Surber, AGAIN, this time by way of Instapundit, has a message for the merchants of Ferguson:

Do not bother rebuilding. Your customers do not want you. They tore up your stores — twice. And after one of them robbed a store. These are not protests. They are pogroms aimed at the middle class. Take the insurance money and run.

Police officers, too, should leave. Why risk a criminal trial or worse for doing your job?

Homeowners, too. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic — it does not matter. You are middle class. They do not want you. Leave.
:
Backed by looters and violent people, liberals are telling the American middle class they do not want you. They want an America where you are either a billionaire knocking down tax subsidies, or jobless and on federal assistance. This is why Obama is importing 5 million more poverty cases illegally from Mexico and points south.

Obama is a courtesan of the very rich…The riots serve his greater purpose to cleanse the nation of the middle class…

To which, Instapundit adds, “It does seem like you need to either be a New Oligarch or a member of the dependent classes to get any attention from these folks.”

Surber links to Forbes:

MITT ROMNEY GETS a lot of heat for his billionaire donors, but President Obama has his fair share of support from the country’s richest, too. FORBES counted well over a hundred billionaires who’ve been invited to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. since Obama’s inauguration, some of whom have thrown parties to fundraise for the President and given big to both his campaign and super PACs supporting him.

The cursory-overview list offered at the Forbes article: Penny Pritzker, James Crown, Steven Spielberg, Marc Lasry, Warren Buffett, Haim Saban, George Soros and Tom Steyer.

Continuing,

The looters won, thanks to President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Governor Jay Nixon — Democrats all — who ignored the truth and the facts of the case to fan the flames of violence, across the country. People have begun calling these the Obama Riots. Expect more.

My advice to businesses, residents and officials of Ferguson is to move. Become ex-Fergusonians and maybe, ex-Missourians. And then vote straight Republican tickets after that. They may not be much but at least they will not encourage people to rob you and then burn down everything you own.

Conventional wisdom says the democrats are the party of the middle class. This is less an item of eternal timeless wisdom, than a perishable commodity with a limited shelf life. And we’re well past it.

Related: John Hawkins tallies up the seven things we’ve learned from the tragedies involving Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown:

1. The initial story you hear is probably a lie.
2. The Left has zero interest in discussing why black Americans are really more likely to be shot by police officers.
3. It’s time for cops to start wearing body cameras.
4. You better arm yourself because you can’t count on the police to protect you.
5. The mainstream media is more interested in promoting the idea that America is a racist country than the truth.
6. Most people on the “Left” care more about the narrative than the truth.
7. “Black Leaders” are looking to ratchet up the tension, not ease it.

If Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton show up somewhere claiming that a wonderful black kid who was going to college was shot for no reason and nobody is doing anything about it because of racism, you can safely assume you’re being taken for a ride. The police do make mistakes. The Akai Gurley case is a great example of that. There are also bad cops out there. The cops who tortured Abner Louima in New York City fit that description. But, it’s better to let a court sort through the details under oath to get the facts rather than relying on rumors and people who see dollar signs in their eyes every time someone yells “racism.”
:
The mainstream media helped create the angst over Trayvon Martin and the riots in Ferguson. NBC falsely claimed George Zimmerman used a racial slur and edited his call to the police to make him sound bad while the whole media used an old picture of Trayvon Martin that made people think he was 12. On the eve of the Grand Jury verdict in the Michael Brown case, the New York Times published THE STREET Darren Wilson lives on with his new wife. Beyond those egregious offenses, the mainstream media helped create many of the initial myths about both cases, was slow to correct the facts and habitually slanted its news coverage to portray Zimmerman and Wilson as guilty, even when it didn’t fit the facts. Everyone knows the mainstream media is biased, but when its coverage plays a role in getting people’s businesses burned to the ground, it has gone too far.
:
It’s extremely ironic that most of the businesses that burned in Ferguson were minority-owned because black leaders like Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, the New Black Panthers and, yes, Eric Holder and Barack Obama helped make it happen. Yes, they gave bloodless, CYA condemnations of violence, and then went back to hyping people up instead of calming them down. See, when people get mad, they give donations. Peace doesn’t make money. Peace doesn’t get your name in the newspaper. Peace doesn’t get anyone on TV. [bold emphasis mine]

Don Surber, via Gerard.

It is time that higher education paid the same corporate income taxes that every other industry in America pays. I would force Harvard to liquidate that $35 billion Harvard sits on in endowment funds. And I would tax donations to every college in the United States. These are not charities. They are huge corporations run by six-figure corporate executives.

Nor are these institutions exempt from civil rights law. I want to see someone punished for passing off Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren as Indians to meet some affirmative action quota. Perhaps the next president can RICO the Ivy League and even do a thorough antitrust investigation of higher education.

Discrimination is discrimination. Throw away the affirmative action crutches and watch academics rise in the United States.

Surber links to Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a.k.a. Instapundit, who explains,

Decades ago, the Ivy League colleges thought they had a problem: too many Jews. These recent immigrants, from a culture that prized education and academic achievement, had an unfortunate characteristic: They worked harder, studied longer and cared more about school. In short, they had all the attributes required for success in the Ivy League.

Problem was, the Ivy League didn’t really want them. Being first-generation students, these applicants didn’t have rich alumni parents who would be likely to donate big bucks. Being from an ethnicity not associated with America’s governing class, they didn’t help the Ivy League with its biggest selling point — that going to college there provides an opportunity to rub shoulders with America’s governing class. And they were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard and weren’t much fun.

The result was a change in admissions criteria to reward “leadership,” and “well-rounded” candidates — a thin disguise for “WASPs” — and, following closely on, actual quotas for Jewish students, so that no matter how many applied, their numbers on campus would stay just about the same. After several decades, this came to be seen as racist and unfair, and the quotas were dropped. (Though by then, conveniently enough, the Ivy League was able to find Jewish applicants with plenty of money, polish and governing-class connections without too much trouble).

But while the quotas for Jews are gone, the Ivy League now, by all accounts, has quotas for Asian students. They are seen as people who study too hard, boring grinds who aren’t much fun — and, of course, their parents aren’t as rich and connected. And though the numbers of highly qualified Asian applicants have grown dramatically, the number of Asians admitted stays pretty much the same every year.

Now the Asian students are suing. In a lawsuit against Harvard, they are claiming that Harvard demands higher qualifications from Asian students than from others, and that it uses “racial classifications to engage in the same brand of invidious discrimination against Asian Americans that it formerly used to limit the number of Jewish students in its student body.”

These claims are almost certainly correct. Discrimination against Asian students — and not just by Harvard, but throughout higher education — has been an open secret for years. Asian students, we’re told, face a “bamboo ceiling” as a result.

Where today’s discrimination is different from the Ivy League’s old quotas against Jews is that those old quotas were removed as part of efforts to fight racism. The Ivy League’s new quotas, meanwhile, are often defended on the same grounds — or, at least, as a means of attaining “diversity.”

Quotas, applied for the sake of achieving “diversity,” are a tacit admission that unequal treatment is required in order to achieve the diversity. They are insulting, in addition to purveying exactly the sort of “discrimination” to which they are supposed to be opposed.

This applies generally. No net good can come from a plan that requires recognition of some elemental thing as the opposite of what it really is. One day, we will learn, and the dark age will end. In the meantime, it will persist.

