Archive for February, 2009

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A Quote For Our Times?

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Pithy quip scribbled in over at Gateway Pundit, out about which we find by means of Power Line, out about which we find by means of Cartago Delenda Est, out about which we find by means of Blogger Friend Rick at Brutally Honest:

There are two kinds of people in the electorate: 1. People who remember how horrible the Jimmy Carter years were. 2. People who are about to find out.

I never really said it was a day-brightener.

Maybe things will go differently this time around. There do seem to be substantially more people, nowadays, who understand it really is all up to them, and that the government really isn’t going to do too much besides shuffle money around and make new rules — which tends to screw things up more than straighten ’em out.

Posted in Obamamania | No Comments »

Ann Coulter Attacks Single Motherhood

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

…and those who insist on glamorizing it, scribbling down glossy articles to the effect that this is just things-the-way-they-are, you’d better get used to it.

Why isn’t the number of smokers treated as a fait accompli that the rest of us just have to accept? Smoking causes a lot less damage and the harm befalls the person who chooses to smoke, not innocent children.

The Times’ single motherhood endorsements always describe single mothers as the very picture of middle-class normality: “She grew up in blue-collar Chester County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, and talks like a local girl (long O’s). Her father was a World War II vet who worked for a union and took his kids to Mass most Sundays.” Even as a girl she dreamed of raising a baby with a 50 percent greater chance of growing up in poverty.

How about some articles on all the nice middle-class smokers whose fathers served in World War II and took them to Mass? Only when describing aberrant social behavior do Times writers even recognize what normality is, much less speak of it admiringly.

According to hysterical anti-smoking zealots at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking costs the nation $92 billion a year in “lost productivity.” (Obviously these conclusions were produced by people who not only have never smoked, but also don’t know any smokers, who could have told them smoking makes us 10 times more productive.)

Meanwhile, single motherhood costs taxpayers about $112 billion every year, according to a 2008 study by Georgia State University economist Benjamin Scafidi.

Smoking has no causal relationship to crime, has little effect on others and — let’s be honest — looks cool. Controlling for income, education and occupation, it causes about 200,000 deaths per year, mostly of people in their 70s.

Single motherhood, by contrast, directly harms children, occurs at a rate of about 1.5 million a year and has a causal relationship to criminal behavior, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, sexual victimization and almost every other social disorder.

Yes, it is fascinating, isn’t it…some social vices we just gotta stop come-what-may, no-matter-what. With others the message is different: Don’t You Dare Criticize.

Who makes these rules?

Money seems to me to be at the heart of it. When people act in a manner inconsistent with logic and common sense, but with a sticky stultifying consistency with regard to each other, and they don’t really care too much about what it is they’re doing but are doggedly determined to keep on doing it…that’s usually money. Doling it out, or raking it in. In this case I think it’s raking it in.

Well, I became convinced long ago that Ritalin, and other (overpriced) remedies for learning disabilities, are in fact bonding agents between young boys and their overly-controlling mothers who can’t quite figure ’em out because they don’t act enough like girls. This is an enormous, blossoming industry, and it doesn’t thrive in proximity to households with strong male figures. The diligent patriarch seems to have an antithetical relationship with consumerism in general, in fact. Once consumerism swells up past the critical horizon of irresponsibility, and nurses a desire to keep on ballooning outward, it tends to enter into an inimical relationship with manhood.

Once a lady becomes a single mother, if she has boys in the household, the Ritalin prescription is just a matter of time. Usually, she already doesn’t understand her own sons. If she does, she won’t later.

The really tricky thing about single motherhood, is that it is a mixture of women who chose to be single mothers, and other women who did not. So that could be a defense of the New York Times, I think; smokers always choose to smoke.

But it’s an indictment against them as well. Women do choose, here and there, to become single mothers. With or without a decent command of knowledge of the eventual consequences. How many of them are nose-deep in these glossy New York Times articles about how much sympathy and goodwill comes your way, once you start struggling as a single parent?

But their kids aren’t participating in the choice. They aren’t choosing to have their God-given masculinity medicated away because momma can’t figger ’em out. And the burdens they must bear for being part of such a decision, they must bear over an entire lifetime.

Which justifies Coulter’s trademark closing-uppercut, in my mind:

If the establishment media wrote about smoking the way they write about unwed motherhood, I think people would notice that they seem oddly hellbent on destroying as many lives as possible.

