Archive for the ‘My Blogger Friends’ Category

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XLII

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Nice Lookin' LadyOur dear blogger friend Irish Cicero has made a list of bloggers that “humble” him. It must have been through a clerical error of some kind, but we made the cut. Actually we’re in the Number One slot.

There are twenty-three blogs in that list, most of which, in our humble opinion make us look like dog barf. Not that this takes much. We’re just a guy. A guy who brings absolutely nothing to the table at all, other than a mediocre writing ability and a determination to think like a grown-up. You know…I see this thing, this thing must mean that thing, and because I infer that thing, I’m going to do this other thing and not some other stupid thing.

It used to be a requirement for survival. Now it’s a lost art.

This is enough to put us at the top of such a list? As we pointed out there, we hope not; we hope the ordering was random.

Cicero, we’re thinking of you tonight as we drain off the current box o’ suds. Here’s mud in yer eye pal. And thanks for the undeserved attention.

Buy Some Extra Rounds

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

We think of them as friends, and we have high confidence that we are right in doing so. Their happiness is ours. Join us in lifting a tall cold one for them.

I Think Therefore I Err has a fifth blogoversary. Congratulations, and we look forward to five more from you.

Buck Jr. is stateside. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And welcome home.

Cassy’s own hero is making an honest woman outta her. So tack another one onto the list of reasons why he’s a better man than I am. In response to the question that was specifically asked, my answer is that a real woman drops the maiden name. But on that front, Cassy has nothing left to prove. You two are both lucky and doing alright.

Enough talking. Hoist ’em!

Gerard Picks on Charles Johnson — Again

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

He’s a man on a mission. “Must drive stake into heart. Dismember body. Expose to sunlight. Stir ashes into dung. Shoot resulting mixture into the sun. Must. Must.” What inspires him to tread so close to the precipice, beyond which one becomes precisely what one seeks to defeat?

Bullshit like this…

Follow the link. You know you want to see the Pink Hitler.

Me, I’m one of the supporters of this effort. Like I said, “if this is an unhealthy addiction…I’m a willing enabler and want to be one.”

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXXIX

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

…but The Blog That Nobody Reads got a prominent mention last week, in Webloggin’s farewell post.

Webloggin was the byproduct of an earlier blog called Threshold-55. Three years, a bit of burnout followed by a 6 month layoff and then this beautiful site. We had many blogging members come and go. The Machete of Truth whom I miss dearly, Big Dog, Teri O’Brien, House of Eratosthenes, Republic of Biloxi, Jodi 210, The Otto Show (now a group blog called The Inside Straight), The Right Wing Cafe, Right Girl (aka Girl on the Right), Faultline USA, Bookworm Room, Right Truth, Okie on the Lam, Soccer Dad, The Absurd Report and The Intolerant Fox.

I can’t even begin to thank each of these blogs and their respective owners for contributing the finest conservative commentary I have ever read. You have been an inspiration!
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Please don’t think that the left has won one here. In fact quite the opposite is true. Webloggin is redundant in nature and it has simply outlived it’s usefulness. I am the acting Watcher at Watcher of Weasels and this has become my central focus in the blogging world outside of Newsbusters. Many of the Webloggin members also blog over at WoW so I urge you readers to follow us there.

As of this week I will begin redirecting readers to Watcher of Weasels and hope you pass on the word. You have all been kind to me and the other Webloggin members and you have my utmost gratitude.

Happy trails, Trip. Thanks for hosting us during those three years before we moved onto our own domain here…and see you at the WoW.

Also, as some of you know, yesterday we managed to snag a HotLaunch, meaning we somehow earned a prominent mention at HotAir and it sent our SiteMeter stats spinning all wonky. We’ve already seen I dunno how many new accounts set up for commenting, so we’ll probably get some new friends out of this. That’s always a good thing. Take off your coats and stay awhile, ladies and gents. Besides, it’s cold and wet out there tonight, and you weren’t thinking of getting back on that highway anyhow.

What brought ’em in? Our post yesterday about a NewsBusters article — drawing our attention to a couple of wrinkly old hippy ladies who were acting like sixteen-year-olds…fulfilling most, if not all, of the things I’ve been noticing about the Palin bashers for awhile. In the space of a few minutes, they managed to hit all the high points. At least ten, maybe more, out of the 25.

There are many these bitter people running around. Most of them have rights and responsibilities on par with those of normal people…and while they’re acting all concerned that “we live in a country where [Palin’s accomplishments are] possible,” it seems to escape their notice that a lot of other people are pretty concerned, legitimately, about them. The ignorance they represent, and the hate. It doesn’t even have that much to do with politics, or liberalism, or Barack Obama. We’ve already managed to find out a few things about what’s taking place here, but it’s still something that requires further inspection. There’s something there that has gone undetected for awhile. Something living underground, predatory, slithering, toxic.

We won’t root it out. People have a right to be prejudiced. But we’ll probably learn a lot of helpful things about it over the next couple of years.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXXVIII

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

A few days ago I got in trouble with a whole lot of my male readers on the subject of chicks. And so I’m glad, today, to see my point of view defended by…a chick. And not just any chick, but Blogsister Daphne.

We all know when a good-looking woman crosses our path, our eyes turn, we can’t help ourselves. Humans enjoy physical beauty. Classically beautiful women have two things in common; a shapely figure and attractive faces. It has always been so. Playboy didn’t define beauty, it merely showcased the finer lights of my sex in a more blatantly prurient vein.

Big bottomed girls, fair redheads sprinkled with freckles, golden brown brunettes, lean boyish frames, overflowing busts and tawny eyed blondes all find admirers in the wide arena of men. Taste is subjective, sexual heat is particular. Acknowledging the platinum standard of female beauty doesn’t denigrate or negate women who failed to benefit from a great combination of DNA nor does it demean the men who fall in love or deep passion with a woman who swims in circles well outside that ancient ideal.

I still maintain my own careless editing motivated many to take my words out of context. Many among my critics were offering the critique that man-to-man-to-man, the ideal of beauty will naturally change. I agree with this, and it seems Daphne does too.

But I’ll certainly go along with the idea that there is a predilection. And that it is frequently misrepresented and mis-perceived. Rare is the man who’d prefer the physique of Keira Knightly, contrasted against Marilyn Monroe. My point was that Vox Populi was perfectly on-target: If you spend your lifetime preferring a certain look, it is highly unlikely some “Rules”-reading bimbo will come along sporting a completely different look, and cause you to stop in your tracks and go “Whoa!” You’ll probably end up marrying someone within your ideal of beauty.

Daphne’s point is well taken too, though. There is taste; there is the magnetism. One is subjective, the other is far less so.

Morgan’s Purse-Dog

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Webutante was wondering over at Gerard’s place what we look like, so we went looking through our own pages for something old in which our Buddha-sized gut didn’t show. We finally settled on this one which is slightly modified…

I did that one a very long time ago, and if I recall correctly I zoomed way in and sucked in the stomach by about three or four pixels. Digital liposuction; wouldn’t help nowadays. Everything else is genuine though. If memory serves.

Gerard wasn’t satisfied though, and thought it might be realistic to add something back in.

Mmm, yeah. Don’t think that’s gonna happen.

Barack Hussein Bush

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Barack Hussein BushMan, I’ll bet the anti-war zealots are really pissed.

I’m talking about Barry’s Nobel speech. Blogger friend Buck sent me an offline, curious about my thoughts, noting that Sarah Palin liked it more-or-less just fine. (We are, newcomers can tell from the artwork, decidedly in her camp; our New Mexico friend sees something wrong with the safety net, and at this late hour is opting to remain in the burning building.) “Caribou Barbie” includes, it should be noted, a caveat in her positive remarks:

But while blowing a kiss, Palin also took a jab, suggesting Obama study the actions of his predecessor as he navigates two wars abroad. “By the way, I’d like to see President Obama follow more closely in the footsteps of George Bush and his passion for keeping the homeland safe,” she said.

So naturally Buck wanted to know my reaction. Well, I played a round of Obama Speech Bingo with it last night. I didn’t count the word “my” as a “me,” and mostly because of this, by the time I made it to the end we were seven squares away from a total blackout. Pretty good speech. Bingo here, bingo there, bingo everywhere…

And by the time we were done — as is subtly indicated by iOwnTheWorld (hat tip to American Digest), as well as by Tundra Princess, it reads an awful lot like something the Crawford Village Idiot would say. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

I wonder how this happens?

Well as a general rule, when a committed politician starts talking common sense it’s only because he’s been backed into a corner and is left with no other alternative. Michael Moore didn’t like Obama’s decision on Afghanistan…that logic used by the filmmaker is the logic used by an eight-year-old, wanting to get something and not getting it…”It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around.” Bit it signals big trouble for the O-man. A quote attributed apocryphally to LBJ is “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” If Obama’s losing Moore, He’s losing all the tie-dyed anti-war Haight-Ashbury crackpots.