Me, on the Hello Kitty of Blogging:

Seriously, it just makes sense that a whole calendar page ought to be flipped, between sitting down with friends & relatives to offer thanks for all the wonderful things you have, and trampling strangers under your feet in a mad dash to get more stuff.

“Black Friday” should not be in November at ALL. People may argue about whether commercialization has completely consumed Christmas, but nobody can deny there is a problem. Nor can anybody question, seriously, that a lunatic mad-mob-crowd shopping season that leads up to a holiday in December, ought to start in December. The month of November should be set aside for the more humble sentiments, for the gratitude.

I console myself by thinking about females. Shopping is for females. Females bear the hard work of clearing off the dining room table, bagging the leftovers, washing the dishes, etc. while the men snooze. So in that sense, it is a little bit fair. But then I think, if I was a female and I’d just busied myself with an hour of clean-up detail, would I want to be among the hairbrains kicking off the Christmas shopping season that evening?

And then, I realize, the overlap is not complete. The people shopping on “Black Friday Eve” are not the ones who cleaned up the kitchen. Maybe they’re the daughters, or step-daughters, or some such. It isn’t my place to know, I don’t live in those households. But, I realize civilization is dying a little bit with this lunacy, and I die a little bit inside too, realizing this.

We should stop. We don’t even need a blogger guy to point it out. We all know it. Every single one of us. We’re just not acting on it.

Sometimes-commenter Robert Mitchell posts over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging, somewhere…

The real difference between conservatives and liberals, today:

Liberal: Someone should take care of this! Or, We need a program to take care of this!

Conservative: ++sigh++ It looks like it’s up to me to take care of this…

From Cute Puppy Love.

From Geeks Are Sexy.

Ian Tuttle writes in National Review:

The Left has a storied history of transforming legitimate disagreement into mental illness…
:
How is one to debate whether Rudy Giuliani says what he does merely because he is a white supremacist? “But I am not a white supremacist!” he might object — which is, of course, what all white supremacists say! And when [NY Times Columnist Charles] Blow claims that the president’s opponents are desperately clinging to power, how is such an opponent to respond? After all, doctor knows best.

To psychologize the question at issue in a debate is to remove it from the realm of debate altogether. That is why liberals are eager to explain their opponents’ positions as the work of psychological “mechanisms,” operating subconsciously or unconsciously, of which the opponent is unaware. Were he fully apprised of these mechanisms, he could be a constructive interlocutor. But oblivious to so much subliminal influence, debating him is just not fair; it would be taking advantage. He is, one might say, not in his “right mind.” Where the Soviets encouraged sulfozin, the American Left encourages Howard Zinn — but the difference between the two is, at root, not so large.

It is to be expected. What else are you to do when the evidence says your opinion is wrong, logic and common sense say your opinion is wrong, history says your opinion is wrong, the “science” behind your opinion doesn’t produce predictable or repeatable results — but you have this emotional need to swagger off the field of conflict as the unquestioned victor? It’s all too easy. You announce that you have found yourself in a battle of wits with an unarmed man, then take the high road.

I have to disagree with the closing thoughts:

Obviously conservatives could employ this same practice. [Michael Eric] Dyson’s obsession with racial injustices they could blame on “querulous paranoia.” Blow’s concern about conservative “fear” they could explain as “persecutory delusions.”

But to do so would, besides being obviously false, serve no purpose. Ideas, proposals, platforms — the material of political progress — are refined in the clash. Reduced to expressions of hidden cognitive processes, ideas vanish.

And if you think American politics is unhealthy now…

But it is! We have elitists accusing non-elitists of elitism, sexists calling non-sexists sexists and racists calling non-racists racists. How do you fix that? Not with a bunch of “don’t lower yourself to their level.” That’s just a bunch of not-doing-anything. And it’s been tried already.

Since when are “persecutory delusions” among liberals false anyway? Beside being Thanksgiving, this is Ferguson High Drama Week #2. We’ve been listening to persecutory delusions among our friends the leftists, the entire time, all day every day.

Now if you want to set me straight that it’s a mistake to argue with them, you’ll find you haven’t got a lot of convincing to do. But it’s still an educational exercise, of sorts. I have noticed among the lefties who aren’t so eager to “diagnose” their opposition, the next popular tactics all have something to do with perceiving some lack of understanding. The fabric of conservative thinking is all wrong, it fails to note legitimate “shades of gray” in some spectrum, or the conservative fails to see how the plan is supposed to work. Something requires an explanation. It seems to be a sincere misunderstanding on the liberals’ part. But it also comes off looking like monologuing-away about how single-payer health care will fix all our problems, or a bigger stimulus will fix the economy, is what’s really needed. Like the monologuing is a tonic. Or an anesthetic.

Because when the conservative provides a rebuttal of the form “Yeah we already tried that, and these were the results” — the counter-rebuttal is…yup…more monologuing about the same stuff. “See when the government spends the stimulus, it creates jobs, which blah blah blah.” It gets embarrassing. The endless-loop shrinks down to the size of a Cheerio, and the “debate” dissolves into just one side belaboring discredited theory, and the other side annoyingly articulating the results of practice.

In fact, this is a rather simple, indeed tedious, misconception crying out for a correction long overdue. Liberals are allowed to think the disagreement results from conservatives’ ignorance about the future. When in actuality it comes from the liberals’ ignorance about the past. It turns out that when you form domestic policy around the premise that it’s wrong for people to get rich, and overseas policy around the premise that it is wrong to confront evil, what you get out of that is more poverty and more evil.

Like, you know, duh.

From Brietbart…

At one point [host Don] Lemon interrupted Jackson saying, “Reverend, with all due respect, if people need jobs in the community, why would you burn down a store or a place where you could possibly get work?”

“Sometimes pain can lead to a rational conclusion.” Oh okay, so we haven’t misunderstood. Burning down the store is somehow supposed to make it all moar-better and what-not.

Liberalism is destructive, and inherently so. We should be thankful the entire nation has the opportunity to see this.

To coin a phrase, it isn’t part of the solution it’s part of the problem.

From the comments:

Only in America can an otherwise illiterate man make a six figure income fanning the flames of anger, bigotry, hate and victimization; while interviewed on prime time by a major network. The race cabal of Chi-Town turned the plight and cause of Martin Luther King Jr. into a de facto cottage industry worth millions. Other than shamefully peddle their faded and empty rhetoric, what else have these bunch done for the those that they allegedly represent? What [a] scam.

From here.

…and what they really mean, ten of them. Including,

8. No War for Oil

Chanted by Liberals to imply that the Iraq war was actually, only about oil. There no real shortage of oil, it’s just expensive. Had we used the money we spent freeing Iraq, buying oil instead, we would have had ten times as much oil. Instead, we caused (temporarily, until Obama screwed it up) a stability in the world’s oil production which in turn weakened those oil producing nations (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela) who were funding terrorism and Communism. The goal was international stability which would have resulted in the reduction of violence world wide. That is until some moron named Obama yanked our troops out of Iraq, and set everything back two decades.

