybe it’s something worth considering. If not, then piss off.

If it’s a wonderful idea, you can make it sound wonderful without injecting the most emotional issue of modern times into your presentation of it.

But I know that we’re not likely to demand this, and so we’re about to be buried in this nonsense. For years, if Obama is actually elected, which seems a sure thing now. Socialized medicine, socialized education, gun control, higher taxes, giving more money to union thugs and tort lawyers, appeasing terrorists — none of which have a damn thing to do with black-versus-white, but all of which will be presented that way so we can drum up popular support for the very worst ideas possible.

Identity Politics Heavyweight Bout

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Via new sidebar addition Pigilito, we learn about a priceless smackdown blow-by-blow narrative from Just One Minute

Geraldine Ferraro states the obvious – being black is helping Barack – and is getting pummeled for it. Of course, Ms. Ferraro is a bit of a flawed messenger here, since one might suspect her claim to history is based entirely on her gender, but then again, few things can rival a Dem Party tussle over identity politics for sheer comedic value.

Don’t wait for the democrat party to be honest here, you’ll just get older.

They are not having a fight about which class of oppressed-person is more “due” to be handed the keys to the White House. That would be silly…but insufficiently so, and not nearly as dangerous as reality.

They’re arguing amongst themselves about something nearly identical to that, but with entirely different ramifications. They are arguing about which class has a better card. Yes, card. Because they figured out years ago that when someone is elevated to a high office with a membership in some kind of oppressed class, whether the historic oppression was real or apocryphal, that person can make intemperate decisions. What a wonderful asset. Stupid, extremist, poorly-advised decisions emanating from a high authoritarian office…a wonderful thing, as long as they’re in your favor.

And legends of historic oppression are great for bulldozing through the resistance that normally rises up in the face of stupid decisions. President Hillary wants to outlaw war, President Obama wants to outlaw money. You see a downside to those? You must be an ist of some kind.

“As you can see, my Jedi power far exceeds yours. Now…back down.” — Count Dooku

The Message of Change

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Click on the pic to see what Gerard thinks of it, and how he modified it. He began with nothing to say and he said it. Now there is only the repeating, and repeating, and repeating…

On Thing I Doubt #1

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

The line in Dr. Helen’s column from last week, like all truly effective, deceptive things, is technically true. But one is tempted to glean something from it that is unsupported and misleading, and the observant reader must cast a jaundiced eye toward Dr. Helen, because it seems this might have been deliberate.

This letter could have been written by many women around the United States.

What I think is common about the letter, is that it concerns a bride who is now earning more money than her groom. What is open to question in my mind, is the much-prophesied blistering angst from the hubby…

Dr. Helen, I’ve recently found myself bringing in more money than my husband, and it’s causing problems. It’s not because he doesn’t work hard — he works more than me (which probably just adds insult to injury). I’ve been looking up this topic online. Everywhere I look it is just women commenting on how to make the man feel better, but I’d like to hear from men on what works for them. Thanks — Please don’t use my name! For my husbands sake!

From where I sit, this letter could not have been written by many women around the country. This letter stands alone. Or it would…if the author came out and said her husband is suffering from a bruised ego. Go back and read it a second time, very carefully. Really, really read it, every sentence, every syllable. She doesn’t come out and say this. It’s causing problems. Don’t include my name for my husband’s sake.

This is a fatal flaw, at least toward the purpose I have in mind for this letter. It stands as a solitary piece of evidence, thus far, available to pose a challenge to Thing I Doubt #1 which is:

1. Men who have problems with their wives making more money
I’m continually told this is a major cause of trouble in paradise, but I notice the people who tell me this are very seldom personally involved. In fact the only exception to that, is when it’s the wife who earned more…and in those situations it would be more accurate to say she had fantasies about earning more. Now, I’m a man. Having a wife or live-in who earned more than me, would be a real first-time experience. It strikes me, at first blush, as a rather pleasant change of pace. I know other men. None of them, not a single one, has demonstrated any attitude about this remarkably different from my own.

