Archive for November, 2009

Judicial Footnotes

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Let us not forget about that whole judicial activism thing…so many other things going ’round all screwed up, it’s easy to let this one fall off the radar.

U.S. senators on Thursday will debate and vote on the nomination of Judge David F. Hamilton, President Obama’s first judicial nominee.

Hamilton, who would sit on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago if confirmed, has said his decisions as a federal judge can “amend” the U.S. Constitution by adding “footnotes” to it.

At the 2003 dedication of a U.S. courthouse in Indiana named after former Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), Hamilton quoted someone else’s comment that judges write “footnotes.”

He told the audience: “Let’s start with the Constitution. Judge S. Hugh Dillin of this court has said that part of our job here as judges is to write a series of footnotes to the Constitution. We all do that every year in cases large and small.”

That judicial philosophy led Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Hamilton at a rare second hearing on his nomination, held on April 29.

Hamilton was confirmed. So let the footnotes begin.

Elections have consequences.

Purity Resolution

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

All RIGHT. Now we’re talkin’.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed on Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.
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Here is the resolution’s list:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

If I was running for office — hah right, fat chance. Anyway, I’d be at nine outta ten. It is a satisfactory intersection between the issues that concern us in the here-and-now, and my own platform. So the seventy-percent test seems fair, to me.

I wonder how Scozzafava woulda done.

Update: I would have appreciated some elaboration on Point #1. Maybe splitting it in two. Whoever wants to call himself a conservative in 2010, should be spirited in launching a devastating attack upon the various wealth-distribution schemes. There needs to be an emphasis on the damage that takes place on the natural-market forces when assets are forcibly taken away from one and given to another. There also has to be a sense of conviction that Keynesian economic theory is not only invalid, but has been repeatedly tested and failed each time. That we are permanently done with it.

Neal Boortz has a great quote about this today. The author is Dr. Adrian Rogers.

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. [emphasis mine]

Go in to 2010 standing up for that guy. The guy that must work to earn without receiving. Let the liberals appeal to their base, let them wail away that you’re slavishly playing into the interests of a bunch of rich pansy whiners. Let them go ahead with that.

Just stick to that one sentence up there, the one bolded. Whatever is given to someone who didn’t earn it, must have been plundered away from someone who did. And who loses when that happens? We all do. Rich, poor, anyone in-between.

You know what else has to be in the document? Something about reality. Name-calling. Stop championing one policy over another policy by coming up with a bunch of school-playground names for people who happen to favor the other policy.

To drone on at length about how liberals want energy, labor and prices to be artificially more expensive…how they’re guilty-white-racists pushing bad policies in some sick search of personal redemption…how they’re out to bring down the free market system…that’s all fair. The next few steps beyond it go into ad hominem, and that’s too far. Leave that to them. They’re very practiced at it and they don’t have anything else.

Best Sentence LXXIV

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

The seventy-fourth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes out to Smitty who is blogging at The Other McCain. He is righteously schooling Rick Moran for Moran’s latest…uh…”I hate Sarah Palin so that makes me a really smrt guy” whatever.

Beats him like a drum, then signs off with this beauty:

To tweak Nietzsche, socialism is the opiate of the bureaucracy, but addiction lacks middle ground.

If a plan for $12 trillion in new debt had even the slightest chance of being the right way to go, and it was being argued honestly, those who promote it wouldn’t be working so hard to ratify it through stigmatization of the opposite. Stigmatizing the opposite is Item #2 on the list of ways To Motivate Large Numbers of People to Do a Dumb Thing Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Thing With Your Name Later On. It works like this: “He’s a bad man, so if he doesn’t like something, whatever that is must be a wonderful thing.”

A couple months ago I heard one of the radio guys say something quote-worthy (Smitty’s gem remains the champion of BSIHORL#54, but let’s just drift off topic for a moment to mention this)…paraphrasing here…

If you could somehow find a real live Nazi who happened to be opposed to Barack Obama’s health care plan, he might be correct about that one thing.

Exactly.

We’ve lately taken to pondering the benefits and liabilities of some plans and potential plans that are, shall we say…impactful. Influential. Irreversible once put into effect.

The energy we have been spending, on both sides, examining the less desirable human traits of those who oppose our point of view, whatever that might be, is pretty high. That’s an understatement. The expenditure of this energy is off the scale.

Nazis can be right. About things that aren’t connected with Nazi-ness. It’s possible.

Dumb people can be right.

Stinky people can be right.

Call ’em what you want…big ol’ poopy heads can be right.

We shouldn’t be spending any energy discussing the human-personality attributes of those who are on this-side or that-side of a decision. It’s entirely irrelevant. The merits of, and legitimate objections to, the decision itself — this is entirely sufficient to demand as much of our attention as we can afford to disburse. Especially in view of the things we are trying to decide.

Moran, although he occasionally agrees with me about some things, has become emblematic of what’s wrong with the way these things are argued and why we have become divisive lately. He’s seeking to make friends with people by inventing, or obsequiously adoring, third grade insults.

Who’s divisive?

Hardball Bigotry

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

These people are nuts. And this stuff they’re peddling — it’s just plain sick. What in the hell is the matter with Chris Matthews? And who in the world is launching these fusillades against Fox News, and ignoring him?

Just have a look at some of this nonsense. And I’m using “nonsense” as a euphemism for something else.

NORAH O`DONNELL, NBC CORRESPONDENT: They have a connection with her, and I think it`s an emotional connection. A lot of the people I spoke with today were unable to articulate exactly why they supported Sarah Palin…But she`s about to arrive any minute, and there`s a stage out front where she`s going to take to that stage and make remarks, almost like a mini-campaign rally.

MATTHEWS: Well, they look like a white crowd to me. Let`s go back to Joan Walsh. Not that there`s anything wrong with it, but it is pretty monochromatic up there.

Joan, no surprise in terms of the ethnic nature of the people showing up. Nothing wrong with that. But it is a fact. Let me go to this intramural — the nastiness — and I want to get back to Norah on this, Norah covered the campaign and — the nastiness of this, the attacks on you might call them the “little people,” Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, in the campaign. Here`s somebody who was governor of a state taking whacks in a published book, her only book, trashing little people, and at the same time, she`s looking out for little…

Here`s her quote. By the way, here is McCain defending his people. “There`s been a lot of dust flying around in the last few days, and I just wanted to mention that I have the highest regard for Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace and the rest of the team, and I appreciate all the hard work and everything they did to help the campaign.”

So he`s pushing back, Joan.

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Yes. You know, he was trying to stay out of it, Chris, for a few days. He was saying nice things about her. But when she insults his team like that — and you know, I — there are questions about who`s right, but they strenuously deny it, and other reporters who were around also deny her version of things. So, I think that there are a couple of whopping lies, as well as just a mean-spiritedness that doesn`t serve her well.

It`s why she will never be president. She is a very divisive, mean- spirited person. She is fighting down with her 19-year-old ex-future-son- in-law, who should really be ignored, if anything.

So, you know, I think you see a side of Sarah Palin — Norah is right. People who love her love her. But the general public doesn`t trust her and sees this kind of mean girl persona that she`s never grown out of.

Norah did great reporting, by the way. I was watching when she interviewed these people who were wrong about TARP and who just started babbling about she will defend the Constitution, as though Obama won’t.

MATTHEWS: Right.
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MATTHEWS: … on “Sean Hannity” last night.

I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people. I think she is very smart about this. Here she is on the issue of — of what happened down at Fort Hood, obviously, an ethnic issue, as many people see it.

WALSH: Right.

MATTHEWS: She sees it that way. Here she is going at him.

This mindset is plenty worthy of an expose all by itself. I can just see it now…”Coming up next: A political phenomenon grips the fears and passions of the nation. Guilty white liberals who see every issue in terms of white-versus-not-white. What drives them? What motivates them?”

I’d love to see health care reform presented in this way. Gather up a couple hundred communists who are chomping at the bit for government to take over health care, with all their sob stories, and gravely intone: “These people feel an emotional connection, they feel like they have been, in one way or another, beaten-up on…I was struck by the meanness of this, the nastiness of this…whopping lies, mean-spiritedness of this…”

What this is, is a liberal effort to take control of the “water cooler” conversation. People see this rot, and if they happen to like Sarah Palin — or even if they don’t, but they’re just part of the growing majority who think Obama needs to be stopped — the thought that comes into their heads is, “My God, the people I work with are going to see me the way they see the white racist knuckle-draggers in this video.” And they become chilled. They shut up.

It’s part of a deliberate strategy.

Meanwhile — none of the issues presented here are white-versus-not-white. Not a single one. Matthews, O’Donnell and Walsh are bringing that into it. If they are honest in their remarks, and I think they are, then that means they are sick and weak to the point of being incapable of making a logical decision about anything, because they get distracted and drift off into irrelevancies that determine the final outcome for them with regard to what they’re deciding. And then, like little kids, they seek validation for what they’ve decided, in the form of agreement toward/from others. “Oh you are so right, Chris, you are SO right.”

We’re looking at why blogs became popular in the first decade of this century. It’s not a matter of instant communication or high technology or even any kind of wonderful job the bloggers are doing. It’s a matter of trust. When you don’t trust anybody you want to get as many perspectives on what’s going on as you possibly can. The days of “Listen To Uncle Walter For An Hour And Consider Yourself Well-Informed” are long gone. And these guilty-white-liberal-racist-holier-than-thou airheads are what made it happen.

Dump Timmy?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Yer doin’ a heck of a job, Geithny.

Humans Are Bastards

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

It is a TV Trope with a whole lot more examples of it, than you might at first think.

Humans Are Bastards

“If there’s one thing you can say about mankind
It’s that there’s nothing kind about man”

Tom Waits, “Misery is the River of the World”

“Lady, people aren’t chocolates. You know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.”

