John Hawkins has really outdone himself this time. Twenty ironies:

3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
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6) Only in America could someone drinking a $5 latte and texting to his friends on an iPhone 4 complain that the government allows some people to make too much money.
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12) Only in America can we have terrorists fly planes into our buildings and have some people’s first thought be “what did we do to make them hate us?”
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19) Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any income taxes at all.

Our poor people are fat. Perhaps no civilization can have both — the hungry are fed, and people with brains use those brains for their intended purpose. Perhaps there’s a choice to be made.

Hope springs eternal. Give America credit, if there is an experiment to be done to settle the question, it will have to be done here. Where the poor people are fat. Say what you will about it, but there is no getting around the fact that it is an amazing human achievement. Now, if we could just think like grown-ups.

Fluker (n.)

We live in the age of the Fluker. To be a Fluker:

1. You have a problem and want everyone to know about it; it is the very same problem other people have had, and have managed to solve, while keeping it to themselves.
2. This doesn’t bother you in the slightest.
3. The answer you have in mind for your problem involves a change in the rules that would affect EVERYONE.
4. You partner up with special-interest and advocacy groups, politicians, “community organizers” and so forth, and give lots of press conferences and interviews about this problem you’ve got…that thousands, maybe millions, of other people have managed to solve without bugging anyone at all.
5. That doesn’t bother you either.
6. You have your problem in years that are divisible by 4.
7. Inexplicably and strangely, while yammering away about how helpless you are until such time that the rules are changed so that everyone is forced to reckon in some way with your problem, and bitching up a storm about some guy on the radio calling you dirty names, you still want to let everyone know how tough you are and how you don’t back down, that you’ve got a backbone of solid steel, your will be done, you’ll triumph over anything, never get discouraged…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
8. Just like a kid on the playground at recess during third grade, you are entirely unable to distinguish between people who have logical/moral reservations against your idea (which, as noted above, would impact everyone)…and…well, you’ll slander ’em any which way you possibly can, won’t you. Chauvinists, sexist pigs, Nazis, monsters, DirtyRottenCreepyJerks…nobody can be a decent human being unless they back your idea. Because your skin is too thin to handle disagreement, skepticism or legitimate criticism.

After Sandra Fluke, the latest Fluker is Ruthelle Frank, who could march her 84-year-old ass down to the court clerk’s office with $20 and clear up a problem with her birth certificate…but instead…is literally making a federal case out of the new photo ID law in Wisconsin.

And she wants to keep her tough-old-bird cred.

Frank is accustomed to a fight.

“I was born paralyzed on my whole left side, and I came out head first with a big scar at the top of my head,” Frank said.

“My dad pushed me to be what I am,” she added, recalling how her father, Elmer, tied her right hand to her body so that she would learn to use her left hand.
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Her children back her fight.

“She has made all of us tough,” Frank’s daughter said.

Like the birth-control slut, she qualifies on all eight counts as a genuine Fluker.

We’re looking at the real war on women, right here. Flukers tend to be female, and sadly, this causes the new trend to have a polarizing effect on the sexes. Perhaps if a male Fluker were to emerge and start whimpering away about…aw, I dunno. Some days, it seems there aren’t as many beers left in the fridge as there should be, like someone is drinking my suds. Maybe a man could go before Congress and demand a new government program to buy his ale or something.

See, there’s the thing. In the pre-teen years, the dudes have to make a choice. They can grow up to be sissies who are constantly complaining that this-or-that basic challenge in life is tooooooo haaaaaard…can’t handle it by themselves, start hollering for help even where it’s obvious they should be able to succeed by themselves. But you have to give up your big-badass title to do that. You can act like a smug prick if you want, like our current Commander in Chief. You can wrap yourself up in a thick blanket of that “NPR male” not-quite-masculine sissy-rage, like Keith Olbermann or Alan Alda used to do when people were still paying attention to them. But you can’t go strutting around like a modern Conan The Barbarian when you need someone else to twist the top off your soda pop for ya. Can’t be leader of the pack after pulling the “Stop the merry-go-round I wanna climb on” routine. If you insist on having your cake and eating it too, you get your ass kicked. It’s wired into the male DNA. We put up with bossy male progs, expecting that after they’re done strutting around and acting imperious, they’ll go away, or at least get out of the way. To actually take the top-dog spot, for reals, pulling rank after you got done proving you aren’t good for anything — that’s a whole different story. Men don’t tolerate this in other men.