Working WomanEight months after I jotted down that gem, the New York Times trumpeted yet another pocket-protector lab-coat clipboard propeller-beanie egghead study, seemingly unrelated at first glance, but tightly interwoven with Thing I Doubt #1 once you take the time to inspect — which says…

Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, the researchers also asked how people felt during each activity. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed?

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.

Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.

As is the case with all other male-female issues, once you’re untethered from concerns about political correctness this is all easy to predict. More women are working now, for money, than in times past — that much is beyond question by anybody. And since we’re being politically incorrect, let’s be honest. Women started working more because a bunch of women got together and whined. Sorry, it’s true. We can debate whether this is a good thing, how good the women are at their jobs, if they can do those jobs as well as men can. But they didn’t get these jobs because a hundred million men woke up one morning and decided to be a bunch of Steve Trevors ready to appreciate the positive attributes of their Wonder Women with squeaky-clean, sincere and asexual adoration. Nope. The women complained. They demonstrated, they screeched, they intimidated, they bullied, the beat on brows. For years. The activists among them did everything they could to force society to function the way they thought it should.

So let’s be honest — women started working because they…or at least, the activists amongst them….did a lot of whining. They whined, and as a result of the whining got more work to do. Whining people got more work…what happens next, class?

How in the world could we avoid lots of whining about the work? In what universe? How would that be logically possible?

When has a whiner ever gotten something the whiner was whining about wanting, and stopped whining?

Now do spare me your peevish comments and e-mails. Nowhere in the above did I say all women with jobs, got those jobs because they whined. Comments about individuals, comments about groups — learn the difference. Also, nowhere in the above did I say women enjoyed a monopoly of whining. I wish like hell that they did. I could listen to a whining woman all day long, but a whining man has a nauseating effect and lately it seems we’re buried in ’em. So no. I’m not even going to say there’s a correlative relationship between the act of whining and our fairer sex. But more women are working now than in times past, and it wasn’t because someone said “the gentlemen in this job just aren’t getting me the results I want, I’m going to put a woman in there.” No, we created a post-feminist modern society in which executives felt their careers were in jeopardy if they didn’t do something to prove they weren’t sexist. Traditionally-male roles were filled with females, not because people were hopeful about the results once this took place, but because they were fearful of the consequences if it did not. That, and…I’d like to think…much of the time the hiring manager was familiar with the skills of the individual and didn’t care if she was female. I’m sure that’s happened. A few times. I’d like to think that happened most of the time. But I dunno. The coercion-based cause-and-effect, the culturally-based language of horse-heads-in-beds, to anyone who was alive and aware in the middle of it, is undeniable. You do this the way we want. Or else.

Gawd I hate disclaimers. I hate that they’re necessary.

Anyway, now women have lots of jobs, and they’re beginning to dominate the higher-paying jobs. A job is something you do for money. Which — statistically, this is the tendency — is something you probably wouldn’t do were it not for the money. If there’s more money involved, it will be connected to something you’d be even more reluctant to do if it weren’t for the money. Yes, I’ve heard the adage — do what you love. There is truth in this, but it doesn’t work beyond a certain point. I know. I’ve done things I love for money, and sooner or later the money rests on you doing what you love in a way you’d much rather not. You’d rather do it some other way. But if you do it that other way the money won’t be forthcoming. And so, next year if not this one, all jobs become…a job. Something you’d rather not be doing, to get the money that you won’t get if you do something you’d much rather be doing.

Hate to shock the establishment once again, but there isn’t that much of a male-female split here. In marriage, or not, I’ve shared households with more than my share of woman. I’ve always generated the higher income. You don’t spring out of bed everyday and say to yourself “Oh boy! I’m the primary breadwinner! Life is good!” Life doesn’t work that way.

