Washington Post:

The Republican rank and file is largely in sync with GOP lawmakers in their staunch opposition to efforts by President Obama and Democrats to enact major health-care legislation, but a new Washington Post poll also reveals deep dissatisfaction among GOP voters with the party’s leadership as well as ideological and generational differences that may prove big obstacles to the party’s plans for reclaiming power.

Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are overwhelmingly negative about Obama and the Democratic Party more broadly, with nearly all dissatisfied with the administration’s policies and almost half saying they are “angry” about them. About three-quarters have a more basic complaint, saying Obama does not stand for “traditional American values.” More than eight in 10 say there is no chance they would support his reelection.

But for all the talk among Republican elected officials about a nascent comeback after gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey this month, there is also broad frustration among Republican voters about the party’s direction, detachment from its congressional representatives and a schism over its priorities.

Fewer than half of the Republicans and Republican-leaners surveyed by The Washington Post see the party’s leadership as taking the GOP in the “right direction,” down sharply from this time four years ago. About four in 10 are dissatisfied with the policy proposals being offered by congressional Republicans, and similar numbers see the current crop of GOP legislators as out of touch with their problems and personal values. Nearly a third say the Republicans in Congress are not standing up for the party’s core values.

This portrait of how Republicans see their party is part of an ongoing series of stories examining the GOP at the midpoint between its disastrous losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and the midterm elections in 2010 and the 2012 presidential contest…
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Nearly three in 10 of those surveyed expressed no opinion about who in the GOP best reflects the party’s principles or volunteered that no one does. Topping the list of named leaders was former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee.

In the poll, taken amid the media whirlwind surrounding the release of her memoir “Going Rogue,” more cite Palin than other Republicans as best reflecting the party’s core values and as the top vote-getter in hypothetical presidential nomination contests. But on neither question did she exceed 20 percent backing among all Republicans.

It seems to me we have a lot of “Republicans” running around who are still drunk and hung-over on this intoxicating elixir of personality-politics. Palin’s policies and Obama’s policies, they say, are somewhat or mostly irrelevant. The democrats have found a likable guy, so we need to find a likable guy. Palin may be likable but she doesn’t inspire confidence. We have to find a guy who is oh-so-likable, and oh-so-competent looking — that nobody will ever want to make fun of him, ever.

Then we put him up against Barack Obama, in an election that is bereft of any policy discussions just as the election of ’08 was. And Obama gets hammered into one-term history.

Yeah good luck with that.

President Sottero has the “popularity contest” of 2012 won already. At least in the likability category. He will absolutely, positively, guaranteed, emerge victorious there. The challenge for Republicans is to make the overall contest much bigger than that.

If that challenge is tackled in all the right ways, it won’t be hard. Barry’s policies suck ass, and the recognition is becoming widespread that we can ill afford them. As I attached to the end of the Daphne/Sarah thread this morning — speaking of elephants-in-the-room —

I get the impression Buck & friends are making fun of we who see promise in Palin, for our reprehensible judgment in deciding what’s a likable personality and what isn’t. How could you like her: She acts like a dotty old aunt with her midwestern accent and her Tina Fey glasses…this misses the point. Speaking just for myself, I have no affinity for dotty-old-aunts, I long for a return to the days when personality didn’t matter. When it was all about the wisdom of the policy.

We have no avenue to salvation in any other direction. When we forget about the policies, we end up with policies that say…hey let’s cut the unemployment rate by scaring the shit out of the businesses and taking all the stability out of our economy…let’s fight the deficit by borrowing lots of money…let’s get big government under control by means of a six trillion dollar “health care” plan.

Put Palin’s spirit and worldview in the body of some chubby middle-aged plumber with a hairy ass crack sticking out of his jeans, and I’d vote for that guy too.

If aliens came by and kidnapped President Obama and we were left to continue American political history without Him, we’d still be afflicted by the same curse: Republicans and democrats alike, being taken in by the phony-baloney “My personality is wonderful, so pass my bad policies” nonsense. The debt figures we are talking about have a debilitating effect on the financial wherewithal of generations yet-to-come; their shock waves will reverberate long after you and I, and President Sort-of-God, and His oh-so-capable handlers, are all dust, and the personalities of He as well as those who challenge Him, are long forgotten.