Chicks don’t have that going on, it seems. This is something they need to fix. Somehow, on Planet Woman, you can be a helpless little waif and at the same time you can bellow about what a tough nut you are. In the same breath. Women will rip into other women for wearing the wrong thing at the wrong place, but they vote “present” and call it good when it comes to the “Are you an alpha dog or are you not” thing. They don’t police their ranks for wimps who want to keep the privilege and luxury of wimpiness and still lead the dogsled team.

There is a trifecta in play now. First it was Fluke, next it is Frank. In both cases, the wimp projects this image — maybe it’s compensation? This “don’t screw with me I’m tough as nails” image. In both cases it’s entirely unfitting; we know their names because they are entirely unable to cope with the basics of ordinary life. So if there ever was an outstanding question on whether they’re tough as nails or not, it’s been settled already. Well, I wonder who the third one will be.

Our society is morphing into a rather strange place. This should not be a man/woman issue; there are lots of tough women out there, and there are lots of wimpy guys. Like Hannie Caulder said, there are no hard women there are only soft men. And without regard to gender role assignments, it must be said that our society is not being helped when “tough” is defined as changing the rules so your personal needs can be met…especially when those needs are not very daunting, once your perspective is properly adjusted…and it has to become everybody else’s business because you’re just not sufficiently resourceful to find another way to do it. Sorry, with all due respect to Ruthelle Frank’s daughter, that’s not tough.

We’re now very deep into the Age of the Fluker. I hope it’s a brief blip on the radar of our history. I don’t know if it’s up to the women to stop it, or up to the men to stop it, or to motivate the women to stop it, or if the two sexes need to work together on it somehow. Whatever the case may be, this cannot continue. There are reasons men make other men choose between prestige and the soft blanket of helplessness. No society can survive for long when its rules are created and refined by the wanker set.

It’s a funny thing about logic: The weakest strains of it are the most capable. When you find a brand of logic that can “prove” anything & everything, you know you’re looking at something so weak that it’s borderline useless.

Case in point…

Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Likin’ this…

I can never get over it. It’s amazing, how much nothing is packed into one state. If Nevada was something besides a nothing when the white man first discovered it, you’d have to count it among the top human achievements importing all that nothing. Or manufacturing that much nothing. Whatever…it is a truly mind-blowing quantity of nothing out there.

“Kidzmom” tells me it’s up to me to do the driving during the child pick-up or drop-off, and the first thing I do is run down and get a CD audiobook. Amazon used to be the perfect solution, but lately they’ve started taking two weeks to ship what used to take two days. So I’ve had to get creative. When I was contracted to IBM, first time I moved to this area some twenty years ago, there was this awesome truck stop, crammed full of everything a truck driver could ever need or want. It’s still there. I picked up a work of fiction there, which is kind of really creepy, and then my fiancee burned me a copy of Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. Requirement met.

I picked up the boy, last weekend, in time for spring break, by myself. This weekend we dropped him off, as a threesome. Me, girlfriend, kid. We stayed in Reno Saturday night, swapped him yesterday at noon in Battle Mountain, and crashed last night in Incline Village. What a blast. Big-ass lobster feast, followed by…well…frankly, Incline Village is afraid of being discovered, so I can’t reveal details. But we limped back home this morning, with a fresh box of beer, I just got done soaking my old ass in a hot bath with a couple bottles of cold suds, during which time I used a brand new Quattro to scrape the March whiskers off my throat. D-i-s-g-u-s-t-i-n-g.