Let’s be blunt: I have a lot more sympathy for the ladies now that they’re whining about being the primary breadwinners, than I did back when they were whining about jobs being held by mostly-men. Once the household as it exists in this minute rests, sixty or seventy percent, on you, the sad truth of it is that everyone else can goof off to their heart’s content should they so choose. And you can’t.

But are the gentlemen complaining? Dr. Helen’s letter-writer doesn’t come out and explicitly say so. I damn well wouldn’t. And one day, I actually posed the question to a group of us while we were waiting for a table in a Sushi restaurant during a weekday lunch — said party being, at the time, all-guy. Would any of you be among the angst-ridden patriarchs who’d have a problem with it if your ladies out-earned you? Would any of you know any other gentlemen who might react that way? And the answers came back. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope, and nope.

So relatively early on, this became Thing I Doubt #1. I doubted it, because I had not seen it. And I still haven’t. I don’t believe in it. I think the fella whose forehead is pulsating and throbbing with jealous rage that his bride brings home a bigger paycheck, is a work of fiction. I think it’s an act of projection. I think what we’ve done, is raise our daughters to adulthood constantly beating them up over how other people feel…at all times. To the point where our women imagine problems of resentment to exist where, in fact, they do not. And in so doing we’ve made it needlessly difficult for our women to be happy. We’ve told them when they earn less than men, they should feel slighted, and when they earn more they should feel guilty.

Now I see (via Boortz) the rest of the world is coming around to view things my way.

It seems we’ve officially left “Leave It to Beaver” behind.

In the new dynamics of home economics, it’s not just that men want women to contribute financially to a marriage: The vast majority of men say they wouldn’t even mind if their wives brought home the bigger paycheck.
:
After years of being conditioned to believe that men relish the role of primary provider, researchers were surprised to discover that just 12 percent of men surveyed said they’d mind if their wife earned more than they do, and in general men seemed happy to share the breadwinner role. [emphasis mine]

Years of being conditioned to believe…rather shocking, I think, that the article comes right out and admits this. But in my world, it’s like a big fat duh.

It’s all a big crock. A crock designed to make women feel guilty. Somewhere, I’m firmly convinced, there is a real study kept under lock and key, a study that says women pay more money for newspapers and glossy magazines when they’re feeling guilty than when they don’t. Well, if women want to feel guilty, I can tell them when to feel guilty: If they share a house with me, don’t work, and let me come home to a kitchen garbage can that is full. In my real life we have that working the other way…my sweetie works later than I do sometimes, and I told her on the days she does, she won’t come home to a full garbage can. I was doing pretty good at holding up that bargain, and lately I’ve slipped a couple times.

But let’s be clear on this. If she got a massive raise and started making more than me, I’d think that was freakin’ awesome. I also think it would be fair. And I don’t know of a single stud anywhere on the entire civilized part of the globe, who’d say anything different. The disgruntled, second-fiddle breadwinner hubby, squirming away, working himself into a lather and an early grave in his stew of spite and bile, popular a legend as he may be, is just that and nothing more. And not a very good one. It’s like a husband wishing his wife would win more arguments by crying, have sex with more of his friends, or run up the credit cards to a higher balance. I’ve been doubting him for a very long time. I believe in the Loch Ness Monster before I believe in him. Welcome to the club, all you late-comer doubters.

Tough Love

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

FrankJ at IMAO has a radical idea about what to do with the democrat party next, now that all other plans have failed.

The Democratic Party is on the verge of civil war. Two charismatic leaders are pulling it apart, setting the factions of black people and elite white women against each other. There will be blood, and I don’t see any reason why America should be in the middle of it when it happens. We’ve interfered enough, trying to prop up one of this leaders we think will be friendlier to us, but there is nothing but disaster on the horizon. We need to cut our losses and abandon the Democratic Party.

I know many of you will be resistant to the idea as we’ve invested so much time and money in it, but what have we gained? Democrats have always been a stumbling block for our country, and so much of our tax money goes to their aid. Do you ever see that changing, or do you see it getting worse? Be honest. And you can’t say we haven’t tried all we can to help the Democrats. We even tried introducing them to democracy, but they came up with idea of superdelegates to subvert that.