Why is He backed into a corner? Because He’s got a real job now, one that demands real decisions. The unicorns will have to leave the Oval Office now, and head on out to the marshmallow sparkly pastures where they belong so real-world decisions can be made.

For those who don’t understand what I’m talking about, the President’s speech provides most of what’s missing. Palin, once again, is right: It truly is a good speech — if He means what He says.

More trouble for Sort-of-God: Blogger friend Rick brings us a report that more people than ever would prefer to go back and undo the 2008 revolution:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections. Using the Bush card may not be particularly effective for Democrats anymore…

BarracudaWhich means the whole “Obama will take us in the right direction again” was never anything more than a brain fart…a “I’m just tired of real-world decision-making”…an “I wanna vacation.” And since we live in a three-dimensional universe of cause-and-effect, the appeal of the dalliance has come-n-gone. Time to wake up. Time to do some real-world living.

Except in the meantime, during our slumber we seem to have sworn the sandman into our nation’s highest office. Oopsie.

Real life continues to play out like the finest Palin-in-2012 commercial money could possibly buy. The contest, still three years off, is being set up rather neatly and I think this is a healthy thing. Workhorses versus unicorns. Understanding and stating what needs to be done, versus dissembling and equivocating. A woman with all the right enemies versus a guy with all the wrong friends. Wife and mother, versus false prophet. A governor who left ’em wanting more, versus a President who’s gonna hang around three more years like a bad smell whether we want Him or not. “You betcha” versus “uh, uh, um, er, uh.”

Even Buck is seeing some redeeming qualities in the Barracuda:

Comment of the Day…
… over at Lex’s place, on the subject of Miss Alaska, her recent editorial in the WaPo, and Leftie reax to same:

OldT6Flyer
December 9th, 2009 at 3:19 pm · Reply

The best thing about Sarah Palin is the every time she speaks the reaction from the left is so over the top that any rational person has to say: “What could possibly be that interesting?” and proceeds to tune into the Sarah Palin channel which, even if she’s not totally your cup of tea, comes across as a reasonable sort, especially in comparison to her tormentors, who are found writhing in the corner, foaming at the mouth, and generally making asses of themselves. As a bonus the so called “women’s movement” groups get exposed as, not all that interested in promoting women at all seeing how their silence at the obvious attacks on a leading WOMAN go strangely unanswered.

So no matter what you might think of Sarah Palin you’ve just got to love the apoplexy she causes on the left. If she didn’t exist somebody would need to invent her for the cause.

Yup. What Ol’ T-6 Flyer said. It’s well-known in certain circles that I’m a Palin skeptic even though I haven’t posted a whole helluva lot on the subject here in the home space. Which is by way of saying I’ve engaged a lot on the subject of La Palin in comments on other folks’ blogs. I’ve yet to drink the Arctic Princess’ Kool-Aid and I truly believe it’s way too damned early to be talking about 2012 presidential candidates. But… two things: (a) I simply LOVE the way she makes the Lefties go completely bonkers and (b) I totally enjoy crossing swords with zealots of any persuasion. And who knows? I might jump on the Palin bandwagon if she keeps on making sense and causing coronaries on the Left. Especially the latter.

What’s it all mean? Nothing more or less than what I’ve been saying for years.

People — call this liberalism, or call it something else — live in “Candyland,” where no tough decisions are ever necessary, when they feel like they can afford to live there. When all their food is slaughtered or grown and harvested and cleaned and sanitized and inspected and shrink-wrapped and delivered to their doorsteps.

Someone still has to grow that food. Which means truck in some fertilizer, the necessity of which might not be appreciated by those who merely consume the food. Shoot some predators, poison some predators, round up the predator-bodies, plow, irrigate, clean and maintain the farming equipment, clean and maintain the equipment that cleans & maintains the farming equipment…

Just because our daily wants and needs are met without too much fuss & bother from us, doesn’t mean we live in a snow globe. Things have to get done in order to make our lofty, comfortable existence possible. It doesn’t matter one bit whether we understand this necessity or not.

Twits like Michael Moore are like images in paintings, passing judgment on the brush strokes being used to bring them into “existence.” It’s all fine and good that he’s got opinions about stuff. But your mere dependence on these things is not a qualification for you to speak about the necessity of doing them, or lack of necessity. It’s something of a disqualification, if anything. If your existence depends on things getting done, and you yourself can’t see past these links-in-the-chain so you understand how these things are important, it means you’re spoiled and you can’t be relied-on to take inventory of all the staples required for your day-to-day being.

Image Credit: Mike Ely.

“Is Morgan Freeberg Slipping?”

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Some folks stopping by to read The Blog That Nobody Reads, might be toying with starting one of their own, and are now engaged in that frenzied gathering of bits of evidence of the benefits & liabilities of doing so.

If in doubt, I think you should proceed…but if you are feeling queasy about the liabilities and feeling less than confident about your comprehension of what they are, I suppose you could take note of things like this —

And as much of a tragedy as I think it might be when someone decides to bite down on a thought that (agree or disagree) is well-thought-out and worthy of being expressed, I would have to agree: If you’re not prepared for the experience of seeing your name up in lights like that, you probably shouldn’t get started.

Smitty’s gripes — make what sense out of them as you can — are linked behind the pic. And I must ‘fess up: I’ll be needing to hear from you about it, if you can spare a moment or two. I’m not sure I see what the beef is…

Sitting on a couch in your undies typing shit about stuff through the innerw Blogging. It ain’t for the timid.

What We Need, is All Obama, All the Time

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

I don’t know where Van der Leun gets this artwork, I really don’t. Wish I did. I’d like to have a large tee shirt made of the above. No caption, no comment. Just let the viewers make of it what they will.

Our blogger friend is having some fun resorting to sarcasm (I think), having determined it is the only method available to deal with a certain mindset, said mindset currently writing under the name of Phil Plait. If Gerard is not being sarcastic, perhaps then he could explain the mindset to me because I’m completely freaking lost as I try to follow it.

It goes like this: The one thing we need, is to hear what President Obama has to say.

Seems perfectly reasonable, until you stop to ponder the fundamentals upon which it rests, namely:

The one thing we’re missing, is that we have not yet availed ourselves of an opportunity to hear what Obama has to say.

Which means…

After an unprecedented two-year-long presidential campaign, during which an unprecedented 700 million dollars was spent getting messages to us about what Barack Obama thought about things, after the assemblage of the winningest campaign team in all of United States electoral history, and with an equally unprecedented accumulation of “tech-savvy” computer talent and a boss-man just so loaded with charisma that birds sing and unicorns hump when He walks by, two autobiographies from a guy who hadn’t really done much of anything when He wrote them, “hardball” moderators getting tingles up their legs when He speaks, and then after He’s elected, about the only thing He’s managed to do in eight months besides spend record-setting amounts of borrowed money is to give speech after speech after speech after speech after speech — it’s almost like He doesn’t know how to do anything else, ya know? — you know why we still suck so much? The number one reason? The one thing that, if fixed, would set everything all straight? The one thing that would defeat the Sith and bring balance to The Force?

We gotta give Barry a fair hearing. He hasn’t had one just yet.

If you think I had fun jotting that one down (I did, actually, thanks for asking), wait’ll you see Gerard’s turn at bat. At the sarcasm-bat. I think. That’s a sign that a master is at work ever there was one — I honestly can’t tell.

Phil, I imagine, would still say that the sanctity of the Presidency trumps all unless your first name begins with a G.

But even if that is not the case, I think those that oppose the president speaking to the children have gotten it all wrong. (Yes, I have changed my position on this.) Upon reflecting on Phil’s position and others here as well, I have changed my mind.

I have come to realize that what is deeply wrong with this country is that so far we have not heard and seen enough of President Obama.

I now think we need to see more. Much more. We need to have a morning message from the President every day on all cable news channel. Indeed, we need to have it broadcast on all TV channels, especially ESPN and other places where citizens dodge their need to know the truth. We need to see his message in the lead in to Good Morning America and Fox and Friends both without fear or favoritism.

Weather Channel too.

We need to have Barack Obama’s message, whatever it might be on whatever day, delivered to all of us on the front page of whatever newspaper we are still reading.

We need to have it as the lead-in to NPR’s Morning Edition. We need to have his message replace the bumper music at the top of Rush Limbaugh’s show.

In short, we cannot have enough of listening to the President tell us what he’s thinking and what the right way to think about what he’s thinking is.

We need to hear his words and see his face every day. Every single day.

I am in ernest about this. I will even pay higher taxes to make this so. We need, in the most urgent and important way, to see and him him All. The. Time.

I hope the address to Congress and a grateful nation is only the beginning of this program of all Obama all the time.