Belly full of beer and shellfish. A newly discovered vacation spot. And my kid knows how to drive a go kart as fast as it can go, fire a .22 rifle, and help his old man with his taxes.

Reminds me of the perfect day.

7:30
Dinner. Lobster appetizers, 1963 Dom Perignon,20oz. New York strip.

9:00
Relax after dinner with 1789 Augler Cognac and Cohiba Cuban cigar.

10:00
Have sex with two
18 year old nymphomaniacs.

11:00
Massage and Jacuzzi.

11:45 Go to bed.

11:46
One last blowjob

11:59
Let loose a 12 second, 4 octave fart. Watch the dog leave the room.

12:00
Laugh yourself to sleep

It was kinda close to that, with some details missing. After we dropped off the kid, that is.

Well, I look at it like — I’d trade it all just to see the kid show some signs of being more manly and capable. And I didn’t have to trade; I got both. A highly successful spring break.

I’m still not sure what to make of the spring break tradition. In my day, this was something you could maybe think about during your senior year of high school. Possibly, maybe, junior. But only if you were one of the “cool” kids with the rich parents. And then something happened. Fast forward to today…from what I know about it, nowadays if you’re fifth grade or higher you get an automatic “spring break.” We-ell — my initial inclination is to disapprove, and my better judgment tells me that’s the right call. But I’ve procreated and failed to make a go of things with the female-incubation unit, who is now with my spawn in another state. So with things the way they are, I’m not sure what we’d do without it.

Is society starting up a whole bunch of new traditions in an attempt to adapt to single-parenthood? Or maybe, just one? I suppose I shall have to leave that to the philosophers.

The dining area was miniscule, with a posted capacity of 49. So we were in close proximity to the couple next to us, the masculine half of which noticed my “One Big Ass Mistake, America” tee shirt after their main course had arrived. It turns out they, too, are from the Golden State, San Luis Obispo area. And they, too, are confronted with an unpleasant reality that the state is headed over a Greek-style financial brink.

They’re probably about fifteen years senior to us, which puts them in early sixties, with a clean-cut “grown-up hippie” look to them both. We talked a bit about some of the more appealing parts of California, where to visit for the summer, and a bit about ObamaCare. The four of us were pleased that the accommodations allowed for fellowship rather than isolation. It would have been more pleasing if we’d been able to discuss current events, rather than liberals ruining everything; but, let’s quit beating around the bush. These days, that is the current event.

And this inspires my “DJEver Notice?” moment…

It isn’t that I object to the specific ideas the left-wingers have. Looking back over all their bills, their executive orders, their speeches, their “occupations,” and the subsequent arguing-over-the-innernets in which I’ve engaged…one big problem I see with the things they want to do, perhaps bigger than all the other problems, is that they don’t have any “specific ideas.” They have lots of general ones: Make it less profitable to be productive in our society, make it more profitable to be unproductive, try to make more abortions happen. Do whatever has to be done to make sure the democrat party wins more battles with its opposition, and that the country loses more battles with her opposition, because the democrat party is good enough for a “scorched earth” policy but America is not.

My DJEver-Notice-moment thought is that: The list of definable ideas ends right about there. Following that point, everything they want to do is not quite so much a what, as a who. “Give a blank check of [power/money] to [blank], who, take our word for it, [has/have] all the right ideas.”

Global warming scientists.

The Congressional Black Caucus.

Labor unions.

The members of Congress who wrote ObamaCare.

This-or-that alphabet-soup government agency that “regulates” this-or-that industry to “keep our water drinkable and our air breathable.”

ACORN.

Pharoah Barack The First.

Planned Parenthood.

The United Nations.