Gerard brings us reality, and not the pleasant kind either.

This is Maurice Clemmons, sought by the police of Washington state, for possible involvement in the ambush/assassination of 4 police officers Sunday morning in Tacoma. Reading Clemmons’ recent and not so recent criminal history makes any sensible person ask, “What is this animal doing out on the street?” The short answer is, “You just can’t lock up crazy and dangerous people any longer.” The longer answer, in fewer words, is “We don’t have the guts to jail the nuts.”
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Clemmons became free to walk about Washington state in this way: “Clemmons posted $15,000 with a Chehalis company called Jail Sucks Bail Bonds. The bondsman, in turn, put up $150,000, securing Clemmons’ release on the pending child-rape charge.”

You’ve got to love the name of that bail company: “Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.” That name encapsulates in its depraved way everything that has gone amiss over the last few decades. “We think jail just sucks and if you do to come on down to Jail Sucks Bail Bonds where freedom to take your demented life back on the streets is only 10% away.”

Of course, the Democrat controlled Washington State legislature and governor are continually hatching legislation that will make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to arm and protect themselves from the vermin they catch and release like diseased trout back onto the streets. You’d think having four armed police officers executed while they sat having coffee in a Tacoma restaurant would make the politicians of this state, and other states, think twice about anti-gun legislation. Forget about it. The Democrat disease’s main symptom is that they don’t even think once.

Blogger friend Buck sez, over at Daphne’s place, that we here put up Sarah Palin posts with great frequency. And you know what Morgan Rule Number One is…that’s right. If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty. Because being falsely accused of something really sucks. We won’t allow it to happen. So it’s time for a Palin post.

Saw a magazine at the haircutting place when my son was getting his buzz cut. Had a caricaturized cartoon of Palin taking the oath of office from a Chief Justice John Roberts, with a huge crowd in the background. The depressed-looking face of a mopey one-term Obama prominent among them. It was truly a glamorous piece of artwork. But before I could look around for whoever the Vice-President-Elect was, my eye was drawn to the headline: “Is This Even Possible?” or words to that effect.

The article inside was very thoughtful about all the pros and cons.

Not.

Just a bunch of high-level take-aways from sharply biased polls…her unfavorable rate is at a staggering sixty percent or some such. And you shouldn’t expect this number to move, ever, no matter what.

Well, I’ll tell ya this much. If we start from these premises that must remain unchallenged, for they cannot survive scrutiny or debate of any kind…if we start from those, then yes I agree. Sarah Palin is unqualified for any federal office, let alone President.

The premises are these.

That this bilge you’ve been told in elementary school…”Republicans and Democrats want to get the same things done but have different ideas of how to go about doing it” — is absolutely, positively, completely true and not to be subjected to the slightest bit of doubt.

That, since we have unanimous agreement about what we’re trying to do, it falls to We The People to elect the most qualified, knowledgeable and sophisticated people among those who agree with us about what has to be done. Because Lord knows our problems have nothing to do with wrong-headed policies per se. They all have to do with chuckleheads. We somehow have been electing thick-skulled people to do the things we all know need to be done, but we’re like crack addicts or wife-beaters. Starting now, we’re going to do things completely differently and put some rocket scientists in charge and that’ll fix freakin’ everything.

If you believe those two things, I can see where you’re coming from about Palin. She just isn’t the sharp-knife-in-the-drawer we need. We gotta get us a genius, like ++SKNXKXKX++ (guffaw) Barack Hussein Obama.

But I don’t buy into those two things. I don’t think we’re all trying to do the same things. I don’t think we all desire the same outcome. I think — and frankly, if you disagree, I must disparage your alleged attempts to pay attention — this nation suffers from a fundamental ideological split.

Constrained or unconstrained vision.

Extroverts in charge, or introverts.

Yin, or Yang.

Creators & preservers, or destroyers.

Real-life people, or fantasy-land pixie dust people.

Do we want wise, tested policies put in place, or crackpot bullshit policies, with really nice smart people who are capable of convincing us they’re the right way to go when they really aren’t.

Castes, or not.