What’s really dishonest about that one is that it appeals to the cliché-driven mindset, and against the grain of reality. In so doing, it reveals that the speaker thinks in clichés. The “neocon” Republican, who is on the payroll of some big oily corporation and at some obscene confiscatory salary rate, with bonuses, probably wears boots and a cowboy hat, has some cunning master plan to siphon the oil in Iraq into some big tanker or warehouse or truck somewhere. After which, he intends to sell it to the highest bidder and this somehow forces the rest of us to pay ten dollars a gallon for gas.

When the real conflict is, liberals want everything to be expensive for those of us who are stupid enough to continue paying for the things we use without relying on the government. So that as life continues to get more and more difficult year by year, we’ll be given an incentive to become wards of the state. Versus the conservative outlook that says no, let’s just let Cloward-Piven die the death it deserves, and if there’s no reason for gas to cost more than $2.50 a gallon then let’s get it down there so people can drive to work, and if there’s no reason for more than 10% of our households to be on public assistance then let’s drive that rate down too.

And then there’s the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with any of this. I recall somewhere on Quora someone decided to get an echo started, and I decided the time came to stop the echo because Quora is abused enough already. Actually, I think I agreed with the person who asked the question, who was pointing out the hypocrisy of democrats voting in favor of the use of military force and then hitting the campaign stumps with the “no war for oil” thing. But still, Quora is for questions. The lefties were rewarding the soapboxing with contrary soapboxing, not much answering-of-questions was happening that I could see. So I stepped in with some truth.

And the truth is, the point where liberals got all pissy about the invasion of Iraq was this: A problem had existed for awhile, and someone was using executive authority to confront the problem, arrive at a strategy, direct resources, and engage action against the problem in such a way that these things might have an actual effect on the outcome. “War for oil,” body counts, making-new-terrorists, “they hate us now,” blah blah blah blah blah — none of that actually had anything to do with it either. On Planet Liberal, when a problem drags on and on across the decades, what you’re supposed to do about it is give a lot of speeches and use them to get democrats elected. Period. You aren’t supposed to do anything to actually change the situation. As we saw a decade ago, when you do that, it offends them a lot, and in a very special way they can’t (afford to) explain.

It’s just like getting hired into a union shop, and then working your balls off so the other guys who’ve been there awhile start looking bad, that makes you the center of negative attention and widespread enmity in exactly the same way, and for the same reasons. Everything was good and everything looked fine to the bosses, until that new guy came on the scene. So let’s “help” him make it home some night, show him the proper use of an axe handle through his teeth.

Anyway. Back to the subject at hand.

6. Violence Never Solved Anything

Cute, pithy, feel-good but still utter nonsense. Interesting that the same Liberals that cry, “Violence never solved anything,” have no problem arming local police departments like soldiers going to war. Interesting that they also have no problem when their president sends troops with guns into another country to make it do what we say. Interesting that so many of the wealthier and more powerful ones have no problem hiring armed guards to keep them safe.

Quite. For liberalism to make sense — just to start making sense — you have to presume nobody is going to use force to try to hurt you or take your stuff, but at the same time, that community-wide starvation is imminent due to dwindling resources, and we need to coordinate the allocation of those resources. The challenge in selling it is that within those segments of our society in which muggings and burglaries are unlikely, the standard of living is comfortable, and by the time you get there starvation ceases to remain any sort of issue. But that really isn’t much of a problem, it’s natural for humans to worry about depleted resources. Especially here in the U.S., it’s become rather easy for us to forget how good we have it.

One of the many reasons liberalism, as we know it today, doesn’t make any sense is while liberal detest violence, they sure do appreciate force an awful lot. Force of law, force of executive order, force of “majority” rule, force of phony-science, force of academia. They just love concluding arguments with some variant of “and so it’s decided, you’ll just have to go along with it.” And yet they know their rules are only for those who choose to abide by rules. They’re like the cowardly vice-Principal who breaks up the fight on the school playground, and then arranges detention only for the “good” kid who isn’t supposed to get in trouble.

Buzzfeed:

I once saw a high school teacher lead a simple, powerful exercise to teach his class about privilege and social mobility. He started by giving each student a scrap piece of paper and asked them to crumple it up.

Then he moved the recycling bin to the front of the room.

He said, “The game is simple — you all represent the country’s population. And everyone in the country has a chance to become wealthy and move into the upper class.”

“To move into the upper class, all you must do is throw your wadded-up paper into the bin while sitting in your seat.”

The students in the back of the room immediately piped up, “This is unfair!” They could see the rows of students in front of them had a much better chance.

Everyone took their shots, and — as expected — most of the students in the front made it (but not all) and only a few students in the back of the room made it.

He concluded by saying, “The closer you were to the recycling bin, the better your odds. This is what privilege looks like. Did you notice how the only ones who complained about fairness were in the back of the room?”

“By contrast, people in the front of the room were less likely to be aware of the privilege they were born into. All they can see is 10 feet between them and their goal.”

“Your job — as students who are receiving an education — is to be aware of your privilege. And use this particular privilege called ‘education’ to do your best to achieve great things, all the while advocating for those in the rows behind you.”

Mkay, some questions first though. After all, this is supposed to be “education,” so questions should be a good thing…

This “advocating for,” what is that exactly? Is that picking up the crumpled up pieces of paper off the floor, carrying them to the bin and dropping them into it? Because that would be cheating, am I right?

Or is it manufacturing & placing more bins? As one of my current Facebook friends & former work colleagues pointed out, that would be something like capitalism…

Centralized government views its job as reducing the number of bins and move the one constantly according to what the Principal tells the teacher the needs of the class are based on last quarters bin report. The US Constitution allows more people to make more bins without much interference or guidance.

In fact, once you get out of the communist classroom setting, you’ll find one of those bins under every desk.

Probably not what the “communist” teacher had in mind.

A second question. The original article reports “most of the students in the front made it (but not all) and only a few students in the back of the room made it.” We can deduce from this statement that some of the students who made it were sitting a lot farther away from the bin compared to some of the students who missed, which would prove this “privilege” doesn’t decide everything. The mission is supposed to be one of education, education relies on communication.

If “privilege” is a real thing, then — and I maintain that it is — could there not be an opportunity for the underachieving to learn some things from those who met the challenge? It has been established that the dividing line between privileged & underprivileged, is not the same as the dividing line between the hits and the misses.

Which leads to yet a third question. Since some among the underprivileged did meet the challenge, and some among the privileged did fail the challenge, could it not be strongly ascertained that the point of this exercise is to pay closer attention to those who failed, as opposed to those who are underprivileged? The ramifications are significant. An “education” that involves a shift of attention toward those who fail, is bound to ultimately result in more failure. This would be the opposite of what the casual observer might have inferred from it, that the problem identified is all these crumpled papers missing the basket and we’re laboring toward a more sophisticated social model in which more crumpled papers find the intended target. You can’t get more success out of “teaching” people to ignore success and fixate themselves on failure.

Conclusion: A good place to resume this “lesson” from where the instructor left it, might be to pair up these “privileged” misses with the “underprivileged” hits, see if something can be done to improve the technique. Of course, in order for it to reflect real life, with some sort of market-based economic system in place, there would have to be a reflection of productivity. So a new bin for any student who manages to sink, let’s say, five in a row.

At the end of it all, it may be found that some among these budding “founders” managed to cross a respectable distance. This would do nothing to defeat the exercise of “education”; quite to the contrary, it would vividly illustrate the practical side of why we bother with it.