Posted in LD, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Insecurity, or Shut Up And Do Something Amazing

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

InsecurityMy goodness, it would seem that big, bad ol’ stinky economy has us down in the dumps. I’m seeing a common theme in what makes a good article.

It seems to have something to do with “Why Wasn’t I Good Enough”? Or, to be more precise about it, “Why Wasn’t I Ordinary Enough?” If you see the page pictured and click on the first link I circled, you’ll be taken here and you can read all about how & why a grown-up little-boy might be naturally selected for extinction in the Darwinist second-date sweepstakes. Too much attitude, ranted about old girlfriends, oggled other women. Not a single word about the big killer: You didn’t show enough of your personality, and she doesn’t understand why you’d be a better pick than any one of a bunch of other guys she could second-date any time she wants.

I look at “dating advice” like this, as something pretty simple. If it is indeed accepted as “advice,” it creates more of what is in abundance already. And in this case, that something is fear. Fear of being remarkable. Men aren’t supposed to anything as individuals. It’s quite sexy for them to go through the motions — the “rebel” thing — just don’t really do anything in life that way. Make individuality a fashion statement, and nothing more.

You’ll see the link at the bottom is pretty much the same thing (however, if you click on that one, you’ll find the subheadline is more accurate than the headline). Now this is truly worthy of note and comment: My regular page full of useless, puffy trash-tabloid headlines from MSN, and three out of nine of them — a third! — are directly concerned with addressing the fears people have of being put on the outs.

This is not a good thing. People who are too concerned about doing the right things to keep from being rejected, tend to worry overly much about “staying inside the lines” — don’t do anything, at at least nobody can accuse you of doing anything weird. It doesn’t come quite so easily to us to worry about performing. Sure, we’ll go through the motions of it. “Do what you’re supposed to do,” just like back in the third or fourth grade. What goes unmentioned is that sometimes “supposed-to-do” has to do with sitting still, remaining humdrum, so as not to threaten anybody else.

It happens a lot in the world of dating as well as in the world of work. Some truly available young women go on first-dates with several guys at once; now, who do you think is going to get the second date? The free-lance photographer, or the oh-so-polite guy who does…y’know, I can’t quite remember what he does for a living?

The point is — if you do something noteworthy on an individual level, the whole “not selected for extinction” thing tends to work itself out, y’know? But because that tends to raise the bar a little bit on everyone else, our tendency is to see that as a destructive thing, and therefore to discourage it. Just do the same things everyone else is doing, and “the economy” will eventually get better.

That isn’t going to cut it. An economy is a vast network of individuals doing remarkable things. For it to hum along, someone’s gotta go first. Build something. Buy something. Perform some services someone can’t get anywhere else.

It all starts with someone who doesn’t give a good Goddamn what “everyone” thinks. That’s how America got here in the first place y’know.

So if the whore’s too stupid to agree to a second date, go meet up with someone who isn’t.

Thing I Know #125. They tell me rules are needed for civilization, but I notice civilization is needed for the rules. Civilization arises from where a wild frontier was tamed. On the taming of a wild frontier by a rulebook, history stands mute.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

The Climate Bill

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Weeks, not months. True, it was not at all an issue in the 2008 elections, not by a damn sight…especially when you compare it to the rhetoric that was being flung around in the ’04 elections. It’s the data. They aren’t there to prop up this albatross anymore.

Too late. The globular-wormening activists have been voted in. Let that be a lesson to y’all: It’s not enough simply to withhold support from a shitty idea. You have to do what you can to defeat it, as well. Kick it when it’s down.

We didn’t do that. Now we’re going to pay the piper.

The Senate’s top environmental lawmaker offered a preview on Wednesday of major component of climate change legislation she said could be introduced “in weeks, not months.”

“We are not sitting back and waiting for some magic moment,” Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters. “We’re ready to go.”

Boxer shepherded carbon-capping legislation to the Senate floor last year, the most progress any climate change bill has made in the U.S. Congress. That bill won 48 votes, with 36 opposed, but died after a procedural maneuver by opponents.

Any new legislation to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide — such as those from coal-fired power plants and fossil-fueled vehicles — would build on that earlier measure, but would not follow it exactly, Boxer said.

“We may move in three weeks, we may move in six weeks, we could move in 10 weeks,” she said. “We could get a bill out of committee tomorrow … I want to get a bill out of there that every member has a stake in, every member understands every word of it, and so it will take a while …

“It could be weeks, not months, but it will be before the end of this year,” she said.

