Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I’m going to peg her as a lib. My fellow Starbucks patron was a redhead, still good looking although just a little past her prime. I’m thinking she was a lib because she was coaching her adorable little tyke to figure out EXACTLY what the little moppet wanted. Lefties have this strange fascination with picky kids. They seem to think we’re suffering from a shortage of them and in danger of running out of them.
My dated tee shirt exhorted people against putting democrats in charge in 2008, and her reply seemed to have something to do with not putting Republicans in charge…except she didn’t have the mettle to actually say so, instead her comments had to do with both sides sucking equally. Uh huh…the old stop-expecting-anything argument.
Not sure if that’s where she was going. It’s not working with me, because I’m not looking forward to the upcoming simplified tax form:
Besides of which, you can’t realize a success if you can’t recognize a fail. That’s like, pre-pre-pre step one. If you’re going to make a chili you really think has a chance of winning, or if at the very least you’re going to try not to poison the judges, you have to form an understanding of what doesn’t go in. Spot the fails.
Now if our lefty advocacy groups and election committees are forming a “grassroots” effort to keep the current crop in charge, and the argument they’re trying to put in circulation on the social networks and in the coffee shops is one of “Ah, what’s the use, both sides stink on ice, just bend over and relax your sphincter, maybe apply a little bit o’ lube and it’ll go in easier” — and that’s the very best argument they have to offer — that’s a pretty good definition of a fail. Especially in this case, right? Obama was elected with a super-majority in the Senate, and He said the economy would get better and the oceans would start to go down. And then Holy Man was given two-to-four years along with trillions of dollars for His pet projects. Now it’s time to face the music and we’re back to golly-gee-it’ll-take-time-for-Him-to-fix-the-screwups-of-the-last-guy…yeah, well, sorry there’s a certain shelf life for that line, and it’s done past it.
Saw an e-mail being circulated, someone makes the point that the nation can survive Barack Obama, but it cannot survive the ignorance that got Him elected. That’s my viewpoint on the situation. The thing that’s really going to kill us is this sense that, since both sides are bad, it really doesn’t matter who’s in charge and what’s-the-use-of-trying. I understand and respect that people have their reasons for feeling a sense of futility. My request is that if they must demonstrate this sense of futility and defeatism, they do it by staying home and not voting. That’s only reasonable, I think. It may not be an effective expression of the apathy, but it would be an honest one. And hey, if we’re looking for an honest expression of apathy, then the question arises naturally, in fact, pretty much out of the very definition — What the heck do you care?
I’m seeing a lot of concern about the swelling dependency class. Been seeing it for years. In 2009, some 59 million tax returns showed no liability. My point here is, although this shows a real problem with “skin in the game” and it does herald the rapid approach of a tipping point, at the far end of which we’ll see a perpetually-defeated and disenfranchised minority laboring under the yoke of paying for all these wonderful bennies, this is not our biggest problem.
I think the biggest problem the country has right now, bigger even than the dependency class voting in crooks and thieves to grab free stuff and give it to ’em, is that other voting bloc represented and appealed-to by the Ann-Margret look-alike in Starbucks. The ones who feel a sense of resignation, a sense of what’s-the-use-of-trying, but somehow — inexplicably — feel passionate about this sense of resignation, and eager to spread it around as much as they can. Come to think of it, this has a lot to do with teaching your kid to pick out exactly the perfect flavor of granola bar at Starbucks. She’s from my generation, and this is one of the more risible weirdnesses of my generation — we’ve been conditioned to think choosing solves everything. Would you like me to steal your money by holding you up with a gun, or a knife? Burn your house down with gasoline or oil-soaked rags? The important thing is to express, to take an active part in the process!
I don’t think the democrats can win another term just by appealing to the people who want to be given free stuff. I think, if that’s the game plan, the electorate will eventually wise up. It always has. People get tired of it. The real danger, from what I can see, is with the Pleasure of Being Nasty voter.
I don’t think we’re going to be done in by the voter who is demanding a net gain. I think the viper we’ve been holding at our bosom is the voter who’s acclimated to a net loss, the one who’s resigned himself to getting screwed.
You’re reading that and you’re saying “Why Freeberg, that’s completely absurd! You’re saying the ones who are most likely to re-elect Obama and all His friends, are the ones who recognize that this is nothing but a big ol’ band of bloodsuckers and thieves — and say so constantly?”