I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing, since FrankJ is spelling this one consistently with the ic on the end, and with a capital-D. The democrat party I know is the one that says there is no terrorist threat — they identify strongly with a certain propagandist and maker of “documentaries” who says exactly that — but — we all need to be trembling in fear of the globular wormening ManBearPig. Our sardonic nickname for this credo that the planet is dying, and we can only save it by paying more taxes.

Which is a scam that screams “I am a scam!” in mid-sentence if ever there was one.

I have only 26 capital letters I can use on things, and none to waste on someone droning on at me that I should ignore something that’s really killed people, and concentrate my energies instead on something that never killed anyone. I have no capital letters to waste on people who hold themselves out to be “nuanced” thinkers, “tolerating diverse points of view,” while being no such thing and doing no such thing. I have no capital letters to waste on someone who wants to provide more and closer inspections on the voting process…if & when, and only if & when, they lose.

And the idea of a national convention to figure out if people like me should feel guiltier about being white or being male? I’m loving it. I love the idea that it will tear the democrat party in half, and then hopefully, churn it up into hamburger. It’s the only good part about the elections this year. Had you suggested such a thing would happen a year ago, it would have been humorous…and it’s unlikely anyone would have laughed about it, for it would have been seen as extraordinarily unlikely. And better than even odds some easily-offended, small-minded “tolerant” democrat person would have tried to exact some kind of personal revenge on you for saying it. Ending your job, or maybe your career. Don’t know if the tolerant democrat person would succeed at that. But s/he would sure as hell try.

Now such a convention, an absurd, self-parodying guilt-contest between the estrogen class warmongers and the skin-minority class warmongers, is the most likely thing to happen. Makes me grin. The entire nation will watch the democrat party repeat over and over again, that they see people as nothing more than specimens of special, artificially-propped-up, guilt-driven entitlement classes. We’ll all watch the democrats prove it to us, deny it vociferously, and then go back, Jack, and do it again. For half a year. I love it. I love watching democrats writhe in agony over the choice they have to make — it’s Obama’s time. But wait, it’s Hillary’s time too. Can’t be both — and yet — it is. Oh, what to do what to do.

So I like FrankJ’s idea quite a lot, but I say let’s do it on Labor Day…I wanna watch this convention first. Let’s try to sell democrats on democracy for just a little while longer. Even though it’s futile, we just might learn a little bit more about them. It’s fascinating.

Bush to Veto Waterboarding Bill

Monday, March 10th, 2008

So you see, he’s still good for something.

Senator Kennedy manages to get things 180 degrees bass-ackward with surgical-precision accuracy once again. Had his talent been appreciated earlier, Mary Jo might still be alive today.

“President Bush’s veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency,” Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement Friday. “Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world.”

Yes by all means Ted, let’s just feed the terrorists three hot meals a day and let ’em have their naps like little kids in Kindergarten. Let’s just wait for them to tell us something out of the goodness of their hearts.

Most shameful act of his presidency…what a laugh. From what I can remember, President Bush’s approval ratings dropped like a rock after he started making nice-nice with you, you pompous blowhard.

The pattern remains unbroken: Whenever a hardcore leftist talks about the “rule of law” they’re always talking about something that hurts the country. “Rule of law” is never used to describe something that really is a rule of law…like, say, building a fence to force people to go through proper channels when they want to come here. That would have something to do with a “rule of law.”

Oh, and uh…what’s up with this “eyes of the world” stuff, huh? What’s a United States senator care about that? Does he represent the people of Massachusetts in our federal government, or does he represent a bunch of foreigners? Because, you know, if I’m not mistaken I think he took an oath that addresses that question directly.