Posted in ManBearPig | 4 Comments »

Stimulus Watch

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Senate version worse than the House version?

Based on economic and legal analysis, the authors conclude that the Buy American provisions would violate US trade obligations and damage the United States’ reputation, with very little impact on US jobs. They estimate that the additional US steel production fostered by the Buy American provisions will amount to around 0.5 million metric tons. This in turn translates into a gain in steel industry employment equal to roughly 1,000 jobs. The job impact is small because steel is very capital intensive. In the giant US economy, with a labor force of roughly 140 million people, 1,000 jobs more or less is a rounding error. On balance the Buy American provisions could well cost jobs if other countries emulate US policies or retaliate against them. Most importantly, the Buy American provisions contradict the G-20 commitment not to implement new protectionist measures–a commitment that was designed to forestall a rush of “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies.

Now, I thought this was a new era in which America would be earning all kinds of respect from her “allies” and her “neighbors” by not going around being “arrogant” and thinking she was all that & a bag o’chips. That whole humble-humble-humble argument, again.

We had a debate last year about whether people respect those who stand for nothing, and just work like the dickens at being luuuuved by others. It ended with a dead-even split; history says the suck-ups aren’t liked very well at all, but the American electorate decided America should go ahead and be a suck-up, and surely it’ll work out for the best.

So where’s the sucking-up? Going all isolationist doesn’t seem to have an awful lot to do with those fawning displays of obsequiousness that the “majority” voted in.

Don’t look at me. I’m a big believer in the Syndrome “That’s How It Works” Paradigm.

See? Now you respect me, because I’m a threat. That’s the way it works.

All men, who are honest, believe in the Syndrome Paradigm. That’s because all men were once boys. And in the world of boys, when the girls and grown-ups are gone…Syndrome’s got it nailed, brother. You’re a threat, you get respect — you aren’t, you don’t.

And I see this thing called the “international community” as just one big locker room. I didn’t start seeing that way because I’d been in a locker room — I started seeing things this way after I’d been reading the news for awhile.

But I’m willing to be proven wrong. So prove me wrong. This doesn’t seem like the right way to go about it. In addition to which…if you must so thoroughly screw up domestic things like the economy, and it’s really that unavoidable, I’d like to respectfully request a little more — focus? Don’t go messing up the foreign-relations stuff as well. Obama’s got four years to be our modern Jimmy Carter, and that involves a lot of screwing-up, at home, and abroad.

Those are big shoes to fill, but forty-eight months is a long time. Pace yourself. Baby steps.

Posted in Economy, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization | 1 Comment »

A Parting Shot for Daschle

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Boortz is having fun by pointing to something. I’ll join in by pointing at the same thing.

Making a big deal out of 238,000. Amateur.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This | 3 Comments »

Leave Me and Demi Alone!

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Ashton Kutcher, once his and wife Demi Moore’s celebrity-paychecks have been deposited and they have their mobs of adoring fans, would like to be left alone.

Even though Kutcher has become the unofficial poster celebrity for Twitter, he decided to take to MySpace for his “brief retort to the critics”—after all, tweets are limited to a mere 140 characters each, and he has plenty to say.

Kutcher addresses many of the recent attacks against him…Among the highlights:

Kutcher admits it was probably wrong to air his complaints via the Web about his neighbor’s early-morning construction work, but argues he should be allowed to sleep in peace and quiet. “Yes I live a very fortunate life and for that I am very greatful [sic],” he writes. “I do however work for a living. I have a family that I support and a company that I run daily. And I cherish the 4 to 6 hours that I sleep a day.”
:
As for his new love of twittering, he insists he and wife Demi Moore hope it helps them better connect with their fans. “We have dedicated ourselves to building a coalition to abolish 21st century slavery and are smart enough to know that we can’t do it alone,” he explained. “But truth be told we are having fun connecting with people and if we are to be defamed for doing so, so be it.”

This is my third post about Ashton Kutcher and his big blow-up at the construction folks; perhaps my obsession is due to the weirdness of the juxtaposition between everyday “owl feces cougar placenta jack bone dick!” Ashton, and the “I Pledge” Ashton.

Let’s be fair to Ashton; we are all Ashton Kutcher.

Or at least, all the folks who voted for Obama wanting to bring about this “hope and change.” There’s a little bit of Ashton Kutcher in each of ’em.