It’s not easy to pick up on this, because if you argue with a lefty for any significant length of time, the conversation will swing over toward “you’re just a bad, bad person” compared to the lefty. Unless, that is, you surrender to their nonsense. But on those rare occasions where the point-of-disagreement is actually defined, overall you’ll notice it comes down to the lefty saying yes, and you saying not-necessarily or I-don’t-think-so, to the proposal of granting unlimited power and deference to some panel of strangers — who will then flesh out the details. Which means you and your leftist antagonist are not arguing about details at all. You’re arguing about generalities, the most significant of which is where to put the power.

They are opposed to transparency in this kind of apparatus, they’re opposed to any kind of sharing of power, and they’re opposed to details. Their appeal, therefore, is toward those who are unaccustomed to thinking in details.

I have the impression that our new friends in the dining hall, perhaps, were once held hostage to this. Although it must be said I ave limited confidence in that impression; they struck me as intellectually capable, curious, and capable of handling details. But they also had a very subtle air about them, which I’ve seen many times before over the last three years, of …”Oops.” It came off looking like a distant regret, not so much Obama-era as Clinton-era. Maybe I imagined all that.

What was not imagined, was their California weariness. Oh, here we go again: Tax the filthy rich bastards and that’ll solve everything. Eyeball roll. They’re facing the same gut-punch reality we are, probably wondering, reluctantly, if the time has come to pack up and watch the wreckage from afar.

There are lemmings who are so sure the other lemmings have the right idea while their paws furiously claw away at the ground underneath, and then there are lemmings who remain sure of it as their furry bodies sail through the open air down toward the sea. I’m not sure if one class is more deserving of contempt than the other, or of pity, but I’m sure that it’s generally better in life to embrace details.

I’m also sure that those who shun details, are going to be forever starting fights with people who do not, and then blaming them for the fights.

Simply disgusting.

The economy is anemic, gas prices are skyrocketing, and it seems that we learn about some new betrayal or failure on the administration’s part every other day. This bad week for President Obama has followed a very bad week for him, as the president was caught promising something on missile defense to the Russians and ObamaCare faced scrutiny in the Supreme Court, and the president followed all of that up with his ill-informed and unwise attack on the Supreme Court. The Tuesday walk back only made the situation worse. A truly adversarial press would have made this story front and center. The Augusta question gave the White House an early lifeline, a chance to bring up its ridiculous “war on women” gambit from another angle and move the women’s conference story, which no one was talking about, into the public conversation ahead of the stories that the nation is talking about, but which don’t favor the president.
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I can’t prove conclusively that Matt Spetalnick’s question about Augusta was a plant, but it was an awfully convenient question for the administration to push an election-year message that has been pushing since January.

Via Instapundit, via Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Also, it’s rather easy to forget now that the whole “requiring coverage for birth control” thing had not yet blown up back in January, when George Stephanopolous steered the Republican primary debate on to the subject of birth control. Of course, Stephanopolous was actually supposed to be a “moderator” and he was, according to your definition, moderating…so if he was ever accused of being a plant, anyone who knows anything about it would be conveniently able to brush that aside with a simple recitation of the relevant “facts.”

Which just goes to show, the definition is not that crisp. Plants don’t necessarily have to be plants. But a pattern emerges nevertheless: The Obama administration, or whoever has taken the stick on coordinating these fortunate public exchanges, would seem to have a cynical view of the attention span of the American female. Someone, somewhere, is of the mind that you just have to shift the conversation to The Pill for a minute or two and all the hysterical airhead American women will turn out in droves to re-elect His Holiness. Well, I know first-hand there must be problems with this — it’s certainly not true across the board. Some of the most intense longing for Him to haul His ass back to Illinois, is felt by the daughters of Eve, and this cheap shallow attempt to manipulate will only make that feeling more intense.

But it is a mixed effect, certainly. So as to whether or not it’s a winning strategy for He Who Argues With The Dictionaries, I suppose we’ll all find out in a few months.

So the kid’s here for spring break, of which today is the last day. The fiancee and I are driving him back to Nevada today so he can resume school. We had a blast with the go-karts and the trip to the shooting range, where I lost my .40 S&W virginity and managed a decently tight grouping in spite of the wicked recoil on the Beretta.