Here’s a non-partisan wish I think we can all support…or we all should be able to support it. Can’t wait to drop it into a conversation in which nobody knows what my politics are.

I hope your chosen deities see fit to endow President Obama with the wisdom to enact some policies that work so amazingly well, it doesn’t matter how much exposure He gets.

Because watching that Adams-apple bob up and down in a liberals’ throat while his face turns red, is fun.

One thing that might be less fun — especially if you live at 1600 Pennsylvania and your initials are B.O. — would be to read Victor Davis Hanson’s ideas on the dilemma. The dilemma defined above. How come it is, that having had a greater opportunity to get His word-in-edgewise than arguably any homo sapiens that has ever walked the ground, ever, living or dead, within recorded history or before…Barry still requires another shot at it? How come the godlike Svengali who has so much to teach all the rest of us about communication skills and getting messages across, just can’t seem to get ‘er done when it counts?

When Obama said he would be fiscally prudent, we got near $2 trillion deficits. When he said the debt would grow to $7 trillion over his tenure, you should nearly double that estimate. When he said Bush shredded the Constitution, he adopted most of the Bush plan from rendition to tribunals. When he said that he wished to move on, we got investigations of the CIA and the previous administration. When he said we’d have all combat brigades out by March 2008, we knew we could not. When he said anything about health care — it would save money, would not alter private plans, would not go to illegal aliens, etc — we already assumed all that was mendacious. When he says anything, we know now that it is either not true or will not be true or at best will only be partially true.

Character matters?? Oh no! Sounds like something boring your parents might’ve said!

Well, hopefully Hanson is wrong. Hopefully Mister Wonderful doesn’t have to start telling the truth…and He is just one speech away from achieving this message-communicating excellence which is supposed to come so naturally to Him, with His gifts and talent and all. And then, once we get our heads pulled out of our butts and finally absorb what Mister-Amazing-Communicator-Guy has been trying to tell us for three years now…life…will be amazing…and wonderful…

Any day now.

Or, VDH might have a point. Respect, genuine respect, the kind of respect that comes from trust — means something. It means something now, because it always did. Quantity is powerless to make up for quality. Oh dear, what a scary thought.

Speaking of Centrists…

Monday, September 7th, 2009

…that being a reference to the previous post

…our friend down in New Mexico who frequently takes issue with us about our extremist positions, versus his middle-of-the-road ones. He had an opportunity to expound at length on how he thinks people should spend Labor Day. He had, count ’em, one-two-three perfectly decent opportunities to disagree with us about things.

And he ended up three-for-three. We, with our extremist viewpoints, could have authored every single word he wrote. Especially these:

I will resist the temptation to turn this post into an anti-union screed, and said temptation is strong indeed, Gentle Reader. But let me just say this about that… I’m of the opinion that labor unions are the root of all most evil in our post-industrial society. I’ll grant you labor unions have a glorious history and were responsible for righting numerous wrongs in the early 20th century. But like the buggy whip, their time has passed. What we get from our unions today are things like “card check” —a decidedly UN-American renunciation of free elections in the workplace— and outright political intimidation. I’m not seeing much good in that… and neither are most other Americans, as Ed Morrissey notes in this Hot Air post. But let us not digress further; I’m sure you get my point.

I have redacted much there, because our friend down south places much in the clamshells () and as I’ve said before, I consider parenthetical material to be entirely expendable. But within the clamshells and outside of ’em, there is much linky goodness peppered throughout Buck’s Labor Day post, and it’s all well worth reading. Go read it all, every single word. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Nevertheless, this “centrist” thing brings up a concern that weighs somewhat heavily on my mind whenever our so-called “moderate” acquaintance takes issue with our “extremist” ramblings. We are, in recent years, strangely unified on our definitions…extremist…moderate…fringe-kook…centrist. There is very little disagreement lately on what opinion falls into what category. And this unification does not work along lines of common sense. This, in my mind, is a bad thing. It is almost a public mental health issue. Something just shy of a crisis.

I don’t like the way “centrist” is defined lately.

Let us say we do something that common sense, as well as history itself, counsels as being reprehensibly unwise. Passing gas into a campfire — after painting one’s hind end with gasoline. Kidnapping baby bear cubs in line-of-sight of their mothers. Telling Hells’ Angels riders something like “Hey, are you faggots going to move your fucking bikes so I can park here?” Flesh out that list of mine in whatever manner most effectively entertains you…

…it seems to me that lately, what defines a “centrist” is the following: We’ve done this stupid thing, whatever it is, ten times. It’s put us in the emergency ward ten times. Let’s go for an eleventh, just for the hell of it!

The guy who says “Let’s not, and say we did” is characterized as the extremist.

Am I right or am I right? We’re tinkering around with the idea of passing nationalized health care — which hasn’t been written into a unified body of legislation yet, let alone passed through committee. Every time some “conservative firebrand” comes up with a word of caution for us…think of Sarah Palin’s “death panels”…we are cautioned that this is a “falsehood,” that it is “bearing false witness,” that it is an “urban legend.” And that she is an “extremist.” But primarily, that the stuff she’s saying is not true.

Of course it isn’t! The legislation hasn’t been written yet. But if you want to go by the history of other countries that have this kind of health care plan in place, what she said is absolutely one hundred percent true. Death panels, death courts, death quorums, death committees, call ’em what you will. It’s bureaucrats deciding who’s gonna live and who’s gonna die…and “death panel” is just as good a name as any.

My point is not that what Palin said, in the final analysis, is true. Although it is.

My point is that her comments have been characterized as extremist in nature, and those who contradict her have been characterized as moderates. In a sane universe, it would be the other way around. The evidence is overwhelmingly on her side. I say again: overwhelmingly. Start, if it suits your druthers, with all the countries that have instituted nationalized health care plans, similar or identical to the one we are now considering — who are now rejecting those plans, or in some other way regretting them. They have bureaucrats sitting down to decide who does & doesn’t “deserve” coverage…empowered with decision-making over life-and-death…just like Palin said.

Palin one, Obama zip.

And that leads into this other article of “must-not-miss” stuff straight from the archives of that extremist Libertarian crackpot Neal Boortz: Four Problems That Could Sink America. Briefly summarized here:

1. We don’t like to work. Sure, now that jobs are scarce, everybody’s willing to put in a few extra hours to stay ahead of the ax. But look around: We still expect easy money, hope to retire early, and embrace the oversimplistic message of bestsellers like The One Minute Millionaire and The 4-Hour Workweek. Unfortunately, the rest of the world isn’t sending as much money our way as it used to, which makes it harder to do less with more.
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2. Nobody wants to sacrifice. Why should we? The government is standing by with stimulus money, banker bailouts, homeowner aid, cash for clunkers, expanded healthcare, and maybe more stimulus money. And most Americans will never have to pay an extra dime for any of this. Somehow, $9 trillion worth of government debt will just become somebody else’s problem.

3. We’re uninformed.
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People who lack the sense to question Big Lies always end up in deep trouble. Being well informed takes work, even with the Internet. In a democracy, that’s simply a civic burden. If we’re too foolish or lazy to educate ourselves on healthcare, global warming, financial reform, and other complicated issues, then we’re signing ourselves over to special interests who see nothing wrong with plundering our national–and personal–wealth.
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4. iCulture. We may be chastened by the recession, but Americans still believe they deserve the best of everything–the best job, the best healthcare, the best education for our kids. And we want it at a discount–or better yet, free–which brings us back to the usual disconnect between what we want and what we’re willing to pay for.

Do you see a common thread amongst those four? I do. I call it the “ant and grasshopper milkshake.”

People who are willing to endure the dilemma of delayed gratification, for a late reward, are intermingled in their personal fortunes and prospects with lazier people who just want to fuck around. The result: The standard of living for hard-working people who choose to educate themselves and then act on that education, is deprecated; the standard of living for jag-offs, conversely, is artificially enhanced.

To stand in opposition to this, is not extreme. To lend your voice in support of it, is not moderate.

Our friend in New Mexico does not suffer from a lack of brains, or balls, or judgment. He simply misunderstands the debate — some of the time. And he doesn’t even misunderstand the debate quite so much; he misunderstands the enemy.

His values on the other hand, are right where they should be. And his idea is an awesome one — I know this to be true, because it’s an idea we’ve had here many a time. People need to pull their heads out of their asses with regard to old-fashioned honest hard work, and listen to what Mike Rowe has to say. For whatever other disagreements he & I may have, we are abso-freakin-lutely on the same page there. I swear, if people gave up watching American Idol, and spend just five minutes out of that time out of every hour that was spent previously, watching Dirty Jobs — a lot of this nation’s problems would disappear overnight.

Stopping the “Pledge” Echo

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Blogger friend Buck has just caught wind of the “I Pledge” video, and he’s not too fond of the smell.