The thing that shines through here, about which it seems nobody wants to talk really, is that it’s really hard to keep your perspective on things like voting for strangers you’ll never actually meet, and seeing a dividend come out of that in your everyday life. Barack Obama can’t stop construction workers from waking up Ashton Kutcher earlier than Ashton wants to be woken up, any more than Obama can find some qualified nominees whose taxes are in order. But who cares? The American political scene has a systolic and a diastolic. When the current-year is divisible by four, people care. When it isn’t, they don’t. They forget all about the pledges they took to be better people, “meet my neighbors,” “find out their name,” “give ’em a smile”…and start tweeting on Twitter about owl feces jaguar dick, or what-not.

As for the twenty-first century slavery, I have no idea what he’s talking about there. (I checked his page and he doesn’t elaborate.) I would think the first step to abolishing it would be defining it.

Could he be talking about members of Congress who impose tax rules on the rest of us, and then ignore their own rules?

Well, that’s the lesson here. Those know-it-alls from last year who were so sure Obama was the answer to all the nation’s problems, don’t really care. They’re just a bunch of Ashtons. And deep down, I think they all understand they weren’t really making a logically effective or beneficial decision, quite so much as participating in a social event; wanting to “Be A Part Of This Thing.” During the odd-numbered years they really don’t give two shits one way or t’other.

That should be of intense interest to the rest of us. It ought to captivate our attention enough for us to remember the next time we walk into a voting booth, because during the odd-numbered years, people in power are still making decisions. Even when the people who voted for them, have forgotten all about the whole thing and are busy tweeting away and cussing out construction workers.

Posted in Celebrity Halfwits, Obamamania | 1 Comment »

Ghost Girl & Car Crash

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

A little bit of Blair Witch type fun for ya. Be mindful of your own heart condition, I’ll not be responsible for it…

Posted in Glad I Learned About This | No Comments »

Keynesian

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

He even quotes him at the end.

As John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run we are all dead.”

I realize economic concepts can’t really be debated…we’d just end up vectoring off to see what the ekspurts say, and then becoming horribly confused when we discover that not all of the ekspurts agree on these things.

But I wonder if there is such a thing as a “shot in the arm” for an economy? Can you do something that would be reckless over a longer term, and see some “pump-priming” benefit in a shorter term — then real quick reach over and shut it off?

…tax cuts can be enacted quickly, but they won’t result in much new spending. Government spending would spur the economy sooner, but it’s hard to ramp up — and even harder to shut down.

What are needed are programs that will stem the decline in jobs, boost spending and restore confidence to consumers and business as quickly as possible. In other words, address the short run needs of the economy.

Seems to me short-term benefits are cosmetic, by definition. The American economy has shown a marked tedency to build up “bubbles”…stock market bubbles, housing bubbles, dot-com bubbles. Things that are blossoming in appearance, but in reality, are ultimately revealed to have had massive invisible sinkholes building under them. We don’t like bubbles. But aren’t they the very picture of “address[ing] short run needs”?

Gods & angels, it seems to me, would be perplexed to be watching us right now. We spent the last year hollering “change is comin’, change is comin’!” Now the change is here. Nobody thought the change had anything to do with allowing business, transactions, hiring, manufacturing, contracting…transpire any more easily or quickly. So yeah, the economy’s in the shitter. That’s exactly where we wanted it to be. An economy is people buying stuff and selling stuff, and we’ve sent an unmistakable signal to the folks who are responsible for doing it, that we’re about to put our government in charge of making it a whole lot tougher. We’ve not yet wavered in that approach.

The economy’s doing precisely what we asked it to do. Why, the Gods-n-angels would wonder, are we so unhappy with it? We sent it a signal and it responded, just like a faithful horse, the kind of horse you’d want to keep for a long time. Why’d we tell it to go where we didn’t want it to go?

Posted in Economy | No Comments »

Morrissey on Daschle

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

The truth is strong with this one:

At some point, this nomination has to be more trouble than it’s worth. After all, no one will buy the notion that Daschle’s “uniquely qualified” for the HHS position as some did with Geithner at Treasury. The HHS position is a payback for Daschle’s support in the primaries, and Obama has a perfect excuse now to dump Daschle regardless of loyalty. By keeping his tax problems secret, he’s proven rather untrustworthy.

And that gets to the heart of why the Senate should have rejected Geithner and why they should refuse to confirm Daschle. It’s a matter of trust. Neither man shows a compelling reason why they should have the public’s trust placed in them. Both men will run vast bureaucracies and enforcement mechanisms, Geithner especially. The public has the right to demand people with proven accountability, not people who blame their accountants — or their accounting programs.

