Thursday, June 29. 2006
 Well, we've already explained the Cult of the Daily Kos here: Daily Kos is the Amway of Bile And that was before we found out you weren't getting your platinum level member's card and special introductory Bushitlerburton T-shirt unless your moon was in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars.
Well, peace won't rule the planet because you vent your spleen over and over in a chat room. It's our contention that Markos Moulitsas would be shoving food out a hole in a wall if he didn't preside over that coven of contentiousness, The Daily Kos; but what about his minions? Umm --toadies! Er, running dog lackeys, yeah, that's it! Nah, his, his, well, let's see... let's be polite: his commenters. What the hell makes them congregate together, simultaneously proclaiming they are an ascendant majority and a tiny vanguard minority, always being unfairly portrayed by the media and betrayed by shady cabals everywhere? What's their story? Enchiridion Militis thinks he knows: They're the 2006 version of the John Birch Society.
Americans should be informed on the election in Mexico because the outcome there will be felt on our borders and in our cities. The Immigrant Diaspora is directly related to the economic hardship felt by the Mexicans who view "Coming to America" as their families only chance for survival. Americans can look to Venezuela and Bolivia as examples for what will lie ahead should the Populist candidate Obrador be elected. "López Obrador -- a 52-year-old former mayor of Mexico City whose campaign plays to women by distributing pictures of him on heart-shaped, rose-dotted fliers -- is the disciple of New Deal-style programs. He pledges to work "for the good of all, first the poor" and wants to blow a hole in the North American Free Trade Agreement by refusing to honor Mexico's commitment to lower tariffs on U.S. corn and beans"
 Reposted from May, 2005:
Roger Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals, with an essay: Re-Taking the University Samples: "Academic life, like the rest of social life, unfolds within a frame of rules and permissions. At one end, there are things that one must (or must not) do; at the other end, there is rule of whim. The middle range, in which behavior is neither explicitly governed by rules but is not entirely free, is that realm governed by what the British jurist John Fletcher Moulton, writing in the early 1920s, called “Obedience to the Unenforceable.” It is a realm in which not law, not caprice, but virtues such as duty, fairness, judgment, and taste hold sway. In a word, it is the “domain of Manners,” which “covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself.” A good index of the health of any social institution is its allegiance to the strictures that define this middle realm. “In the changes that are taking place in the world around us,” Moulton wrote, “one of those which is fraught with grave peril is the discredit into which this idea of the middle land is falling.” One example was the abuse of free speech in political debate: “We have unrestricted freedom of debate,” say the radicals: “We will use it so as to destroy debate.” "
and: "Many parents are alarmed, rightly so, at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social, and political scruple that they had been brought up to believe. Why should parents fund the moral de-civilization of their children at the hands of tenured antinomians? Why should alumni generously support an alma mater whose political and educational principles nourish a world view that is not simply different from but diametrically opposed to the one they endorse? Why should trustees preside over an institution whose faculty systematically repudiates the pedagogical mission they, as trustees, have committed themselves to uphold? These are questions that should be asked early and asked often."
Read entire.
Wednesday, June 28. 2006
Repost: originally posted on Oct 19, 2005 From piece by Zinsmeister at The American Enterprise: "Nearly one third of Germans under 30 say that the U.S. government ordered the 9/11 attacks. In France, a book insisting that Americans carried out the assault themselves to increase defense budgets becomes a huge bestseller. In Britain, major newspapers carry headlines like "The USA is Now the World's Leading Rogue State."
Asked which countries are the biggest threat to world peace, Europeans name the U.S as often as North Korea and Iran (each are picked by 53 percent). Countries characterized by Euros as less menacing than the U.S. include Syria, Iraq, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Libya. As one American living in Britain, Anglican minister Dwight Longenecker, summarizes: "Our cultural ancestors have become unrecognizable, even hostile, to us." Unlike some forms of bigotry, anti-Americanism is most virulent among Europe's elites. Everyday Germans and Brits and Italians tend to be more appreciative of American culture, economic achievement, and government than their political lords. But ordinary Europeans have relatively little influence on the direction of their societies. The thing about European governance most striking to American eyes today is its comparatively undemocratic nature. In much of the continent, elections mean little, unaccountable bureaucracies and elites commandeer the most important decisions, the same people hang onto power endlessly, and policies that would not survive the test of popular opinion are simply instituted by administrative fiat. To cite just one example, direct election of mayors has been blocked in many localities, with national authorities insisting on appointing local leaders themselves. Because of this unrepresentative politics, lots of ideas supported by a majority of the European public--like the death penalty--have no chance of becoming law. The tradition of a peasantry ruled by its "betters" endures in numerous ways. Many of these habits are actually being deepened by the European Union, where decision making is dominated by unrecallable mandarins serving appointments in Brussels, who regularly ram through laws that could never pass by popular referendum. "
Read entire.