Scrubs (the one thing both Cox and Kelso agree on)

You Suck taken to the extreme.

When compared to other civilizations, or another species, Humans are a bunch of bastards. They are all greedy, heartless, violent, cruel, selfish, egotistical, thoughtless, and in extreme cases, evil, as opposed to the other species, which will be better if not far superior: they are all peaceful, live in harmony with nature, are naturally good, floss after every meal, etc. Ironically the species in question almost always looks and acts just like humans anyway.

That some among us naturally gravitate toward such a realization, is a psychological weakness. It is a disease. They reach conclusions about things because this has such an appeal for them, which is a problem because when you’re thinking honestly, you come to the conclusions supported by the facts, not the conclusions you want to reach; but that the appeal is there at all, is a second problem.

Our worst laws and policy decisions come from this.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXXVI

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Right Wing News, where we are an occasional contributing editor on the weekends, has gone back over the week just past and lifted some of the best quotes. From the news, from the teevee, from the blogs, from the op-ed pieces. It is by no means a short list, but it is put together from some quality material. And we are flattered to see we have made the cut.

Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe, and safe things dangerous.

That is intended as a lamentation, let’s be clear about that. And lately it seems to work both ways. If you think carbon is dangerous (more on this later) but there’s no cause for concern over giving Kalid Shiekh Mohammed a civilian trial, you must possess some keen insight, perhaps some X-ray vision, that gives you wisdom beyond the three dimensions and the earthly domain.

If, on the other hand, you just call things as they are — taxes hurt the economy, if you execute the bad guy he won’t kill any more little kids, cities with magnanimous social programs have teeming masses of homeless because if I was homeless I’d head down there too, maybe kids have attention deficit problems because they aren’t getting their asses whipped anymore — then you’re more mundane. You have demonstrated no irony, therefore you haven’t demonstrated this keen extra-dimensional insight. Therefore you must not have it, therefore you must be something of a dimwit. And far more horrifyingly still, you’re a little bit on the boring side.

You may be missing Trivial Pursuit questions that any average fourth grader would be able to ace easily, but express one thought contrary to common sense and you have a free ride to genius-land. Over time the favorite among these has become “perhaps they are sending their children into restaurants with dynamite belts because they have no other way to fight back.” On the flip-side, you may have been publishing important scientific works for decades, curing diseases, re-designing bridges so they can carry more weight…but utter one single thing that fits in too well with reality, like “If I wanted to burglarize people, I’d skip all the houses that I thought had guns in ’em” — and you’re an instant dumbass.

It’s not a drive toward left-wing politics; if it was, it would be far less dangerous because it would capture the fascination only of those who are enamored of left-wing politics. This phenomenon has a deep impact on people who don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. It’s a mistaken realization of what intellectual wherewithal really is. It is an excessive fascination with where above-average intelligence might take a thought, with an inadequate understanding of how exactly that works.

And it pushes us toward choosing the more exotic and more contrarian epiphanies and solutions — in response to problems that, when all’s said & done, at the end of the day are really quite mundane.

And those solutions are wrong, more often than not.

O and P

Friday, November 20th, 2009

An attractive and talented, if somewhat irritating, younger actress from the here-and-now…Olivia Munn. She emerges victorious from the installment last week, and is challenged by a blast from the past: Pamela Hensley, Princess Ardala from Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century.

So who snags it?

This time it’s a voice thing. They both irritate, but Hensley irritates less.

Besides of which, I got an eyeful of The Princess when I was thirteen or fourteen. That does something to a fella’s…eh…recollection. In the year, Hensley was the babe. And who can forget those horns.

Prose

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Blogger friend Gerard is none too fond of Townhall.com (warning, not-work-safe language behind the link). He is not alone, but what makes his displeasure pleasurable is his expression of it.

The man writes the finest poetry when poetry is the furthest thing from his mind. The local climate has something to do with it, I think. Seattle was my stomping-grounds for four years. Of course, I wasn’t that creative.

Travesty in New York

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Krauthammer:

…Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: “9/11, The Director’s Cut,” narration by KSM.
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So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
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It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

A grateful hat tip to Neo-Neocon, who had already made my “short stack” with a wonderful post she had up yesterday…which could be even more devastating…

Ask the 1993 WTC prosecutor what he thinks

So, if the Left’s best argument for trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the civilian justice system is that we’ve done so well getting terrorists convicted there before, why is Andy McCarthy, the prosecutor of the case they cite the most—the 1993 WTC bombing—so dead set against it?

He’ll tell you himself:

For what it’s worth, I think the team I led in the Blind Sheikh case did an excellent job, and we also convicted everybody. But that is not the measure of success. It’s not whether the government wins the litigation; it’s whether the national security of the United States has been harmed more by having the trial than it would have been harmed by handling the detainees in a different manner.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

The question is not whether the prosecutors are able, whether they’ll do a spectacular job, and whether they’ll get these guys…The issue is: What damage will we sustain by doing things this way, and is there a way we could do them without sustaining that much damage.

Memo For File CIV

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Me, in the previous post:

The fundamental problem with what we are doing right now is an enduring and often unstated belief that expurgation is the key to our success…our society is suffering because it isn’t yet pure enough. People in charge right now are giving lots and lots of speeches about things…I don’t hear very much about people-making-money-helping-other-people in those speeches. I don’t hear much about liberty or freedom.

What I do hear about is other people being the cause of all our problems. Certain types of people. “Wall Street bankers who caused this mess in the first place” is a more familiar phrase than one would expect any intact phrase to be, in a healthy, thinking environment. People clinging bitterly to their guns and their bibles.

Expurgation. Our economy is not to be made more robust or more vibrant, but more pure. We are to define certain segments of our society, certain groups of people — isolate them, blame the problems on them, and somehow marginalize them. Make them less influential, or get rid of them altogether.

Blogger friend Rick points to an example that’ll curl your hair.

Did Christianity Cause the Crash?

Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre’s success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the pastor’s basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents space from a lovely old Baptist church that can’t otherwise fill its pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass—“because Americanos don’t do that,” one told me—and file quietly into church. Some drive newly leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished enough to reflect his wingtips.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

The piece is infested with faulty logic, what we here call “dolphin logic.” You know…fish live in the sea, dolphins live in the sea therefore dolphins are fish. This is applied to the “sun belt.” There are lots of houses of worship in the sun belt, the sun belt was hardest hit with the housing/foreclosure crisis, therefore God must have caused it. All those God-people with their crappy $20k-a-year jobs having kids and using their “cheap credit” to move into houses they couldn’t afford.

In 2008, in the online magazine Religion Dispatches, Jonathan Walton, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside, warned:

Narratives of how “God blessed me with my first house despite my credit” were common … Sermons declaring “It’s your season of overflow” supplanted messages of economic sobriety and disinterested sacrifice. Yet as folks were testifying about “what God can do,” little attention was paid to a predatory subprime-mortgage industry, relaxed credit standards, or the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM.

In 2004, Walton was researching a book about black televangelists. “I would hear consistent testimonies about how ‘once I was renting and now God let me own my own home,’ or ‘I was afraid of the loan officer, but God directed him to ignore my bad credit and blessed me with my first home,’” he says. “This trope was so common in these churches that I just became immune to it. Only later did I connect it to this disaster.”

Rick also pointed to Doctor Bob, who thoroughly eviscerated it by pointing out the top-heavy rhetoric-to-fact ratio…

So, a lot of foreclosures occurred in the Hispanic and black communities — and the prosperity gospel was increasingly popular among these groups as well. Pretty damning, I’d have to say. Pretty much nails it down, don’t ya think?

Or not.

Seriously, there’s really not much more to the “evidence” in this article than that. Sure, they mention that some of the banks were marketing to prosperity Gospel churches, and some pastors were a bit cozy with the banks as well, and seemed to be encouraging debt. But really, that’s about it. Perhaps some numbers would be nice: how many of these churches’ members actually ended up foreclosed or financially destitute? What percentage of foreclosed homes were purchased by these church members? If you’re going to make the claim that the prosperity churches are a major factor in the housing meltdown, wouldn’t some hard facts and numbers be, you know, reasonable to provide?

Oh, and here’s a little mental exercise for you: imagine their cover blaring forth: “Did African-Americans and Hispanics Cause the Crisis?”

Yes, that is the smaller of the offenses: The lack of balance. This idea has to be evaluated on its intellectual merit, an there can be no intellectual merit if there is no intellectual honesty. In order for there to be any intellectual honesty there has to be balance. “No, I have these rules that say it’s okay to blame Christians for things, but not people with darker skin for anything” is not balanced and it cannot be intellectually honest. “Women good, men bad,” similarly, is inherently imbalanced and therefore cannot be intellectally honest. In fact, the Atlantic piece, quite surprisingly, begins with a confession of sorts…

I had come to Charlottesville to learn more about this second strain of the American dream — one that’s been ascendant for a generation or more. I wanted to try to piece together the connection between the gospel and today’s economic reality, and to see whether “prosperity” could possibly still seem enticing, or even plausible, in this distinctly unprosperous moment.

Hanna Rosin wanted to connect the gospel to today’s economic hardship, and she managed to get ‘er done. That, too, is intellectally insincere. You aren’t “learning” much of anything, if you’re just filling in holes in an idea you already had in the first place.

The larger of the offenses is the one I spelled out up above at the beginning. The desire for purification. The desire to destroy. Raw, naked bigotry, wearing a thin mask of a desire to make the economy better.

As I was reading the Atlantic piece, an image formed in my mind morphing together the cover image with the infamous Newsweek visage…what if the two hit-pieces got together and had a love child? I let my imagination flow in the comments under Rick’s follow-up:

I began to have this vision of Sarah Palin, in her office, in teeny tiny black running shorts, holding an enormous cross, with a caption like “Did cross-waving simpletons in slutty waitress glasses cause the crisis?” and/or “How do you solve a problem like them?” You know. REALLY let the hatred drip out.