Cain TV:

What if the next President doesn’t feel like pursuing anti-trust law, or banking regulations, or EPA regulations? What if he can’t get Congress to change his least favorite law because – as is the case with immigration – the American people don’t agree with doing so? According to the precedent Obama is setting, the President has the authority to simply wave his hand and declare that those laws – or entire sections of law – will not be enforced.

So, during an interview on This Week, George Stephanopoulos decided to ask:

“How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in, wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it — he says I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.”

Guess what. The President doesn’t think they have the right to do that. Why? Here’s his idiotic non-answer:

No word on whether He plans to change the force of gravity, the speed of light, or the freezing temperature of water within the two years He has left.

In fact, more and more I have some serious doubts that we’re done with this guy in 2017. I’ve always thought of Him as a tragedy in the making, someone whose fate is cast by our term limits, to lose all of His influence save for that as a somewhat famous private citizen — and whose psyche is simply unprepared for what He would surely see as a downfall. Oh sure, He’d shoot His mouth off a great deal more than ex-Presidents are supposed to, kinda like Jimmy Carter. But that is all He would be, another Jimmy Carter.

This clip makes me want to re-think that. I’m not so sure we’re done with Him. He thinks He’s doing the right thing here, but doesn’t want future presidents to follow suit. Just like the little kid who’s too young and too undisciplined to play Chess or Monopoly, making up new moves on the spot, coming up with new moves for the pieces, and new conditions whereby the opposition can’t build hotels or collect $200 for passing Go.

So why would He step down, just because the rules say so?

*sigh*…

Asst. Fire Chief Steve Fair with the Ferguson Fire Department said they found structure fires along the corridor of Florissant, West Florissant, and Halls Ferry roads.

“We have been fighting approximately 25 structure fires tonight, along with a car dealership where we lost 10 cars that were burned up,” said Fair.

They had a map up at that site at one point…

We’re getting a lesson here about what civilization is, what it takes to make it happen, what it takes to keep it going. And what its problems are in this age of mass communication. Too many people want to be a part of it, insofar as they can collect benefits from being part of it. The part of their credo that doesn’t work goes something like “Alright, but keep in mind no decisions can be allowed to stand that we don’t happen to like. My smaller clique wants veto power over everything.”

I see over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, some of my friends have sympathy for the thug that got himself shot. They say their sympathies are not with the looters, but I’m not sure you can cut it that way.

I keep hearing about how “we need more accountability.” Huh. Well what about the news agencies that played up the drama angle on this story, to the hilt, in the days running up to the grand jury’s decision? ALL DAY. EVERY DAY. Misusing the miracle of mass communication to give the tension a higher, and higher, and higher profile.

This is how you kill civilization. We can certainly see this happening in smaller units, in families for example. In dysfunctional families, one common factor that runs through all of them is that attention is reserved for those who are constantly spoiling to start fights, therefore, big issues are made out of things that really are not so big. Some within the family can see what’s happening and don’t want to contribute to the problem, but their solution is to retreat to a safe distance, therefore to make themselves inconsequential. The bulk of the influence therefore goes to the co-dependents, to the dysfunctional individuals and their enablers.

That’s what happened here. I don’t wish to be insensitive about this, but the point of origin, really, was not so big. A thug rushed a cop who was, fortunately, armed. If you don’t want to get shot, don’t rush at cops with guns. If you don’t want your kids to get shot, don’t let them grow up to become thugs.

Had this one germinating in my cranium for awhile. SNews (n.): News that is produced for the benefit of the producer of the news, or some third-party who has entered into some transaction with the producer of the news, rather than for the benefit of the consumer of the news.

If you like, you can think of it as a portmanteau for “sponsored news.” It is meant to be a homonym of snooze. The litmus test is: Thinking of the “news” as an answer to a question, does the question it answers bear any resemblance to a question the audience would have been asking? If it doesn’t — and lately, I notice, it very rarely does — then it isn’t really “news,” is it?

My accumulation of mental kindling has been touched off by the ignition that is the “news” out of Ferguson. As we await a verdict, it is fair to say the questions foremost in the audience’s collective mind are easy to distill.

1. Are they going to indict him?
2. If so, on what charges?
3. If not, are the hoodlums going to wreck everything?

And the “news” that is coming out, ALL DAY — in fact, throughout all of last week — is not this. Rather, it is one boring speech after another from an assortment of local muckety-mucks. BLAH BLAH BLAH urge remain calm BLAH BLAH BLAH racially sensitive BLAH BLAH BLAH.

My beef with this is that things that are called “news,” whether they really are news or not, cost. They cost money. They cost time. Most of all, they cost bandwidth. You only have so many minutes in the day you can pay attention to the news. Everybody is hurt when we call things that aren’t news, “news,” and then treat those things as if they really are news, when they’re much more like sponsored messages from interested parties. Well-intentioned parties maybe, but still, seems to me they should be paying for the advertising. And let’s call it something like advertising if that’s what it is. Stop calling it news.

Update: This is what I have in mind: News.

The test doesn’t seem to be working properly. From the comments:

I’m laughing so hard because I got conservative when I am in fact quite liberal.
:
Same here!
:
I got liberal and I’m definitely conservative haha
:
This is hilarious because it’s the most false thing I’ve read all day.

Me? I got…

You got: Liberal

You are all about progress and reform. You appreciate respect when it comes to matters of personal beliefs and actions. Above all you are about liberty, and you feel it should be both nurtured and protected.

The correct answer would have been, of course, “absolutely, positively middle-of-the-road.”

That is, unless we’re going to use the word “conservative” to describe ideas that are middle of the road. Which we do. So to reconcile that, we go back to what I had to say about the modern usage of these terms, which is the most sensible thing anybody’s had to say about them anywhere…

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.

Where did the test go wrong? Why is it so inaccurate? Again, to the comments…

Libtards set this thing up.

Yeah, that’s probably it. They let liberals design the test, when the right thing to do would’ve been to purge any liberals from the ranks of the designers before the designing started. I had something to say about that, too, lately…

Liberals have a habit of defining liberalism according to what their opponents believe, and if there is any brand of ignorance on the planet more pervasive and eminent than any other, it is the ignorance liberals have about what motivates their opposition. They don’t have a clue as to what motivates conservatives. And they’re proud of not having a clue. So we shouldn’t believe what liberals have to say about what liberalism is. They don’t know a great deal about that either.

They don’t decide well, and that’s why they don’t govern well. They can’t govern at all, really. When you put them in the position of governing, what you get is Detroit. That’s what this test seems to have become, a little-Detroit.

Going to try to be more helpful to Mrs. Freeberg in the kitchen this Thanksgiving, doing my research…

From here.

Did you notice the knife block?

Soon it will be time for us to gather, and collectively meditate on the gifts we have, both material and non. And, to set aside some provisions for those less well off, through no doing of their own.

And then there are douchenozzles like this guy…

Patton Chambers may be the only college student who actively blogs about his underwear and ingrown toenails—all the while being homeless.

A senior at Auburn University, Chambers decided to forgo living in his apartment in order to experience the “homeless” lifestyle for the remainder of his college career. According to the 23-year-old, without the stress of working, homelessness has been the best decision he could have made.

“What could I do that would eliminate having to work, would open up big opportunities, and be a really fun, interesting experience for me?” Chambers asked Campus Reform in an interview last week. The physical education major had just finished a run at the campus recreation center and was headed to class.