The Contrarian of Prague

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Interview with Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

“I am not a climatologist,” Mr. Klaus cheerfully admits. “I am not disputing the measurement of the temperature.” Even so, Mr. Klaus believes that his many years of experience in the fields of economics and econometrics give him some insight into the nature of the problems faced by climatologists and policy makers. In climatology as in economics, he says, “there are no controlled experiments. . . . You can’t repeat the time series.” So, just as you can’t run a controlled experiment to determine the effect of, say, deficits on interest rates, we can’t directly determine the effect of CO2 on climate. All we have are observations and inferences.

Mr. Klaus is also interested in the politics of global warming. He has written a book, tentatively titled “Blue, Not Green Planet,” published in Czech last year and due out in English translation in the U.S. this May. The main question of the book is in its subtitle: “What is in danger: climate or freedom?”

H/T: Kate.

The Benefits of Experience

Monday, March 10th, 2008

H/T: Gerard.

g0 ah32d and ca11 m3 a n00b

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Tomb RaiderYesterday afternoon stood out as a momentous occasion, for not only did I finally get two loads of laundry done in a single day, but I got this silly girl out of that cistern she’d been trapped in since, oh, I dunno, Christmas or Thanksgiving or something.

The one right before she corners Pierre at that second tomb, and has to raise & lower the water levels and stuff.

What’s aggravating is that this is a mock-up of an earlier game that came out a whole decade ago. My long term memory isn’t working that well anymore. I don’t remember how far I got in the original game. I haven’t even passed any point where I get to say to myself “Aha, nothing lately looks familiar, I must have played past the point where I gave up ten years ago.” Nope, doesn’t work like that at all. And you’re dreaming if you think I have the slightest idea what to do when I get somewhere.

I remember back in the Age Of Zits, the age where I was old enough to drive but not old enough to suck down a beer, the “old” people would marvel at my abilities to figure things out. There must be some amino acid or something that fritters away after awhile, like that stuff that helps you digest your food or grow hair on the top of your head. Because it doesn’t seem like it’s all that much time later, and damned if I’m not one of those “old” people now. Some Lady or Tiger choice pops up, and instead of relishing the opportunity to test my resourcefulness like I would’ve twenty years ago, I just get testy and irritated.

Maybe it’s experience. Maybe challenges and puzzles just look different after the first zillion times you’ve bolluxed them up…with some real consequences. Why, yes, that theory makes me feel much better. That would mean I’ve dissolved over time into a craven coward instead of an old fart.

Anyway, that’s a record. Four months while the bimbo was trapped in the well. Lots and lots of life happening, which has to do with my spotty attendance in trying to get ‘er out again. Maybe I can use that as an excuse, too — the “I’m So Busy” excuse. But you know what would really be fair and feel better than anything else, is blaming her. I keep telling her to run this way, she keeps running that way and ending up dead.

Related: In the “Suspicions Confirmed” department. Yesterday’s Pajama Diaries comic strip had to do with some proposed activist groups, things that “don’t exist, but should” or some such rot. The “Can I Get An Amen Here” type humor proposed that the busy working moms (lowercase-m, for reasons you shall soon see) band together, set their sights on those among their peers who have better looking bodies, and get rid of them somehow.

So it is true. Frumpy women don’t want ordinary guys like me, guys in whom the frumpy women aren’t even interested, to be able to observe better specimens.

And I would presume that includes pixelated specimens as well, so I figure I’ve got two years, tops, to beat this silly game before some nanny-state constable barges into my home and nabs it off my shelf. If Hillary wins, better cut that in half.

Time’s a-wastin’, bitch. Do what I tell ya. And quit falling off of stuff.

Alcohol May Be Good For You

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Not news to me.

People who do not drink alcohol may finally have a reason to start — a study published on Friday shows non-drinkers who begin taking the occasional tipple live longer and are less likely to develop heart disease.

People who started drinking in middle age were 38 percent less likely to have a heart attack or other serious heart event than abstainers — even if they were overweight, had diabetes, high blood pressure or other heart risks, Dr. Dana King of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and colleagues found.