And I reply, in turn: Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
People who feel a sense of defeat, want like the dickens for everyone else to feel the same sense of defeat. Or, at least, be forced to live under it.
You play a game of Monopoly with four people, two of the players are bankrupt and no longer in the game — they don’t want the other two to be playing for much longer. It’s a part of human nature no one wants to talk about.
I think the big spoiler of 2012, who can really make the elections go the wrong way, is the voter who’s expecting the shaft. He’s at the point now where the disappointment has been so long expected that there will be a whole new disappointment if there isn’t disappointment.
He doesn’t have any expectation left for an honest government, so he doesn’t want anybody else to have such an expectation either. He doesn’t have any sense of hope left, so he doesn’t want anyone else to have some. And worst of all, when His Divine Eminence gives all these “uh uh uh” speeches about getting even with the millionaires-and-billionaires on their “corporate jets,” I get the feeling He’s addressing people who know they’re about to get screwed, the ones who understand they’re about to lose even more. They’re straight out of the Pleasure of Being Nasty experiment.
They want to lose a portion of what they have left, maybe all of it, just to make sure someone else loses something too. And the really sick thing is, they think it’s a net gain for them, if the magnitude of loss they are about to sustain is less than the loss sustained by the other guy.
They lose a nut. Some stranger they’ll never meet, loses two.
You can’t realize success if you can’t recognize fail. I call this a fail, because — if for no other reason — the government, which means that creep in Congress, that crook everyone recognizes is a crook, and nobody has anything good to say about him, certainly not about his integrity or his character or his trustworthiness as a steward of public resources…he makes off with three nuts.
If we know someone is spending resources foolishly, it’s a fail when you give him more. It doesn’t matter who’s bearing the burden; an increased investment in something stupid and dumb, means a fail. Maybe that’s what the slogan needs to be.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think the big spoiler of 2012, who can really make the elections go the wrong way, is the voter who’s expecting the shaft. He’s at the point now where the disappointment has been so long expected that there will be a whole new disappointment if there isn’t disappointment.
That would explain why the top 3 GOP presidential candidates, are the very ones LEAST likely to be willing (or in Paul’s case, able) to get anything done for the economy while in office. That’s what these middle of the road types insist is on their minds these days, right? Jobs and the economy?
- cylarz | 12/30/2011 @ 14:15People who feel a sense of defeat, want like the dickens for everyone else to feel the same sense of defeat. Or, at least, be forced to live under it.
You’ll never read a clearer definition of liberalism than this.
Faced with something you’re not good at, you have two options: 1) accept it, and bow out gracefully, and find meaning for your life elsewhere; or 2) outlaw it, slime it, devalue it, undermine its foundations… anything, everything, to make sure that if you’re not good at it, nobody else is either.
Why are liberals always blathering on about “equality”? Because it means that nobody’s better than anybody at anything, which means that nobody’s better than them.
Why are they so hung up on gay marriage and abortion on demand? Because people who have a moral code and the gumption to at least try to stand by it are against both. Lacking both principles and willpower, they’re determined to deprive everyone of both by judicial fiat.
Why do they love “engagement” and “dialogue”? Because talk talk talk, especially with the kind of people they’re always urging “dialogue” and “engagement” with, never actually achieves anything. To actually solve any of the problems they keep nattering on about would require boots on the ground. Which requires the type of people who are willing to fill those boots. I.e. people with a spine and a set of balls. Which ain’t them, and they damn well know it, so they’d rather see the whole world burn than be shown up (especially by the kind of troglodytic, doesn’t-even-have-a-PhD-in-Wymyn’s-Studies musclebound jarheads you find in the icky, icky military).
Etc. Liberalism is nothing but sour grapes and spit in your eye.
- Severian | 12/30/2011 @ 19:43Because talk talk talk, especially with the kind of people they’re always urging “dialogue” and “engagement” with, never actually achieves anything.
Funny how this wonderful, vaunted, prized diplomacy never seems to extend to their domestic political opponents, who after all, are fellow Americans. “Talk” is reserved for dictators who want to wipe our country off the map.
- cylarz | 12/30/2011 @ 23:46