People keep what they earn…or we need a wise, benevolent government to gallop in on a white hors after all the loot has been earned by others, and redistribute it. You know, like Obama said. “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

If you have your head stuck up your don’t believe i this schism, I can see how it would make perfect sense to carry around all this concern about whether she’s “qualified” or not.

If, on the other hand, you know what’s going on and you appreciate the gravity of it, you understand that insisting on a candidate who can get along with Katie Couric, makes about as much sense as telling the little boy to pull his finger out of the hole in the dike and let the city flood…because he doesn’t have a Ph.D.

She’s the boy. She’s got the hole plugged with her finger. How she ended up where she is, doesn’t matter one little bit. Our nation is about to be flooded…invaded. She’s standing between us and disaster, and she deserves our support.

Let me bore you with some “slides” from my last trip. Just the four I thought were worth exposing to the innerwebs. Click the pics for larger. The occasion is me doing all of the driving…ahem…to pick up my kid after he spent Thanksgiving with his mother. So father and son are on a road trip together. Through what might be the most boring stretch of asphalt in God’s fifty states. Lessee what we got…

This is by Lamoille Canyon. We devoted some time after the pick-up to exploring it, but I had to declare this window of opportunity spent before too long so we could make some progress home. You can’t be too careful with Donner Pass at this time of the year. Well, anyway. This one might be suitable for a decent desktop background, with some aligning and clean-up.

This was actually taken on the way back home after dropping him off last weekend. It’s at Echo Pass, on the Highway 50 leg.

This could have been any old godfersaken stretch of highway. But if memory serves, it is somewhere east of Winnemucca, by Carlin or Battle Mountain. I took a few shots like this, and this is one of the clearest.

I’m not too happy with this one, just thought it was something neat to keep. Camera sucks for indoor shots, and that includes most night shots. You see why; it’s a matter of light and time. It remains a problem when the jiggle-factor goes away. This is in the Auburn/Forestville area, by that large dip that avails a splendid view of the whole valley. If only we reached it when there was still some more light.

Research Example No. 1

One eerie, foggy, rainy night [i]n 1889, Igor finally got it right. He dug up the fresh corpse from that day’s funeral. This allowed his master to complete some top secret research he had been working on for years, which led to the following starting discovery: When Dr. Frankenstein touched the left half of the brain with his electrode, the monster began to perform complex mathematical computations, to organize his dorm room immaculately, and to dress like a nerd. When he would touch the right hemisphere with his electrode, the monster would begin to play the blues on his guitar, to produce bad movies, and to render political opinions based on bad public policy and faulty data.

How To Stay Humble When You’re Smarter Than Everybody Else, pp. 47-48.

Two days ago I briefly touched on the Climategate scandal in the middle of my thoughts about our society’s recently maturing caste mentality:

Scientists are to contribute studies to the IPCC…if their work has been subject to “peer review.” If not, then whatever they have to say doesn’t mean anything, even if they are real scientists. But gosh darn it, if we have to re-define what peer review is, we’ll go ahead and do that then! And, of course, you can’t participate in the peer review, if your works have not been peer reviewed. So it ends up being a cyclical, nonsensical criteria. Nothing more than a gentleman’s-club. I’m in. You’re out. I count. You don’t. We’re right. You’re wrong. Behold: the new “scientific method,” fit for a post-modern world saturated with, and drowning in, institutionalized thinking.

This has never helped the human race. It never once helped us to figure out the earth is round. To the contrary, this is precisely what kept it flat.

This championship of process-over-outcome is not by any means a failure; it achieves precisely what it is supposed to. It divides thinking people into two groups, one of which never makes any mistakes and the other of which is never right about anything. Real life very seldom actually works that way, and so through this thinking style the committee engages in a circular travel, and in so doing divorces itself from reality. This is the task that was attempted, whether anyone wants to admit that or not.

I don’t know if the Review & Outlook editors of the Wall Street Journal read my blog. I’ve always been of the mind that hardly anybody ever does…it isn’t called The Blog That Nobody Reads for nuthin’, ya know. But how else, then, do you explain this gem which popped up just a few hours ago?