I still think our society is too civilized, too noble, for this dreck to have the kind of appeal we are to believe that it has. It all looks so phony to me. We respect each other across boundaries of creed, geography, class and sex. I think we hold this respect for each other deep down. Perhaps we are losing it in incremental stages, but the foundation of it is still there. At the very least — most of us don’t want the responsibility that would go with the act of destroying others who are not like us. Whether some of us have the stomach to entertain such lascivious thoughts, is another question.

But I think deep down people understand: Regardless of whether this group over here, is a more suitable target than that group over there, for the isolate/blame/marginalize strategy…this is not the avenue to our ultimate economic salvation. We are not going to fix things by blaming Christians. Or, as seems to be Ms. Rosin’s intent, Latinos. Or sun-belt people, or red-state people, or gun-n-bible people. Or Sarah Palin.

We can’t make things better by blaming. I think Rosin does have a point about people just believing God will make things better, no hard work required. Yes, I’ve met people like this. And they do cause problems. But that, to me, is not “Christianity.” I call that L-A-Z-Y. The Christianity is just used as a symbol of it…as a caption…as an excuse. And it’s used by Rosin as a way of targeting a group that happens to be convenient.

Perhaps someone needs to get the word out to the guy Rick pointed to next…Mike at Waving or Drowning. And his readers, who are falling for it hook, line and sinker.

We need to start systematically rejecting this. We have some people wandering around with some terribly bad ideas, and some of these ideas might have caused the crisis. Chief among these ideas would be: People have a “right” to own a house. Next up: That when someone is refused a loan to buy a house, maybe a “civil right” just got trod-upon. And the next one: That it’s more important to twist a bank’s arm with some new legislation than expect people to live within their means.

But that means we need to start marginalizing and shedding the ideas, not the people. If it’s your primary focus that some targeted group of people should experience some kind of smackdown for which they are overdue, then you’re probably not among the people who are ultimately going to find an answer to this problem.

Repealing Sound Economic Policies Means Repealing Their Results

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Here’s something to scare the bejeezus right outta you. Congressmen Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

One of the strongest factors promoting recovery from our 10 post-World War II recessions was an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the immediate trouble, the American economy is fundamentally strong. Based on this underlying confidence, recessions and recoveries roughly conformed to the principle of the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom, and vice versa.

Repealing the ResultsThus real growth in the four quarters following postwar recessions averaged 6.6% and 4.3% over the following five years. As the chief economist for Barclays, Dean Maki, said in this newspaper on Aug. 19, “You can’t find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery.”

That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.
:
Anyone who believes the Democratic Party’s recently expressed concern over the deficit should look at the relentless growth of spending on its watch. Total nondefense spending set an all-time record this year—20.2% of GDP—double federal spending as a percentage of GDP during the height of the New Deal in 1934. Even without this year’s stimulus bill and last year’s bailout of the financial system, nondefense discretionary spending authority still grew by 10.1% in fiscal year 2009 and is projected to rise by another 12% in fiscal year 2010. Forty-three cents of every dollar of this spending is borrowed money.

Given the magnitude of federal borrowing, there is good reason to expect higher interest rates and strong inflationary pressures in the future.

It is hardly surprising that many investors are reaching the conclusion that this administration and Congress favor policies that virtually guarantee the economy will not return to the climate of low interest rates, benign inflation and strong growth that we knew from 1982-2007. These investors understand a simple truth that current Washington policy makers fail to grasp: When you repeal the Reagan economic program, you repeal its results.

How do we solve the problem? First, we have to define it.

The fundamental problem with what we are doing right now is an enduring and often unstated belief that expurgation is the key to our success. The economy is just part of our society, and our society is suffering because it isn’t yet pure enough. People in charge right now are giving lots and lots of speeches about things — it seems to be their answer to every single problem that comes along. And I don’t hear very much about people-making-money-helping-other-people in those speeches. I don’t hear much about liberty or freedom.

What I do hear about is other people being the cause of all our problems. Certain types of people. “Wall Street bankers who caused this mess in the first place” is a more familiar phrase than one would expect any intact phrase to be, in a healthy, thinking environment. People clinging bitterly to their guns and their bibles. Sometimes I hear about sacrifice. We are to become rich by first becoming poor…or, forget the rich part, it is our destiny to simply be poor and we shouldn’t want anything more than that. We already got ours, now we have to sacrifice for whoever is behind us in line. The equal distribution of our misery, is much more worthy of mention than the ending of it.

I don’t recall Reagan saying or doing anything like this. I don’t recall him saying anything about fixing the economy solely for the benefit of people who eat arugula…or those who don’t…or people who cling to their bibles, or people who don’t. He spoke of The People as — investors. Stakeholders. Real people, who had every right and reason in the world to expect their representatives to run the government that belonged to them…non-destructively.

We were waiting for the representatives to roll back a bloated and harmful government. To repair a mistake. The way a man might wait for you to roll your car off his foot.

Our current administration came riding in on a white horse as a champion delivering us from a bad situation, as a remedy to past mistakes. But it doesn’t seem to think the representation is what rolled the car onto the poor guy’s foot; it seems to think he stuck his foot under there. Come-uppins seems to be the prevailing theme binding all these speeches together.

We are to be purified of our past sins through pain. Salvation may lie on the other side…things may get better after they get worse…maybe. But no promises there. The pain is the important thing right now. Sacrifice…apologize…grab-a-mop, and I-inherited-this-mess.

What’s the solution? The message that needs to go to our leaders has to be one of expectations within a certain window of time. Things should improve. It’ what they’re there for. If they can expect re-election while things are not getting better, then it is silly to think there’s any incentive for them to make things better.

FDR’s tarnished-silver legacy is going to have to get a little bit more tarnished here, I’m afraid. And it should. There’s no reason for a recession, even a giant, rancid, history-making recession, to drag on over an entire decade. But when a sour economic climate can be used as a foundation for a re-election campaign, as opposed to just for regime-change campaigns — that is what happens. Countries become saddled with cancerous governments, layers of bureaucracy politically invested in that country’s continued suffering.

And then those countries turn into dictatorships. Their people are told what to think. They’re told to believe things are getting better when they really aren’t.

If this is not to happen in America, we need a better job definition for our leaders. The message needs to be expressed that things should be getting substantially better, and soon. Or else. If we ask for them to tell us sweet little lies every election cycle, then that’s exactly what they’re going to do. This would cost us not only our prosperity, such as it is, but our freedom as well.

Leftovers Not Allowed on Plane

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

*sigh*.

If you needed this annual reminder…you’re welcome.

Are you flying to grandma’s for Thanksgiving? Think twice before trying to take leftovers home with you on the plane.

Mashed potatoes are usually thick and gooey, and cranberry sauce wiggles and jiggles. The Transportation Security Administration considers both to be liquids.

It may sound strange, but you can’t pack those in your carry-on bag. More obvious no-nos include gravy, salad dressing and soup.

Physics Geek’s Cool Joke

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Physics Geek is an occasional commenter around these parts, always with something fresh and thought-provoking to say. Earlier this week Daphne clued us in on that cool joke of his.

I first saw this on rec.humor eons ago. Not exactly sure what made me think of it, but I couldn’t resist posting it.

By the way, don’t take too seriously the “it’s real” part.

Tandem Writing Assignment

The following is a true story received from an English professor.

You know that book “Men are from Mars, Women from Venus”? Well, here’s a prime example of that. This assignment was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca (last name deleted) and Gary (last name deleted).

First, the Assignment:

English 44A
SMU
Creative Writing
Prof. Miller

In-Class Assignment for Wednesday:

Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth.

Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.

And now, the Assignment as submitted by Rebecca & Gary:

Rebecca starts:

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Gary:

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…”. But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

Rebecca:

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel.” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth — when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.

Gary:

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. “We can’t allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ’em out of the sky!”

Rebecca:

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Gary:

Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

Rebecca:

Asshole.

Gary:

Bitch.

My guess is that they have 5 children now.

Man Convicted for Possessing a Shotgun

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

British court lunacy. Perhaps coming here soon.

A former soldier in England has been arrested and convicted (and may even go to jail for five years) because he found a gun in his yard and he turned it over to the police. I presume this is in part a reflection of the anti-gun ideology embedded in UK law, but don’t prosecutors and judges have even a shred of discretion to avoid foolish prosecutions and/or protect innocent people from absurd charges? Here is the news report:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.”

… The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden. In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges. “I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. “At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.” Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

… Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge – therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant. Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

… Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.”

It’s what naturally happens when the people governed by a government cease to be citizens, and become subjects instead. Look what he has in his hands. Off to jail with him.

Tea. Crates. Boston Harbor. Ker-sploosh.

“The Very First Enumerated Power”

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

A legislative branch absolutely, positively out of control:

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D.-Ore.) says that Congress derived the constitutional authority to make Americans purchase health insurance as part of its “very first enumerated power.” He was referring to the language at the beginning of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

CNSNews.com asked Merkley: “Specifically where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health care?”

Merkley said: “The very first enumerated power gives the power to provide for the common defense and the general welfare. So it’s right on, right on the front end.”

Before CNSNews.com could ask a follow-up question, Merkley’s press secretary pulled him away, apparently to attend an event.

Related: If Obama is So Bright, Why Does He Keep Drawing on the Auto Insurance Analogy?

Since Barack Obama charged into the spotlight with his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, we have received constant instruction from our high cultural arbiters about Obama’s supposed intellectual prowess.