For Chambers, the decision to become homeless wasn’t necessarily a financial one — although he says he appreciates no longer being burdened by rent — but more of a personal experiment. When Chambers lived in his apartment, he rarely left. He says he is too “awkward” for college parties and didn’t do much dating before he gave up his permanent residency.

So Chambers wanted to “start fresh.” He wanted to leave his comfort zone and do things he’s never done before. And he also wanted to quit his job in the fast food industry.

“One of the reasons [to become homeless] was to get out of working,” Chambers told Campus Reform. “It was just stressful night after stressful night, and anytime I’m getting any kind of unnecessary stress put upon me, it’s total bull crap, and I don’t feel the need to put myself through that because it’s not necessary because if I don’t need stress, why am I having stress?”

“And that’s the big thing,” he said. “All I was really working for was money to pay for rent. Honestly, I would rather be homeless and not have to work. That would be a better life.”

Via Young Conservatives, which happens to mention:

Chambers isn’t truly homeless like the folks who have lost everything. He has health insurance, an iPhone, an inheritance from his now deceased grandfather, and money left over from his previous job.

He isn’t choosing to live this way in order to draw attention to some great and noble cause, but simply because work was too stressful for him. But there’s no need to worry, because the out of touch with reality college student doesn’t believe in welfare and refuses hand outs. At least he has that going for him, right?

To put the icing on the cake, Chambers is not only allergic to work, he’s also terribly misinformed about politics and current events and doesn’t vote. As if this country needed another one of “those” people.

Ah, but you can’t say he’s completely disengaged, can you. He certainly does have something to say. It’s the saddest single statement in this entire little story, isn’t it? “And that’s the big thing”: Avoiding the “stress” of actually doing stuff.

Give him credit. He’s got a lot of company here. And there is some value in one from among them doing the “experiment,” and blogging away, about how it leads to…

It definitely wasn’t the setup I was expecting, it was a little too revealing to the drive thru cars and it was only one tiny dumpster that didn’t have too much trash in it. I dug around and actually found a lot of cups and fry boxes that hadn’t had the pieces peeled off yet, but I didn’t get one free food game piece which sucked. You can see all the pieces that I laid across the dumpster, but if they ain’t free food I don’t want them. I’ll be back tonight probably to search for more, but so far it’s been a huge bust.

Your parents must be so proud.

So I can see some productive conversations coming of this, hopefully around the Thanksgiving table. Like: Why do those of us who took time out of our days, and put the food on the table, do such a thing when it can offer us a little bit of unnecessary stress at times? Why bother? We aren’t going to get credit for it, in the end. We’re certainly not expecting it, we don’t think of ourselves that way. Actually, those of us who do not say grace at meals, will allow ourselves a holiday exception in order to properly observe the spirit of the occasion: Without God’s help, it would not have been possible. Oh, some do not believe? Well then, the thought for the day would be one of, sometimes fortune is good and sometimes it isn’t, let us appreciate it when it is. The point to it all is that our nourishment, materially and spiritually, begins at the confluence of the good fortune and the hard work, but we should appreciate the good fortune, although entirely under our control, is but the first step in the journey toward the prize. It isn’t enough all by itself.

But then there’s this: We do not want our entire lives, and any purpose behind those lives, to boil down to something like “I didn’t get one free food game piece which sucked…if they ain’t free food I don’t want them…so far it’s been a huge bust.” Young Master Chambers has time to reform his thinking, and I have faith it will happen, because sooner or later we start to think about what we want carved on our tombstones. I doubt anyone wants that carved on their tombstone. “Here lies Patton Chambers. He’ll be back tonight probably to search for more, but so far it’s been a huge bust.”

I look at people like him, and I have a tough time seeing someone who’s really that different. I see a sort of kinship with them. Our common ground is our exposure to the tragedy of futility: We all try and try, sometimes we find out our best isn’t good enough. The difference is the response. Aesop is said to have written a fable about a fox and sour grapes. With Patton Chambers, and others like him, I think that’s what’s happening: I tried and tried, I got nothing for it but a bunch of stress, so my new mission in life is to stop doing that because any goal beyond that must not have been worth it. What should have happened, what would have happened with normal people, would have to begin with an acknowledgment that there is something worthwhile outside of the current experience. To attain the goal, it has become necessary for us to embiggen the periphery of what we have experienced to date.

That is the thought that initiates all learning; it is impossible to get the learning done — events of whack-upside-the-head serendipity notwithstanding — without having such a thought. Which raises a question: What is Patton Chambers, who is evidently lacking the ability to form this foundational thought for whatever reason, doing in college?

From Rare.

Gerard’s post made me do some thinking. This is why he’s happier than I am; things that bring him glee, furrow my brow and get me thinking hard. And yet at the end of it, between the two of us he’s the one who’s gained more insight and figured out more stuff. Somewhere in there lies a lesson.

Anyway, I was trying to recall what the timeline was between Election Day and this Gruber video, the one where the architect of ObamaCare brags about having sold it to a bunch of stupid American voters…

And I looked here, and here, and here. Finally I landed here, where I discovered (mostly) the answer to my question…

4) Who keeps finding all these clips?

Rich Weinstein, a forty-something investment advisor whose insurance policy was canceled under Obamacare, has surfaced the last three videos. Dave Weigel has written a great profile of him, including this part where Weinstein describes how he got started:

“When Obama said ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period’-frankly, I believed him,” says Weinstein. “He very often speaks with qualifiers. When he said ‘period,’ there were no qualifiers. You can understand that when I lost my own plan, and the replacement cost twice as much, I wasn’t happy.”

So Weinstein, new plan in hand, started watching the news. “These people were showing up on the shows, calling themselves architects of the law,” he recalls. “I saw David Cutler, Zeke Emanuel, Jonathan Gruber, people like that. I wondered if these guys had some type of paper trail. So I looked into what Dr. Cutler had said and written, and it was generally all about cost control. After I finished with Cutler, I went to Dr. Gruber. I assume I went through every video, every radio interview, every podcast. Every everything.”

Half a question answered, a whole new one created. Because in the meantime, I also went here where I came to be aware of something Congressman Trey Gowdy said, that sounded like something I might have said: “Comprehensive” is Latin for — based on our recent past experiences — “full of bad stuff.”

Yeah, don’t take that too seriously, it’s a joke. As well as an observation. On the way to that, though, he mentioned something else that got me thinking, because this is a point that has not too often been explored: Prof. Jonathan Gruber, and friends, really didn’t fool anybody. Unless you count democrat voters, which must have been the stupid people to whom the professor was referring in the infamous video clip. Republicans didn’t vote for this boondoggle.

And yet — this is the point I’d like to stress, it’s eluded our notice for far too long — Gruber & crew feel pretty doggone good about themselves. It’s as if they decided ahead of time they’re going to fool everybody because they’re really smart and stuff, awarded themselves the “really smart and stuff” trophy, and neglected to hang around long enough to see if they really fooled anyone. It’s not just him, and it’s not just them. You see it all around. Why, as recently as yesterday some liberals commented at this blog right here (which nobody reads, anyway),

You seem to be responding to our previous comment, and seem to be largely in agreement. The “Greatest Generation” accomplished great things, including defeating fascism in Europe and Asia.