A repost from Feb, 2005: From a piece by Gelertner in Daily Standard: Benjamin Disraeli--twice prime minister of Great Britain, romantic novelist, inventor of modern conservatism--was a neocon in the plain sense of the word, a "new conservative" who began his career on the left. Conservative thinking dates to the dawn of organized society, but modern conservatism--a mass movement, a philosophy not for aristocrats and the rich but for everybody--was Disraeli's creation. That modern conservatism should have been invented by a 19th-century neocon is thought provoking. More surprising: His redefinition of conservatism is still fresh, and his political philosophy has never been more apt. Conservatism is the most powerful and electric force in the American intellectual landscape. Young people no longer discover the left and get excited; they are far more likely to get their intellectual kicks discovering and experimenting with conservatism. But what exactly do conservatives believe? How do they resolve the seeming paradox that so many conservatives revere the past yet are also progressives, determined to move this nation forward and let it grow, stretch, and inhabit more and more of its own best self? Disraeli produced a definition of conservatism that resolves the problem. It is so terse and compelling, it ranks as a milestone of political thought. He was a statesman who remodeled Europe and a thinker who examined some of the hardest of all political, social, and philosophical questions: How should democratic government work, what does party politics mean, where do the Jews fit in? I too "would lift up my voice to heaven, and ask," says the hero of his novel Tancred, "What is DUTY, and what is FAITH? What ought I to DO, and what ought I to BELIEVE?" On these and related questions, Disraeli said fantastically improbable things that would be easy to dismiss except that many of them are true.
Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, June 27. 2006
Dr. Sanity said this better than we have or can - but she is right. Rush has been saying this for years, but I have finally come around to being persuaded. The basic issue for these radical environmentalists is not to end global warming--it is to discredit capitalism and to use global warming and other environmental concerns as a justification to impose their ideological and political agenda. They haven't a clue how to really counter the natural cooling and warming trends of the planet--but if they blame it on human beings, then the solution is to control people.
Global warming is a scientific issue. I can be convinced that the earth is getting warmer, but it will take more than slogans and hysteria to convince me that the warming is something other than a natural cycle in our planet's history that may have some repercussions on human life.
Read the whole thing - it's good.
When you step in it this many times in a row, it's no accident. It is way past time, in our opinion, to boycott them. Sisu. Bush's anger was gratifying to many. At Maggie's, we have all quit our subscriptions over the past year. Just could not stomach their propaganda. Miss their Travel Section, though - but who can afford all those trips anyway? The NYT has made itself the chardonnay-sippping, 60s-era, radical chic, Manhattan limo liberal mouthpiece rather than a serious national paper. (See post immediately below.) But to add treason to the mix is just over the top. We can all return to them, if and when they return to sanity - or land in jail. In the meantime, it's The New York Sun for us. And the CSM. The Globe is = NYT.
I'd like to acknowledge whoever linked to this piece, but
I don't know who did. Anyway, these are the
45 Communist goals for the US, as published in the 1963 Congressional Record. Take a look, and see how they did, or are doing. Looks like their goals are doing just fine.
Monday, June 26. 2006
A quote from a speech by Dem strategist George Lakoff from 2002, trying to explain the conservative worldview. Interesting that he neglects the subject of freedom entirely. Squaring the Boston Globe dug this up: Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.
Whereas The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.
Therefore, So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.”
Saturday, June 24. 2006
 I don't know what the New York Times is thinking, but I suspect it feeds their vanity to imagine that they are being valiant journalists by publishing the methods we use to track down terrorists. Legal methods, mind you.
If I had the time, I would post more on this - but for the moment, I just have to say that this behavior is treasonous and contemptible, not to mention dangerous. Not to mention provocative: are they hoping the Justice Dept will charge them with something, to boost shrinking sales? Like adolescents, you might almost think that they keep testing the limits. Then, when they get into trouble, imagine what they will scream? "Fascism, freedom of the press, Bush=Nixon=Hitler=my mean parents who grounded me, etc." A classic 1960s Leftist maneuver was to "expose oppression" by pushing the limits and breaking laws until somebody was forced to react. Then you get to be a martyred hero of the Revolution! "Like wow, really cool, dude. Let's smoke one more and go protest something, and maybe get us arrested or else pick up some groovy chicks, and buy us some groovy love beads and a bottle or two of Mateus, and bring the hippy chicks back to our pad and light the herbal candles. Far out, man. We have a plan! And we might get lucky. I hope they shave their legs or I'll barf, dude. Hey, slow down man - come on, and pass me that joint. And yo, hey - is there any pizza or ice cream or beer left from last night? Shoot, now I think I need a nap before we go to protest. Let's get arrested later, OK, man? Ban the Bomb, or Ban Bush or whatever - just don't ban the bong! Dig ya later." God forbid, if we have another 9-11, the NYT will quickly exchange their love beads and pot for their grown-up suit and Scotch, and be the first to complain that no-one connected the dots. If I were Gonzales, I'd be on them likes flies on horse poop. Can you imagine this sort of thing during WW2? Would they have published that we broke the Enigma code? Editor Update: I see the Anchoress has had the same thought. She summarizes other reactions to the NYT's treachery. I added a few sentences to this piece. Some readers ought to take a moment to forward this post to the Times' Public Editor, so they might have the chance to get into reality before they go to jail.