Never mind that when speaking without his teleprompter, Obama typically appears ineloquent and befuddled when forced to think on his feet. Or that despite having taught Constitutional Law, he has confused rudimentary provisions of the Constitution itself.

To his apologists, Obama’s elevated chin and inspirational cadence from behind his teleprompter are conclusive evidence of his brilliance. National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman even lionized Obama as “the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.”

But if those sycophants are correct, why does Obama constantly say things that are so facially absurd? Examples are legion, from his misstatement that the world stood “unified” during the Cold War to his suggestion that our economic difficulties somehow derive from structural flaws within the healthcare, education and energy sectors that overactive government must now “fix.”

But his recent habit of analogizing automobile insurance with health insurance may set a new low for someone so supposedly brilliant.

In an interview this week with ABC News’s Jake Tapper, Obama declared that Americans should be forced under penalty of law to purchase health insurance under the House legislation, just as we’re allegedly required to purchase auto insurance already:

“What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance, and if you don’t, you’re subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it’s affordable and you choose not to, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there’s a thousand-dollar hidden tax that families all across America are burdened by, because of the fact that people don’t have health insurance, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty… Penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.”

There are just a few problems with this theory, which should be obvious to anyone who has devoted serious thought to the matter…

RTWT.

Union Troubled by Eagle Project

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Morning Call:

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Don’t go fucking around with the union, or they’ll start “looking into” you.

How Poor People Live

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Let’s Think About That:

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.

They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the son.

“So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered: “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

“We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

“We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

“We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

Then his son added, “Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.”

Clint Says Everything’s Screwed Up

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Just saw it on O’Reilly Factor, and New York Daily News says it’s true…

Go get ’em, Dirty Harry.

“[E]verybody’s so screwed up. It seems like our country’s in kind of a morbid mood, because of the recession or whatever.”

We’re “becoming more juvenile as a nation,” he said. “The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.”

We have been on an ascent. Now, maybe we no longer are.

When you’re on an ascent, there is responsibility involved. There is also a certain deprivation, which calls for a certain resourcefulness; you’re laboring from a lower point, on up to a higher one.

On a descent, there is no sense of individual obligation because it’s widely understood we’re descending. Nobody feels a responsibility to get out of the way, or get in the way.

And there’s no demand for resourcefulness because you’re sinking from a higher point down to a lower one. To whatever extent good old-fashioned creativity may be in supply…the demand for it is less than that.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry…

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Phil’s been playing around with graphics.

It’s not all his fault. As you’ll see at his place, we have been a corrupting influence on him.

Ah well. We’d apologize, but our Commander-in-Chief seems to be much more skilled at that kind of thing.

MooningUpdate: Now that we’ve delved into our daily stack…we find this piece overlaps so well with Phil’s funny graphic, that neither one of the two justifies a post of its own. They fit in very nicely together, though.

Why Does Obama Keep Bowing?
President Obama’s silent bow is yet another way of apologizing for America’s misperceived arrogance and superiority. He has found yet another way to pander and apologize without ever uttering a single word.

There he goes again. The president, when he met the emperor and empress of Japan in Tokyo on Saturday gave the typical deep bow expected from subjects not peers.

You would think the president would have learned his lesson when he caught such wrath for “bowing” to the King of Saudi Arabia earlier this year. American presidents do not bow to anyone. They do not bow to heads of state, monarchs, potentates, popes or any other mere mortal.

When President Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia earlier this year the White House rushed to spin it away. They claimed that it was not a “bow” at all. The White House stated that the president was “stooping” to look the feeble king in the eye while shaking hands. Well, you can fool some of the people some of the time. The pictures and the video said it all. — Obama bowed to the Saudi king.

The White House’s take on the president’s latest “bow-movement” is that, while it was a bow, it was done pursuant to protocol. That is an outright lie. There is no such “protocol” for a president of the United States to bow to anyone for any reason.

Graphic shamelessly swiped from blogger friend Rick (click for larger).

Every time I see Obama bowing…or apologizing…the following dialogue keeps running through my mind.

Oh honey!!!!

What?

You only brought home two cans of bread crumbs!

So?

I wrote down four!!

Really? It looked like two.

No! We need four!!

Hi folks! Can I just say something? This is all the fault of America. America messed up your shopping list. Yup. And we’re very sorry about it.

(Husband and wife, exasperated, in unison) Please get out of our kitchen, Barack Obama.

Right…by the way, you’re not making those mashed potatoes right. You need to mix the milk and butter in like this…

OUT! Now, Barack!

Right. I’m gone. Go back to your guns and your Bibles…

That Magazine Photo

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

One more Sarah Palin thing, because something has to be said about Newsweek.

I was going to blog about the Runner’s World spread, but that was the weekend that Palin resigned from the governorship of Alaska. Her fitness regimen ended up not making the cut. Anyway, Newsweek somehow selected one of the pictures for the November 23 cover. Probably for purely commercial reasons, not to reflect a party bias.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like SarahAlthough I do find it rather incredible to think they’d make a similar decision about a democrat.

Palin herself has a problem with it. Darn, there goes that fantasy of her attending her own inauguration ceremony in a Supergirl costume. From her Facebook page:

The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.

– Sarah Palin

I see the objection. It isn’t against her being shown as casual, or come-hither, or bookish or leggy. It has to do with what is appropriate in what setting.

It also has to do with relocating things. Newsweek, it seems, didn’t have permission to use this. Palin posed for the picture “among friends,” one might say. Kinda. Her comments for Runner’s World were entirely apolitical (hilariously, a couple of readers objected anyway since they didn’t subscribe for “that political stuff”). Newsweek placed the picture before a decidedly more hostile audience.

What’s the message here? That if Palin is President, she’ll spend all her time jogging and posing for pictures? I can certainly see more than a few Newsweek readers picking that up…the ones who are inclined to. Which is probably most of ’em. Still and all, the thought makes me chuckle. The nightmare of having a President who spends all the President’s time posing for pictures. Oh heavens to Betsy. Perish the thought. What’s that like?

Dr. Melissa Clouthier adds:

After this post got fed to Twitter, I got into an argument with a leftist feminist there about this cover. She brought up Hillary Clinton. She believes that Sarah Palin did this to herself by posing for Runners World. What serious politician or man would pose for that sort of cover?

What serious newsweekly would put a degrading picture, say of Obama frolicking in the surf or Bil and Hill dancing in the sand for the camera, on the cover of a magazine? Only conservative politicians need worry about being portrayed as trivial and sexy (Sarah), mean and old (McCain), mean (Cheney), mean and stupid (GWB). A Democrat gets gravitas-portraying treatment.

Always.

And that’s why conservatives view the press as biased. They don’t even attempt, even feebly, to hide it anymore.

Well said.

Another Black Conservative has an interesting thought:

I am beginning to think that I was right when I said that the Oprah interview humanized Palin. It is going to be much harder to disrespect Palin like the left did before without pissing off new people. Perhaps this book tour and all the interviews on the lamesteam media will produce a Sarah Palin 2.0. It will be interesting to see Palin’s approval ratings after the book tour.

Neptunus Lex, perhaps committing an infraction of protocol, audibly notices the elephant in the room:

[O]ne only has to look here, where Newsweek greets Palin’s newly published memoir with a provocative photo from a running journal and asks “How do you solve a problem like Sarah,” a header that literally begs the question, while demonstrating both political and gender bias and undoubtedly souring the faces of envious, shrewish, muumu wearing, lemon-eating scolds across the country. [emphasis mine]

Yep, there it is. That was undeniably the effect of it; and I’m pretty sure there was a fair strength of effort in that direction as well.

There certainly is some resentment there. And looking really good in running shorts while being a 45-year-old mother of five, probably has a lot to do with it.

However, it must be said — lately, winning elections seems to have a lot to do with figuring out who you can write off, not who you should go chasing for their vote. Case in point, Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care one bit what He has to do to get my vote. He doesn’t and He shouldn’t. I, and millions like me, have been gutterballed. It seems to be working out very well for Him.

Sarah Palin should do the same. Women who dislike her because she’s good looking, aren’t ever, ever, ever gonna like her.

And hey. Let’s be completely frank about things. If you’re answering polls saying Hillary is qualified to be President, and Palin is not — whatever the bee is that is up your butt, I do not want you deciding anything. Let me repeat that: Anything. I do not want you taking my customer service calls, I do not want you making my coffee, I do not want you running a leaf blower on the sidewalk an hour before I go walking on it. You have just-plain-poor decision-making abilities. Stay home.

Regarding Sarah’s comment. She would have been ahead-of-the-game keeping her mouth shut. Just let everyone argue about the magazine cover; maybe make it privately known that she disapproves of it, to sort of nudge the national conversation off in the direction of the permission Newsweek gained to use the photo, or lack thereof.

Good-lookin’ women showing their legs when they run for President? Hey…if you don’t know whether I’m for-or-against, you must not have been reading this space very long. Not saying I don’t see where she’s coming from, because I do. Yes, it’s sexist. But sometimes a subtle critique can be much more effective.

Anyway: Why so much attention riveted on the photo? Check out those headlines:

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?

She’s Bad News for the GOP — And For Everybody Else, Too

Good grief. You see my point. The photo, inappropriate as it is, is nuthin’. Nuthin’. Melissa’s right. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.

Update 11/19/08: Ah hah…as I figured.

What on earth was Sarah Palin thinking when she posed in a pair of teeny-tiny gym shorts for a photograph that ended up on the cover of Newsweek — a cover she has called “sexist”? Perhaps she was thinking that her image would only appear in the magazine she was posing for, Runner’s World, and nowhere else, at least not for months and months. If so, she had good reason — since, as DailyFinance has learned, the photographer who shot the picture violated his contract by reselling them to Newsweek.