My own opinion is that yes, Rich Fader does seem to be responding to their previous comment. But, not wanting to speak for him, but I’d characterize it as premature to conclude he’s in agreement. With…

The Greatest Generation was largely liberal. They stuck together after the debacle of the 1929 market crash, persevered and rebuilt the U.S. economy during the Great Depression, defeated fascism in Europe and Asia, constructed the superhighway system, reformed civil rights, and landed a man on the moon. But each of these accomplishments had the seed of its own destruction. Each generation has to remake the world afresh.

What is liberalism, anyway? The question has been debated and debated around here, and other places too. No, you can’t just go look it up in a dictionary and believe the “experts.” It’s an impossible question to answer until such time as one establishes the level at which one is attempting to define the word. Are we talking about achievement, or effort? Are we talking about political ideology, value systems, or just base human impulses?

If we do consult the experts, are we going to be careful to purge their ranks of any liberals before we put our faith in them? We should. Liberals have a habit of defining liberalism according to what their opponents believe, and if there is any brand of ignorance on the planet more pervasive and eminent than any other, it is the ignorance liberals have about what motivates their opposition. They don’t have a clue as to what motivates conservatives. And they’re proud of not having a clue. So we shouldn’t believe what liberals have to say about what liberalism is. They don’t know a great deal about that either.

Liberalism, as we know it today, is the culmination of many evolutionary phases. The most recent significant one is the Bush v. Gore election, in which they feel their guy got unfairly trounced, and this made them bitter and determined to get their revenge. They’ve been getting it ever since. The next most recent one before that was the aftermath of the Red Scare, in which they successfully rewrote history to make it look like the whole thing was all-about-nothing, the United States didn’t have any genuine enemies, and the only thing that happened of note was that Sen. Joseph McCarthy “ruined lives.” In fact, what happened was that the liberal left got back a result on its test — liberals think a lot like conservatives when they’re trying to recruit, and to win elections, it seems those are the only times they require tests — and verified that it was within their power to write mythology about recent events, and sell the mythology as if it were true. You see up above with this business about liberals landing a man on the moon, a good example of that.

That concluded a very long and tortured chapter in American history, in which the “Progressives” tried to sell the country on the Eugenics Movement. With the history scrub that’s gone on since then, you may not have heard about it. After the whole business with World War II was over, it became clear to everyone that this wasn’t going to sell well because the public was too aware of Hitler’s Final Solution; the public knew too much. They understood the connection between the noble intentions, and the ultimate ugly consequences they’d just seen.

The Eugenics movement, itself, was a natural consequence of the industrial age. It inspired all this wishful thinking in people who like to think wishfully, more than they like to work: Levers, on a control panel, controlling big, mighty things, things too large for a man to move without such a lever. What if we could make all men, and women and children too for that matter, into the big mighty thing, and control it with a lever? George F. Will touched on this a few years ago with that piece I linked, “Why Liberals Love Trains”:

Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

Here we see what liberalism truly is: It is a desire to control the work, as opposed to doing the work. Jonathan Gruber, the wreckage he has heaped upon our health care system and our economy aside, is only an emblem of it. But he’s a very good emblem of it. He fancies himself to be so smart that it’s his place to say how we should do our work, and to buy the health care services and products that we need. But he has no way of proving, even to himself, that he really is that smart. This doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, so one must conclude that he has no wish to do the proving. He just skips right past the proof stage, and is ready to pop the cork on the champagne and celebrate how smart he is. Again, he’s not alone; it isn’t just him.

And we know how endearing this is to everybody else, by the shellacking the democrats just took two weeks ago before the “stupidity of the American voter” video came out. One has to wonder how bad it would have been if the video came to light, let’s say, a month or two weeks earlier.

Before the Eugenics movement, I’d say, the next most recent evolutionary phase — and I could be missing something here, there’s more than a century — would be the storming of the Bastille in France, and the Red Scare that followed. That, from my reading of history, was the final reaction to a gradual acceleration of communication. There had been “revolutions” before that, but not of the same form or possessing the same characteristics. The French Revolution was the birth of a new age, just as the American Revolution was.

Before that, liberalism was nothing but a base human impulse: Envy. With the primitive communication of a purely agricultural society, lacking effect means of mass communication, the envy was localized and not centralized. A father might be envious of his son for being able to do something he couldn’t do; mothers might have envied their daughters-in-law, brothers might have been envious of brothers. Once people could communicate with each other on a large scale, and fuse the envy together with sloth, that was the birth of liberalism as we know it today. That was the first evolutionary stage, when people who like to monologue instead of doing things to help other people, realized the monologuing might actually win.

Who falls for this stuff? Not everybody; but, people have, and people still do. I have no time to find the relevant post right now, but one of my friends on the Hello Kitty of Blogging suggested a name for the suckers: “Grubes.”

So, this is going around, although perhaps not as much as I’d like.

As one who has actually dealt with regulators, as their regulations made contact with what was being regulated, I’ve wondered about this Weltanschauung. Very, very often. Those who labor under it and put their faith in it, seem to think regulators possess some sort of monopoly on either integrity, mental acuity, or knowledge of the subject matter. I’m not sure which. All three are highly questionable and never seem to be actually tested.

A great question for Mr. Axelrod, who seems to be trapped in fourth grade when it comes to dealing with uncomfortable situations on the recess playground.

Sarah Palin was quoted, somewhat less than accurately, here. Nevertheless: That’s a good term.

The great Sarah Palin once noted that there are two types of feminist. There are the “Annie Oakley feminists” who are accomplished, skilled, and strong and there are the “faculty lounge feminists” who have nothing better to do but to whine and complain about imagined slights. “#Shirtstorm” proves that there are not enough of the former and far too many of the latter.

What she actually said was:

For too long, when people heard the word “feminist,” they thought of the faculty lounge at some East Coast women’s college, right. And no offense to them: They have their opinions and their voice, and God bless them. That’s great. But that’s not the only voice of women in America.

I’d like to remind people of another feminist tradition — kind of a Western feminism…It’s influenced by the pioneering spirit of our foremothers who went in wagon trains across the wilderness and they settled in homesteads. And these were tough, independent pioneering mothers whose work was as valuable as any man’s on the frontier. And it’s no surprise that our Western states that gave women the vote, the right to vote, way before their East Coast sisters in a more genteel city, perhaps, got it right.

Faculty lounges are, when you get right down to it, ivory towers; and people in ivory towers tend not to be obsessed with uplifting people outside the ivory towers, making them equals. History offers some exceptions to that, but very few, and the tendency that emerges is that equal treatment is something that has to be seized, deliberately and stridently, by those who depend on getting it and aren’t getting it.

Faculty-loungers just aren’t in this crowd. They’re like “leaf blowers” of social change, moving the detritus from one location to another, and then back again. They get offended and butt-hurt, complain a bunch, get someone to apologize or delete something, and then go back and do it again. As we can see now, that’s about it.

The never-ending fight for equality. Which means we’re all equal, each and every one of us…the more equal, the better…

…it’s just that some of us should have the power to decide what words have & haven’t outlived their usefulness, and to cram those opinions down the throats of everybody else…and others of us shouldn’t decide any such thing. For equality!

“We just learned that TIME magazine apologized for including ‘feminist’ on their poll of words to ban. What a victory!”

Via American Digest.