 Nick at Evangelical Outpost claims that WMDs are simply McGuffins, and that if a nuke were dug up in Saddam's basement, it wouldn't matter.
He got me thinking so much about McGuffins that I know I'll order an Egg McGuffin for breakfast next time. Will I get handed an empty wrapper for $1.99? Who remembers the theft in Psycho?
Diana West's Deluded America in the Wash. Times echoes our Run Away post this week (scroll down). I notice Powerline thought this was good, too. A quote: The question is, did bombing Dresden to defeat Hitler or dropping two nuclear bombs to force Japan to stop fighting make the Allies into barbarians?
I think most people would still say of course not and argue that such destructive measures were necessary to save civilization itself — and certainly thousands of mainly American and Allied lives. But if this argument continues to carry the day, it's because we still view that historic period from its own perspective. We view it from a perspective in which Allied lives — our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons — counted for more than Axis lives, even those of women and children.
How quaint. That is, this is not at all how we think anymore. If we still valued our own men more than the enemy and the "civilians" they hide among — and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq — our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, and not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran and not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.
In the 21st century, however, there is something that our society values more than our own lives — and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people — Western elites — never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadists. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of, anyone who does. This, of course, only enhances their own moral superiority. But it doesn't win wars. And it won't save civilization.
Why not? Because such smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides, don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other...
Read the whole thing.
Thursday, June 22. 2006
 Honestly, I have had it with Islam. I no longer entirely trust the existence of a "moderate Islam," and the wise VDH agrees. (On the other hand, there seem to be millions of Iraquis who want freedom and democracy, so I don't know.)
But my real issue today is why do the Dems keep pushing on this "Run away" theme? (Why do they always want to run away? Since they are Leftist in orientation, I can understand them wanting to bend over for the tender mercies of the glorious (ex-)Soviet Union or the charming, humane and sensitive Mao - but for these Jihadists? What do they see in them?) I guess it's a reflex for them - but I'd hate to have them as my band of brothers at Agincourt, or Poitiers, or the Battle of the Bulge. Or, God forbid, by my side in the Israeli Army. Or Lexington and Concord - they would invite the Brits in for tea. Wizbang has the latest farce today - thank goodness for the sense of Lieberman, one of the few Dems who understands what is going on. Why run away like a frightened bunny, when you have a chance to scoop up a few thousand Jihadists, and to create a sane, free country in the heart of the Middle East? It seems like a no-brainer to me, and it could change the world in a very positive way. Yes, they will kill some Americans as they hide behind their women and children, and they will set off bombs forever, like the Palestinians - but we will kill lots more of them. And our guys don't want to run away - they want to stand and fight. Running from a bunch of gangs of stone-age religious-fanatic sociopaths who want to kill us and to destroy Western Civilization is just not the American way. The buffoon Murtha has been totally discredited here at Powerline, and Kerry - he still thinks he is in Vietnam and lives in a one-man time-warp. As linked below in Dr. Sanity's exasperated post, where are the Dems when we have a chance to wipe out a major outpost of Jihad? Where is their spirit, where is their determination to protect...and what is with this scared bunny rabbit deal? All it does is to encourage them, as Somalia did when Clinton ran like a scared rabbit, and Madeleine Albright tried her "We're nice" approach (which Saddam, Osama, Kim Sung Il, Iran, Hamas, etc interpreted as weakness and fear). Lastly, what is this solicitude about "bring our boys home"? These guys are professional soldiers, trained and paid to fight, eager to use their craft, eager to confront danger, and tough and deadly. If they kill a few civilians by mistake, that's too bad - but I forgive them. War is hell, and we could be carpet-bombing Fallujah if we wanted to: instead, we have been trying the friendly, slow, surgical approach (which no other nation on the planet would even bother with, except the Brits). They can come home when their job is done, but all they will do is sit around their base camp bored, and take classes and practice while waiting for the next chance to use their abilities: they aren't social workers. (Well, the National Guard guys volunteered too, and seem to have their heart in their work, but I know it's not their career.) God bless 'em all, and God protect them all. Editor's Note: It isn't like The Barrister to post such intemperate pieces, such as many other blogs do. Pure rants and tantrums, however therapeutic, are beneath the dignity of Maggie's Farm, and add little to the discussion. I modified it, but I still do not like the tone.
