House of Eratosthenes

I figure people in the U.P. in Michigan are nice. That’s a crass generalization and I know it is prone to error, but I’m sticking to it. I’m adopting it as one of my personal prejudices, without apologies. I’ve met some of them, back when I lived in Detroit, roaming across the bridge past Sault Ste. Marie. They’re just plain nice.

Please join me in extending your best wishes to the family of Army Sgt. 1C James A. Priestap. And while you’re at it, just as a mental exercise…try to envision what it’s like to stand guard with enemy snipers around. Snipers who actually have the wherewithal to get some sniping done. Knowing they’re out there looking for things to snipe.

We got thousands of men like Sgt. Priestap out there right now…men and boys, who understand this fully and volunteer to serve anyway. Follow the link above, and you can write just an encouraging word or two to be passed on to his family. Just something to think about.

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Dark Times
Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Historians look back on the thousand-or-so years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, and call them the Dark Ages. This is because science took a back seat to sectarian issues, and y’know, the big “we” didn’t do a whole lot. History during that time, for the most part, is a bunch of people bonking each other over the head and taking land back after it was taken away from them by some other guy bonking someone over the head. No cool theories about gravity, not much going on with communications or the written word, no real value placed on the acquisition of new information.

Well, there’s bound to be some similarly derogatory name invented for the twenty years or so in which we’re living right now. Our handicap, however, is not so much cognitive as it is cogitative. A thousand years ago, people weren’t too good at, or too keen on, acquiring information; nowadays they get ahold of it, and for the most part just jerk off into a wet paper bag when it comes time to figure out what the information means. The whole thing has some hope, just a faint one, of making sense to you only if you live in these times. To a future generation looking back, it is sure to be unexplainable, just as the things people did a millenium ago, to us, are incomprehensible.

A perfect case in point: The letters page of the Sacramento Bee from yesterday (third one down) (link requires registration). The burning of the six Sunni Muslims as they were leaving prayers over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Supposedly, in retaliation for attacks on a Shiite slum earlier, someone doused a family of Sunni worshippers with kerosene and set them alight. Iraqi police stood by and did nothing. Some other folks who tried to put the flames out, were stopped by the attackers. The Sunni Muslims burned to death.

Well, Flopping Aces has been looking into this and finding more and more and more problems with the story. You can get started on the whole sorry saga here. As of this writing, it’s probably most accurate to say the Associated Press has been working with the Iraqi police to try to verify the story — and, collectively, they’ve hit a rough patch. It would not be a departure from the realm of the undisputed, to go a bit further and say some parts of the story have been proven false. Like for example the employment status of a certain “spokesman” who got the whole story going.

So as a supporter of the war, I’m getting this finger waggled in my face about how I voted for it therefore I own it. But the basis for this argument is based on pure bullshit. Easily-detected bullshit. And furthermore…assuming the Sunnis and Shiites are fighting in something that could be called a “civil war,” since obviously there is some sectarian violence going on, nevermind the facts getting in the way…doesn’t this all just go back to the old debate about people & guns? I get mugged, I get shot, I get killed, who’s to blame. Society, or the asshole who pulled the trigger.

What is the argument being made with all the talk about civil war? People are killing each other and it’s America’s fault? That’s laughable. People were killing each other before we invaded. Is this all supposed to support some thesis about how Iraq was a lot better off when Saddam was in charge? If so, why has it become so rare that anyone has the balls to just come out and say that. Someone like Jonathan Chaitt, who thinks we should put Hussein right back in.

Or is it just that our hands are dirty. That it’s better to have people killing each other without our involvement, than with our involvement. Hey, it’s an argument worth making, all I ask is that when people make it they have the honesty to admit that is the argument they’re making. Is that too much to ask? Maybe we should come up with a name for this. They think everybody should behave like the cowardly citizens of Hadleyville in High Noon. That’s it. The Hadleyville Paradigm. The dictum that civilized people, when bad guys come around, crouch in their living rooms and peek out from closed shutters.

Yeah, yeah, you know what the Hadleyville shutter-peekers are going to say. They’re going to say if I believe so strongly in this war, I should be over there fighting it, and since I’m not it proves I’m some kind of hypocrite.