Also upgraded his home-built with a new 2GB video card. No time for blogging lately. But in my early morning ponderings, I did manage to upload some wisdom to the Hello Kitty of blogging…this has been eating at me for awhile…

There are certain “scientific studies” that I notice never seem to do the trick, with such completeness that it would be redundant to release another study saying the same thing, because said further-study is published soon afterward. And again and again and again…polar ice caps are shrinking, conservatives have tinier minds, girls mature faster than boys, et al. Perhaps there is minutiae that needs a further hashing-out and the layman can’t see it. But it’s more likely, I think, that science in these areas is running in circles. I don’t say this because I pretend to understand all that the scientists say; I say that because it is only in a narrow field of subjects wherein I see it happening. It looks like bored, inexperienced, not-yet-established scientists with laptop computers looking for something to do, and that’s probably what it is.

I would like to see a scientific study on this: Some public figure says or does something that generates a bit of heat, and then apologizes for it. What effect does the apology have? Do some experiments, with a control group that doesn’t offer an apology, and find a way to objectively measure the cred, or stature, or job security, that was supposedly lost [and then recovered again]. Also, did the angry people stop being angry when the apology was issued. Put the numbers on a graph, and plot a line.

THAT is a study I would LOVE to see. Once will do it.

Thing I Know #52 sez,

Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.

…and that would seem to make such a study redundant already, since apologies certainly fall within the things being demanded by angry people. But Things I Know are nothing more than lifetime experiences — of me — open questions on which the uncertainty seems to have been eliminated…but looks can be deceiving. And, people didn’t just start issuing apologies when I was born, or when I became aware in my observations of such things. The clumsiness and ineffectiveness of apologies does seem to be something of a modern development, or at least, the dazzling phoniness and insincerity of the apologies are modern characteristics.

Do apologies work? There certainly does seem to be a lot riding on the question every year.

Demanding the apologies, that certainly does have an elevating effect on one’s social standing. Kinda reminds me of when Billy Batson said “Shazam!” and was transformed by lightning into Captain Marvel, remember that? That’s what we have had, in recent times, with this other catchphrase, “You know, I find that offensive.” Like, faster than the naked eye can perceive the change, you have acquired superpowers.

But for making the apology, I’m not sure anybody ever recovers a damn thing. I’m not sure why anybody bothers with it. I suppose they want to demonstrate that, at least, they’re not ignoring anybody. But I also see when the time comes to run for a high office, there are a lot of people ready to describe as their qualifications that they do ignore the right people. That, lately, seems to be a backbone to what American politics has become. This candidate, over here…is sensitive to the demands and grievances of that aggrieved victim group, over there…and, if he manages to be elected to the high hallways of power, we will see a gutterballing, a marginalization, of that other antithesis faction of critical people, way over there. *cough* President Barack Obama *cough*. Attorney General Eric Holder upholding the law for “his” people. Equal protection under the law doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything anymore, it’s all about voting in politicians to decide who will gain influence and who will lose it. I suppose that part isn’t really new. What’s changed is the feeling of obligation, the feeling of “These people, who were not really part of the socio-political phenomenon that swept me into office, nevertheless have a legitimate grievance and the Constitution suggests I should take it seriously, through the right it recognizes they have to petition their government.”

I do want to see such a study, though. What necessitates such an apology; why do people clamor for one, what are they looking for in one; what is the effect of issuing it, especially, contrasted with the control group that doesn’t offer one.

I don’t think they do a thing. If they did once, they don’t now. People don’t take them that seriously, and they probably shouldn’t. This is a field ripe for study. It is my impression that this open question affects us in ways it did not, in our recent past. We should get off our duffs and learn what’s going on, and how we’re changing. So much energy, concern, perspiration and drive being plowed into a place that is not providing us with a tangible reward, suggests this might not be a good change.

Sorry if that offends anyone.