Unfortunately, the public hasn’t demanded it, in part because the press has been willing to portray these as “glitches”. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) noted the double standard of the press in covering the Obama administration and its obvious ethical issues, and wondered if a Bush nominee with even one-tenth the tax issues of Daschle would have gotten such supportive coverage. If Daschle had been Republican, we would have seen screaming headlines pointing out how out of touch the free limo service would be for a nation struggling with economic crisis, and how Bush did nothing but appoint fat cat lobbyists to positions of power. The silence along those lines with Daschle and Obama speaks loudly.

It’s a brand new hopey-changey world, but that means more than what some folks think it means, especially with regard to double standards.

Before people were getting sworn in to these awesomely-powerful positions in our government, all this talk about double standards was kind of…funny. Maybe noteworthy, if you were a tighty-righty. In some cases, perhaps, more than a little bit whiny.

Now, it’s a warning siren, as serious as any fire alarm or air raid horn.

You need to be paying attention, no matter where your political beliefs are. This is a double standard that benefits people in charge, who are facing no opposition on anything, anywhere. Yes, perhaps Geithner was worse, and it’s too late to stop him. But it really says something about Obama — if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt in the Jeremiah Wright matter, and make up your mind he was somehow “fooled” into what that nut was all about — that here the Chosen One is, a couple weeks into His first term, and here He is getting “fooled” all over again.

Seriously, how do you explain this? As Messianic geniuses go, this guy seems to get fooled an awful lot. If you really buy that, it must be like watching Wiley Coyote chase that roadrunner…safe on the head…rocket-roller-skates into the cliff…train coming out of the painted-on tunnel…meep meep.

Or, you could simply entertain the notion that perhaps He isn’t really being fooled. Dude is from Chicago, after all. Something to think about.

Posted in Obamamania | No Comments »

D’JEver Notice? XXIII

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

A friend (leaning somewhat left) sent me an e-mail poking fun about our presence in Iraq. I sent back a smartass reply that Hillary Clinton owes the public an explanation, since she voted for it. I got back a smackdown to the effect of just once, could I please lay off the politics, sheesh.

My mistake. She wanted to joke about our going into Iraq, without getting into politics. You know, I strongly doubt the response would have been the same if I made a joke about smirking cowboys and choking on pretzels.

It got me to thinking about a audio clip I heard from last year, I can’t remember if it was Letterman, Stewart or Leno. Some joke about one of the Republican candidates…Huckabee, maybe…followed up with some kind of jab at Hillary. The crowd was guffawing with the best horse laugh you ever heard at the joke that came at the Republicans’ expense, and managed to whiplash into an indignant “Ooooh!” when the Hillary punchline came along.

You can find that ominous, tragic or funny in its own way — personally, I find it qualifies for all three. If you find it funny, then you have a surreal situation in which the audience’s reaction yields a far more noteworthy occasion for humor than anything that was scripted.

That’s my “D’JEver Notice?” moment for this week…nothing impressive. It just seems whether Republicans are running things, or those other guys, we always have this social protocol in place. “Everyone” is ready to talk about politics, for as long as anyone wants, provided it is laced with humor, and the humor comes at the expense of the Republicans. When the tables turn, it’s all geez, everyone’s sick of this, fer chrissakes would you move on already.

And if it’s a conversation that causes enough bad feeling to merit recollection later, people recall it as if the Republican started it. Pretty freakin’ scary when you think about all the performance reviews being drawn up out there in corporate-land, about this-guy or that-guy who “votes Republican” and “keeps bringing up politics” and “won’t let it go” and “makes jokes those around him don’t necessarily appreciate.” Question: Why the thin skins? Did Republicans win an election somewhere while I was snoozing? Last I checked, they’d been thoroughly marginalized. In 2009, someone who makes decisions that count, is a democrat, no ifs-ands-or-buts. Good manners means never saying anything snarky about ’em, even if someone comes along and specifically asks your opinion?

I know exactly what this reminds me of. Recess on the playground in third-or-fourth grade, boys and girls playing with each other, and the girls wanting to play rough. So the boys accommodate, and — Ooh! That hurt! You hurt me! Wah!