Problem with that argument: One guy goes over to fight the war — just one — and the argument is defeated. Forever. You need only one Marshal Will Kane to walk the lonely streets, and the Hadleyville shutter-peeker is reduced to the position of saying, “he shouldn’t be out there, he should be in a living room, pretending not to be home, peeking out from between shutter slats just like me.” And everyone’s going to understand this is a ludicrous argument, fitting only the Darkest of Times. It’s going to look like exactly what it is: Someone taking the easy way out, getting nasty because other people are taking a more courageous stand, thereby making him look bad.

And so instead, they’d rather talk about people like me. That, too, looks like exactly what it is: A distraction. It is an argument that must be inconsistent, and must everlastingly stay that way. I think we need to do a lot of things. I think we need to cut some taxes, and yet, I’m not running for Congress. Does that make me a hypocrite? I think the United Nations should be doing a lot of things differently, and yet if they have elections whereby I’m given the opportunity to energize this opinion into action, I’ve missed every single one. Does that make me a hypocrite? I like beer. I am not in the business of brewing beer. I have not put any of my investment dollars into beer companies. Hypocrite?

No, it really comes down to law and order. How long do we think bad guys should have, to just run around being bad guys? Saddam Hussein had twenty years before the invasion even got started. The shutter-peekers, picking up all this enemy propaganda and old-wives’-tales and urban-legend-gossip, and translating it into some argument of “we never shoulda done it” are trying to support a position that twenty years was not enough. Saddam Hussein should have had unlimited freedom to be a bad guy — forever. Which means all of the bad guys should have that long.

Shutter-peeking, forever.

And note, it’s an absolute position. Much was done before the invasion of Iraq, to get other countries “on board” with it, to justify it with broad factions of people with disparate interests in human rights, weapons threats, etc. Seventeen resolutions ignored! Surely, it’s an absolute position to take, that this is somehow not enough; it’s a moderate position to take that y’know, maybe seventeen is enough, and it’s time to do something.

Future generations are sure to look back and raise the question: If the war is going so badly that the shutter-peeking can be made, somehow, to look good…wouldn’t this have been possible while relying on true things? Why all the urban legends? Why the propaganda?

And if anyone asks me, I’m going to have to give an answer to the effect of…well, even though a few years after the invasion we’d been snookered by an awful lot of stuff…somehow, at the end of 2006, verity was an attribute that still didn’t have a lot of value for many people. I don’t see any way around giving that answer. I hope nobody asks me to explain it. The best I can come up with, is that truth has a connection with justice; you need the former to get the latter. If what you want is anarchy, just bad guys marching down the streets of Hadleyville, while shutter-peekers peek out their shutters and hope the bad guys get bored and walk away — maybe this has an effect on you. Maybe this causes truth to not have much importance for you.

Maybe it comes down to that: justice through boredom. What is the attention span of a bad guy? Do bad guys get bored and stop being bad guys? Is boredom an adequate substitute for Gary Cooper? Can we have an orderly society in which, whenever there’s trouble in the town, we just come up with some arguments as to why it doesn’t concern us and then shutter ourselves up in our living rooms, until the bad guy gets bored?

Yeah, it does make sense. Facts wouldn’t matter too much to someone who thinks that way. Come to think of it, there’s only one question on which such an ostrich-type shutter-peeker would have any interest whatsoever, all others being trivial: Is he gone yet?

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The Top 10 Hottest Animated Disney Women
Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Elastigirl Ah, now this is my kind of thing. Here we have a genre that is understood to be G rated and oggling at the coquettish star material is decidedly inappropriate…or expected to be inappropriate, anyway. Nevertheless, time after time the message has been concocted, passed to the parents on a covert channel squarely over the kids’ heads, and someone has taken the effort to pick up on the signals and compare them from one movie to the next. Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s really got it going on?

It’s even original. And, where it is called-for, tasteful; due consideration is given as to whether Ariel might be underage. And Jessica Rabbit wins the top spot, as one would expect.