I started noticing this a few years ago. The oldest living guy, lady, person in the world at any given time — you know, it’s a depressing thought but they do have to replace that record every now and then — we started working our way through ’em like Reese’s Pieces a few years ago. I can’t remember the year and it was pre-innernets as we know the innernets today so there’s no links.

But I do remember what I noticed.

Every single patriarch/matriarch that popped up — without fail — said something about a daily ritual involving exactly one glass of red wine. And it made a deep impression on me that the news stories weren’t trying to play it up, they just saw it as a cute little tidbit of human interest to toss into the story. But for three or four of ’em in a row, the tidbit was always there. One glass. Red wine. Every day for eight decades or more.

And we’re talking…oh, nothing of Methuselah spans or anything. But well north of a hundred. One hundred teens…I think one woman was 121.

I have some Pinot Noir in the fridge. And some Cabernet. Not that I plan to be around in the 2070’s or anything, I see the odds as decidedly against it, but if you’re still here you might want to Google me and see if I’m still on this side of the dirt. Just on the off-chance.

Via FARK.

Insured Celebrity Body Parts

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Mostly legs; some stuff in there you won’t expect.

Text-Safe Street

Friday, March 7th, 2008

“Life’s tough; it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne

Rachel found it on Wednesday. Yesterday Gerard pinned down a “higgelty-piggelty” YouTube clip that explains the plain in nauseating detail.

You know, I can’t say “text-safe street” lots-of-times really fast. So where’s my protection?

Update: You know, I’m doing some more thinking about this and I have to consider maybe this is actually a wonderful idea, just implemented a little bit backwards. Nobody’s really concerned about protecting the lampposts, nor should they be; the object of our concern is the texting person.

So why waste this money protecting the lamppost? The texter, won’t someone think of the texter!

So let’s do this right. Strip those lampposts, and with the money saved, get some helmets. Knee and elbow pads. Shinguards. Nut-cups. Shoulder pads. Chest pads. Goggles. Boots.

Lastly, you wrap up the whole thing in a foam pad mess until the text messager is just like that little kid in A Christmas Story who can’t put his arms down anymore. Then send them out to text away to their li’l hearts’ content.

Because you know it and I know it: Nothing looks cooler than someone texting while strolling around.

Will Win This Yet

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

An optimistic tone over at the Rottie’s place thanks to Crunchie.

As well as a crystal-clear distillation of what exactly we’re supposed to be doing over in Mesopotamia…and which, it seems, we are indeed doing. So no, we’re not there to steal oil and kill brown people. In fact, if those are indeed the stated purposes then we need some hearings pronto, because we’re doing a pretty lousy job of it.

If you’re a screeching Lunar Chiroptera the only reason we went to war in Iraq was for the oil, or to kill brown people, or yada yada. But anyone who paid attention and had an IQ above explosive diarrhea, knew that Iraq was the first step in the long marathon of actually winning the strategic war against Islamofascism. You see, we had two choices. We could play whack a mole from now until doomsday, killing terrorists wherever we could find them, taking out one cell at a time, at a huge long term cost in lives, or we could go after their “hearts and minds” and eventually kill the ideology that spawns them.

The occasion for this commentary is, of all things, the Gray Lady, linked by Blackfive.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

Abe Greenwald has a prize-winning commentary about this

It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift. Far from “creating more terrorists” as the failed cliché goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth. A 24-year-old Iraqi college student is quoted as saying she loved Osama bin Laden at the time of 9/11. Now, after seeing the efforts of religious leaders to curtail her daily freedoms, she rejects extremism entirely. While George Bush’s critics can make no useful connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq, this young woman has no problem doing so.

People who oppose the Iraq war, by & large, also oppose conservatism. When they are left to describe in detail the conservatism they want to resist, invariably they give a perfectly functional line-by-line description of the Islamofascism we would go back to tolerating endlessly were these anti-conservatives calling the shots. Something out of the seventh century…bad for freedom…oppressive to women…steamrolling over the will of the people…a theocracy…a moldering patriarchal layer of insulated & isolated martinets imposing draconian punishments, out of touch with the common people.