This September, Mr. [Michael] Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: “Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.” Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.
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“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.” In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

A more thoughtful response to the emails comes from Mike Hulme, another climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, as reported by a New York Times blogger:

“This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It’s the best, we’re told, because it’s the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim. [emphasis mine]

This is the danger of process-over-outcome. Certainly, you can value outcome over process, and still have lots of rules about what you’re doing — if there are consequences to flouting the rule. Wash your car from the top down OR you’ll use up more water and your car won’t get as clean…water your Christmas tree twice a day OR it might die, dry out and catch fire…wash your hands before preparing meat OR you might make yourself sick.

There is no such consequence for this “peer review” as it is embraced by the chicken-little crowd. None that services the interests of the rest of us, anyway. Of course, if you base science on what any-ol’-Joe happens to say, you just might end up making an ass out of yourself. That’s the traditional premise for it.

But here we have a situation where the CRU scientists made asses out of themselves anyway, with their wagon circling. Granted, most of the humiliation came from the collusion about the wagon-circling rather than the wagon-circling itself. But what does that matter? It looks, to the public, like something anti-scientific…and there’s no defense against that, because in the end anti-scientific is precisely what it is.

Ultimately it all comes down to this:

These guys were not trying to stop the world from cooking. What they were trying to do to the world, was get it to buy the stuff they were selling. “Science” was reduced to nothing more than a label to affix to the sales pitch.

1. My mind wanders to an evil wishing well…imagine a man can toss a penny into it and be robbed of some years of his virility, his hair, his teeth. But he gets to pick one and only one thought his wife will never have again. Burned out of her head forever. Feminism makes me feel sexy even when I can’t stop stuffing my fat face…I need a dog…our son should be put on Ritalin…
2. Are Hooters’ waitresses absolutely, positively, without exception, in all fifty states, always over eighteen years old? Because if they aren’t, that would be just too weird.
3. When Superman flies somewhere at super-speed and lands again, shouldn’t he always be covered with a layer of fried bug-guts?
4. Does PETA get mad when dockworkers scrape barnacles off the hulls of the boats?
5. Elementary school elections should be done Chicago-style. One of the candidates should promise all the kids malt liquor and cigarettes in exchange for their votes. We have a Chicago guy as our President now.
6. Dumbass, you always remember the toothbrush and deoderant but you keep forgetting the hairbrush.
7. With regard to that wishing well. I wonder how often it would have gotten a penny back in the olden days. Perhaps as often as Robert Louis Stevenson’s bottle imp changed hands? Nowadays, I suppose the pertinent question would be how often the pennies would have to be cleaned out of it.
8. Hotel room has no grounded 120V outlets. At all, whatsoever. I didn’t know that was possible anymore. Did I step into 1968?
9. If we want honest government, we should make a habit of voting for the candidate who puts us to sleep. The first thing a professional liar learns is to be fun; being convincing is Lesson Two.
10. I want to see a family comedy in which the mom does what the dad usually does. You know. Figure out she’s a selfish jackass; resolve to improve, do a better job of listening to what her husband and kids want, and not to spend so much time at work.
11. Has James Bond ever used a disguise or a pseudonmyn that’s worked for him for very long?
12. I keep hearing people need to come together and stop being so contentious. I think they don’t argue enough. Here’s some evidence. “Violence never solved anything!” First time someone said that, someone else should’ve stood up and said “That’s a load of crap.” It didn’t happen, so we get to hear that over and over again, even though there isn’t a grain of truth to it.
13. Big Brother was trying to do to the people, exactly what our Founding Fathers were trying to do to the three branches: Tear apart any connection between them, sever any relationships, stop any conspiracies from forming by inhibiting the necessary underlying feeling of trust. Under Obama, is the government doing a better job of keeping us from trusting each other, or are we doing the better job of keeping people in government from trusting each other? Answer that, and you have answered which vision we most strongly resemble.
14. Are slasher movies made by fundamentalist church people? Look who bites it: Girls who show off their boobs all the time, druggies, fornicators. And then there are the jocks and the nerds. Of course, the cute girls who take showers don’t make out too well either. Especially when their response to a power outage is to light a candle and walk backwards, slowly, whimpering.
15. A family-owned greasy-spoon diner with unsecured wireless. That’s pretty awesome! California can forget about it. We got rid of anything family-owned quite some time ago…save one. For the past few years when I travel out of state, a small greasy-spoon is more and more of a novelty to me. And cigarette smoke actually smells good.