Well, the video itself is just the leafy part of the weed. The root of it has to do with this absurd notion that, under the right set of rules and under some Really Swell Guys elected and appointed as our leaders, we suddenly become a better people. Our friend in New Mexico didn’t ask for any advice here, but I think I’ve got an idea or two about how to stop an echo when you run into this…this…let’s call it “used food.”

First, forget the damn video. Remember, leafy part of weed, root part of weed. You’re much more likely to run into other manifestations of this errant mindset. Maybe not quite so much now as you were last winter, but here and there you can still encounter the starry-eyed Obama fan. Even as they recover from their stupor they can still be heard to utter a few words of nonsense about “being led” by someone who will “inspire us to do better.”

Here is how you stop that echo.

Agree. Agree with every single word. After all, all they’re saying is that people should try to be the best they can be; you’re only disagreeing about the gimmick used. So let them drone on about all the things they can do, kind of nudge them away from the “trim down my carbon footprint,” and toward things that make sense like “be a better parent,” “write to my teevee network to put on more wholesome and educational shows when kids get home from school,” et al.

And then you lay the smack down.

Just get that number-eleven between your eyebrows, frown just ever so slightly, as if you’re thinking really hard about something; if you have a beard, maybe run your fingers through it ever so thoughtfully. And then interject that bit of wisdom “Hey, you know, these things are so wonderful we can probably put some thought into doing them no matter who happens to be President, right?”

It’s just freakin’ glorious. Fun to do, and fun to watch.

As an added benefit, if they choose to find a way to argue with you on this point — they’ll fail on all counts. They won’t find a way to do it, and they’ll give away the fact that they’re trying to. Which, in turn, tells you something very useful about the real motivations of your “opponent”…whether he really does want to do good things, or whether he has something else in mind. And that’s always a good thing to know early on.

For Now, We Dance

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

And we didn’t get here by saying “Oh, we’re willing to compromise and be moderate…that proves we’re reasonable…” We got here by the opposition being unreasonable. And with everyone realizing that on their own.

A certain faithful reader needed to see that. Now then. On with the dancing.

What the F*ck is Going On in Portales, NM?

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Things seem to be going alright for our friend overall, no bitching or moaning about bad teeth, just some engaging and aesthetically pleasing photography, edifying thoughts on our Air Force, et cetera. We were relieved to see him benefit from such a widespread and obviously heartfelt defense over at Daphne’s place, he’s certainly deserving of one.

We agree much more often than we disagree. We’re in two different generations, but our story is the same: Sick and tired of seeing more and more wreckage accumulate from yet more bad liberal ideas. We have much in common personally. We’re both geeks, with lengthy careers and semi-interesting stories to tell about them…somewhat…both “lucking out” with some combination of luck and hard work, into jobs somewhat at odds with high-school-grad status. Funny/sad stories to tell on the love-life front. The younger of us is still coping with the metropolitan-super-sanitized-bullshit each and every day, albeit having managed to ensconce himself in the partial security blanket that is Folsom; the older one is in the enviable position of having extricated himself from it altogether. I’ve often thought if something should happen to my Lady Love, God forbid, Buck might be something of a real-life sketching of myself in the later years, a sort of “Time Travel Morgan.”

This comment, though, was a little bit of a head-scratcher:

I tend to think of you (and your rhetoric) as sort of a scorched-earth pessimist, Morgan. If you throw out the outliers on either side of the bell-curve… and by that I mean the Jane Hamshers and the Morgan Freebergs (in the blogosphere)… the great majority of us are indeed sick and tired of all the goddamned “Your’re eeevil!” statements, followed by the inevitable “You’re stoopid!” retorts. Our politics today look more like an elementary school playground than reasoned discourse between adults.

There HAS to be a better way, or the republic is doomed.

Well, I agree entirely with the elementary school playground remark. On me being a scorched-earth pessimist, that’s probably a misunderstanding but a forgivable one; once the “typical” discourse about this-or-that turns to glurgy sweet socially acceptable nonsense, count me out thankyewverymuch. We’re into the Prager mindset here, showing a strong and sustained preference for clarity over agreement. Some folks interpret this as antisocial behavior. I can see where they’re coming from, wrong as they may be.

On our rhetoric matching the “You’re Stupid” versus “You’re Evil,” we’ll let the reader judge this one. My comment is limited to — I dunno what he’s been reading. We at least attempt to be a little more, uh, nuanced than that…

But Hamsher? We’re a counterpart to her?

Just wow. The Morgan Rule Number One counsels an unorthodox solution to the false accusation: “If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty.” According to that, then, I need to become a conservative version of Jane Hamsher. Well, that takes some talent I don’t gots. I simply don’t know how to go about it.

I’m familiar with the doctrine of discarding outliers in the data before processing the data — in computer science, in statistics, in democracy and other social matters. There is some merit to it, but all in all the practice is much more controversial than most people understand it to be. The fact of the matter is, much of the appeal this has had for us throughout the years has been taught to us by our civil servants in the public school system. They just love it, because excluding the outlier lends unnatural and unmerited weight to conventional thought; the public school system, being a labor union construct, adores conventional thought. Makes the populace much easier to control.

First thing I did when I read this surreal comment, was head on over to Buck’s place to see if anything was going wretchedly wrong. Surely such a capable mind would require a strong seismic force to shake his connection to reality? The dude called me Hamsher. Thankfully, as noted above, all seems well over there. That settled, I undertook the task of trying to figure out what bee had somehow flown into his bonnet. Process of elimination would yield fruit the quickest, I decided; also noted above is the fact that we don’t disagree on much, although we disagree. I took a quick inventory of the issues —

We seem to disagree on Sarah Palin;
We disagree about legalizing pot;
We disagree about pretending illegal aliens belong here.

Perhaps he feels I have failed to give his side of one of these, or all three, proper consideration. This is certainly possible, and I am, perhaps, prone to frequent error here. It’s a malady common to technical people: Once we find a method is a good one, our tendency is to shun all the others.

There is a problem with considering Buck’s point of view on these three, though. In all three cases, it calls for turning one’s back on reality. Taking a certain thing that is known to be something — and deliberately pretending it is the opposite of that thing. Palin, who can obviously get more done in a constant unit of time than most folks can, is an incapable dimwit; pot, consumed in a variety of forms for the express purpose of altering the thinking process, doesn’t do this; and illegal aliens are not illegal at all.

Bunny trail here: In the case of the illegal aliens, I notice the word “undocumented” is used in place of “illegal” by the tireless advocates who work so hard to proffer this doctrine of “Pretend things are the opposite of what they really are.” Obviously this is an errant practice and it is being promoted for nefarious purposes — but when you think on it a minute or two, “undocumented” makes the point even more ruggedly. By which I mean, my point. If a law is a bad one, the adjective “illegal” might fail to sell some on the idea that said illegal thing should be avoided. “Undocumented,” on the other hand, means you don’t know something. When you’re talking about twelve to eighteen million of something living in close proximity to our kids to whose protection and safety we are sworn, and go to sometimes absurd lengths in other matters to supplement even incrementally — this is a heady issue.

Other than those, I can’t think of anything on which we’ve disagreed. It’s a testament to how much respect I have for our blog-brother that I put this much thought into what could have inspired what might very well be nothing more than a brain fart, but at this paragraph I think the point of diminishing returns has been crossed in this exercise. We have much more to say to the opposition than “you’re stupid/evil,” and we’re not a Hamsher; at least, I don’t think we are. As for pessimism, it’s always been our position that while the recent avalanche of dumbth is thick, slick, fast and treacherous, our country will survive it in the end — after losing a whole lotta stuff, most tragically from our heritage. But wiser. And still flawed. Our nation has a lot of things going for it, but one must always remember it is a construct upon humanity with all of humanity’s blessings and all of humanity’s shortcomings. And Adam did bite out of the apple. The point is, though, that we’ll get through the current crisis, and that’s always been our position over here.

In my experience, moderating one’s tone in mixed company brings benefit and is often costless; but moderating one’s understanding of truth brings no benefit at all, and costs like crazy. We live in interesting times, wherein anyone who undertakes to learn what is happening right now but at the same time keep outlying thoughts out of his head, embarks on a road to insanity. If the end goal is to keep extreme viewpoints from being expressed, lest others become offended, the far better course is to learn to keep one’s mouth shut. But let the thoughts develop as the truth compels them to be developed.

The Seating Arrangements for Next Week’s Dinner Party…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

…don’t put blogsister Cassy Fiano side-by-side with Levi Johnson.

Michelle, Meghan, Cassy

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Meghan has a few words for Michelle.

We will not get anywhere by continuing to sell hate and fear. Of course, there is always going to be a fraction of the GOP that is going to respond to that, but at some point we have to start facing the reality that hate and fear will only get us so far. Those emotions are not sources for inspiration of joining anything, let alone supporting a political party.