One of the readers posts an interesting question: “Do Pixar babes count now that Disney owns Pixar?” You know, I don’t see how they couldn’t. Pixar has indulged in the “toss this joke at the parents and go over the kids’ head” thing far more than the parent company has, and some of the Pixar babes are just…wow. Elastigirl, of course, stands alone as the only female cartoon character who distracted me from what was going on in the rest of the movie.

And it goes without saying: Once we branch out into the world beyond Disney movies, nobody is on par with “Alice,” Dennis Mitchell’s mom. Yummy. But that almost gets into a different subject.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… IX
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Jonathan Chait: Restore Saddam Hussein back to power.

Up until now, this has been a joke. A sarcastic one. Like, okay mister wise guy, whaddya think we should do, put Saddam back in? Now we got Chait saying we should look at doing exactly that.

I’m still the opposite. You know that joke about the lawyers in the bottom of the lake? Whaddya call five of them…a good start? That’s how I see Saddam right now. The fucker’s a good start. If our execution has been flawed, let’s do a detailed post-mortem on everything. And then let’s test the post-mortem process by taking down the next asshole, and the next one and the next one. Keep practicing until we get it right.

Our situation with sociopathic world dictators who are possibly dealing arms to terrorists, or trying to get into the position of doing so…is exactly the same as our situation with people talking on their cell phones. Or people playing their car stereos way too loud. Or women walking dogs. Or kids on razor scooters. Or four-wheel-drive trucks driven by people who live in the city and don’t need 4WD. Or people buying lottery tickets when the jackpot is over 50 mil. It’s exactly the same as those, albeit more lethal…

There are too fucking many of them. There are so many representations of the one class, it’s a form of pollution. The damage done by the whole, is greater than the sum of the parts.

And so allowing for the whole “Saddam was not a threat” thing and the “Iraq was better off under him” thing…and I’m allowing those only hypothetically, and only with the snarkiest of sneers…I must call Mr. Chait’s attention to the issue of flooding a market already flooded. Murderous dictators all the world over, venomous vipers all across the world’s stage, are so damn plentiful in 2006 that we need to start charging a license fee for applicants. Just nevermind the danger — or threat — posed by each one of them. They’re overcrowding us.

Really, if I wanted to become a tinpot dictator and start selling WMDs to terrorists…I’d be worried sick about starting a new career in a saturated market. I’d probably name my banana-republic country “AAAAA” so it would be listed in the terrorist yellow pages first. Chait has shown himself to be blissfully unaware of the problem at hand, without even trying to.

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Hastings Down
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Alcee Hastings will not be the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

This gets into one of those “Republican or Democrat, ya gotta admit” things. Like…we got a problem. A big one. To whom did it make sense that a federal judge impeached for taking bribes, should be up for this chairmanship in the first place?

Once again…this new, Democrat-controlled 110th Congress is supposed to be riding in on their white horse, to save us from the Republican culture of corruption. Now that they’re in, they want the plumb jobs to go to…whom? An unindicted Abscam co-conspirator, and an impeached federal judge. Where’s the innocence? Where’s the snow-whiteness? I’ve heard of bait-and-switch, but this is a little ridiculous. Turkey leftovers are still in the fridge, and our “new” government is looking pretty scandal-slimed already. How are things going to look a year from now? How concerned should we be?

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It’s Just Like Heroin
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Oh, boy…even a klutz like me is way too smart to comment on this one.

Gossip But I’m not above linking to it in my blog. Which nobody reads anyway, so this can’t possibly lead to anything bad.

Women talk three times as much as men, says study
By FIONA MACRAE Last updated at 13:39pm on 28th November 2006
Women talk almost three times as much as men, according to the research.

It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.

In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.

Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.

The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men.

In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men.

And, if that wasn’t enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high.

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…pull pin, walk away…

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Rangel Makes Sure We Don’t Forget
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

At the beginning of this month, I said…

It’s one of the few things that remain consistent about our liberals. You can receive their help, or their respect. Never, ever, both at the same time.

It was a wrap-up to my comments about “the Kerry thing.” You know, about how our troops in Iraq are out there because they didn’t make themselves smarter. This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, makes an effort to form opinions based on facts…which means we try to find out why we’re supposed to think the things we’re supposed to be thinking. We don’t take the words of others for it. Not unless we have to. We try to find source documents. Download clips and see what’s in ‘em. Which is awfully inconvenient to some…and John Kerry’s “botched joke” was a perfect example of this.