This guy is a carbuncle on the ass of the free market and deserves a good flogging.

But I can’t help retaining some admiration for a genuine outsmarting. Clinton playing his games to get out of Lewinsky-gate, is not in the same league; he didn’t outsmart anyone. This is an outsmarting.

And at the very least, it’s worth a few chuckles.

“Jane Giles,” the “overdue account,” and the drawing of a spider.

“Megan Roberts” and the Blockbuster video late fees.

I own Logan’s Run, and I’ve often had exactly the same thoughts about that computer. One piece of data that doesn’t meet the validation criteria, and the city is destroyed. The following year Luke Skywalker blew up a space station as big as a planet, by firing something into an unprotected “exhaust port.” A few years earlier, Spock told Norman “I am lying” and all the robots freeze in their tracks and stop working.

Not sure what was running on these things, but it had to be something from Microsoft.

And you see by the way David skates past his unpaid bills, the humans don’t work too much better than the machinery.

I suppose that’s the price we pay for technology. We get a system that works as long as everything that goes in, is precisely what the system expects. Otherwise it all goes ker-blooey. David draws a parallel between the City of Domes computer, and “the Blockbuster ‘returned or not’ database.” Uh, yeah. If he didn’t notice that connection, I would’ve.

David Thorne’s site is over here, and his Wikipedia entry is here.

“Subjective, but still educational.” That is the summary, part of it anyhow, from Fourth Check Raise to whom we owe a grateful tip of the hat.

Here’s your link.

Hat tip to Gerard, we have a new blogroll addition called Exercise in Futility. Most recent post there, How to Destroy a Liberal’s Worldview.

In response to “what about rape” question, ask: “Is your father a rapist?” (the answer will be no). Follow up with: “if he were, would I be allowed to shoot you dead right here, right now?”
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“How much does the atomsphere weigh?” (the answer is 5 quadrillion tons, aka 5,000,000,000,000,000 – that’s 15 zeroes).

“If the humans pump 1 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, how many years will it take to increase the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere from 0.038% to 0.04%? (The answer is 25,000).

Great stuff.

So this appealing-looking, seemingly-harmless male figure is placed in a position of trust and he turns out to be a venomous viper. That kind of thing I just love all to pieces. Especially if it’s a woman, like in Hand That Rocks The Cradle. It’s so predictable. Backstory in the first twenty minutes; plot thickens at the end of the first hour; some horrible tragedy and/or injustice takes place as the second hour unfolds. Final conflict begins a hundred minutes in, and then the killer suffers some grisly demise. The innocents live ever after but not altogether happily, just wisely. Their lives changed forever.

This thing though, just pisses me off. Know why?

You have the oldest kid, who apparently is the star of the show.

You have the evil stepfather.

You have the estranged bio-dad.

These guys could be triplets. Why? Why?? Why can’t you make the bio-dad look kind of like…I dunno…Nick Nolte’s mug shot.

Yes there are subtle differences. The kid is younger, of course. But there will be a climactic battle. Probably in the dark. People falling in water. Getting dirty. Bloody, maybe. And I’m supposed to sit there with five beers in me, and go…”ooh…I hope…uh…that guy wins, and, er…that guy over there…loses. Yeah.”

It’s simply beyond my capacity. Can’t keep up. Even their hairlines are more-or-less the same. Is the creativity-shortage that powerful? Did Ron Perlman ask for too much money?

I need to come up with some kind of name for this thing with guys’ haircuts and grooming and costuming. Maybe “Beverly Hills 90210 Syndrome.” I’m not asking for too much here, I don’t think. Guys in real life look quite different. In movies, I do not want them looking like identical twins if 1) they’ll be getting in a fist fight, 2) they’ll both be fucking the same girl, or 3) both of those. Show some goddamn creativity. Put one of them in dreadlocks. Make one of them bald. Add some depth to the characters, at least so that I can tell people apart. You’re taking enough of my money.

Maybe after it comes out on video I’ll find out it’s a terrific flick. But that’s how I’m seeing it, if at all. And that’s a great pity, because I’m part of the audience they think they’re chasing.