Someone’s not having an easy time adjusting to their own folks running the show, I think. They still want to define “having a rational discussion about politics” as “speaking truth to power,” and they still want to define the last of those as “recycling some jokes about George W. Bush & crew.” Any “discussion of politics” outside of that is anti-social, perhaps symptomatic of anger management issues on your part…we may not have too much longer to wait before it’s a hate crime.

Yet these people are running everything now.

How much more persistent can those feelings of insecurity possibly be?

Posted in Deranged Leftists | 3 Comments »

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

It is often said that being a beat cop makes you cynical about humanity, and the experience does this to you in a most destructive way: The glimmerings you pick up about our species, what makes it tick, our capacity for evil and violence, are all TRUE. What’s unique is the side of the human condition you’re seeing.

Rather like figuring out what an elephant looks like by staring at its asshole.

Well, as of now, you don’t need to respond to domestic-disturbance calls or go chasing off after drug dealers to gain a dark perspective of the human condition. You can just read the last two posts on Rachel Lucas’ blog.

Air passenters are ungrateful…

Manhattanite Tess Sosa, who escaped the sinking plane with her husband and two small children, thought the airline was too focused on self-congratulations – and “they want to exonerate themselves as much as they can.”

“They are happy they had such amazing results, and they applaud themselves, and then give us a small token?” she said. “That’s how I take it.”
:
“You’re going to crash me into the water, and you’re going to tell me all I get is an upgrade?” asked Antonio Sales, 20, who was traveling with the University of South Carolina’s track team. “That’s more of an ‘OK, you’re not dead, I’ll give you something to hold on to.’ It’s not enough at all.”

Teammate Gabrielle Glenn, 20, was more blunt: “That’s it. They should sue.”

Rarely have I beheld such ungrateful piggy behavior.

The airline is “applauding” itself BECAUSE none of you died. Due to them employing an excellent pilot and crew who saved your lives. They have nothing to “exonerate” themselves for because the crash wasn’t the fault of any human being on the entire planet.

Geese, bitches. GEESE.

My favorite is the one I titled this post after. Antonio Sales, 20, someone who needs a punch in his tiny little nuts. Hey Antonio. The reason “you’re not dead” is BECAUSE they decided to “crash you into the water” BECAUSE THE FUCKING ENGINES FAILED – BECAUSE OF GEESE – AND THAT WAS THE ONLY WAY YOU WOULD NOT DIE.

And a “Mom” who seems to think the whole universe is here just to give her a place to have more and more children, husband or no. You were wondering why you hear so much about this bitch lately? Because it’s part of her plan…

The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week conceived all 14 of her children through in vitro fertilization, is not married and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said.

Angela Suleman told The Associated Press she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.

“It can’t go on any longer,” she said in a phone interview Friday. “She’s got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn’t want to get married.”

Angela Suleman said her daughter always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are “plugged up.”

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn’t want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Sure, that’s what I would do.

And dig this:

THE single mother of octuplets born in California last week is seeking $2 million from media interviews and commercial sponsorship to help pay the cost of raising the children. [emphasis Rachel’s]

It’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder — and no, Barack, I am not requesting treatment for this epidemic be made part of the “stimulus”. But an epidemic we do have:

The narcissist is described as turning inward for gratification rather than depending on others and as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power and prestige.

We lavish all this attention on idiots for idiotic reasons — voting for unqualified candidates for President because “there’s just something about Him, I can’t explain it”; giving people their time in the limelight on American Idol when they can’t carry a tune in a bucket; doting on prospective mothers during baby showers.

What we seem to forget, is little kids are watching this. And the little kids grow up. You almost can’t blame them for then saying “Okay, my turn, where’s mine?”

Almost.

I’m sure Nadya Suleman had a similar experience sometime during or prior to the teenage years, when she got this “obsession.” Now she wants to know where hers is. Of course she does.

And the airplane passengers are just more of the same.

We seem to have crossed a meaningful boundary here. Sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, mass communication became possible and affordable, and so it was suddenly important for us to be seen doing things. To show what wonderful people we are, to whoever might be watching. And so you had all these bullshit social programs very much like the ones we’re creating right now, to “put people to work”…nevermind that no true wealth was being created. Looking back on it, it was quite silly, really — even though we’re making the same mistakes all over again.