That photographer, Brian Adams, could not immediately be reached, and his agent, Kelly Price, declined to comment, saying, “I keep all of my clients’ business private.” But a spokeswoman for Runner’s World confirms that Adams’s contract contained a clause stipulating that his photos of Palin would be under embargo for a period of one year following publication — meaning until August 2010. “Runner’s World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image,” the spokeswoman said. “It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer’s stock agency, without Runner’s World’s knowledge or permission.” The spokeswoman declined to say whether Runner’s World intends to respond to Adams’s breach of contract with legal action.

Update: The resident conservative of NPR, which I guess would be like the tallest building in North Dakota, doesn’t like Palin. And he’s found some exceptionally silly reasons…that’s the only adjective that seems to apply after a fair amount of this…

The rap on Palin is that she’s too shallow and inexperienced for the presidency — a conclusion that early Palin supporters like me came to during the 2008 campaign. Alas, for conservatives in search of a champion, there’s nothing in Going Rogue to challenge that conclusion. It’s like this: Palin spends seven pages dishing about her appearance on Saturday Night Live, but just over one page discussing her national security views.
:
This is the Republican Party’s great populist hope?

Sarah Palin is selling a personality, not a platform. That’s not dumb. She’s doing the best she can with what she has to work with. She quotes her father’s line upon her resignation this summer as Alaska’s governor: “Sarah’s not retreating, she’s reloading.” On evidence of this book, Sarah Palin is charging toward 2012 shooting blanks.

Palin’s selling a personality and not a platform.

Consistently since 1992, people have been getting elected on personalities and not platforms. Most notably in the election just passed. But we should hang it all on Palin like she’s in the process of inventing it. She’s not to be taken seriously unless she’s the only contender running on platform. And not even then. Like I said: “Silly” is the only word that applies.

Doctor Zero has a different take:

Newsweek advertised its cover story on the release of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” by asking, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” This headline was informed by the same journalistic standards that led the Washington Post to publish a book review by someone who admits she didn’t read the book – and then prompted MSNBC to invite this person on the air as an expert on the book she didn’t read. Newsweek apparently couldn’t be bothered to watch “The Sound of Music” all the way through, because Maria is the hero of the piece. The nuns singing “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” are singing about suppressing the very spirit that will help Maria save her family from totalitarian oppression. Considering Palin’s indestructible good cheer, if she runs for office again, I wouldn’t be surprised if she used “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” as a campaign song… and thanked Newsweek for the suggestion.
:
The careless, sloppy disdain of the Left’s reaction to “Going Rogue” is almost as strong an argument for Palin’s politics as anything contained within its pages. The absolute lack of care and competence from the government that ran up a $12 trillion national debt is astonishing. Months of dithering over Afghanistan strategy, with American troops under fire, ends with a painfully unqualified Commander-in-Chief wailing that he wants a new set of options…
:
The argument over whether Sarah Palin is “qualified” for the presidency is the opposite of the question conservatives should be asking. What we need to know is whether any other aspiring candidate has the essential qualifications Palin brings to the table. [emphasis mine]

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” as a campaign song. I like it.

Sarah Palin is indeed a conundrum. A prevailing viewpoint is a powerful thing, and a durable thing too. It can survive its own internal contradictions, if it has some — for quite awhile. And our current prevailing viewpoint does have some.

It goes like this: Sarah Palin is to be summarily disqualified because she is a contender in a contest of personality, not quite so much of platform or position. BUT — right after she’s been so dismissed, and you address our current Commander in Chief, you shouldn’t be so bold as to ask Him any heady questions about platform-or-position, and most certainly not about how He came to a certain decision about a certain thing…instead, you should compliment Him on the gracious and dignified lilt to His voice. In sum: He gets to compete on appealing aspects to His personality, at the expense of any debate on substance. Palin is to be dropped from the running for any hint that she’s about to enjoy the same advantage, even if it isn’t at her instigation.

This is an unworkable contradiction, one that becomes less comfortable with repeated exposure, for all consciousnesses save for the most intellectually flaccid. If this is a vital underpinning for Palin’s still-considerable disapproval rating, and it is our impression that it is, don’t look for the disapproval rating to remain where it is for too long.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting things to add:

[M]any conservative elites imagine that a Harvard Kennedy School degree is superior to multifaceted knowledge of .357 Magnums, chain-sawing, skinning game, and fishing, they will judge her only in terms of a traditional cursus honorum—spiced up with invective about creationism and Christian fundamentalism. (I have some experience with such snobbishness: when I used to speak before hostile university audiences, I was often introduced along these lines: “Mr. Hanson is a raisin farmer from Fresno State of Jerry Tarkanian fame.” [and therefore, presto, must be an idiot].)
:
If Sarah Palin thinks FDR was President in 1929, or that he could speak on non-existent TV, she is through; if Biden says that, it’s “just old Joe again.” If Obama does not know the first thing about our most prestigious medals, the language of Austria, or diplomatic protocol about presidential bowing, it’s because he is deliberately trying to be cool; if Palin did the same, she’s a buffoon hockey mom. That is the way it is, and her supporters should accept it, deal with, and overcome it.

Ridicule can be a powerful weapon. And how difficult would it be to deploy?

Liberal snobs and conservative snobs are wondering aloud about some kind of threat…some unstated threat…some avenue by which our nation will meet harm due to a President Palin’s cluelessness and lack of intellectual depth.

In the very same week in which the hysterics begin, Kalid Shiekh Mohammed is being brought to New York City to face trial and enjoy the same privileges and guarantees an American citizen would enjoy in civilian court. Because the “intellectually deep” folks in charge think that’s just a swell idea.

Priorities, snobs. Priorities. Maybe if some of you spent some time working for a living, you’d be organizing them better.

Poverty of the Spirit

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Robin of Berkeley writes in The American Thinker. Get ready for something dark, dark, dark. You can only agree with this if you’ve seen something in human nature, something that will rob you of your faith in it, however incrementally, forever.

And I do agree with it. Every last word.

It’s a chilling moment when the light goes out in someone’s eyes. A once-radiant child hardens from abuse. A woman’s heart shrinks after her husband’s abandonment.

The person looks the same, maybe acts the same. But something is gone, and what’s lost is irretrievable. It’s like when a person dies: in a heartbeat, the soul vanishes.

I witnessed this alteration recently when I visited my goddaughter, a radiant girl. Her mom, a hardcore progressive, has started exposing her to the darkest elements of the left. And the last time I looked in the girl’s eyes, the light had gone out. Disappeared. Just like that.

I see this phenomenon every day: a light dimming. The friendly shopkeeper snaps at me. My cheerful neighbor seems flattened.

And you hear it in the news: people acting strangely, going off the deep end. The most bizarre behavior becoming the new normal.
:
Why now? This may be the most important question of our time. Why are some people reaching the boiling point? Why do many others look vacant, like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The shootings at military bases, from Little Rock to Fort Hood — why now?

It’s Obama, of course.

Liberals will excoriate me for writing this. They’ll insist that bad behavior is not Obama’s fault. He’s a man of peace.

But study the phenomenon of cults, and the dynamics are always the same. The leader can incite violence without ever getting his hands dirty. Obama is controlling the marionette of the masses.

If Obamamania is a cult, then Obama is the cult leader. Cult leaders routinely pull the strings of their followers. The most extreme example is Charles Manson. He rots in prison for murders he never committed. He didn’t have to do the dirty work. His brainwashed charges did his bidding.

I’m not saying Obama is a Charles Manson. There are varying degrees of manipulation, from using sexy blondes to entice men to buy cars all the way to hypnotizing them to drink poisoned Kool Aid. But there’s a common denominator in all mind control: manipulating people through mind games.

As soon as Obama came on the scene, the programming began…
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First, the vultures starting swooping down on Hillary. Obama chose not to call off the dogs.

Then thugs invaded caucuses. Again, silence.

Which led to vicious misogyny against Sarah Palin and threats on her life. From Obama: not a peep.
:
Obama’s greatest magic trick? Brainwashing the masses to believe that racism is a greater danger than radical Islam, and that Obama himself is in constant peril.

Opposing health care means you oppose Obama. Oppose Obama and you’re part of a vast right-wing racist conspiracy.
:
Mother Teresa was once asked how she coped with serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. She responded that what she saw in the cities of the United States was much more disturbing, because it was a “poverty of the spirit.”

Poverty of the spirit. No truer words can be spoken of the progressive Left.

Memo For File CIII

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I engaged the Frum crowd. The Brooks-babies. The Moranistas.

The folks who would perform home-self-surgery with rusty spoons to make sure someone with the letter “R” behind his name wins the next election…and toward that goal, desperately want the party to move to the “center.” And for that reason, Sarah Palin absolutely cannot win the nomination. Which means she cannot be considered. She’s dim, she’s dopey, she’s “unqualified,” she’s bad at Trivial Pursuit, she’s too good-looking, she’s a dumb ol’ girl. What we need to do is repeat 2008 all over again and nominate some “maverick” who votes with democrats a whole lot of the time. Because, y’know, that worked out so well.

The party means everything. The party must win. And so we have to get the party to stop acting like the party it’s supposed to be. Otherwise, who knows, maybe “we” will win, but the guy representing us might…reverse the growth of our bloated government, let people keep their guns, start treating illegal aliens like they really are illegal aliens, put our poor people on the path to financial health rather than giving them more social programs, and just generally, y’know, act like people are worth a damn and are supposed to be here doing something worthy.

I don’t typically address these people because I don’t know if they’re friends or foes. It seems the only way they agree with me is in this perception that we share a common enemy. They want to see more people elected with that label. The letter R. I’m not even on board with that. After the shenanigans pulled in New York, the party apparatus ranks high on the list of people & groups I don’t trust. So the Frumistas are supposed to be kindred spirits with me, disagreeing with me on this fundamental principle, and that one and that one, but laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with me to elect people I don’t trust anymore.