It’s floating around the innerwebs since at least February. I can’t find a point of origin to credit properly. Sometimes, things just go that way, other times a helpful bit of evidence will roll in. Anyway — I see the “Re-elect Obama because Romney’s a Mormon” campaign has started in earnest, so this could be helpful.

Quit trashing President Obama’s accomplishments!

An impressive list of accomplishments:

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then
deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number from a state he has
never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States

First President to violate the War Powers Act. .

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally
obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease
implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a
third party.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs
when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of
companies to his union supporters.

First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act
through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the
deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those
with criminal convictions.

First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of
his political appointees.

First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law
unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly
spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state
it is allowed to locate a factory.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath
to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been
properly issued years ago.

First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for
catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in
his office. .

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half
years in office, 90 to date.

First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights
and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by
the taxpayer.

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year
at taxpayer expense.

First President to repeat the Holy Quran tells us the early morning
call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound
on earth.

First President to take a 17 day vacation.

How is this hope and change working out for you?

The perpetual-vacationer speaks:

Michelle Obama, who has quickly become the Obama campaign’s tip of the spear when it comes to fundraising and vote-getting, is now stumping for children to convince their “great-grandparents” to vote for her husband. At an event at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park – for which tickets cost at least $500 – Michelle said:

I mean, I can’t tell you in the last election how many grandparents I ran into who said, I wasn’t going to vote for Barack Obama until my grandson talked to me, until my great-grandson talked to me, and talked about the future he wanted for this country.

You can get out there with your parents. You guys can knock on doors. I had one young lady who brought me a petition — she’s already working. You can convince wrong people. Sometimes we don’t listen to ourselves, but we will listen to our children.

The left seems to have a fascination with this that goes back aways — children being wise sages uniquely qualified to dispense the kind of wisdom that is attained only through experience.

Near as I can figure, it’s part of a much greater and broader perspective in which it’s important to see everything as the opposite of what it really is. We have to spend lots of money to keep from going broke, we show the greatest respect toward women when we systematically eliminate every reason for their existence, we’re “shoring up” capitalism by stealing money from the people who’ve been productive and giving it to people who’ve chosen to live destructive and self-destructive lifestyles…et al.

Children are experienced, knowledgeable, and have unique wisdom to impart. Fits right in. The younger the better, I suppose.

Uh oh…

Mega Millions mania has plunged a Maryland McDonald’s into a bubbling cauldron of controversy hotter than a deep-fried apple pie.

Workers at the fast-food joint who pooled their cash for tickets are furious at a colleague who claims she won with a ticket she bought for herself and has no intention of sharing.

“We had a group plan, but I went and played by myself. [The ‘winning’ ticket] wasn’t on the group plan,” McDonald’s “winner’’ Mirlande Wilson 37, told The Post yesterday, insisting she alone bought one of the three tickets nationwide that will split a record $656 million payout.

“I was in the group, but this was separate. The winning ticket was a separate ticket,” the single mother of seven said as she and her fiancé left her home in the squalid Westport neighborhood to attend church.

The Haitian immigrant refused to show what she said was the winning ticket, claiming she had it hidden in another location and would present it to lottery officials today.

Pressed as the day went on, she became more cagey.

“I don’t know if I won. Some of the numbers were familiar. I recognized some of [them],’’ she said. “I don’t know why’’ people are saying differently. “I’m going to go to the lottery office [today]. I bought some tickets separately.”

With winning tickets also sold in Illinois and Kansas, a single Maryland winner would get an after-tax lump sum of $105 million, or $5.59 million a year for 26 years.

This is why I hate lotteries so much.

Say what you will about people who make their profit by running some kind of business, but at least the profits are realized because, somehow, a product or service was provided to someone else. So if there’s some dispute coming out about where the profits should be going, people end up arguing about the who, what, when, where & why of the product/service coming to be.

These poor miserable wretches are arguing about the five W’s involved with exchanging a dollar for a crummy piece of paper…which piece it is…that determines who gets five million a year for 26 years.