And yes, for those of you wondering, you’re still not allowed to use that other word. Your betters have forbidden you from doing so, for your own good. For equality.

By way of Instapundit.

Yeah, I’m really not a fan of the whole “Get a load of how X dealt with Y, boy he really handed him his own butt cheeks on a plate” thing. To me, once you’re cheering on one side of a debate, you’re demonstrating there was a need to do that cheering for that side of the debate. Which is a tacit confession that maybe that side isn’t winning at all, so it’s kind of self-defeating.

But, it’s the verbiage of this thing. And the fact that it’s buried in a thread literally thousands of posts long. Must do what I must do — go out and grab it. Preserve it for posterity.

Brad, I apologize in advance that I’m about to use bad words on your page, but I simply don’t have the time, nor the patience to deal with this fucking troglodyte imbecile in an amicable fashion.

Instead I’m going to mock him, berate him, insult him and his fundamental philosophy, maybe call him some more names, rejoice in my giant majority, maybe add a few more insults, then go to bed, in my giant house in the mountains with my hot athletic wife. I won’t bother to wait for Forest’s response, because it will consist of some poorly thought out sound bytes regurgitated from Mother Jones and a series of links, and I’d rather suck start a 12 gauge than listen to one more fucking doofus tonight.

First off, why won’t anybody answer his question about the gender gap?

Well, Forest, that would be because it is a stupid fucking question.

You’re like that crazy hobo on the subway demanding everyone justify the moon ferrets. But moon ferrets aren’t real, so why waste a bunch of time explaining that to a stinky hobo. But I’ll try, because I’m a retired accountant, and when people like you try to use stats it is like watching a monkey humping a football. So amusing, but kind of sad.

If you mean the pay gap that exists between women, anybody with an ounce of statistical sense knows that it is insignificant when it comes to actual equivalent jobs with equivalent requirements. Once you factor in that women are statistically more likely to take time away from their careers for child rearing and factor that in, the pay difference is statistically insignificant. Unless you work in the Obama White House, because fuck you is why.

Men also tend to work more in dangerous or physically demanding jobs by choice, which also pay better. Nobody forces them to go into those fields. Men also get more STEM degrees and women get more LAS degrees. STEM pays better. Nobody is forcing these men to do math, but men and women are different. If you don’t understand why my accounting degree is more valuable that your gender studies degree, you don’t understand basic econ 101 and supply and demand. So yes, I would like fries with that.

If you mean the gender gap in voting between the parties, just about every psychological study ever conducted by somebody not huffing paint understands that women tend to make decisions more emotionally and men tend to make them more logically. I see you reaching for you Sexist Card, but I said tend. This is not always the case, it is simply a trend. If you don’t like it or find that sexist, you can fuck off and die. Men and women are different. Most of us happen to like that. Some men think more emotionally (like pajama boy metrosexual hipster douchebags for example), and some women think more logically (like hot republican warrior babes), but a trend is a trend.

Now, the DNC being a bunch of sleazy shitwads, do manage to have some people working there who are excellent at stats and marketing. I’m assuming they hire evil republican capitalists for these positions because they show some basic competence. Regardless, these clever people understand the whole emotional reaction thing, and when your platform is mostly bullshit, they aim their marketing at a bunch of heart string tugging, sob story, feel good but do nothing, nonsense that appeals to the big hearted and mushy headed voter. Why yes, I don’t want old people to starve and free health care for everyone! Yay!

As for what have conservatives done for women?

Built America.

Deal with it, motherfucker.

You are pathetic at debating. At some point in time you discovered that if you just post enough bullshit, non-stop, you will win by attrition because most people simply do not give a fuck enough to waste their time debating what is basically a fleshy spambot. You’re so bad at this that you even annoy the shit out of the people you might have convinced. If you had an iota of likability, you might have swayed somebody, but you’re so incredibly shitty at this that even the moderates would rather hang out with Harry Reid, and they’re pretty sure he’s a pedophile.

You do not realize that arguing on the internet is a spectator sport. Nobody ever sways the decided, you fool! The goal is to convince the undecided. And on that count, Amy the Sign Language Gorilla makes a better spokesman than you.

You are basically a Speak and Spell, and instead of when pulling the string you get “THE COW GOES MOO” you get “LINK TO HUFFPO” or “WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER MY QUESTION”. Only the Speak and Spell has a use. Children need to learn which animal says moo versus which one barks. You on the other hand, are completely fucking useless, and when it comes to entertainment, my money is on Fisher Price.

When you ask a question, and people answer it, a smart person would then use logic to pick that post apart for the edification of the onlookers and observers. But not you, you just pretend the question wasn’t answered, and keep asking it over and over again. That is the Damien Walter method of arguing, and usually occurs right before somebody with half a brain clubs you like a helpless baby seal.

Don’t feel bad. Compared to Damien, I’m letting you off easy.

I know these things. I’ve seen your kind, and know your methods, which is why rather than debate you, I simply insult you. Then everyone laughs at you. I’m amused. They are amused. We go about our fulfilling lives. You go home, yell at your five cats, then masturbate furiously into your shame pillow while watching episodes of Girls on HBO, before passing out in a puddle of Thunderbird.

Which is why I’m awesome, popular, and rich, and you are a loser with 2 followers. Because you suck, and everyone hates you.

So, at the end of the day, please continue with your link storms, and your tired, boring, hashed out Salon bullshit about the war on women. One of the reason the republicans now have 250 seats in congress is because morons like you have helped to annoy the living shit out of the average American to the point that if a man wearing a HOPE/CHANGE shirt was to step into the intersection in front of their car, they would literally mash the accelerator to the floor, just in the hopes that it was you.

Our many new republican senators thank you.

Now fuck off.

This does inspire a serious question about progressivism: If it is the way forward, and forward is where we are going, where we are destined to go, then how come we don’t just…go? Why is it that every few years the electorate figures out that it’s a cul de sac and we have no choice to retreat from it?

How come 1980? Why 1994? Why 2004, 2010, 2014?

The answer is in this, I think: “As for what have conservatives done for women? Built America. Deal with it, motherfucker.” Proggies haven’t built anything at all except occasional electoral victories, the Obama administration is proof of that. After getting elected, they are builders of what exactly? ObamaCare. Which they & their supporters are going to insist has been a success…there really isn’t anything more that needs to be said after that.

The details for those who really care about STEM…

We landed on a comet!

Well, we, being the European Space Agency, landed a small probe on comet 67P/Churyumox-Gerasimenko, seen on the right.

Wednesday, Nov. 12, was a history-making day for humans in space, and the culmination of a 10-year project that has already taught us much about our solar system.

Ten years ago, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft to intercept a comet named 67P/Churyumox-Gerasimenko. For the last decade it has approached, orbited, smelled, and studied the comet, taking thousands of mind-blowing images along the way.

During all this time it’s been carrying some very precious cargo.

On Nov. 12, Rosetta deployed that cargo — the Philae lander — on humanity’s mission to make physical contact with a comet for the first time ever.

The lander was scheduled to touch down on the comet at 10:35 am EST on Wednesday, Nov. 12. The landing was successful.

While we couldn’t see Philae land from Earth, live broadcasts of the control room were provided by ESA, NASA, and Slooh.