So we did find hundreds of chemical WMDs in Iraq, BUT.... - they aren't new
- they didn't find any nukes
- that's old news (it is?)
- the timing of the declassification is suspicious
- that still wasn't a reason to invade
- Saddam wasn't such a bad guy
- it doesn't count, because it doesn't fit the narrative
- Bush never really made WMDs his main excuse anyway
- it's really all about oil Halliburton imperialism Bush's stupidity the neocon conspiracy the Israel lobby getting elected whatever. ...and so it goes on. The US is always wrong. Oh, and there are no terrorists in Iraq.
Our own Dr. Bliss just blew off some steam on this subject (scroll down to "bitching"), but now I see more in the same vein from Dr. Sanity. She is right to be disgusted and fed up. A quote from her piece: Every time I see our country accept the premises of the insane political correctness promulgated by the political left--a doctrine that claims that, while all cultures and countries are equal; you, America, are uniquely bad and evil and must be punished for your sins. Every time I witness the hysteria mounted when America falls short of its own ideals--and then willingly and honorably acknowledges the fact and takes steps to correct it; every time I witness the granting of moral equivalence between America and the barbaric terrorists who get a free pass from the international community and the MSM for their behavior (being a terrorist means never having to say you're sorry as far as the left is concerned)-- I am appalled.
Is there no decency, no honor left in the Democratic party anymore? Has most of the world gone completely insane? Is the suicidal appeasement of evil and the denigration of good now the norm? And what will happen to the world if America is finally beaten down and just...shrugs...when the next international crisis arises.
My opinion, Dr. Sanity? Yes. And have another beer while we try to figure out how to buy CBS!
Wednesday, June 21. 2006
This is my final Larry Summers post, and I wish him the best: Grievance-collecting, as we shrinks term it, is a personality trait which commonly serves the purpose of self-interest or self-aggrandizement. It is rarely, in normal life, a rational or justifiable mode of operating. While it is typically associated with paranoid personality traits, our society has taught people that it can be useful as a ploy or manipulation, and that people can actually benefit from having grievances, rather than being pitied and getting plain old-fashioned attention. In our topsy-turvy, politically-correct, hypersensitive world, having grievances becomes a badge of honor. This is psychologically perverse. And it is perverse to claim "offense", in my opinion. Who said YOU shouldn't be offended, anyway? Surely we all deserve to be offended, and all will be whether we deserve to be, or not. But those who seek offense and collect it will surely find the most - and will invent or imagine it when they cannot find it. Every psychiatrist has seen a woman who had a notebook, or a mental notebook, of every insenstive act or word of their husband since the day they met. What those women (yes, it's always women) never realize is that, if he wanted to, the husband could have the same notebook, but he doesn't focus on it. What's that problem? That problem is imagining, or wishing, that the world would pander to our every little neurotic hypersensitive feeling. There is the infantile narcissism, which tends to be much more concealed or disguised where it appears in men. And in the political and academic worlds, this seeming-weakness is exploited, converted into power to control and manipulate through guilt, and to gain a free pass for one's own aggression or destructiveness. In America today, that conscious and deliberate exploitation of this format is a dominant force, which few are brave enough to confront. Yet it must be confronted, not only because it is nuts, but because it damages the person who does it, in the long run. In psychiatric practice, we confront victimization daily, and refuse to permit patients to use it as a cop-out and an excuse for avoiding performance, achievement, earned, positive attention, and building good relationships. There is no human dignity, and no self-respect, and no future, in a career of bitching. Every human has tough things to deal with, whatever color, religion, nationality, sexual interest, etc. they are stuck with. Get over it, as the Eagles say, and grow up. And growing up means giving up the baby methods of power and attention...and accepting our best, small, humble contributions to life. I have felt that those sniveling gals at Harvard who sunk Larry Summers really took the cake in this game, and I am ashamed of my association because of that ridiculous episode. But they showed their power, didn't they? The power of sniveling bitching. That does women no good whatsoever - they need to be the best in their class in Physical Chem II, Linear Algebra, and Discrete Probability, if they even want to do graduate work. Tears and hystrionic self-pity won't do it in the big world, where performance and mastery count. Make a rocket land on Mars or circle Saturn - that means something. Some women can do that - most cannot. But neither can most men. But we can all do something useful in this world, and destroying others isn't it.
Sunday, June 18. 2006
 It's tough to be a Dem these days, because Bush has squeezed us/them out of the center.