And with all the hubbub about Sarah Palin’s book, Rick Moran saw another opportunity to light into her one more time but this time put out some effort to show some calmness and cool-headed-ness about it. Very light treatment to her density and stupidity and vapidity. In fact, where he did give that treatment, he qualified it thoroughly…

[T]here is an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism that undergirds her anti-establishmentarian shtick. She has made her shallow, depthless understanding of the world into a badge of honor, and indeed, her supporters push the idea that this is a positive good, that having a president as unversed in nuance as they are of policy and programs would be kind of neat. Sure would be a switch from all those brainy establishment elitists who don’t want to roll back the New Deal and Great Society, making this country into a true conservative paradise.

This is not to say that Palin is stupid. She’s intellectually lazy. I wouldn’t necessarily call her incurious in a George Bush sort of way but neither would I refer to her as possessing the innate intelligence of a Ronald Reagan who actually did change the narrative about himself. Reagan had an active, curious mind and the good sense to reach out to experts who educated him, as well as filling in knowledge gaps by reading voraciously. Palin does not seem to have that spark, that drive, that hunger for knowledge that anyone as ill informed as she admits herself to be should possess. Therefore, I hold no hope that she can transform herself into a reasonably well informed politician.

This, too, ranks high on the list of people-and-groups-I-don’t-trust. Know why? Because horror of horrors, Rick Moran said something bad about Tundra Princess?

No, because it’s a phony argument.

If the argument to be made is “Stop it with the Palin nonsense…she’s not reasonably well-informed, and she can’t win” then the solution to the concern would be to go ahead and enter her name as a serious candidate, and at the 2012 GOP convention she’ll receive the vicious clobbering she so richly deserves. And then a nominee will emerge who has a much better chance of taking on Obama.

That isn’t good enough for the Frum/Moran crowd. That isn’t even close to good enough for them.

They do not want Sarah Palin to not be nominated. They do not want her to make room for someone who has a better chance. What they want, is for her to not be considered. Any further. As of right now.

Phony, phony, phony, phony, phony.

Commenter buquet (#45) gave more credit to this concern about intellectual capacity, and addressed it very well…

I think some of the “anti-intellectual” comments about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party crowd miss the point. Most people I know just want to see some common sense in Washington. We have an “intellectual” as President who surrounds himself with “intellectual” advisors (about half of whom seem to be Marxists or former Marxists). They are rapidly moving to gain more and more government control over our lives and freedoms.They are also spending money in absurd quantities that will ultimately diminish the standard of living for most middle-class Americans. I am convinced that it doesn’t take a great mind to be a great President (although I wouldn’t object). Common sense conservatism and practical decision-making abilities are much, much more important as our current President is making so painfully clear.

On the decision to “drill baby drill,” we have a simple situation. A superpower nation is sinking rapidly toward third-class status because its own environmental rules forbid it to make use of its own resources, and those rules should be repealed.

On the decision to invade Iraq, we confront someone dangerous, who’s been in command of dangerous weapons on-and-off for a quarter of a century, who thinks he’s too good to honor the treaties that were supposed to make him safe.

On the decision to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, on the other hand, we confront a chemical. A chemical we make when we breathe. The idea that it is somehow dangerous is more a religion than science — it is a religion that says humans, by their very nature, are a toxin upon the planet.

On the War on Terror, we are forced to fundamentally re-define, perhaps for the first time since the Civil War, what it means to fight. How wars are engaged. How armies should be tooled up. How enemies are defined.

Buquet has it completely right. How do our “intellectuals” handle these issues? They hold hands and jump, together, into this “Bizarro” world in which everything is the opposite of what it really is — then they make decisions that will impact other people, by the hundreds of millions, but not them. The simple things are made complicated. The complicated things are made simple. The dangerous things are made safe. The safe things are made dangerous. Terrorism is a “nuisance,” all the respectable scientists agree we need to tax ourselves 1% of our GDP to save the planet, Afghanistan needs to be given more time so we do the right thing, Kalid Shiek Mohammed has to stand trial in Manhattan, we have to make it easier for illegal aliens to vote and get more benefits…the list goes on and on.

It is frequently said that Washington DC is a strange place. Persons all up & down the ideological spectrum murmur, in disapproving tones, about this otherworldly place that seems to sit in its own universe, from which these laws radiate outward to bind and ensnare the rest of us “real” people. Why is it like this? Because we vote that way. We keep electing these damned “intellectuals” who pretend safe things are dangerous, dangerous things are safe, complicated things are simple and simple things are complicated. And they listen to fat moviemakers who can’t even keep mustard off their shirts who go around saying asinine things like “there is no terrorist threat.”

This is a Pogo moment, folks: We have met the enemy and he is us.

We move through this in stages. First stage: There are no wrong answers. We stop believing two and two are four. If you say two and two are five, there must be some alternate perspective through which the problem can be viewed…perhaps some life configuration I’ll never understand, and when you view it through that lens maybe two and two are indeed five. By extension, if you say three, or thirty-three, there must be some other walk-of-life by which that makes sense as well. Ultimately, all answers are correct…

…the next stage of deterioration is the one in which “four” becomes the one answer that can be wrong. Look at all the rest of us working so hard to empathize with others, to try to explore all these corridors and back-alleys through which two and two might add up to five. And here you are, Mister Knuckle-dragger. Probably speak no other languages but English. Probably never been to a foreign country. You probably drink non-organic milk and eat non-organic vegetables. Four. Sheesh! What a rube. No nuance.

In two steps, we enter the Bizarro world. First there are no wrong answers, then the right answer is the one wrong answer possible. At that point, everything has to be upside down. It is the age of the “intellectual”: Safe things are dangerous, dangerous things are safe, complicated things are simple and simple things are complicated.

How do Presidents greet Emperors? They bow way down.

What’s the perfect gift for the Queen of England? An iPod.

What do you do when you’re all out of money? Spend it real fast.

How do we treat terrorism? As a nuisance.

How do we support the troops? By voting for the 87 billion before voting against it.

How do we commemmorate the fall of the Berlin wall? Send Hillary. The President’s a busy man.

What do we do about Afghanistan? I dunno…and don’t ask me again, you’re not involved in the process! Need more time.

Seriously, what can we do to jump-start this economy? Stimulus, and a decidedly un-American nanny-state health care plan. Right now.

What is our national heritage? We’re cowards about race.

Haven’t we done anything good, ever? Sure, we elected Obama. Now let the apologies begin. For us, not for Him.

Drill baby drill? Only in your wallet.

Isn’t that a tax? No.

But my dictinary says so. I don’t care, it’s not a tax.

This intellectualism stuff arrives at the cost of common sense. And it’s pretty easy to see why. In politics, all positive personal attributes must find a way to manifest themselves. You cannot have intellectualism without a manifestation of the intellectualism. And the manifestation of intellectualism is — two and two are five. Some answer has to be given, to each question that comes along, that deviates from what would be patently obvious. Two and two cannot ever be four.

This is why the Frumistas are outside of my circle of trust, and they’re going to be staying out there for a long time. They don’t ever address this. They just say “intellectual.” Republican party needs to be more intellectual. But meanwhile, the intellectuals make bad decisions because that is their job. They must oppose common sense. And the Frumistas, in turn, end up opposing common sense. They don’t have to prove anything to us about their ability to make correct decisions, not even once-in-awhile. We, on the other hand have to prove to them that we can oppose common sense. All the time. Don’t even consider Sarah Palin, not even for another minute, not for another second. The Frumistas are getting all agitated with us.

And they’re not pleasant people. Moran, at his own spot, you’ll notice began to be outnumbered. He remained civil. But he did predict in his own paragraphs that he’d be subjected to some kind of abuse by the Palinistas like me, and it didn’t happen. Once again, the Palin folk were expected to exclude others, to insult others, and it didn’t happen. But the poison did come back ’round the other way. Quickly. And reliably.

Our blogger friend down in New Mexico is the classiest of the bunch. He’s not dished out any poison like this, ever. The nastiest thing I think I’ve ever heard him say about Palin, was “what’s all the fuss about?” and he honestly wants to know. But that’s an exception and not a rule. He is not a fair representation of the rest of the Frumistas. A more typical representation would be this from michael reyolds (#33)…

Me? I’d send her money. I love the idea of her being the face of the GOP. You’re really not getting this: Democrats are laughing and doing their best to epoxy Palin onto the GOP. The more times we can say Palin’s an idiot and Palin is the GOP, the better.

The “Palin is an idiot and the democrats want the GOP to nominate her” thing deserves a special mention.

Moran says Palin is not like Reagan. He’s wrong. Somehow, he does not remember Ronald Reagan’s time in office the same way I do. The two figures, Reagan and Palin, are indistinguishable in the way they address a crowd, how they relate to that crowd, how polarizing they are, what they do intellectually with the readin’ and the writin’ in their off-time (to the best I can see). And in the insults hurled at them and what they do to bring ’em on, they are absolutely identical.

Palin is not being called a dimbulb because she’s a dimbulb. That’s quite easy to see. Even for an “intellectual.” I see perhaps scores, maybe hundreds, of dimbulbs every single day. I feel no urgency in pointing out each one that comes along. There is no importance attached to noticing each one…not the same importance attached to, say, swiveling my noggin around to catch a glimpse of every lovely female with a nicely-endowed chest. Truth is, I have no idea how many twits I see everyday and neither do you. Until they get in our way it isn’t an issue that is worth any energy.

Sareh Palin’s dumbass-ish-ness, somehow, is worthy of an expenditure of energy. Vast, vast amounts of energy.

That isn’t how you treat a dimbulb. That’s how you treat a threat.