Well now, it’s important to be seen by other people while we’re watching yet other people. The Voting-For-Obama thing is a perfect example — how many of his slobbering, ignorant supporters used the phrase word-for-word, “I want to be part of this”? More than just a few. If their friends didn’t know they were voting for Obama, the exercise would’ve been futile. It was never about being-part-of-this, it was about being-KNOWN-to-be-part-of-this, which is a different thing. You watch the forementioned attention whores on American Idol who can’t carry a tune in a bucket…well, you can’t just watch that in solitude, and then keep it a secret. No! you have to go to work and babble away about how unfair it is that so-and-so got voted off. So everyone knows you were watching it.

So we have NPD where we didn’t have it before — because we asked for it.

Just like we stopped smacking kids in the butt when they misbehave, and now it’s some kind of mystery why every third kid has something called “ADHD.” It’s not a mystery. We treat each other different, in a few years’ time, we’re going to be acting different. The mystery would be how to explain it if it didn’t happen.

Hey Rachel…great stuff. Now I think you need to put up a post or two about bunnies or candy canes or something. Wallow in this sewage for too long and it’ll just eat you up inside. You know it and I know it.

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, The Evil Men Do | No Comments »

Women With Jay Leno’s Jaw More Likely to Have Affairs

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Mmkay, whatever.

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Phony Egghead Studies | No Comments »

The Less Sense You Make, The More Help You Get

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

I knew I wasn’t the only one doing this. Natalie has been doing exactly the same thing.

Her legs look much nicer. And even if they didn’t, she’d still be much more fun to watch. You do not…do not…repeat, do not want to watch me dealing with one of those machines. You do not. And if you are watching, in the same room, get ready to duck because a cordless phone’s going to be flying across the room in a few moments.

I don’t do well in the department of pretending to have a coherent conversation with someone when they, and I, both fully understand this isn’t what is taking place. I know good manners involve keeping up that illusion, but this is my Achilles’ Heel. And if it’s a machine pretending to be helpful and not being helpful, that doesn’t lower my frustration one little bit. I get that funny gleam in my eye Bill Bixby used to get in his, my veins all stick out, my skin turns green and my muscles swell up until my shirt rips. It’s not a pretty sight.

Enough about that. Watch how Nat deals with it. Good looking, classy young lady solving a vexing problem in a practical, constructive way.

Posted in About Me and My Blog, Everyday Dimwits, Glad I Learned About This | 1 Comment »

Renditions

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

One Revolution AwayTime to get out the banner again.

His Holiness’ loyal followers are ticked off at Him, because He signed an executive order that appears to preserve the legitimacy of renditions, a controversial procedure in which scumbags are shipped off from countries that prohibit torture, whatever that is, to other countries that do not.

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

You catch that last bit?

Counter-terrorism efforts are contending with an ever-diminishing inventory of “mechanisms” they can use to take “terrorists off the street.” Pre-Obama, the problem has become so incapacitating that shipping the scumbags off to other countries is now “the main remaining mechanism.”

But the big news here, is that the banner is correct. Liberals are never quite happy with the status quo. You put ’em in charge of freakin’ everything…and oh dear, we’re still not quite good people just yet. Need another revolution.

And the profound irony is that it’s all about making us decent. But to most people, including quite a few Obama voters, allowing a terrorist attack to go ahead and make a smoking crater out of an American city filled with old people, women and children, just so you can go on the next day and brag about what an exquisitely-refined set of faux-European human-rights “values” you have — doesn’t make you decent.

It makes you an asshole.

Posted in Europeans, Obamamania, Torture and Civil Liberties and What-Not | No Comments »

Poe’s Law (or What the Hell Was That About?)

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

I put up the previous post in response to the stated wishes of a couple of good friends (lib-rulz) with whom we were dining last night, who helped us turn the local Hooters restaurant into an arguing-about-politics free-for-all.

I’m pretty sure we would’ve gotten thrown out of the place if it was a nice over-priced dinner spot, with a piano tinkling away off in the corner, where you’re required to wear a necktie. As it was, this was the place with girls young enough to be my daughter parading around in clingy tank tops and orange short-shorts, so nobody even noticed the…”BUSH! CHENEY! OBAMESSIAH! UNCONSTITUTIONAL! LACK OF SPECIFICITY! IMPEACH! GUANTANAMO! HOPE AND CHANGE! EXPENSIVE CLOTHES! BLAH BLAH BLAH!” coming from our corner.

The point made by my opposition, as I understand it, is that this is the dawn of a new age and the one thing Republicans and democrats need to start doing, toot-sweet, is figure out how to come-together and get-along to solve all the nation’s problems.

And oh by the way, Sarah Palin is a dumbshit, you need to agree with that too.