As they drift, or are squeezed, Leftward, they alienate voters both on the "social" issues and on defense. (Don't ask me what I mean by "leftward," since much of it isn't really "Left:" there is nothing intrinsically Left about Jihad-denial, for example.) Or is there? Our bred-in-the-bone Repub Mrs. Chairman feels that it is always a tactical imperative of the Left to disparage the US, because they have an agenda of social change. Thus anything that smells of nationalism, patriotism, pride, or which focuses on external rather than internal evils, delays the movement towards their quasi-socialist agenda, which can only be based on the "What's wrong with America?" question. For the country that everyone in the world wants to come to, and to be like, it is a bit odd. When we Dems begin standing up for America, and abandon socialism, we can begin winning national elections again. Most honest people who take risks to come here, and do so legally, want economic and political and personal freedom, not hand-outs, and not an easy lfe. Indeed, it is remarkable to what extent the Dems no longer tout the US as the bastion of individual freedom, opportunity, and good values, the way JFK always did. (Mrs. Chairman is smarter than me, but she will not blog.) We need two lively parties to make a good game of "Capture the Flag." In the end, the struggle is always for the non-ideological "center," (which has always been fairly conservative outside of the MSM, academia, union loyalists, California, and New England/New York, and the ridiculously wealthy for whom redistributional taxes are no concern), but which has slowly drifted "rightward" - I think mainly in reaction to the alarming "Leftward" drift of the Dems since JFK - and the high visibility of their irrational and often wackily colorful fringe elements and "lens lice," as Curtis Sliwa terms them. That "Leftward" drift is a major political error, especially in a time when the rest of the decadent and spoiled Western World is so visibly and desperately trying to undo their socialist errors of the past. I call it "trying to take candy from babies." You get a lot of "boo hoo hoo" from the dependency voters - but they are not the centrist voters the Dems need. Nor are the Mexican illegals. Shameful. We (yes) Dems should be a proud patriotic party - not sycophants and ass-kissers and vote-buyers for whoever wants a free ride on somebody else's nickel and effort. And we should be the party of JFK and Truman - not limp surrenderists but tough against threat, and tough administrators at home. Not socialist - but helping to spread opportunity. Not negative - cheerful. Not hateful - appreciative and respectful - normal. I have little respect for JFK as a person, but as a politican, the guy was damn good for an amateur rich kid. In Vietnam, we all failed his vision of freedom. I was there, opposing desperate totalitarian Marxist loonies. But we were undercut by our surrenderist Marxist "hate America" loonies at home, and it has taken Vietnam many years, many deaths, much sorrow - to finally come around. I should remind our readers that I worked for JFK's campaign, and made my mother come with me to drive an hour to the Bridgeport, CT train station to hear him on a campaign stop. I remember how red his hair was, in the sun, and how my Mom, and the other ladies, all said "He's so young and handsome." He was elected by women (if he was, in fact, elected: Daly had quite a powerful dead-voter Chicago scam going then, and I remember how he proudly "guaranteed" Illinois - "whatever it takes." I confess, at the time, I thought that was pretty cool. Not now, not funny.). If anyone recalls, JFK "won" that election by appearing stronger on defense and anti-Soviet, and just as conservative and Federal tax-cutting, as Nixon - who won the guy vote. Yes, I remain a Dem - Bird Dog calls me a limo liberal - but I am not a liberal. I just want my party to give me candidates that I can vote for. Why still a Dem? Don't ask: it is personal. Well, want I want to do is to direct you to an excellent and thoughtful piece by Shulman at American Future on the struggles going on in the Dem party. It deserves to be an op-ed in the NYT, along with another must-read which Shulman links - Beinart's piece A Fighting Faith in the always-interesting New Republic.
Saturday, June 17. 2006
Why reject the faux socialism masquerading as Democrat activist politics these days? Because it's no damn fun. They're all just cranks standing on the corner screaming at the traffic and holding placards that read: "The Werld Will End Yesterday." They're always crabby and narrow and in a huff. And they invest every one of their damp farts with the authority of a press release. It' s a sad thing when they display their female armpit hair gone gray as they hold their "Scooter Libby is the Anti-Christ" placards over their heads. Sakes, lighten up. It's the "facists" (Their spelling; what's with the spelling? they've been to college for nine years) and the old fashioned Democrats that are having all the fun. We're smoking big cigars and telling jokes and drinking good booze and doting on our children and avoiding headaches by staying out of Post Modern Art museums and Eminem concerts. And a deer hunter knows infinitely more about nature than some PETA fanatic that's never been anywhere not served by a subway, handing out misspelled screeds outside a KFC. Those "evildoers" are just that, doers; doing real things and having real fun while you Che Shirt snivelers mewl 24/7 that Bush is Hitler and Rove is Goebbels and Bill Gates is Satan and Wal*Mart is Hades and Crude oil is brimstone-- and get this: Al Gore is smart. Put a sock in it, Muffie and Biff. You're forever in the audience, and at the wrong show, to boot. You know who's funny? Mark Steyn is funny. It's easy to be funny, when he's making fun of you: Herewith, "A Call To Celebrities To Conserve":1) Instead of using your air-conditioning system on hot summer days, why not have Barbra and her current husband, actor James Brolin, over for lunch? Ask James how his movie career's going. You'll soon notice the sudden chill in the room! 2) Recycle! Those old breast implants you had taken out? Pop them in the freezer and you'll find they make excellent cold compresses on humid afternoons! 3) In the evenings, cut down on your energy usage by keeping the room as dim as possible. An easy way to do this is to invite Alec Baldwin and Julia Roberts round to discuss politics.