One of the favorite phrases we use here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, is “instructed to believe.” It is our position that our society, here in North America in 2006, is in big trouble — because that is what people do nowadays when they discuss politics. They instruct each other to believe things. Republicans are corrupt, Saddam Hussein was not a threat, Kerry botched his joke, Clinton did not have sex with that woman, military service is a barrier to being a decent public servant, military service is a prerequisite to being a decent public servant, marital infideility is irrelevant to being a decent public servant, the Founding Fathers were not Christians, etc. etc. etc.

Well, Kerry-botched-joke-gate shows, if nothing else, how incredibly important it is sometimes to “instruct others to believe” things as opposed to laying out a solid argument based on evidence. Because when you watch the film clip from beginning to end, or even from beginning to just a few minutes in, you find something that poses problems for the “Kerry meant something else” crowd. Namely, that the asshole didn’t mean anything else. He meant to make fun of the troops. He really did want to deliver the punchline, exactly the way he delivered it, word for word. And the crowd thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Now, if you’re loyal to the Democrat cause and yet you’ve committed the sin of viewing the video clip, you can still reprogram yourself to be a good Democrat by rationalizing things away. It’s easy if you try. Kerry…alright, he didn’t botch his joke after all. But he meant to botch it, and forgot to. Or maybe he does have this disenchantment with the military, and he does think the troops actively serving are a bunch of stupid dolts. And maybe the crowd in Pasadena just ate this shit up. But if he was pandering to a bunch of liberals who loathe the military, he was doing it by mistake…and if he was doing it on purpose, so what? It was an isolated incident. The Democrat party doesn’t harbor any such misgivings against our military. It reflects on nobody save the guy who was supposed to represent the Democrats the last time they tried to take the White House.

Well…Charlie Rangel created a problem or two for that kind of rationalization when he said…pretty much the same thing Senator Kerry said three weeks earlier. Rangel instructed us to believe that Iraq was a place for people who don’t have options in their career prospects. “If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career, or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.” Once again, liberals come out circling the wagons…just the move-on-dot-org types, the Fahrenheit 9/11 watchers, not the elected representatives. Once again…what he said was true, so so what? You can’t prove what he meant by it anyway. And it’s true. Everybody knows it. And he doesn’t. Again, we’re buried under an avalanche of righteous indignation, flinging spittle, and cognitive dissonance. Liberals insult troops — and in retaliation, our liberals get all uppity and angsty, while the troops quietly go back to getting their jobs done.

Well, the American Legion is actually doing something about this. Token stuff, to be sure, but at least they’re doing something.

American Legion: Rangel Apologize Now

The National Commander of The American Legion called on Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to apologize for suggesting that American troops would not choose to fight in Iraq if they had other employment options.

“Our military is the most skilled, best-trained all-volunteer force on the planet,” said National Commander Paul A. Morin. “Like that recently espoused by Sen. John Kerry, Congressman Rangel’s view of our troops couldn’t be further from the truth and is possibly skewed by his political opposition to the war in Iraq.”
:
Rangel was responding to a question during an interview yesterday on Fox News Sunday about a recent study by the Heritage Foundation which found that those enlisting in the military tend to be better educated than the general public and that military recruiting seems to be more successful in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods than in poor ones.

You see how the liberals get into trouble here. It isn’t that they hate the military…although that does figure into it. But the problem is broader than that. It’s this craving for complete dependence on them, from their beneficiaries. People who depend on the liberal movement, must absolutely, utterly, depend on that liberal movement. Said dependants must entertain hope from nowhere else…or if any of them do, it must be kept a deep, dark secret.

I’d feel so much better about the donks if any one among them said something like, “such-and-such class of person might have a shot at success without us, but we’re going to make sure they have a better shot at it with us.” What a positive message that would be. How little effort it would take, so far as I know, to revamp their whole schtick to be compatible, on the plane of reality, with that simple slogan. What a difference it would have made in the last three elections. And yet, they chose not to do that.