The old conservatives of the past need to start accepting that this is a new era and I am a part of a new generation. I am as sick of the infighting as everyone else, but I would like to point out that I am not the one starting this fight or demanding that the other half of the party leave.

Cassy has a few words for Meghan.

But here’s the kicker: just because we don’t want you to lead us does not mean that we are kicking you out of the party. Just because we aren’t appointing you our new rising star doesn’t mean you don’t have a place here. I suspect Meghan knows this deep down, but what kind of attention would she get by acknowledging that? It’s much more fun to sit there and try to fill the role of the new maverick in the Republican party. You get all kinds of lavish attention from celebutards and liberal talking heads who praise you for “keeping it real”. So I’m pretty sure she’ll just continue on acting like she’s being crucified in the GOP, when frankly, no one in the GOP even gives a damn about her. We just wish she would stop making idiotic, asinine remarks in our name.

Now, I really whittled both of these down to size in order to make a certain young lady look a whole lot more intelligent than she really is. To figure out which one it is, why don’t you pop both of them open and give a full reading to each of them — when you run across the “money quote” I think your eyes will bulge out of their sockets, whatever liquids your swallowing will be ejected forcefully from both nostrils, and you’ll wonder why anybody ever prints anything written by…a certain someone.

Give you a hint. It’s got something to do with something that rhymes with “Jitter.”

Obama’s Birthplace

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

Via Buck, who produces two possible reasons why The Holy One has not yet produced the long form…

(a) Suppose Mr. Obama is a legal bastard? Which is to say his mother and father weren’t married when he was born… wouldn’t YOU want to preserve your dead mother’s dignity? Especially in America, where one can easily imagine the hue and cry about a “love child” occupying the White House. This is NOT beyond the pale.

(b) To continue to give the Lunatic Fringe enough rope to hang themselves, as if they haven’t done so already. But this approach, if it is indeed the case, is simply clever politics. And it seems to be working.

I think (b) is far more likely than (a), myself. But I can also produce a (c): When you’ve got a brand new pretty shiny 24k gold hammer, everything you see looks like a nail. Barack Obama’s hammer is that He can convince people something is true by making them feel awkward and teetering on the brink of ostracism if they dare to believe the opposite, or simply harbor doubts. It is His chosen method for selling things, and He is exceptionally good at it.

I believe what we’re seeing with regard to the long form birth certificate, is His oh-so-tried-n-true brandishing of the big 24k gold hammer, as a means of proving something that’s really true. This illustrates the depths to which He has sunk in becoming a master of bullshit-sales; He just can’t help Himself. It’s a lot like the Clintons lying about things in such a way that they’re bound to get caught, and in the meantime provide no discernible benefit to them or to any of their friends even if someone should be deceived by the lie — “I was named after Edmund Hillary,” as just one example.

I don’t think Obama is capable of using what the rest of us understand to be inferential logic. He’d have done it by now. I mean, by that, “I’m thinking of a prime number between 270 and 280 that does not end in 7; what is it?” Process of elimination, if-this-then-that. It isn’t that it’s beyond His intellectual capacity; He seems like a bright enough guy. The issue is that it is not part of the world in which He lives. He’s a socialist. All thinking, in that universe, is social. It’s all “I have to show my faith in X because I will be shunned if people think my faith is in not-X.”

The political benefit from the teapot-tempest that ensues from His keeping the long form under lock and key, is just an afterthought. His primary motive is that on His home turf, this is how you “prove” things and there is no other way to do it: By stigmatizing the opposite. We are discussing an individual possessing a dizzying and breathtaking lack of understanding or concern about what is & is not true. And not only is He our President, but He is also in great company. Quite a few of our countrymen are sufficiently divorced from reality that, if they were struggling with the everyday tasks and exigencies that were a natural part of life a century and a half ago, they wouldn’t make it.

“Don’t Get Mad, Get Popcorn”

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Daphne has banished the liberal gadfly commenter at her site and Gerard’s, known as Arthurstone.

This is my house, the only freedom of speech you own here is at my discretion. Shit on my kitchen floor too much and I’m showing your rude ass the door…I call pussy on you, sweetmeat. You dish it out like a bully, Arthur and cry like a girl when your bad behavior gets smacked back in your face. You don’t like rejection? Try behaving like a decent human being when having adult discussions.

Interesting the week that’s gone by, which this inglorious event concludes. All these events, what do they have in common? Ideology. Liberal ideology. It’s supposed to be making people all decent and wonderful and good…and let us not forget liberty-loving…and it’s failing quite miserably. Liberalism, which we were all supposed to be showing off last November to prove we want everyone to stop worrying about health & sickness, prove we’re not from Texas, prove we’re not racists…motivates Congressmen to shut out concerned citizens from “town hall” meetings, it motivates Presidents to create lists of said citizens who happen to have dissenting opinions. And it makes blog-posters act like jerks.

So I added my wisdom, as I so often do. I’m very giving that way. Because, after all, the issue isn’t that liberalism makes people act like jerks. It’s that people tend to forget liberalism makes people act like jerks.

He’s doing the Lord’s work, you know.

When Obama turns out to be a one-termer, it won’t be because people personally dislike Him, or even because they’re fed up with liberal politics. It will be because very large numbers of us will have figured out that professing allegiance to the more adorable position on any issue that comes along, does absolutely nothing to make you a better person.

On this particular week, thanks to Arthur, we have (I think) five reminders of this instead of just four. And then there’s next week, the week after that…fifty-two of ‘em per year. Liberal nastiness, it’s in our faces, all the time, and people will get sick and tired of it thank God. It’s really happening, and it’s happening because of twits like Arthur.

Don’t get mad. Get popcorn.

In fact, perhaps this is an apropos time to ask: Where’s the evidence that liberalism does anything to make people good? That’s supposed to be its one redeeming feature.

We’ve got Clinton flying over and rescuing those two people from North Korea…if you want to fall for that kind of thing. Anything else?

Dramatic Re-Enactment of the Malkin/View Matchup

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

…about which we wrote back over here. Although the cheering & jeering from the audience is slightly different and the participants lack a certain aesthetic appeal in this one — other than those two things, it captures the spirit quite nicely. Warning, some language not safe for work…

Outclassed, outgunned, outmatched. Ankle-biters shown their own inadequacies and put in their proper place in record time.

From the comments, an honorable-mention entrant in the “Best Sentence” sweepstakes from Blogger Friend Phil, about how liberals see their opponents…

In their world “right-wingers” are A) Republicans, B) Pro-Everything-About-Bush, C) War Mongers, D) Selfish and Greedy or watch NASCAR in their underwear, and E) Eat little babies sprinkled with dried kitten dust for breakfast each morning.

This is a relatively recent problem. Back in the days of Ford-vs.-Carter and Carter-vs.-Reagan, liberals would be able to discuss cause and effect. Sure, it will still all bullshit…”We already have enough nukular weapons to blow up the world seven thousand times. Now if we keep stockpiling them like this Russia is gonna get nervous, and either Reagan or Brezhnev is gonna push a big red button, it doesn’t matter which pushes it first, now does it?”…but at least they proved themselves capable of saying IF this thing over here happens, it enhances or diminishes the potential of THAT thing over there happening.

But that’s the kind of thinking you have to do to live real life. Leave the rake lying on the ground teeth up, something bad might happen. Why wait for it to happen. Store things properly.

Since it has a lot to do with living real life, they lost interest in that right-quick.

Now it’s all “You have to support X, because X is a plan to do good things; therefore if you oppose X, you must be in favor of bad things.”

In other words, they’re no longer trying to sell people on what their plans will make happen, and/or stop from happening. Instead, they’ve ensconced themselves in the judge’s seat; you are to appear before them, and prove to them your decency as a human being, so they don’t yank that red lever opening a trap door under your feet. You are supposed to sell something to them; their plans are too vast, complex and intricate for your miserable mortal little pea-brain to ever fathom, so nevermind whether you approve of the plan or not.

Happy Birthday to Daphne at Jaded Haven – 2009

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

How in the world can you ignore the birthday of someone who can write like this

I have been a very good girl for the past eight months. I’ve held my tongue, sat tight and watched as events unfolded in Washington, consciously reigning in my forty five years of bone deep conservative bias. I wished our new president well and caught my breath, sincerely hoping he wasn’t going to fulfill my worst expectations. I tried not to write harsh words about the man, I diligently checked all sources on his policies, trying to see all side of the issues. I wanted to give Obama a fair shake. I was willing to be proved wrong about my assumptions.

Color me done. I simply can’t stand that progressive little twerp living in the White House and I abhor his every last ideological belief.
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You encounter this problem with many over-educated liberals who employ their freshly minted, first class degrees in the realms of public service, university tenure or NGO’s rather than taking the leap into the private sector. These beautifully groomed racehorses stay in the pasture, never venturing onto the track where the real winners run, learn and ultimately contribute to the wealth of the nation.