Read the whole thing here.
Thursday, June 15. 2006
Planned Parenthood announces that they will make a major effort to elect "Progressives" this fall. (Yes, PP accepts taxpayer funds.) If they said "Democrats," the IRS would be all over them. But they will only support Democrats. Just one more front organization for the Revolution! Can non-profits legally do that? There are many Republicans for Choice out there, mainly ladies. Just be careful about to whom you give your money, ladies. May I assume that the dollars donated by prosperous, "enlightened" white ladies in St. John suits to provide abortions to poor teens, are going to this political effort?
IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...
[The Wealthy Congressman] "Representative Patrick Kennedy has pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of prescription drugs last month in an early morning car crash near the Capitol. Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat who is a member of one of the nation's most famous political families, was sentenced on Tuesday in District of Columbia Superior Court to court- ordered drug treatment, a year of probation and a $350 fine. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of reckless driving and failure to display a driving permit." [The Poor Window Washer] " High-rise window washer Christopher Guay spent 20 hours in jail waiting for his wife to raise the $1,040 the state demanded to free him after he struck and killed a sea gull he says repeatedly dive-bombed at him as he was attempting to clean office windows. " ... it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...
[The Wealthy Congressman] "Kennedy denied that and insisted he had not consumed alcohol before the accident. He said he had gone home after work that evening and had taken the sleeping pill Ambien and an anti- nausea medication, Phenergan. Medical experts called his explanation plausible. Ambien's prescribing information warns about the possibility of hallucinations and strange behavior." [The Window Washer] "Guay said he was working 12 stories up atop 185 Devonshire St. about 8:30 a.m. Friday when he was set upon by three sea gulls protecting a rooftop nest. “They’d sit up about 20 feet, then dive in,” he said. “They hit me twice in the head.” Guay said he moved to an attached roof at 161 Devonshire St., but the gulls followed. He eventually started swinging a broken broom handle, hoping to scare them off and give himself time to slip over the building’s edge and out of the birds’ sight. “I’d been doing it all day, fending them off,” he said. “It was working until I made my last drop . . . When I swung I wasn’t aiming. I didn’t mean to hit it. It flew right into the broom stick. I knew it was dead.” Office workers witnessing the 3:30 p.m. strike called the MSPCA, which responded with one of the agency’s 11 police officers. “I don’t blame them at all for calling,” Guay said. “If I saw someone on the roof swinging at a bird I’d do the exact same thing.” But he said he does have a problem with the by-the-book MSPCA cop. “He wasn’t buying my story at all,” Guay said. “He didn’t listen to a word I said. He said to me ‘So you like killing birds?’ Am I supposed to stand there and let the gull whack me in the head? I had to do something.” " ...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...
[The Wealthy Congressman] "The police said his eyes appeared watery and his speech slurred. He was not given a sobriety test and was driven home by the police, leading to complaints of special treatment." [The Poor Window Washer] " “The (Boston) cops in the transport told me, ‘This is ridiculous. We didn’t want to take you in, but the MSPCA cop made the call,’ ” Guay said of his brief chat with Boston officers while shackled in the back of a prisoner-transport truck. He will be arraigned Tuesday on charges of animal cruelty, a felony. Three Boston cops who spoke on condition of anonymity said they would not have arrested Guay, smirking at the inexperience of the MSPCA officer. “I didn’t even know they could make arrests,” said one veteran cop. Added another: “He’s fending for his life already. I wouldn’t have arrested him.” "... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...
[The Wealthy Congressman] "Last week, back from a monthlong treatment program for drug dependency at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he said he looked forward to resuming his duties, but would need a support group to deal with his bipolar disorder and tendency toward addiction." [The Poor Window Washer] "The beleaguered window washer arrested for killing a gull that he said tormented him for hours atop a downtown high rise got his first bit of good news since the bird fell dead. He landed another job. " - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
[The Wealthy Congressman] "He was accompanied in court by Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican from Minnesota whom Kennedy identified as his sponsor. Ramstad described himself as a recovering alcoholic of 25 years, having experienced his own "similar wake-up call" in July 1981." [The Poor Window Washer] "He was assigned a court-appointed lawyer, who ordered Guay to hush up about the incident. " (Roger de Hauteville wishes to bring readers's attention to the erudite and equally deceased Peter Porcupine for bringing this juxtaposed travesty to our attention. Be sure to read him daily. Quotations in italics from "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickins. If you didn't already know that, go back to every school you ever attended and ask for your money back. Picture is Prometheus, by John Singer Sargent. See it at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, if you're a poor window washer. You can just buy it, if you're a Kennedy)
 As India and China crawl out from under the rock of their socialist ideas, they are beginning to rock the world. In time, the rest of Asia will follow. The old European/American Left and the old European-American Greenies are beginning to get it, but very slowly. The Berlin Wall fell in the 1980s.