It’s like something in one half of the world is perfectly alright and ought not be messed with — when you have the same thing, as they see it, closer to home, suddenly it’s time to bear any burden, pay any price, fling any rabid spittle, to overthrow it and bury it. But if something that really does fulfill all their nasty nouns and adjectives, flourishes east of Greenwich…well, that’s all good. Let it be.

Suing Al Gore?

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

I hope everybody who glimpses at the web this week, glimpses at this before they glimpse at another thing.

I can’t wait until they start having an argument, an argument us ordinary guys can actually see, about what level of carbon dioxide saturation might become catastrophic…and why. Oh, my, will that ever be good. Debate’s over, huh? The science is settled? Then there must be a hard number somewhere. Just produce it. How much CO2 can we have before it’s time to chisel the epitaph of mankind? What proportion?

I can’t wait until everyday people actually learn what kind of percentages we’re talking about. I wish I could see the expressions on their faces when they found out.

H/T: Boortz.

The U.N. is Against Taking Drugs

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

The United Nations is sending out strongly worded letters to the movie business because some of the leading stars are on record with their controlled-substance habits.

The UN’s drug control agency said the easy ride given to stars by police, prosecutors and the courts sent out the wrong message to young people and generated cynicism over drug laws.

Well, I agree with the U.N. drug control agency, although this goes well outside of the mission & purpose I have in mind for the U.N.

And I think it’s interesting. If some slightly overweight, over-fifty, six-foot-tall straight white guy Republican governor of a southern state with a thick southern accent said exactly the same thing, we’d all know about it the next day and we’d all receive our instructions from our media overlords to put the hate on him and laugh at him.

But there’s a conflict here. The folks who are all cranky because we’re too national and not sufficiently international, are the same folks who are all cranky because we’ve got our evil insidious “War On Drugs.”

What’s the U.N. wanna do here?

The agency, which polices the way in which countries stick to international drug conventions, has been heavily critical of the Government’s failure to take a tough line in recent years.

Three years ago it said Labour was sending ‘wrong signals’ after downgrading the legal status of cannabis from class B to class C, which means that those caught with small quantities of the drug are unlikely to be arrested.

I note that many of the people who are vocally opposed to the War on Drugs are my tenth-amendment brethren, people who share my distaste for federal authority on matters where state or local authority is more appropriate. And yet I have to wonder how many among them will let this pass by without comment…a craven cowardly world council, trying to be a world legislative body, without having the stones to admit that is what it’s trying to be. World, not federal.

Should we legalize? No, not in my opinion. I’m tired of the druggies. It’s not the corruption of children that concerns me just yet, or the declining property values. I’m tired of their stupid crappy-ass opinions. It’s a form of pollution. They say the most inane stupid things, things in which they actually believe, because the drugs have been messing with their brains…stupid things like, drugs don’t mess with your brain. Or “if we legalized it and taxed it, we could pay off the national debt overnight” — you’ve heard that one before, haven’t you? The debt. Overnight. Sixteen billion dollars a minute is what that comes out to, you stoned-out old math wizard you.

In Barack Obama, we’re about to elect a President of the United States who is a drug, in all the ways that matter. I’d say that’s taking things plenty far enough.

Hillary Does Well

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Wow

With 97 percent of precincts reporting in Ohio, Clinton had 54 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for Sen. Barack Obama. CNN made the projection based on those results and exit polling data.

Wish I could work up some excitement about it.

I guess Hillary would kill more terrorists than Barack, and she’s more likely to be defeated by McCain, who in turn might kill more than her. So that’s good. But I dunno.

Liberals don’t like us killing terrorists, and McCain & Hillary both are well-versed in doing exactly what liberals want, after offering lots of bullshit lip-service toward the opposite.

The freakin’ media just loves all three of them. “Real” people aren’t that excited about any of ’em.