I just love that stuff. My patented technique has been so effective that I have no qualms whatsoever about publishing it in a blog. I just inquire, with that little halo shining away over my innocent li’l head, “If we’re all going to come together to solve problems, shouldn’t one of the first things upon which we agree, be that you really shouldn’t jump to conclusions about whether someone’s a skull-fucking idiot until after you’ve personally met them and had a chance to determine it for yourself?” There’s no problem with disclosing the secret superweapon to the enemy, because it is absolutely airtight. You can 1) agree, 2) disagree, or 3) change the subject. That is all.

If you agree, then the rule applies to Sarah Palin. Then you have to engage in this hilarious mad-scramble of trying to think of Republicans who’ve tried to circulate talking points about such-and-such a democrat being an idiot. Which is a contest you really don’t want to get started…you really don’t. The tendency is for Republicans to not so much say “Al Gore is an idiot,” as to say, “Why am I supposed to think Al Gore is smart?” which is quite different. Deciding, in proxy, on behalf of someone else, that a third-person that no one in proximity is ever gonna meet, is a clueless jerk, is a decidedly left-wing tactic.

And then there’s the bonus: You have to admit that your party-bosses are telling you what’s going on, and you’ve been lettin’ ’em get away with it.

If you disagree, then you didn’t really mean it when you uttered the empty bromides about dropping antiquated resentments and learning to work together. You just want your side to WIN, WIN, WIN. Party above country.

And if you change the subject…well, you automatically lose, of course.

Anyway, the fantasy was thrown upon the conversational table, repeatedly, that “Morgan’s blog should get hacked.” This came after it was proven that The Blog That Nobody Reads, hadn’t been read by the people criticizing it — proven beyond any doubt whatsoever. How are people who don’t know how to find a blog, going to hack it? But just in case my friends decided to look it up, I thought I’d accommodate them. Make ’em feel good. Because being a liberal is all about feeling good; it’s never about actually solving problems.

Most tellingly, I never got a single response about this “bailout” plan, which further supports my theory that nobody sees anything good about it.

Wouldn’t your chosen deity or angel be weary if you were to approach Him, or Her, or It, and humbly inquire how mere mortals can figure out what a mistake looks like before they make it? Imagine the holy frustration as your cosmic force utters back at you the plain truth of it: “A plan is probably bad if nobody is willing to state for the record that they think it’s any good. Now tell me please, why do you mortals keep doing these things?” But the bailout is on the table. Here we go again.

Also, I have now bet $50 that Obama is a one-termer. Or $100. I can’t remember if I shook one hand, or two. We should really get that cleared up sometime soon.

One other point I’m glad got made…

…in the endless pantheon of political scandals, I can’t think of any single one for which I have less respect than the “Sarah Palin’s clothes cost a lot of money” thing. I don’t think I’d ever find one if I studied the whole shebang, going all the way back to Ancient Greece. It’s just plain stupid. Stupid, as in, leaving your turn signal flashing for a dozen miles. If you have a working brain, you’re insulting it, and it should jump out of your own skull and slap you silly right across the face, for giving so many total strangers substantial reason to think it’s not in there. The same way your mother should slap you across the face for using crappy table manners, and giving total strangers substantial reason to think she didn’t teach you any good ones.

How much loot did John McCain’s clothes cost, anyway? Joe Biden? Barack Obama? It’s blatant sexism…or, it must be something else, because I didn’t hear anyone question how much money Hillary’s pantsuits cost, either.

So anyway, no, The Blog That Nobody Reads didn’t get hacked. It was a private joke with some good friends, the kind of friends with whom it’s a real pleasure to break bread and suck down good wine, or whatever, even if you don’t agree on everything. And regarding the kinds of liberals who really want to hack away at blogs they find disagreeable…oh, they are out there…and Poe’s Law does apply. Some things are so outlandish, they can’t really be parodied. So I’ll be among the first to say that I should really keep my day job — it was not good satire — all I could do, was envision the Crocodiles in Stephan Pastis’ comic strip, imagining one of their typical interactions with Zebra. It is a pretty close resemblance — to the typical Obama-worshipping lib, not to my pals from last night. You know who I mean. The liberals who comment on blogs, insisting everything is the way they say it is, just because they’re saying it, and it’s somehow your job to take them oh-so-seriously because they’ve got a community college degree in whatever. Even though they can’t spell anything right.

Posted in About Me and My Blog | 1 Comment »

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