The Frumistas, drawing on the words of people like “Michael Reynolds,” say the Palinistas are playing right into the enemy’s hands. It is they who are playing into the enemy’s hands with this “intellectual” nonsense. They are playing into a battle plan the democrat party has been deploying for forty-five years now. It has served the democrat party very well during that time. If the newest Republican is non-threatening, ignore him; if he’s a threat, but can be portrayed as a lightweight, portray him that way and call him an idiot; if neither of the above two apply, call him evil. An effective, simple plan…but too simple. Its time is coming to an end. The anxiety that “intellectualism” feels to demonstrate itself, by consistently selecting the wrong answer to every question that comes along, is bringing down acute pain upon people and with the debt our government is racking up, common sense says it’s bound to get a whole lot worse.

The plan will, out of necessity, be retired. It is unavoidable. And there will be some disaster that will happen to the democrats that will make this retirement absolutely imperative.

Hopefully, that will happen in 2012. This is not a certainty. But it’s a possibility; there can be no reasonable disagreement with that.

It is the Frumistas who need to join the rest of us…if, indeed, they are lusting after the prospect of the democrat party getting pummeled. Me, I don’t care about such things anymore. Like tens of millions of others, I’m just fatigued by all the nonsense. A return, please, to common sense. To recognition, where it counts, that dangerous things are dangerous and harmless things are harmless.

Right now, there’s only one person who’s showing any promise of delivering such a return. Out of all the generals who are fighting that enemy of common sense, there is only one Grant, only one Patton. Only one general renowned for stirring up real, old-fashioned fear, real trembling in the enemy’s breast.

That George Patton general happens to be a girl this time ’round — if she chooses to return to the battlefield. A church-going girly-girl. Deal with it. Deal with it, or get out of the game and go home.

Obama Has All the Information He Needs

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Mike Allen, writing in Politico:

President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.

Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press had asked: “Can you explain to people watching and criticizing your deliberations what piece of information you’re still lacking to make that call.”

“With respect to Afghanistan, Jennifer,” the president scolded, “I don’t think this is a matter of some datum of information that I’m waiting on. … Critics of the process … tend not to be folks who … are directly involved in what’s happening in Afghanistan. Those who are, recognize the gravity of the situation and recognize the importance of us getting this right.”

Accuse the accuser, criticize the critic.

But if the data are all there, taking additional time has very little to do with “the importance of getting it right.” Two and two are four; it doesn’t matter if you answer that within thirty seconds or three seconds, or if you take all week. The answer is the same.

“A Third Class Nation”

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Ian Swanson, writing in The Hill:

Last year’s deficit was a record $1.4 trillion, up more than $900 billion from the previous year. The budget was inflated because of much lower tax revenues, which were down because of the worst recession in generations, and government spending intended to stimulate the economy and rescue the financial industry.

That situation is not expected to improve soon given 10.2 percent unemployment that is expected to grow.
:
The Associated Press reported this week that the administration is telling agencies to brace for either a freeze in discretionary spending or 5 percent cuts.

[Sen. Judd] Gregg [R, NH] said he would support a move to freeze discretionary spending, but warned Democrats it would not be difficult for the GOP to use the deficit as an election-year issue.

“We almost don’t have to do anything to explain it,” said Gregg. “This is not difficult to understand. We don’t want to be a debtor nation. We don’t want to be a third-class nation.”

Robocop Alternate Endings

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

All you young kids who don’t know about this classic, it’s here. Something put together by Paul Verhoeven back in the days when his products were consistently good…not just hit-n-miss. Yeah, I liked Total Recall m-u-u-c-h better than Starship Troopers or Hollow Man. I’m funny like that.

But Robocop beats ’em all. Robocop’s the bomb. Robocop I, that is.

Obama Bows

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

So Obama bowed.

And there is much buzz about it. WindsOfChange.net:

Count me among the exasperated at Obama’s willingness to bow before royalty – it’s funny actually, that such an avowed progressive (the group that believes in dissolving the connections of power) is so willing to reify power by being so deferential to hereditary royalty.

Stop The ACLU points to an impressive assortment of other reactions.

How are Obama’s defenders to spin it? Like this:

A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.

“I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official said. “He observes protocol. But I don’t think anybody who was in Japan – who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnesses his bilateral meetings there – would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the U.S., relative to Japan. It was a good, positive visit at an important time, because there’s a lot going on in Japan.”

But this explanation does not square up against the impressive portfolios of other heads-of-state greeting the same Emperor. Like for example at Hot Air Pundit. And Astute Bloggers. And Weasel Zippers. And Donklephant.

There is another way to backlash against the Obama critics, and this one is unsettling. Not for its substance which is straight out of the Alinsky playbook. But rather for its knee-jerk-ish-ness…its mindlessness…its auto-pilot-ness…

The Moderate Voice:

It never ceases to amaze me how much more importance contemporary conservatives place on the form of democracy rather than the substance. Bowing to the leader of a country in which bowing is a respectful greeting when meeting any new person is a betrayal of democracy. Show trials in which convictions are gained using torture, hearsay testimony, and suppression of evidence are defenses of democracy.

The pattern continues. Only a dolt would dare to question the perfection of Holy Man Obama.

CBS News.

The usual crowd of armchair patriots is having a collective fit over President Obama’s decision to greet Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko with a bow.

A bow? I kid thee not.

You can just hear the valley-girl speak. Omigaw!

Rockey the Liberal Rottweiler responds to Alan Colmes’ blog post about it:

The problem here is that President Obama understands something that the rightwing extremists just can’t comprehend: that people’s opinion of you begins with whether or not you are polite.

And, as we all are well-aware, the word “polite” is not in the radical rightwing republikkkan lexicon.

Yeah, nothing endears me to people quite so quickly as the oh-so-polite behavior of calling me a Klansman. Well done Rocky.

More Omigaw stuff at Washington Monthly:

As part of his Asian trip, President Obama met today with Japanese Emperor Akihito. In keeping with Japanese custom and diplomatic protocol, the president bowed.

If you’re thinking this was an inconsequential moment, especially as compared to the significance of the trip itself, you’re underestimating the right’s propensity to embrace nonsense.

As Sister Toldjah points out, though, this is far from nonsense.

It never fails that any criticism of President Obama from conservatives is met with the usual “they’re overblowing it/they’re being stupid” cry from some on the left, and this weekend is no different. In response to the legitimate outcry over the President bowing at a clear 90 degree angle to Japanese Emperor Akihito, liberals at blogs like “The Moderate Voice” (does that place even have any moderates posting there anymore?), Alan Colmes’ blog, and others are blasting conservatives for getting upset at our President allegedly “observing a cultural custom.”

Think again. Both Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit dug up a 1994 New York Times piece back when the first Obama bow controversy emerged, and Ed reposted the link to the article again today. In it, the liberal NYT talks about a tradition among American Presidents that does not involve bowing:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about?

Gerard’s headline raises an entirely different train of thought in a single elegant statement: “If a US President Had Just Done This in January 1942 It Would Have Saved Everyone a Lot of Trouble.” The message won’t sink in where it’s needed. The idea that national pride is a bad thing — for certain countries — is a religion all by itself.

From reading both sides of things, one thing becomes abundantly clear: To whatever extent, and to whatever audience, the bow from President to Emperor is an appropriate show of respect — to be frowned-upon only by nonsensically puritanical chuckle-heads — it began to be so legitimate only in the instant President Obama did it.

And this is what is rather alarming about it. The protocol isn’t quite so much that such an expression is okay; it’s more that things begin to be okay when He Who Walks On Water does them.

What if our 44th President were to come down with a case of severe senile dementia? It seems we’re one brain-itch away from a truly earth-shattering “don’t know whether to laugh or cry” episode. If President Obama were to be afflicted with The Madness of King George, whatever remains of our code of social taboo would be warm putty in the hands of a lunatic. In the space of minutes it would become quite alright…as in, don’t you dare criticize or else you show your own neanderthal-ness…to eviscerate adorable puppies on the White House lawn in broad daylight…to strip down bare naked and rub peanut butter all over your nipples and buttocks…to diddle nine-year-old girl scouts…to defecate into the punch bowl…to…well, lengthening this list any further is not only vulgar, but pointless. The point to be made is: Where is the line drawn? President Sottero is Cool By Definition. Whatever He does, for whatever reason, must be not only allowable — but chic.

And on that train of thought I know exactly where I saw this form of psychosis before. Finally figured it out, I did. I saw it fourteen years ago give-or-take, in a zany little family comedy by Adam Sandler called Billy Madison. A young boy has an accident — “young” as in, young, but not so young that this is something that could be broadly accepted — and Adam Sandler drenches his own crotch with water to make it suddenly-cool to piss your pants.

This is what the hardcore left is doing with President Basically-God. This is precisely it. He Who Argues With Dictionaries pisses his pants at 12:15, and by 12:20 you’re a dumbass rube if your own crotch is still dry. “Everybody Pees Their Pants”. They’ll use their amazing superpower to re-write and re-wire our circuitry that declares right-and-wrong…to make it right. Barry did it, so it must be okay.

It seems pretty harmless when we’re talking about bowing. Especially in Japan. But this isn’t harmless, it’s dangerous. Like I said: It’s not the decision made, it’s how it’s made; the knee-jerk-ish-ness. That is the real story. That is what needs inspecting. The hardcore thirty-eight percent or whatever it is, who’d follow President Wonderful anywhere. They really, really would, and we’ve arrived at the point where the fanatical worship is no longer American, or even remotely compatible with American ideals.

President Obama did something wrong here. He’s capable of screwing up — the potential has always existed — and He did screw up. Just admit it. If you can’t admit it, you have a problem. Get help now.

Indecision as a Virtue

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Scratcher, at Makes My Brain Itch:

Andrew Sullivan Finally Has A President – Now What About The Rest Of Us?