You won’t be able to criticize a President Obama, because he’ll be black, and you won’t be able to criticize a President Hillary because she’ll be a woman. But I have the impression the air will be much thicker with the “Who Are You To Say Otherwise” fumes under a Hillary administration. People are elevated to positions of power, and they learn you have to be very careful about criticizing anyone non-white, especially if they’re serving in an office previously filled only by white guys. That’s universal. But “Don’t Pick On The Girl” goes all the way back to the schoolyard.

And so now that our media has picked our candidates for us, I find it quite interesting. The Republican front-runner became the front-runner by stabbing the backs of Republicans. That is the product John McCain has to sell: “I”m not really a Republican.” The democrats, on the other hand, became front-runners because they have cheap gimmicks to suddenly halt any discussion about their ideas, when their ideas are bad. “You’re picking on me.”

I once said somewhere that a good definition of growing-up, is acquiring the ability to make a beneficial and actionable decision that doesn’t really make you or anyone else feel very good. I have the impression that the American people, overall, are ready to grow up. But our media won’t let us do it.

Update: Neal’s pretty excited about it.

This Is Good XLIX

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

By Gerard

Eyebrow Raising Headline

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

From Reuters, H/T to Boortz.

How about substitute the name “Bush” in place of “Hamas,” and see if the result would ever make it into print beneath that prestigious Reuters name.

Inspired by God, Hamas fighters battle on

Battle on, Reuters.

I’ve Been Bad For Years And Years

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Scotland

FRAGMENTS of bone, which could be human remains, have been found by officers excavating the former Jersey children’s home at the centre of a major abuse investigation.
:
The news came after the first picture of a “punishment room” at the former home was released, revealing a haunting message. On a wooden post against the wall of a secret chamber under the building was written: “I’ve been bad for years and years.”

[Deputy police chief Lenny] Harper said he did not know who had written the message or how old it was.

Officers have excavated one underground chamber at the home and believe there might be three more. The chambers have been described by victims as punishment rooms where they were physically and sexually assaulted and kept in solitary confinement.

More than 160 people claim they were abused while at Haut de la Garenne and the allegations of abuse go back about 40 years. There are 40 suspects and Mr Harper said a specialist team was at Jersey’s ports in case any tried to escape.

The news is not cooperating with my efforts to get my mood brightened a little this morning. I’m glad the coffee’s good and the shower water is hot.

Can I Borrow a Cup of Sugar and a Gun?

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Baker County, FL

A woman is accused of borrowing a gun from a neighbor and then shooting and killing her husband Monday in their home south of Macclenny, according to the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said Meloney Jackson borrowed a gun from a neighbor, entered the house in the 7000 block of John Rowe Street and shot Kevin Jackson.

Baker County deputies responded to the scene at about 5 a.m. after neighbors reported hearing five gunshots coming from the house, WJXT reported. They found the husband dead of gunshot wounds in the front yard with a gun laying next to his body and took the wife into custody.

She Poured Acid on the Bodies and Took the Baby

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Fox News

Deputy Pierce County Prosecutor Ed Murphy wrote in a court declaration that Davila showed up at her barracks on Sunday afternoon with the baby and initially told a fellow soldier that she was baby-sitting. Eventually, she confessed to the soldier that she had killed the baby’s parents the night before, Murphy wrote.
:
The victims were identified as Timothy Miller, 27, and Randi Miller, 25. Timothy Miller was apparently shot in a bathtub at the couple’s suburban Parkland home, while Randi Miller was shot on a bed and then moved to the bathtub, Murphy wrote.

According to the declaration, [Spc. Ivette Gonzalez] Davila took the baby to a home-improvement store after the killings, bought muriatic acid, returned to the home and poured it on the bodies.

The baby was not harmed and is now in the care of the state’s Child Protective Services.

Davila told the soldier that “Randi Miller was in a relationship with Davila’s ex-boyfriend,” Murphy said in his declaration.

Tacoma, WA. The soldiers were stationed at Fort Lewis.