As Capitalism, and hence individual freedom, goes global, the old social planning ideas are obsolete, and the massive state welfare systems destroy the human spirit. They do not work and do not matter. Thus Old Europe is slowly become a museum area, like Thailand used to be. Perfect case in point - we will not drill for oil off the coast of Florida, but China will. Economics drive the world, and free-market economics drive freedom - eventually. Why? Because people in government are not as smart as markets. They have the guns, but they cannot control markets for long. Markets are not God, but markets rule human economic interactions. Markets are facinating things, amoral, enormously powerful, but completely reflective of human interests. I recently heard from a radiologist friend that his hospital has begun outsourcing their radiology to India on an experimental basis. In India, they have MDs working around the clock, for $20 US per hour, reading emailed American x-rays and CAT scans. They provide instant readings. Our guys make at least $500-1000/hour reading these images in their own good time. In a few years, our guys will be out of work or retired, but the new graduates here are doing Interventional Radiology, which requires a human presence. That is markets. The Left of America just doesn't get it, and they would drag us down into the economic dark ages like Old Europe if they had the power. Socialism is dead. It is time to compete, and the era of decadent, self-satisfied and self-indulgent Euro-American supremacy is passing. It is time to use our brains again. Image: MRI of someone's head, with a brain inside
Wednesday, June 14. 2006
Willisms provides a splendid collection of graphs on economic freedom and economic growth, comparing the US with EU nations.
Tuesday, June 13. 2006
 We have plenty of beefs with George Bush (his open-borders idea, and his big-government country-club liberal Republicanism), but his persistence against Islamist Jihad is not one of them.
He secretly arrived at the Green Zone today, bless his heart. Good politics, too. He is no Charles Martel, but we are re-fighting the Battle of Tours, today. I have not a single doubt that we are, or that they would happily kill you or me, with a dull knife, given half a chance - just for existing. Who needs more proof of that? As John points out, a Mr. Rogers foreign policy is not the solution! And I have never been able to understand the Left's apologetics, if not sympathy, for the Jihadists, who are woman-hating, gay-killing, oil-intoxicated, religiously fanatical, theocratic, primitive-capitalist, Christian- and Jew-hating stone-age ignorant murderers. Except that they hate Amerikkkka too. No, being "nicer" to them doesn't seem to work too well, nor does being "liberal." They have contempt for that kind of simpy weakness. Clinton and Albright tried it, and it only encouraged them. The Jihadists are as liberal and as multicultural as Atilla the Hun, and as conniving as a rug dealer. The world is not a nursery school. Politics makes strange burkha-fellows. Image: The (first) Battle of Poitiers (732), with Charles Martel, mounted, leading the fight against Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi, in the heart of France. If you want to invade a country nowadays, LEAVE YOUR GUNS BEHIND - just ask the Moslems, or the Mexicans, for advice on manipulating the nursery-school teacher-politicians: they are easy, and they go down as quick as a prom dress on a warm June evening in the shrubbery beside somebody's pool in East Hampton.
 Middle-East expert Amir Taheri revisits Iraq. A quote from his piece in Commentary:
Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various “fundamental mistakes” committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the “carnage” and “chaos” in the streets as signs of the country’s “impending” or “undeclared” civil war. Add to all this the day’s alleged scandal or revelation—an outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessment—and it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles. It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institution’s much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground.
Read the whole thing in Commentary.