Hard feelings are inevitable. Goodwill and mutual respect are not part of the equation. And in this case, in times recently past, they were — the group bought some tickets together. So something has been destroyed here. And it isn’t an unusual situation with lotteries.

I’ve written elsewhere that you can probably determine, with some good rugged accuracy, which direction our society is headed simply by tuning in to an AM radio station on a daily basis and counting how many times per week you hear an ad that says “find out if you qualify.” The same is true for the level of activity observed, on a weekly or monthly basis, with regard to lotteries. The common thread is: People trying to get hold of free stuff without doing or producing anything that would be valuable to anybody else.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom (hat tip to blogger friend Terri) snags the 125th award for BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately):

The constant and steady perversion of language and meaning has finally brought us to the surreal endpoint where a president stands before the public and pretends that a Supreme Court ruling is illegitimate if it looks to the Constitution for guidance on checks to federal power.

He is referring to a comment made recently, by America’s First Holy President, He Who Argues With The Dictionaries, that it would be an act of “judicial activism” to strike down the Obamacare law.

“I am confident the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected congress,” President Obama said at a White House event in the Rose Garden today.

“I just remind conservative commentators that for years we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step,” Obama said to the White House press.

No distinction made between Supreme Court decisions that invalidate laws because of irreconcilable contradictions against the restrictions in the Constitution…and decisions that invalidate laws because of concerns over “if this, then such-and-such-a-thing might happen.” They’re all just sort of lumped in together and called “judicial activism,” if they go against the grain of what His Holiness wants.

This is supposed to be a Professor of Constitutional Law speaking. We’re told so, anyway.

The e-mails have been busy during my travels on Friday and Saturday, during which time I was at the mercy of the wireless networks in Nevada, a broad flatland in which one must consider himself fortunate to find working indoor plumbing. So this morning at coffee o’clock I have some reading to do. And what do I see in my inbox…vast, great volumes of not-much. Race hustlers trying to make the Trayvon Martin shooting more incendiary, and funny pictures of cats.

And then…

My President had some kind of deadline looming over His head Saturday night, for which He urgently needed me to pony up three dollars. I’m not sure what that was all about. Something to do with the FEC, so from this I infer it would be related to His efforts to win a second term in the upcoming elections.

Ed Darrell & Co. are completely upset with me. There is a picture of our President making the rounds, walking in His dignified way from a plane to a limousine or perhaps vice-versa, carrying a hardcover copy of The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. People think poorly of this, and Mr. Darrell has harsh words for those who think so poorly. His critiism is against poor thinking, but as always seems to be the case with him, one cannot help but suspect he is upset that they’ve reached a conclusion he doesn’t like. One also ends up a little confused about whether his excited and scolding words are for those who send the picture around through the e-mail, or for those who quite reasonably and innocently draw their conclusions from it.

I’m not sure he himself knows.

President Obama has hit me up before for contributions of $2 or $3. Sometimes the e-mails are not from Him, but from people who report to Him or somehow support Him in His efforts. The last one, I think, was from His wife Michelle. There is a lot of language to the effect of how close we are to getting this thing done that we’re trying to do, that is so important. Nothing unusual about any of this, except in this case, I’ve not yet seen a specific statement made about what it is they/we are trying to be doing, which I find a little odd. Isn’t it part of typical deadline management, to keep in mind the horrific consequences to follow of failing to meet the deadline? Granted, that all by itself doesn’t necessitate a repeated chanting over & over again of what the consequences are…but it becomes an expected part of the pitch when the time comes to shake people down for money. What are we trying to do?

Ed’s pals are not happy with me going after just one thing…in which they’re squarely in the wrong. They would like the conversation to be expanded to include other things they think will make them look better. This “James Kessler” person would like to talk about “your [my] side” and/or Republicans, which is unfortunate since that has nothing to do with anything; my point was that Ed Darrell, wrapped up in his hatred and his passions, said something silly and illogical, I’m right and that’s that.