It took Philae 7 hours to descend to the comet’s surface — one of the most difficult maneuvers we’ve ever tried in space. For the scientists at the ESA and NASA — it was 7 hours of terror.

Philae’s 7-hour descent started at 9:03 GMT (4:03 am EST) until the end, when Philae landed, at around 16:00 GMT. These events actually took place about 27 minutes before we heard about them on Earth because comet 67P/Churyumox-Gerasimenko is roughly 300 million miles from us. ESA and Slooh have live broadcasts at different points during the event.

And for those who want to chase after silly side-issues — those who can, do, those who can’t, preen — there is a #shirtstorm about scientist Matt Taylor’s shirt. Yes that is a real hashtag, #shirtstorm. I was going to hold off on mentioning it until I could figure out who these women were on the shirt. I’ve given up on that for now.

Where can I get one like it?

All of humanity made history today by landing a spacecraft on a comet.

Unfortunately, many of the women following that development — and a few men, too — were made to feel pretty unwelcome in the space exploration sphere when one of the people leading the mission decided to show up to talk about it wearing a shirt covered in dozens of half-naked women.

Let me rephrase previous tweet: Sent a probe to a comet, millions are watching. Only a douchbag would wear this shirt pic.twitter.com/ObYBqTopgY
— Henry Legg (@PhysicsHenry) November 12, 2014

After Rosetta Project Scientist Matt Taylor wore the shirt while talking to reporters during a global livestream of the comet landing, people watching took to Twitter in frustration…
:
Interestingly, Taylor recently participated in a live online chat with the Wall Street Journal in which he was asked how he gained acceptance in such a respected field while sporting sleeve-length tattoos.

He responded, “The people I work with don’t judge me by my looks but only by the work I have done and can do. Simple.”

If only women could hope to someday be judged that way too.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of…if only Matt Taylor responded to the shirt-questions the way he responded to the tattoo question. It is, after all, a good response.

But when finally confronted on the #shirtstorm, he went exactly the other way. Even broke down crying. What a shame.

As Jon Gabriel puts it,

Mr. Taylor then made the bad situation worse. Instead of telling these progressive puritans to go pound silicon dioxide, he issued a sobbing public confession straight out of a Maoist show trial. This guy just dropped a dishwasher on an ice cube 300 million miles from home and he’s groveling to a coven of D-list bloggers?

Well, I’m not going to lower the beatdown on the guy for responding in a way that isn’t to my agenda-driven liking. That would be lowering myself to the level of the people beating up on him. Let them do that.

But at the same time: Getting in a good cry on television is about as bad a way to handle it as can possibly be imagined. The tattoo-answer was really the right one. People need to be asking, what can this guy do? He just landed a spacecraft on a freakin’ comet. That is where the attention should be directed, and if someone wants to direct it somewhere else then that says more about them than it does about the shirt.

In fact, an even better response would be something like: “Go land a spacecraft on a comet then come back to talk to me about my shirt.” That has the advantage of brevity. It has the disadvantage of providing some support for those who call the guy a douchebag…so…maybe not.

But it seems a lot of people are missing out on the point here. We have been culturally bludgeoned into thinking of this as: This guy just accomplished something amazing, but, he doesn’t have political correctness on his mind. The reality is: This guy just accomplished something amazing. He isn’t thinking about political correctness. That’s what it takes. Political correctness is for losers, that’s the lesson. It’s for people who find achievement just too boring, and want all the attention and adulation that comes with it without doing any of the work. It’s for people who just want to criticize, who see criticism as being on par with advancing mankind. It’s for people with deep issues. Who aren’t to be trusted with anything.

The best response of all, that really cuts to the heart of the matter, would not enjoy the advantage of brevity. It would explore the hypothetical of a female scientist wearing a shirt emblazoned with the images of half-naked men, and how controversial would we find that to be? Answer: Not at all. And why is there so much concern about wearing shirts that would welcome more women into STEM fields rather than driving them away? Because there’s a lot of history with men doing all the inventions and discoveries. Feminism has made it clear why we are supposed to think that is: Something to do with something unfair. Discrimination, old-boy’s-club, societal expectations, the burden of child rearing and housekeeping, etc.

But you know — maybe it’s because when you’re a man, seeking to distinguish yourself in a positive way and prove your worth, you don’t have the option open to you to throw a big hissy fit over someone’s else’s messaging or iconography. Oh sure there are chestless males who call themselves “feminists” and are joining the chorus to try and make something out of this. But, that doesn’t disturb the pattern, it rather reinforces it. They’re seeking to fit in, which isn’t the same as distinguishing themselves, it’s more like an opposite. There may be a phobia against actually doing something significant and influential, that’s behind all this. So there is a difference there. The men have been discovering and accomplishing, for centuries upon centuries, as this has been the only way they could distinguish themselves. They’ve been burdened with great expectations, as women have not been; and they’ve been unacquainted with these distractions. A female co-worker has a calendar in her work cubicle full of firemen and construction workers — who the hell cares? You get back to work. The women have been, and still are, burdened with the distractions, rather than with the expectations.

So my point is, the intended beneficiaries are not being helped. Think about the real epicenter of this latest little tempest: What is the subject of the complaint? It is the unguarded behavior of some rare specimen lately, someone who actually accomplished something, something that’s historically significant. Turns out, in these unguarded moments he doesn’t think about political correctness. At all. Well now…I guess we’re supposed to wait for someone to come along who can do something similar to that, but is more appropriately obsessed with the new protocols? How long of a wait is that? Maybe such a person will never come along; maybe it isn’t possible. And now you know the real reason why there’s a #shirtstorm: The purveyors of political correctness can’t afford for the lesson to get out, that people who actually accomplish things don’t think about political correctness.

A man proves his worth as a man by getting some stuff done. That is not to say there aren’t women who follow the same route. But they’re not the ones bitching about shirts.

Like I said. Those who can, do, and those who can’t, preen. About other people not being as good as they are. But they’re not the ones who land spacecrafts on comets.

And I think they know that, and that’s the real reason why they’re all bent out of shape about nothing.

Don’t bring it up around them. Or they’ll scold you. They haven’t got anything else going for them.

Related: Feminists have no place to complain about comet scientist’s shirt.

Also: Answering the question in the title of this post, you can go here. That particular item is no longer available, but there are others to be had. Thanks to “Matt” for the tip, in an off-line.

Geez, where’s the time go?

For those of you who are into stats, we’re looking at somewhere over a million hits, anything out of Sitemeter is inaccurate lately and unreliable anyway now. But it says 1,584,somethingsomethingsomething page views.

Number of posts is 7,842, number of comments is 24,718. WordPress dashboard is reporting 5,469 of the user accounts, which looks to me more like a housecleaning chore than any expression of genuine audience interest.

But anyway, The Blog That Nobody Reads is still here. Cheers!

Megyn Kelly discusses the ObamaCare architect who refused to appear on her show.

It seems the video doesn’t have embed code, maybe there’s a puzzle there I could solve if I had the extra few minutes right now which I don’t. So I just went & grabbed this one over here.

So if you’re one of these crazy, extremist, right-wing, whack-job, pot-bellied, gun-cleaning, beer-drinking middle-age straight white male bloggers who’s been telling anyone who’ll listen what a sham this whole thing was…congratulations. We were right all along.

This might be my favorite out of all the “vet appreciation” graphics…

…says all that needs to be said.