Sunday, June 11. 2006
The dailykos is the Amway of Bile. If you're unfamiliar with the multi level marketing approach, you're lucky. It's exemplified by Amway. Amway's often emulated approach to making money for its primary investors is by selling motivational and instructional marketing materials to an ever increasing pool of participants in a pyramidal formulation. Somewhere down the line someone's supposed to buy something besides marketing materials, but that someone never seems to show up. For those of you lucky enough not to know what the dailykos is, it's the exemplar of a stripe of endless vitriol masquerading as political action that infests the blogosphere at the far left hand margin of the internet world. What do they think? Democrats are too Republican for them, is the short answer, if there is an answer; their message generally is encapsulated by Brando's dopey answer to "What are you rebelling against?" in The Wild One. "Whaddya got?" asked Brando in return, never answering the question, but nonetheless saying a lot. Never Answer The Question But Say A Lot should be on the masthead atop lots of websites, dailykos especially. The sentiment's the same, even if the average kos denizen has more of an air of Mr. Limpet than Marlon Brando about them; I bet one real biker could clear the room at the Yearlykos convention they're having this weekend in two minutes flat. They're throwing this little Multi Level Snark Marketing rah rah get-together in that perfect pyramid scheme hideout: Las Vegas, Nevada. They're getting together to earnestly massage one another's sense of importance and well-being and purpose, while they're milked for donations and fees, and then sold t-shirts and tschotschkes and bumper stickers and myriad other assorted piffle. Then they'll be thoroughly and generally farmed for massive donations of their remaining money and their time, in perpetuity -- like a kind of indulgence or tithe. Their time is worthless enough, I guess, as it is spent in a kind of 24/7 alternate reality, a mirror image of real activity. They support quixotic candidates as a kind of kabuki political theater. The US military acts; they try to hamstring it, all the while holding their nose and claiming to support it. Their political opponents do things; they say they are against what is being done, or that it doesn't count anyway because their evil opponents did it for the wrong reasons. If unemployment drops from 4.6% to 4.5%, it means that we've all been forced to take crummy jobs that no one would want. If it goes to 4.7%, well, see-- there's no jobs for anyone. If it stays the same-- see? Another quagmire. Every day is 1931, in Vietnam circa 1969, to a koskid. There is an expression for a force from nowhere that swoops in inexplicably and saves the day: deus ex machina; literally, God from the machine. The cadres of the Amway of Bile rely on the reverse -- the devil will come out of anything, no matter how benign, productive, wholesome, or innocuous, and that devil will allow them to hate that which is objectively good, while simultaneously allowing them to preen morally. Give me Beelzebub from the Machine, they fervently pray; defeat me, and concurrently absolve me of guilt in my defeat. We don't lose elections, they tell themselves; they are stolen. We argue; you smear. We have facts, our opponents hatch machiavellian plots to misinform. Our opponents are too stupid to understand the TRUTH, and simultaneously so wily and clever they can't be defeated by logic. The US doesn't win wars; anyone we beat wasn't worth defeating. We were on the wrong side anyway. We're not prosperous; we're slaves to money. Well fed? It's a conspiracy to make us fat. Long lived? Social Security's going broke. Good news? Karl Rove planted it to trick us. I will log on to dailykos, and he will tell me why everything --no matter how good it manifestly might be -- is bad, and tell me how I can blame it on The Other. And we will chant it together. People who prey on such people -- the people looking for meaning where there is none -- know exactly how to appeal to their desires and manipulate them. First, there will be lots of "information." There will be brochures and websites and teach-ins and workshops and group motivations and seminars and sign up sheets and stickers and petitions that will live in file cabinets forever like trolls. There will be torrents and cataracts and deluges of words -- cut and paste tsunamis. Then there will be slogans. And not just slogans, but everything reduced to slogans of the Sukarno or Mugabe or Goldstein variety: simultaneously vapid and wretched, a kind of accusation lodged in a bad pun or non-sequitur; unanswerable because it is essentially meaningless, and yet it encompasses an entire wordlview. And when all else fails, they'll claim that a cataclysmic end to the world is nigh, like some disheveled disturbed prophet on the streetcorner, simultaneously cadging change. Their opinions are that important and prescient -- the very future of the universe depends on their misspelled keystroked rants. Come to our meeting. We have some literature for you to look at. It's fun to try to guess who at the meeting isn't a plant, after your eyes glaze over from all the motivational brochures. When someone screams "I'm Somebody," and that person is manifestly nobody, just like we all are, it's not worth the effort to argue with them. When your toddler shows you the first turd he made in the bowl, and tells you he wants to bronze it because it's a faerie house, you flush the bowl and pat them on the head, you don't tell them there are no faeries. What do you tell an adult, whose car is covered in Kucinich for President bumper stickers, wearing a "Bush is Hitler" shirt, when he tells you he's "Against War?" That's nice, you'd say, if you were kind; those mean fellow citizens of yours that absolutely adore war are everywhere, and if not for you and your bumper sticker, we'd be invading Canada for their maple syrup right now, I bet! Then you'd roll your eyes and cast a knowing look towards the other adults. Or if you were Kos, you'd sign them up, and yoke them to your mission; your mission to have a mission. Would you like a Bush is Hitler shirt in red? All the Platinum members are wearing them. Black is so 2004. Don't forget to double click the links on my webpage. I get paid for clickthroughs. I'm somebody, Markos Moulitsas, the head of dailykos crows; you can be somebody too, if you can get enough of your friends to say so. I did. The appeal of the multi level marketer is the appeal that works with the child: You can have the trappings of the adult life; you can talk adult talk and go to adult places and get adult things. Other adults will talk to you. But only the child could believe that if I have ten dollars, and you have ten dollars, and we give each other our ten dollars ten times, we'll both have one hundred dollars. The Amway of Bile says: if you say Bush is Hitler, and I say Bush is Hitler, and we say it to each other 50 million times, we'll have 100 million votes and we'll be winners. You'll be winners. Yes, yes you will. Now run along and play.
|