I just read Andrew Sullivan‘s take how President Obama is handling his Afghanistan decision…

What we are seeing here, I suspect, is what we see everywhere with Obama: a relentless empiricism in pursuit of a particular objective and a willingness to let the process take its time. The very process itself can reveal – not just to Obama, but to everyone – what exactly the precise options are. Instead of engaging in adolescent tests of whether a president is “tough” or “weak”, we actually have an adult prepared to allow the various choices in front of us be fully explored. He is, moreover, not taking the decision process outside the public arena. He is allowing it to unfold within the public arena.

NOW he takes his time? We’re to view his deer-in-headlights vaporlock on Afghanistan as wisdom and engaging the public? Damn shame this wasn’t how he handled TARP… or the Stimuless… Or Healthcare Reform… With FOUR proposals available to him, he rejects each with no strategy of his own to put forth, and Sullivan seems to think he should be commended for his indecision?! Name ONE other time this President let any other “process take its time”.

Again — I see enormous harm being done to civilization, by a destructive force that is allowed to endure because it does not have a name.

Normally, when someone is diminished in some way, any way at all…a murderer is executed, a child is disciplined, a driver has to appear in court for failing to observe a u-turn sign, a military force is repelled, a military force is attacked, a horse head is left in a bed, the U.N. sends a strongly-worded letter…a message is sent. That is the real point to all of these things, and a civilized society depends on this.

Certain factors feed in to the effectiveness of the message. One factor is time. Obviously, “If you kill people we’re going to get you” is not as effectively communicated if it takes twenty years to execute the murderer, compared to if it takes twenty days.

Another factor is the potential for compromise. Think of the child being disciplined. Want to spoil a child rotten? Keep right on disciplining him — but make it a regular habit to consider everything. Consider that the child didn’t get a “fair warning,” that he didn’t really mean to do it, but yeah he screwed up but someone else did too…et cetera. Even if the child ends up getting whacked in the butt, or having his stuff taken away, the message is muted. If it’s a simple formula — you did it, there are consequences — the discipline is effective.

O Thinks HardYet another factor is opacity. That is, with regard to the decision to punish, or to allow the fire to rain on down. If the punishment might happen and it might not…but the connection between action & reaction is blurred, morphed, made ambiguous and hazy…it becomes just a random bad-thing-that-might-happen. Like a weather pattern. So part of the message needs to be “If you do this, that’ll happen, if you don’t do this, then that will not happen.” Consistency is key. The authority has to commit to things, like criteria, parameters, magnitudes. If the outcome depends on someone’s mood, then for anyone to modify their own behavior in consideration of such a thing, would be mostly pointless. They’ll be far less likely to do it.

The ultimate example of an effective message, is sticking metal tableware into an electrical outlet. The result is instant, jarring, and for all practical purposes, certain. Very, very few people do that twice.

For an example at the other end of the spectrum, I guess we have President Obama and Afghanistan. What’ll happen next? Nobody knows. President Sort-Of-God has to go off and think some more.

Over the past few days I’ve fantasized repeatedly about a world in which homicide is punished so rapidly, that the embalmer flies out to take care of the bodies of the victim and the murderer on the same trip. The point is — allowing that such a thing was possible, just imagine what would happen to the murder rate if we lived in such a world. By the same token, imagine how safe the country would be, if attacking us was an exercise similar to pissing on an electric fence.

This is what is under assault right now: The clarity of the messages. Justice delayed equals justice denied. There has to be more time, more thinking, more complexity, more obfuscation, more apologia, more…whatever. More ingredients in the stew. More of anything but action.

This is occasionally defended as something in service of respecting the Constitution. What part of it, I wonder?

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano.

On Intellectualism

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Me:

I think we’ve reached a turning point, and the turning point is this:

Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe, and safe things dangerous.

If you’re ready, willing and able to call dangerous things dangerous and safe things safe, you are a moron.

Farker BigSteve3000 (2009-11-13 05:12:23 AM):

[C]ould anyone please explain the hate for her [Sarah Palin] thing.

she seems no more dopey than any other politician. one catch please have a logical thought not “I hate her cuz she sux” or “See she is just wrong for the US” or “RU Kiding she is lame”[.]

Farker coco ebert (2009-11-13 05:33:06 AM):

Because Katie farking Couric swept the floor with her.
Because she has quit almost every political office she has ever held.
Because she is not well-educated. That’s fine if she wants to be governor of a state like Alaska but don’t try to be president. We had enough with Dubya.

Farker totally_out_of_ideas (2009-11-13 06:08:05 AM):

I don’t care for Sarah Palin because she seems to have no intellectual curiosity. She’s not well traveled, well read, nor does she speak well. She doesn’t demonstrate a good grasp of current events, and she seems to have acquired her political and life philosophy from reading bumper stickers. And she is oblivious to all of this.

We Americans just had a President with these qualities and I didn’t like it.

Mmm, hmmm…and our current President, who is “sort of God,” referred to her original municipality as “Wasilly.” By this point, persons of all ideological persuasions will concede that without His wonderful teleprompter, He can’t give a speech to save His own ass.

“Intellectual” titan Al Gore won’t even debate his own magical pet humans-destroying-planet theory. There’s some “intellectual curiosity” for you.

We are not talking about raw mental horsepower here. We’re not talking curiosity. We’re talking about something…something…similar to what I was describing. An irony with regard to belief about what’s safe and what’s dangerous.

FrankJ, putting on his “serious writer” hat (I think — it’s always a little tough to tell with him)…nails down what we clueless dorks see as what’s going wrong with the Fort Hood massacre. It’s the “intellectuals” that are the problem here. They’re deciding too many things.

Now, it seems to me that the appropriate response from the military right now should not be to assure us diversity will be preserved; that’s secondary and a concern for another day. What they should be doing is vowing that if anyone else in the military is found to have views similar to Hasan, they will be immediately thrown out of the military and gutted like a pig.

All of which comes back to my original point.

We’re doing a wonderful job of showing proper respect to intellectualism. We’re accomplishing way too much there. We’ve got bagfuls of respect for it. We’re just doing a shitty job of defining what it is.

You have to show some abysmally bad judgment in deciding what’s malevolent and what’s benign — you have to get the two of them mixed up. At least sometimes. And more often is better. Failing that, you’re not an “intellectual”; if you make sensible decisions about these things, consistently, then you’re a great big ol’ dummy.

Cross-posted at Cassy‘s place and at Right Wing News.

What’s Wrong With Socialism?

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Joe Herring writes in the American Thinker:

I recall a conversation I had with a young coworker in the latter weeks of Obama’s campaign for president. Joe the plumber had just exposed the redistributionist bent of the candidate, and I expressed my assessment of Mr. Obama as a not-so-closeted socialist. My coworker then quite earnestly asked, “What’s so wrong with socialism?”

I initially assumed he must be joking, although his face gave no indication. I stared at him dumbfounded, only later realizing I must have looked like a palsied old man — my mouth working wordlessly, the incomprehension as evident on my face as the sincerity on his. It eventually dawned on me that he really didn’t know what was wrong with socialism. I began reciting the litany of horrors: the crimes of the Holocaust, the purges of the Soviets, the thuggery and inhuman brutality of the statist regimes of the last century. The Nazis, for crissake! How could he not know about the evil of the Nazis? He listened to all of this, nodding his understanding as he recognized some of the events I described, but I could still see a question behind his eyes. While he had been taught of the existence of these atrocities, he had not been clued into the one commonality they shared. They were all perpetrated by the adherents of various forms of socialism. Indeed, such crimes were the only outcome possible.

At this point, some of us get distracted about how & whether it is possible to practice plumbing in certain counties in Ohio without a license. Among those of us who have and use the ability to remain tuned in to the central question. some of us are left asking “How are such crimes the only outcome possible?” And they would do well to become acquainted with F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which does a great job of describing the rise of Adolph Hitler without explicitly describing Adolph Hitler.

It’s human nature. Once the factions start gutter-sniping each other, “The People” lose their desire for a wise leader and begin to nurture an unhealthy lust for a strong one. An emulsifying agent. A greeeeaaaaaaatt speechifier. One who cannot be opposed, even as he moves to codify his stupidest and most counterproductive ideas into law, without his critics paying a heady price for so criticizing. Sound familiar?

And then, as Herring explains with a clear, concise and poignant summary of Von Hayek’s tome, it gets worse:

With an economy of words that showcased the significance of his conclusion, [Von Hayek] pointed out the Achilles heel of collectivist dogma: for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan.

How do you attain total commitment to a goal from a free people? Well, you don’t. Some percentage will always disagree, even if only for the sake of being contrary or out of a desire to be left alone. When considering a program as comprehensive as a government-planned economy, there are undoubtedly countless points of contention, such as how we will choose the planners, how we will order our priorities when assigning them importance within the plan, how we will allocate resources when competing interests have legitimate claims, who will make these decisions, and perhaps more pertinent to our discussion, how those decisions will be enforced. A rift forming on even one of these issues is enough to bring the gears of this progressive endeavor grinding to a halt. This fatal flaw in the collectivist design cannot be reengineered. It is an error so critical that the entire ideology must be scrapped.

Von Hayek accurately foretold the fate that would befall dissenters from the plan. They simply could not be allowed to get in the way. Opposition would soon be treated as subversion, with debate shriveling to non-existence under the glare of the state. Those who refused compliance would first be marginalized, then dehumanized, and finally (failing re-education) eliminated. Collectivism and individualism cannot long share the same bed. They are political oil and water, and neither can compromise its position without eventually succumbing to the other.

Ah, but talking in wistful, admiring tones about the wonderfulness of He Who Argues With The Dictionaries makes you seem so hip!

Hat tip to Washington Rebel.