There’s something over in that party that is absolutely incompatible with this. They want pure dependency — 99% is simply not good enough. This makes me uneasy. They’re supposed to be riding in on a white horse right about now, to save us from that Republican culture of corruption. Why do they need the austere, consummate, perfect state of dependence from those whose votes they want? Why is this so important to them?

Theory: A mother may have an affair on her husband, nearly burn her house down, forget to pay the power bill, or commit any one of a number of possible infractions or instances of negligence. Her teenager, engaged in a process of becoming independent, and depending on others, will view such things in a wholly different light compared to her infant or toddler, who depends on her completely. Democrats are planning things…things which will place them in a bad light viewed by their constituents, unless said constituents depend on said Democrats without exception, completely, utterly, absolutely, without compromise. Democrats know this and are thinking ahead. They know they will look bad, later on, to anyone except those who view life through the eyes of a child. This is what makes the unmitigated dependency so important to them.

This is a far-fetched theory. There is no reason to entertain it. Unless — you are taking note of the Kerry/Rangel episodes, and insisting on an explanation. Once you do that, the theory makes more sense. At least…nothing else does. Nothing else, that’s come to my attention, adequately explains this bizarre behavior, where they prize so highly this objective of making people, or showing people to be, completely dependent on them. Where they are willing to sacrifice so much for it. No other theory comes close to plausibly explaining this.

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X-Men Creator Dies in Superman Pajamas
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

For reasons I may explore someday, I’m heavily biased toward DC Comics as opposed ot Marvel, even though Marvel & DC both seem to be run by a bunch of granola-eatin’ liberals. But my reasons for preferring DC have nothing to do, it would seem, with anything in the life of this noted icon who passed away at his home Sunday so I’ll just keep them in a concealed location for now. Maybe in a phone booth or something.

Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday.

The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise.

Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday.

At Cockrum’s request, there will be no public services and his body will be cremated, according to Cox Funeral Home. His ashes will be spread on his property. A family friend said he will be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt.

At Marvel Comics, Cockrum and writer Len Wein were handed the X-Men. The comic had been created in 1963 as a group of young outcasts enrolled in an academy for mutants. The premise had failed to capture fans.

Cockrum and Wein added their own heroes to the comic and published “Giant-Size X-Men No. 1″ in 1975. Many signature characters Cockrum designed and co-created — such as Storm, Mystique, Nightcrawler and Colossus — went on to become part of the “X-Men” films starring Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.

Cockrum received no movie royalties, said family friend Clifford Meth, who organized efforts to help Cockrum and his family during his protracted medical care.

“Dave saw the movie and he cried — not because he was bitter,” Meth said. “He cried because his characters were on screen and they were living.”

He really made his mark with X-Men, and yet he chose to be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt. What can it mean, what can it mean.

Well, I’m liking the fact that he came up with these ideas that helped turn the whole thing around, and they ended up on the big screen — pivotal to the franchise’s success in that medium. Rest well.

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Things That Make You Go Hmmm… III
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Rawlins Gilliland, commenting on “mock outrage”:

Years ago, I was the emcee at a fashion store’s recognition breakfast. Between awards, I cracked inside jokes indigenous to retail culture. In one shtick, I lampooned about another ‘perk’ being added to the non-existent prizes, zanily announcing: “winners will have their phone calls to alterations answered in English.”

See, you groaned. So did half the audience. I was mortified, later crucified. This, despite hourly complaints from store employees who resented being forced to physically go to alterations to get an item (while customers waited) rather than having it delivered, because people on the phone spoke only Spanish and they spoke none.

This is when I was first introduced to the “‘Gotcha’ Thought Police”, a militia mindset where thinking one thing but saying another has become America’s disingenuous piety game.

Meanwhile, quoting the smarmy department manager who condemned my “racist remark”: “I don’t call them ‘Mexicans.’ I call them ‘Spanish people.’ It doesn’t sound so low class.” So who’s the racist here?

Read the whole thing…

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What Caused It?
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Why did this race car driver crash?

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Who’s Selfish?
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

A new book, titled “Who Really Cares” by Arthur C. Brooks examines the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives when it comes to donating their own time, money, or blood for the benefit of others. It is remarkable that beliefs on this subject should have become conventional, if not set in concrete, for decades before anyone bothered to check these beliefs against facts.