Obama is hell bent on delivering his Utopian fantasies, costs be damned. He was bred well for this velvet lined position and little more, I doubt he could double the worth of a donated nickel by his own wits on the open market…Watching a popular president preside over a gaggle of half wits who believe taxing and legislating one of the most successful nations of individual liberty into the dark stranglehold of governmental control is the proper course of action is absolutely rage inducing, this ignorant band of feeble minded twats deserve an ass reaming of the highest magnitude.

Happy Birthday Cassy Fiano — 2009

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Why don’t you head on over and extend your best wishes to her. She’s smart as a whip, and it’s tough to remember sometimes — but she’s still in that age bracket where a birthday is still a happy special day. Yeah, remember that?

Hot Blondes Say Adios

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Becky, the Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever, is high-tailing it out of the blogosphere. So too, coincidentally, is comic book fan and Obama supporter McBangle of McBangle’s Angle.

That’s a shame, they’re both creative and smart…although they do both suffer from impaired judgment since they don’t agree with me a hundred percent of the time. Nobody really does. But a lot of other blogs out there agree with someone a hundred percent of the time — they’re just puppets. They waste your time. These two ladies were never guilty of that. I’ll miss them.

We’ll mark the calendar for the end of the month, sometime, to give the sidebar a good pruning; it’s overdue. In the meantime, prowl through their older stuff. Becky’s place is probably a good one to browse after you go home from work…and after everyone else is in bed…but with your speakers turned off. Her music-of-the-day plays automatically, and she insists on her right to display partial nudity, rankling at any & all conventions and devices that might be used to separate her from more family-appropriate material. Those are both sins, in my book. But these are archives well worth browsing.

POTUS TOTUS Sat on a Stage

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Jennifer is trying her hand at nursery rhymes.

POTUS TOTUS sat on a stage
POTUS TOTUS displayed just a page
All of the promises
Scrolled on the screen
Can’t trust the press to know what it means.
POTUS TOTUS sat on a wall
POTUS TOTUS had a great fall…

The Macho Response

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

UglySo Gerard sent us a link in an offline, to a politically-incorrect blog out in the Bay Area…and we hadn’t checked it out too long before it became an imperative to slam it into the sidebar.

There is an occasional picture that is not quite appropriate to an office environment, although I’m not sure this by itself justifies a “NSFW” warning…language isn’t fit for family viewing. The ideas are definitely dangerous. Unsuitable opinions. Terrible taste. Pictures of strange ugly creatures. Yup, we’re cousins, alright.

And this link, which we got here, is definitely not to be missed. It’s one of my favorite subjects: Our continuing efforts to somehow motivate the limousine liberals to live up to the same standards they slap down on the rest of us…and our ongoing failure in this effort, as they continue to impose their aristocratic, stratified, two-yardstick solution on society…

You know all those fevered editorials they churn out over there at the New York Times editorial board? Like, for instance, the hot fury published on June 30 wonderfully titled “Firefighters and Race.”

In this jewel the Times editorial board makes its displeasure plain in the very first sentence, huffing that the Supreme Court decision in favor of the New Haven firemen has “dealt a blow to diversity in the American workplace.” This was followed by a July 14th column by Times columnist Dowd titled “White Man’s Last Stand,” to which we will return shortly.

But first, let’s get the meat into the stew. You can just smell that sizzling hypocrisy, can’t you?

It seems the “American workplace” (to use the Times description) that is the New Haven fire department has a higher percentage of minorities than the American workplace that is…yes indeed… the New York Times editorial board its very self. To be quite specific:

• The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black and Latino. Or, if you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is “minority.”

• The New York Times editorial board, according to the information provided by The New York Times, is — wait for it — 12% black and Latino. Or, again, 12 % “minority” if you prefer the term.

• The New York Times Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group of which Ms. Dowd is a star, is 19% black and, again according to the Times listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0% Latino.

That’s right. At the core of the beating intellectual heart of the left-wing establishment where such things are studied with the detail of Talmudic scholars, the New Haven fire department is doing more than three times better on race than the very liberal elites who have set themselves up as its sniffy critics. Perhaps instead of seething about “Firefighters and Race” the Times would have been better served by pondering “Editorial Writers and Race.” Or perhaps: “Too Black to Write; New York Times Column Writing and Race.”

One set of rules for Manhattan, and a different set of rules for everybody else.

Our society-at-large hasn’t been getting serious about tackling that particular problem because we’re too worked up about the planet on which we live getting too hot to sustain life, due to our not being taxed enough. The responsible thinker cannot help but wonder if the two problems are not somehow related. Anybody know off the top of their head what the annual net carbon footprint is of the New York Times? Just throw me a hint. For all I know they could be printing it on every damn page; I seldom-to-never read the thing.

But I’m certainly gonna read this “Macho Response” guy.

An Exciting Friday Evening for Buck

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Pretty interesting. Go read the narrative.

Our friend in New Mexico thinks we need an editor; our writing gets repetitive and parts of it sag into the depths of being expendable. Well, criticism is easy. Examples are a bit more impressive and therefore more persuasive. We’ll take what’s behind the link as an example even if it wasn’t intended as such, because it does a fine job of capturing the apprehension that was involved with that awning ratchet jamming. Yeah, we can take criticism. Of course we can. Who do ya think we are, President Obama?

Capturing emotion is a tricky thing when one does one’s writing. Perhaps it comes naturally when the emotion is of the “Omigaw!!” variety and has only moments ago finished its job of rattling you senseless. Either way, the product is worthy of linkage. And it’s probably a worthy model for our aspirations…

…okay, don’t go piling on now. We know we’re wordy. Read Buck’s sordid tale and watch his captivating movie — that’s the subject.

Working on Plans for the Next Forty-Three

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Well, we’re a workin’ blogger, so we have to get off our fat ass and get our day started here. There is so much more to be said about our wonderful blogger friends all around the innerwebs…a few days ago I awarded a “first place” ribbon to one of them for updating her link to us after we moved our site, and we were going to get a sequenced list going of all the other early-birds.

Blogsister Daphne's Birthday CardIt seemed fair. It’s OUR move; we decided to do it, and how obnoxious would it be if every time someone moved a blog and his buddies didn’t update their links to him that day, he started sending out snotty notes to them to the effect of “Hey goddammit! Update your links!” I’d be all, like screw you pal. So sticks are inappropriate here. Carrots over sticks.

Well it didn’t happen, because the next time I checked everyone apparently had updated their links to this spot, www.peekinthewell.net/blog. It really is true: You can’t fool bloggers.

So with the gracious accommodations to the blog-move, and the birthday wishes, we have so many shout-outs for so many wonderful folks. We just don’t have time for it all at the moment. We’ll have to remedy that one soon.

But I do have to get by with just one…this virtual birthday card from Blogsister Daphne. What is it about Texas women that makes them so classy and precious? I can hear you all virtually yelling at me “Don’t say it!”…

…that’s one birthday wish I can get behind. Badump Bup Psshhh!! Tip your waiters. Try the veal. I’m here all week.

Gotta go, it’s getting late. After showering and dressing, I still have all those boxes of beer to lug up the stairs…ten of ’em. This weekend we’re going to go out and catch a movie, and then another couple weeks I’ll be making the trip to go pick up my twelve-year-old so he can get ready to start the school year. And then I won’t even have to go out to the balcony to get the next bottle of beer, I’ll have someone I can send. Free labor.

Life is good.

These Pussy Betas Are Killing the Country

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Ding ding ding! Blogsister Daphne takes the prize among all the blogger friends, for updating her sidebar link to our new location first…assuming there’s nobody out there who made the change even quicker, someone I haven’t found quite yet. Thanks Daph! You get a double-dose of linky love, and tonight you’re well worth it.

She’s thinking about eugenics, not from out of your history books, but in the very near future:

It’s too hot do anything more demanding than drink ice cold beer and wonder at the mind bending folly of liberals. I’ve attempted to understand their worldview, mark some sane tatter of rationale for the thought processes that would endorse one John Holdren as our president’s Science Czar. This man has some seriously disturbing views on population control. The whole czar thing is creepy to begin with, populating these pet posts with people of this weird caliber is more than a little troubling.

“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”

Obama’s okay with this viewpoint? How about this ripe nugget;

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

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I’m assuming liberals are fine with this scunty prick’s historical opinion, which just so happens to stomp all over the inviolate rights of women’s bodies and reproductive choices…I will never comprehend an individual’s willing subservience to the state. Never. We have too many grown men pining for the safety of momma’s tit and a handful who’d love to control the milk.

I believe women need to start raising more alpha males, these pussy betas are going kill the country.