But after all these years of me subscribing to Ed Darrell’s website, and all these years of having been wisely led by President Obama, I notice nothing’s changed — not one single thing. There are these problems existing somewhere; nobody can say, specifically, what those problems are (except schoolteacher Ed is very often upset that the public education system is getting enough money, I guess there’s that, but that particular peeve is not under discussion here). There is not much specific discussion of the problems so it follows that there’s no talk at all about what the solutions are going to be.

But still there is something to inspire all the hot air flowing with such great heat, power and force from the progressives among us. The bulk of it seems to be: These nice people over here do not yet possess a monopoly on free speech — they’re having trouble getting their message out. Those other people, over there, are getting a message out and that’s part of the problem. They need to be shut up.

It is rather remarkable that if I were previously sympathetic to the global desires of Planet Looney Liberal, I’d be forced to seriously reconsider my allegiances right about now. After the last four years of Obama’s presidency and highly successful — and privileged — campaigning, if all the problems in the world that you can see are due to Him not quite being able to get the last word in on enough things…or perhaps not giving enough speeches?…there’s something very, very wrong with your viewpoint. Also, it’s further remarkable that after all the Best! Speech! Evar! going on again and again and again…I still don’t understand what the Obama agenda is. I’ve responded to quite a few of these e-mails asking me for the $3 asking, politely and succinctly, what exactly it is we’re trying to do. I’ve not yet received an answer back.

There is a new video out called The Road We’ve Traveled, narrated by Tom Hanks. Perhaps my question would be answered if the video had a title more like, The Road In Front Of Us or something…okay, so these people who are paid to come up with things that might possibly be credited to President Obama, have found some stuff. Fine, but what choices are we making, when we choose Obama’s leadership? What are the advantages of said leadership, contrasted with that of someone else — who is also capable of making decisions when the time comes, but would & could be expected to make different ones, due to a wholly different outlook on the world and how it works? On this, the seventeen minutes stand functionally mute.

If the video contributes anything at all to the decision to be made about the upcoming election, it is only this: Here, here and here, Barack Obama was confronted with an important decision that could be made by nobody else. And He decided!

Well…with all respect to the office of the Presidency…pffft. You could say exactly the same thing about Obama’s predecessor, couldn’t you? Actually, you could say that about everyone who’s been elected to that office. Except maybe those two guys who died in office without serving very long…I suspect even they would be able to point to something.

After all the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, and hundreds of speeches given by Him every single year out of the last three or four — I don’t really know what the Obama Doctrine is. About anything. I see He opts for this-or-that when such-and-such a decision comes up…sometimes. It’s much more usual for Him to, as they say, “vote present.” But from whatever definitive decisions actually do manage to be graced with His Holy Imprimatur, I try to reach conclusions about what the Obama philosophy is…and these loudmouths like Ed & Crew scold me about it. If my conclusion is not flattering, that is. And I cannot help but conclude, like I said, that that’s what the scolding is really all about. Meanwhile, the question remains unanswered.

Reasonable persons across the ideological spectrum should be able to agree, that if your argument can only be made to look good by impugning the character of the other guys, to the point where you’re avoiding any discussion of the decisions made & why they’re made, then your argument is probably wrong. According to that, then, they would support whoever is presenting a good plausible plan to get the gas prices back down and get all these capable and able-bodied people working again. I think President Obama should be displaying Himself and His crew as the people who are laboring to implement such a plan.

But from Him, and His supporters, all I’m seeing and hearing is how important it is that they be given more of a chance to get their message out, than those detestable other-people. In fact, it can be truthfully said that — for all I know — that’s the whole point of the seventeen-minute-video linked above: Re-elect Obama, so He can continue to give speeches every day, because who knows, sooner or later one of these days He’ll give the one speech that finally gets the message out. You know, I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with getting the unemployment rate down to five percent, getting gas back down to $2.65 a gallon, and recovering America’s triple-A credit rating.