What are those facts?

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

Huh.

It is not that conservatives have more money. Liberal families average 6 percent higher incomes than conservative families.

Hmm. Wonder when that happened.

Conservatives not only donate more money to charity than liberals do, conservatives volunteer more time as well. More conservatives than liberals also donate blood. According to Professor Brooks: “If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply of the United States would jump about 45 percent.”

Rrrr?

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Slate Reader moodyguppy shares further insight that raises similar questions.

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Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… VI
Monday, November 27th, 2006

Logo …but fellow blogger Alan was good enough to nominate us as one of the best conservative blogs of 2006 (maybe 55% to 60% of the way down). Very decent of you, Alan.

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Collectivists
Monday, November 27th, 2006

I call them collectivists because they won’t come up with a name for themselves. If they were to do such a thing, it would make it easier to define their ideas and what they want done. They don’t want to do that, they just want to talk about the things they don’t like — which is that some people have lots of loot, and other folks have none. Hard to disagree with that, huh? And since it’s hard to disagree with it, they become absolutists.

Which necessarily must mean, they don’t want anyone to have anything. Or at least, they don’t want anyone to have any more stuff than what anyone else has.

You were an ant, someone else was a grasshopper? You refined your skills, someone else sat on his ass all day watching Girls Gone Wild? They don’t care. Everyone should have the same amount of stuff.

Every once in awhile, though, a collectivist will get caught spouting his collectivist drivel, while at the same time hoarding…stuff. America provides a fertile ground for this, because we safeguard the absolute right to spout drivel…and to hoard stuff. For everyone. In other words, no offense can be detected until you analyze the content of the drivel being spouted, and then contrast them against the things being done by the drivel-spouter who has all this stuff.

And then the drivel-spouting collectivst gets nailed. An event of which I like to take note, when it happens. As it did this morning, when Neal Boortz handed a good zing to Yoko Ono.

By the way .. your husband wrote perhaps the most hideous song in the history of modern music. “Imagine,” I think he called it. Maybe you can show us how you feel about the insipid line “imagine no possessions” by giving away all of your stuff!

Hey…it’s a damn good question. Does she part company with her deceased husband on that line? Or did John Lennon never believe in it in the first place? Or does she think she’s above everyone else? World citizens demand to know.

By the way, Boortz is none to happy about President Bush’s new pick for the Department of Health and Human Services. Here at The Blog That Nobody Reads, we are disinclined to believe the religious right has much to say…about anything. We look at the evidence as it exists and noodle things out for ourselves, here, and the evidence shows that the religious right hasn’t managed to actually get too much done. I can still have sex in any position I want, I can still buy beer on a Sunday, you probably can too.

But Neal makes a very good point. Common sense would say — right after a stinging defeat for the Republican party, olive branches should be extended, if not to Democrats, at least to the freedom-inclined Republicans. States’ rights. School vouchers. Repeal national speed limits. Phase out the death tax. And the minimum wage, too; keep legal jobs legal.

But when the Republican party is in a position where it needs more political capital…to the churches they go. In the final analysis, nothing ever changes about our freedoms or lack thereof. But anyone watching, who is not on the extreme right themselves…is scared shitless every time. Why do they do it?

Perhaps they do need political “capital” after all, but it’s not so much political in nature, as much as floating around on that cotton-paper green stuff.

Pretty funny when you think about it. When all’s said and done, American politics is driven by money…just like anything else that is American. The money flows in on the right from the religious fundamentalists, and on the left from the phony collectivists like Yoko Ono and Chappaquiddick Ted, who say one thing and do something else. Seems to me a rather poor investment. Neither the extreme-right money people nor extreme-left money people end up with public decisions being made in any way to their liking; yet, next year, they’re back at it again.

Well, that’s what the art of compromise looks like. It seldom makes sense to anyone looking in from the outside.

None of this is a big mystery to me — except for the guy in the White House. It’s been said here, it’s been said elsewhere, many, many times. You want to win elections, stick with originalist principles. The Federal Government has the responsibility to protect the borders, so kick the illegal aliens out and keep ‘em out. The Federal Government does not have the responsibility to interfere with the sovereignty of the states, in fact it has the responsibility to protect same. So follow through.