Time to bring out our favorite Robert A. Heinlein quote. With my custom dessert topping to go with it:

Heinlein’s Observation: The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Freeberg’s Corollary: Those who want to control tend to want, on some subconscious level, to be controlled; those who lack the desire to be controlled, are similarly disinterested in any opportunity to control others.

What can be more controlling than forcing people to languish away into obscurity and the grave, without benefit of reproduction, because you think there are too many of them?

Daphne continues with this theme

Do you read Roissy? I do. He’s a scandalous piece of work, spilling unwelcome truths about men, women and sex. He’s got a raw style of dealing with a topic that most handle with kid gloves. He calls it as he sees it and, from my jaded viewpoint, he’s usually right. He weighs on politics with this post;

In short, women are voting more Democrat because the Democrat Party is the prime force for turning the government into the world’s biggest provider beta. From the time of the “sexual revolution” (which was really a “sexual devolution” back towards pre-agricultural mating norms when 80% of the women and 40% of the highest testosterone men reproduced) women have been more free to choose mating opportunities based on their gina tingles and the economic and social empowerment granted, respectively, by their pointless humanities degrees and the disintegration of traditional slut shaming mechanisms. The life of serial monogamy and alpha cock hopping has never been more attainable for the average American woman, and the result has been predictable: Women are substituting the beta males they no longer want or need for marriage with a Big Brother Daddy government to help them foot the child-raising bills that their PUA, drug running and serial killer lovers won’t.

Ring any bells?

Yer goddamn right it does. It’s the Morgan Freeberg Theory of the Charismatic Wrecking Ball.

See, here’s what’s going on with these airhead women. They aren’t looking for men who will inject a stronger base of genetic material into their bloodline. Perhaps if they were exposed to danger as frequently as their ancestors from thousands of years ago, they would. But hey. It’s 2009, they’re one debit card swipe away from their next tank of gas, their next pint of Haagen Dazs, their next iced-mocha coffee drink that takes ten minutes just to order, their next feminine hygiene product…there are no snakes underfoot, they were all killed before the swamps were drained before the landscape was prepped before the foundation was laid before the building was built. No saber-tooth tigers. They, like the rest of us, are safe. Not perfectly so, but relatively so. Humankind suffers from a paucity of natural predators.

Boyfriend ShirtHow far into the depths of dumbth can our young Clinton/Obama Sex-in-the-City girl-women descend? Blogger friend Gerard brings us tales, tall tales but verifiable tales, of bored young strumpets forking out North of $200 for a “boyfriend shirt.” Gerard points out the obvious: “Or you can just get a boyfriend and steal it like women with standards since time out of mind. If you take it the morning after, he won’t mind at all.” Stellar advice, but only in an Idiocracy age devoid of natural threats or predators and liberated from Darwin’s purifying spirit, could any humans be in need of it.

And so their priorities change. They need that Bill Clinton charisma…in the next President, in the guy that repairs the copier machine after they sat on it, in the UPS guy. They select the guy who’s going to fix their car based on his charisma. And then bitch about having to pay five times as much as they think they should have.

Charisma, charisma, charisma. Don’t you blame the idiot-girls in my presence; our idiot-boys are just as susceptible, every bit as intoxicated on the elixir, every bit as disoriented and senseless. The charisma that was of such inconsequential value back when someone had to pump the water and churn the butter, and is such a central agent of “survival” now. The nectar of all people who’ve gone too long without really worrying about anything — and because they aren’t truly sane, their thirst for it is never quenched. They don’t really know how much they need or want of anything, for they have never been left for want of anything.

But let’s return to the central theme — now that I’ve qualified exactly how much we’ve robbed ourselves of our own common sense, in this world run by assholes whose hands have never known callouses, and women who’ve adored nobody save for the soft-handed assholes. Let’s inspect this Wrecking Ball theory. Just who, in this atrophied, stultified age, has this charisma? We are divided, fundamentally, into those who want to build things and those who want to destroy things. These two factions of person, do not think of things the same way. They do not live life the same way, so they don’t look at life the same way. Building things is infinitely tougher than destroying things, because things have to fit together with other things — you have to build them just right and line them up just right. You have to measure every step, and you have to adhere to a design. The design has to have taken everything into account that might become a factor during the building process, and this does mean everything. Temperature. Humidity. Slope. PH level. Altitude. Wind speed. Drag coefficient. If it matters, then the design must have taken it into account, and if anything is missing then this is all just a big waste of time.

Builders just aren’t very much fun to watch. They don’t build until they have a line inked in; they don’t ink the line in until they’ve penciled it; they don’t pencil it until they measure it, and measure it again, and again, and pencil it in ever-so-lightly, measure yet one more time, curse heavily, erase…I tell you, watching these people is like water torture.

Wrecking Ball of ChangeWrecking balls are fun to watch. Their mission is far, far simpler, and so they enjoy the benefit of moving in a straight line…to such an extent as they don’t want to move that direction anymore, then they swing back again. With sufficient inertia as to overpower everything else. A wrecking ball can afford to move that way — because it is concerned only with destruction, not with creation.

That’s how people are. If you’re out to destroy things and not build things, you get to move in a straight line just as long as you want. Your actions are utterly predictable, since it’s a physical impossibility for you to abruptly change course or speed. And yet you’re so much fun to watch.

And so our destroyers…our hardcore liberals, our eugenicists, our shrinks, our lawyers, our politicians, our hopey changey “There’s Just Something About Him!!” Christ-replacement iPresidents, they’re just so much fun to watch. Because they’re charismatic. Their movements are unalterable. Their mission is one of destruction.

They come off looking like alpha males, but that’s only because they enjoy the luxury of moving like a wrecking ball. Being fun to watch. They aren’t really alpha males though; alpha males are nerds. Alpha males build things.

These are destroyers. They are pussy betas, and Daphne’s right, they’ll kill the whole damn country if we let them. They don’t know how to do anything else. They cannot design, they cannot build, they cannot preserve…all they know how to do is go through the motions of doing those things, for campaigning purposes.

Their real passions always have to do with destroying things. That’s all they know how to do.

Update 7/14/09: Ah, I was afraid this would happen. Blogger friend Phil got his link updated at about the same time and probably deserves to split the first-place spot, but I shorted the poor guy. Ah well. We’ll wait to see who else climbs aboard and then figure out what to do.

Going After Jenny Sanford

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

When I say the GOP doesn’t need to change a single thing in order to turn things around in ’10 and ’12, this is exactly what I’m talking about. The terrible, terrible anger the Democratic Underground posters have for…Jenny Sanford, the betrayed Governor’s-wife?? Liberals, you see, have just as much anger as conservatives, plus a whole lot more — and the anger they have makes very little sense.

Now, it is my opinion, and that of many others as well, that Jenny Sanford has handled herself remarkably well. Unlike most political wives, she has not stood by her man in public as a show of support and solidarity. Most political wives mindlessly stand by in press conferences as their husbands blabber on about how sorry they are. Jenny Sanford did not. Kudos to her. She’s managed to retain some dignity and self-respect in this humiliating affair.

Of course, that means nothing to the DUmmies. Across multiple posts, she is being smeared and insulted.

The democrat party had this huge rout last year because they were able to convince the typical voter to stop caring about policy, and start caring about personalities. Promote not just the idea that There’s Something About Barry, and that our new iPresident is a godlike being, and “Nobody messes with Joe” and that the Delaware Dimbulb is some wonderful wise Supreme Elder Statesman…but that the lowliest democrat is a better person than the most esteemed Republican. They promoted their party as a sure cure for Goodperson Fever.

We must have some folks in the electorate who don’t feel terribly good about themselves. Because they fell for this in November, and it should be clear now that not a single thirst has been quenched.

Angry LiberalHow could it be? It should be obvious to anyone who uses his head as something besides a hat-hanger. There’s nothing about being a left-winger that can make anybody a better person. The quotes that Blogsister Cassy has rounded up here, are from hardcore types that are not only unfulfilled and unhappy — but angry, pissy, petulant, acrid, shrill, nasty and, worst of all, frenzied. Just like sharks at a feeding frenzy. The more blood they get the more they want. And if Cas wanted to make her list twice, three times, ten times as long, you know she’d be able to do it. She’d find the quotes. They’d be there. These people have the venom, and the need to spew it.

Republican campaign strategy: Just stop helping the enemy to keep all this bile a secret. People don’t want to talk about policy? People don’t want to talk about issues? People don’t want to talk about cause-and-effect? They’d rather be thinking about which political party makes you a Good PersonTM? Hey…don’t lick ’em, join ’em. Let’s have a nationwide debate about which ideology makes you a better person. Just stop cherry-picking the evidence.

I really wondered as I read these posts… how did these people get this way? I’m serious. How do you get so angry, deranged, and hate-filled? What happened to them? There must have been something.