It would have worked.

So what’s up with this urgency to get a bible-thumper in charge of birth control advice? It’s sure to be an ineffectual move, but it gives the Bush-bashing media and snarky FARKers something to jaw about. And that stuff has a lot of momentum. So what is the point?

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This Is Good XXXII
Saturday, November 25th, 2006

You can find this on the innernets, but it came in by e-mail so linking is unneeded and rather pointless.

The Best Divorce Letter Ever Written

I know the counselor said we shouldn’t contact each other during our “cooling off” period, but I couldn’t wait anymore. The day you left, I swore I’d never talk to you again. But that was just the wounded little boy in me talking.

Still, I never wanted to be the first one to make contact. In my fantasies, it was always you who would come crawling back to me. I guess my pride needed that.

But now I see that my pride’s cost me a lot of things. I’m tired of pretending I don’t miss you. I don’t care about looking bad anymore. I don’t care who makes the first move as long as one of us does.

Maybe it’s time we let our hearts speak as loudly as our hurt. And this is what my heart says: “There’s no one like you, Connie. “I look for you in the eyes and breasts of every woman I see, but they’re not you. They’re not even close. Two weeks ago, I met this girl at ” Hooters” and brought her home with me. I don’t say this to hurt you, but just to illustrate the depth of my desperation.

She was young, maybe 19; with one of those perfect bodies that only youth and maybe a childhood spent ice skating can give you. I mean, just a perfect body. Tits like you wouldn’t believe and an ass that just wouldn’t quit. Every man’s dream, right? But as I sat on the couch being blown by this stunner, I thought, look at the stuff we’ve made important in our lives. It’s all so superficial.

What does a perfect body mean? Does it make her better in bed? Well, in this case, yes, but you see what I’m getting at. Does it make her a better person? Does she have a better heart than my moderately attractive Connie? I doubt it. And I’d never really thought of that before.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just growing up a little. Later, after I’d tossed her about a half a pint of throat yogurt, I found myself thinking, “Why do I feel so drained and empty?” It wasn’t just her flawless technique or her slutty, shameless hunger, but something else. Some nagging feeling of loss. Why did it feel so incomplete? And then it hit me. It didn’t feel the same because you weren’t there to watch. Do you know what I mean?

Nothing feels the same without you. Jesus, Connie, I’m just going crazy without you. And everything I do just reminds me of you.

Do you remember Carol, that single mom we met at the Holiday Inn lounge last year? Well, she dropped by last week with a pan of lasagna. She said she figured I wasn’t eating right without a woman around. I didn’t know what she meant till later, but that’s not the real story.

Anyway, we had a few glasses of wine and the next thing you know, we’re banging away in our old bedroom. And this tart’s a total monster in the sack. She’s giving me everything, you know, like a real women does when she’s not hung up about her weight or her career and whether the kids can hear us. And all of a sudden, she spots the tilting mirror on your grandmother’s old vanity. So she puts it on the floor and we straddle it, right, so we can watch ourselves.

And it’s totally hot, but it makes me sad, too. Cause I can’t help thinking, “Why didn’t Connie ever put the mirror on the floor? We’ve had this old vanity for what, 14 years, and we never used it as a sex toy.”

Saturday, your sister drops by with my copy of the restraining order. I mean, Vicky’s just a kid and all, but she’s got a pretty good head on her shoulders and she’s been a real friend to me during this painful time. She’s given me lots of good advice about you and about women in general. She’s pulling for us to get back together, Connie, she really is. So we’re doing tequila Jell-O shots in a hot bubble bath and talking about happier times. Here’s this teenage girl with the same DNA as you and all I can do is think of how much she looked like you when you were 18. And that just about makes me cry.

And then it turns out your little sister Vicky’s really into the whole anal thing, that gets me to thinking about how many times I pressured you about trying it and how that probably fueled some of the bitterness between us. But do you see how even then, when I’m thrusting inside your baby sister’s cinnamon ring, all I can do is think of you?

It’s true, Connie, In your heart you must know it. Don’t you think we could start over? Just wipe out all the grievances away and start fresh? I think we can.