I’ve got a few years on Cas and I have no curiosity about this whatsoever. But if you’ve been reading her pages for awhile you’ll understand my reluctance to conclude I’ve figured out something she hasn’t; this is a wise young lady with a wonderful head on her shoulders who has a lot going on upstairs. If she’s still asking questions and I’m not, it’s probably because she’s trying to figure out something I’m not.

But I know the answer to her question. It isn’t pretty.

In life, we have a lot of Proper Things To Do that offer us a only a delayed reward, or no reward whatsoever. Push the grocery cart someone left in the parking lot back to where it belongs; offer your seat on the bus to the pregnant woman; ask your stuffy old great-granduncle about the good-old-days, even though you don’t really want to know (yet) about them; help the lost child find her Mommy; open the door for the lady; donate your money to help soldiers who are coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan with some limbs missing; show your support for invading Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place; go to church; do your homework; say “excuse me”…the list goes on and on.

It’s not easy to teach a child to do these things, and so parents have picked up a lot of ways to get it done. The easiest way is to teach them this stuff while they’re still in toddlerhood, while the personality is still forming, at an age when they’re most accepting of the taboo. Obviously that doesn’t work for everything. Unfortunately, as kids get older, they become fascinated in their own growing understanding of cause-and-effect, and start to want to figure things out that way…the unreasonable little bastards. So some parents wait until the pre-teen years and have conversations with their children about cause-and-effect. But cause-and-effect is an advanced topic. As I said, above, many among us opted not to think about it at all in the last election. Many among them opted out simply because they don’t know how to think about it, and many among them, unfortunately, are parents. And so a lot of them skip this stuff altogether. Their unfortunate children grow up to be hardcore left-wing secularist liberals.

Real ManNow here’s the ugly part that smears all of us whether we’re liberals or not. When you know deep down inside that you really ought to be doing something, and you decide, for whatever reason, not to do it — deep down inside, what’s going to happen to you is you conceive the rage that has no home. You become bitterly angry, already, in that moment, but you don’t know it yet because your anger hasn’t yet found a target. When someone else comes along and does the thing you know darn well you should have done, just like an electrical storm finding a lightning rod, your anger finds the target. Think about the guy in Irreversible watching the woman being assaulted. Imagine the feelings he’s feeling, the thoughts going through his head. Now imagine some Dudley Doright jumping in and, well, doing right. Imagine how this would change the social-acceptance issues involved in ducking-and-covering. Imagine how angry that cowardly fellow would become, being shown-up like that.

That is exactly what we saw on the left wing just before we invaded Iraq, lasting all the way up to the 2004 elections and beyond. Anchorless rage finally finding an anchor. The craven isolationist looking upon, not quite so much an Adonis of perfection, or a Perseus, or a Hercules, or a Superman, or even any kind of hero — just someone else who made a better decision, and did what everyone else knows damn well needed to be done.

Call it what you will. Call it the product of lazy parenting. Call it a “If I Don’t Help Put Out The Fire, You Can’t Either” instinct. Once aroused, it arrives with a white-hot rage that knows no equal. And we all have it, or at least, the ingredients of it…

It is extraordinarily damaging to our implied social compact. Left unchecked, it turns otherwise decent people in to extremist liberals. It also is caused by being an extremist liberal. It feeds itself, feeding on itself, and makes itself bigger and hungrier.

Go on, read some of the comments Cassy found and tell me I’m wrong.

Republicans have the next election sown up. Really, they had the last one sown up, they just chose not to go for the kill. Just stop keeping secrets for the benefit of the enemy. Stop keeping secrets about the tremendous harm liberalism does to people’s souls.

Irked by Flo

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Neo-Neocon is annoyed by Flo, the Progressive Insurance lady on the teevee. Others find her strangely appealing but they can’t explain why.

I can explain why. Flo comes off as if she’s about to be “sassy,” in a negative, nasty-goth-girl sort of way. And then everything that comes out of her mouth is positive. It’s like if you introduced Rose McGowan to your mother, fearing the worst, and then ended the evening utterly befuddled as you realize the actress did a perfect job of minding her P’s and Q’s.

This sweet-and-sour combination achieves a formula that always works: Serve up a contradiction, in the space of a heartbeat. It sends an electrical bolt deep into our subconsciousness that there’s something complex here, something worth investigating.

Why am I irked by Flo? I’m not, not really anyway…she just reminds me of some older acquaintances that are not, and will never be, my type. As a formerly-available straight male I’ve put up some barriers so as not to waste my time or the time of others, and there’s no doubt Flo trips ’em.

The commercial gets the job done. Without a doubt.

Rick’s Anniversary Skydiving Adventure

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

I keep thinking “damn what a lucky dude” every time I catch a glimpse of the radiant Mrs. Brutally Honest. Wonder if I should be mentioning that. Come to think on it, I seem to recall asking myself the same question last year. Somewhere over at his place. When I was commenting.

Well this year, those two plucky kids celebrated their anniversary in a way that’s worth talking about over here.

Wheee. Brings back memories.

Tandem’s an interesting concept. I’ve never done that before, and perhaps I should’ve. My own turn up there was an entirely different setup. The plane was a single-engine, a rickety kind of thing with all the back seats removed. I had the impression the engine was supposed to be muffled by something that was no longer there. The engine was so loud you couldn’t think, and you could feel the vibration coming off it. There were holes in the fuselage and you could see the daylight streaming in. Three of us would crouch down hanging on to something for dear life, decked out in sweaty nylon jumpsuits soaked with someone else’s sweat, boots older than me at the time (26). “Norb,” my long-haired, humorless, motorcycle-gang-lookin’ kinda instructor would be crouched there with us right by the Door of Dread, yelling some last-minute instructions at us at the top of his lungs. What a character was Norb. Norb was about 5’9″, looked kinda like a Sons of Anarchy character except not quite so impeccably groomed. The mannerisms of a drill sergeant, for I expect the same reason; someone screws around, someone gets killed. Every 500 feet of climb, Norb would yell back at us how high we were, while the plane rocked back and forth in ways you wouldn’t expect a plane to do.

At three thousand feet Norb turned to me and said “Alright! Get the fuck out of my plane!

Here, too, things were ramshackle and spartan. Static-line-yes; tandem, no; reinforced footbar, no. We were to grab onto the wing strut and let the headwind flap our bodies around, like flags. “It’s just air, it easy!” Norb would yell at us. “Just like riding a motorcycle!” Then let go. That would seem to be the tough part, but the thin film of sweat that coated our palms by then, made it simple.

Tandem probably would have been a help here. My instructors always bitched about me not looking up, like you’re supposed to. I really tried, but the impulse to look down is powerful, and some of us are more susceptible to it than others. Once the chute is open — it’s like being knocked into a whole different universe. Dangling by your armpits and your crotch at three thousand feet. Rick says “from the ride up in the plane to the landing in the grass field, it was sensory overload,” and I recall that too. My most vivid recollection? The little dots on the highway that were cars, kinda spread out to the left of me and to the right of me, and all bunched up dead ahead. They were slowing down to look at our canopies. Second-most-vivid? The cows. They were little dots, too. They made an impression on me because that was my tip-off about how great a distance three thousand feet really is. “Holy shit, those little tiny dots are cows,” I thought.

Fear? No, not really. I had a parachute on. Hand-packed by Norb himself. Norb of the massive, unwashed hair and the eyes pinked-out with whatever the hell he was drinking the night before. Or were they naturally that way? I don’t care, I survived.

No footage at all from my event, and perhaps it’s tasteless for me to go into such detail about it in someone else’s limelight. Adrenaline Junkie Rick has many more videos on his YouTube account.

Congratulations on making it through, Mr. and Mrs. Hope the anniversaries ahead are happy and many, and welcome to the club.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XXXI

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Fellow Right Wing News contributor Dr. Melissa Clouthier has picked out her list of hot, sweaty, sexy conservative blogger guys. And guess what. It’s completely unexpected now…but…wait for it…

We didn’t make the cut.

In spite of the fact that we look exactly like this*:

Well like they say, there’s no accounting for taste. And as has been the case since prehistoric times, the girls get to figure out which ones among us reproduce and which ones among us do not. Melissa is certainly one of the sharper ones, but do you think for a moment that, if they took pride in the way they were doing their selecting, we’d be in the world of hurt in which we find ourselves today? I think not.

Gals, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Ah well. I’m sure Dr. Mel was taking the quite reasonable approach of compiling her list of eye-candy from those masculine specimens who had their portraits available, and easy to find. Which is not us. Heck, we’re The Blog That Nobody Reads. So don’t be too hard on her.

*In the mind’s eye of blogsister Daphne. The facial features aren’t quite accurate, and the body style is slightly different, but she did get our early-morning blogging dress code right.