If you feel the same please, please, please let me know, Otherwise, can you let me know where the fucking remote is.

Your Loving Ex-husband,

Dan

Heh heh. I can relate. No further comment in that area from me, none at all. Just a silly-lookin’ grin.

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For The Benefit Of The Victims
Saturday, November 25th, 2006

The quote for the day over on Spiced Sass is a gem from C. S. Lewis. I wish I were laboring under a bit more difficulty to see how it is about to become relevant; but I fear, we’re about to live and breathe the truism of this bit of wisdom, day in, day out, for two long years at least.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I would add, further, that when injustice is brazenly thrust upon a minority for the sake of bringing artificial comfort to a majority, we’ve set down a treacherous road, something desirable in politics but deeply offensive to common sense. One reasonable observer, no matter what his leanings, would acknowledge that where a little bit of injustice might be acceptable, a whole lot of it would be far less so. And where a little bit of comfort might be a decent thing, a whole lot of it is something that shouldn’t be needed quite so much.

And so, to our notions of common sense, a crop that yields both injustice for some and comfort for others, should be harvested only in small doses. If at all.

It just doesn’t work that way in politics. In politics, if a little of something is good, a whole lot of it must be better. You oppress the electorate for the electorate’s own benefit, fleecing the rich to provide for the poor…it really doesn’t matter if the poor spend the public treasury money on big-screen television sets or baby formula. It doesn’t matter. We already “voted” on whether they need the money.

Thing I Know #81. There are a lot of people walking around who seem to think “politics” is the process of re-defining “justice” to be something pleasing to many and unpleasant to few. That isn’t what “justice” is.
Thing I Know #87. In the past few years I notice the people with the largest television sets are the ones we are supposed to call “poor”.

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PETA Targets Alaska Church
Saturday, November 25th, 2006

I only have one comment to make about this: After the Democrat-controlled,110th Congress is sworn in, you can expect activist groups just like this one, to have much more of a voice in how things are done. And, what things are done at all.

PETA mistakenly targets Alaska church

The pastor at Anchorage First Free Methodist Church was mystified. Why was the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chastising him? No animals are harmed in the church’s holiday nativity display. In fact, animals aren’t used at all.

People, however, do dress the parts - Mary, Joseph, the wise men, etc. The volunteers stand shivering at a manger on the church lawn in a silent tribute to Christmas.

The Rev. Jason Armstrong was confused by an e-mail this week from PETA, which admonished him for subjecting animals “to cruel treatment and danger,” by forcing them into roles in the church’s annual manger scene.

“We’ve never had live animals, so I just figured this was some spam thing,” Armstrong said. “It’s rough enough on us people standing out there in the cold. So we’re definitely not using animals.”

Jackie Vergerio, PETA’s captive animals in entertainment specialist, said her organization tracks churches nationwide that use real animals in “living nativity scenes.”

Seems the confusion started with the church’s choice of phrase. PETA flagged Free Methodist’s display as a “living nativity,” and indeed, that’s how the church describes it on its Web site.

To PETA, that means animals.

“Those animals are su

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A Hero SleepsThursday, November 30th, 2006

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… IXWednesday, November 29th, 2006

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What Caused It?Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Who’s Selfish?Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… VIMonday, November 27th, 2006

CollectivistsMonday, November 27th, 2006

This Is Good XXXIISaturday, November 25th, 2006

For The Benefit Of The VictimsSaturday, November 25th, 2006

PETA Targets Alaska ChurchSaturday, November 25th, 2006

A Hero Sleeps
Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Dark Times
Thursday, November 30th, 2006

The Top 10 Hottest Animated Disney Women
Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… IX
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Hastings Down
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

It’s Just Like Heroin
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Rangel Makes Sure We Don’t Forget
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

X-Men Creator Dies in Superman Pajamas
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Things That Make You Go Hmmm… III
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

What Caused It?
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Who’s Selfish?
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… VI
Monday, November 27th, 2006

Collectivists
Monday, November 27th, 2006

This Is Good XXXII
Saturday, November 25th, 2006

For The Benefit Of The Victims
Saturday, November 25th, 2006

PETA Targets Alaska Church
Saturday, November 25th, 2006