House of Eratosthenes

Having said that though…I’ve never disagreed with any of you on the point that if The Messiah wins, we are screwed. SCREWED. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep that from happening.

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More Interested In Her Policies Than Her Periods
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Gerard Van der Leun, a man I deeply respect, is a professional in the editing/publishing business; he is a man of few words, who dispenses praise rarely. Nevertheless he has bestowed on The Anchoress the coveted Finest Fisking Award — richly deserved — in her dealing with the left’s “Palin Talking Points.”

Which is rather like lancing an abscess after it’s swelled to a pint-and-a-half or thereabouts. Not pretty. But now the healing can begin.

Except, that is, for my reputation as an awful, insecure, knuckle-dragging sexist. The long weekend is still young, and now I’ve said flattering things about two women, without even a sign of doing so reluctantly or grudgingly. What can I say? I love classy women. But how do I make up for this transgression against my chauvinist brethren? Maybe after my girlfriend gets done with her job at ten o’clock tonight and stumbles through the door all bleary-eyed, I can yammer at her to get me a beer as long as she’s up. And not say please. Perhaps that will restore my good name.

But seriously. Go read every single word of Anchoress’…handling. And most especially, hang on for that final uppercut at the end. Fantastic stuff.

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Cynical and Condescending
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Anytime you see anyone, anywhere, using either one of those two words to describe John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — if that person didn’t say exactly the same thing about the democrat party choosing Nancy Pelosi as the incoming House Speaker, and that person probably did not, then you’re reading the words of a partisan hack. Whether the partisan hack wants to admit it or not.

And that garbage is all over the innerwebs this weekend. It seems the left has an exclusive license to put the names of women on things, even the names of highly ineffectual, lazy women, to suck up votes. It is their private dominion.

I stand by my words at Brutally Honest:

They run up a woman, they act like they invented womens’ rights. Hell — they act like they invented women. Republicans put a woman on the ticket, and suddenly that’s a sign the Republicans “know they’ve lost.”

The only possible conclusion to draw is that liberals feel they own women. Not at all unlike the guy who cheats on his girlfriend, and then when she gets tired of him and hooks up with someone new, says “If I can’t have you nobody can.”

Come to think of it — exactly like that.

Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, I’m looking for the liberal who wants to engage in an honest, free-form, even-playing-field discourse examining, with intellectual sincerity, the achievements of the Governor of Alaska who’s been in office nineteen months, versus the achievements of the House Speaker who’s been in office nineteen months. Leave the bumper sticker slogans and sound bites from Howard YEEEEEAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!! Dean at home, and just compare those two stewardships. Problems fixed…people unified…approval ratings sustained. Then get back to me on which female-selection was cynical, desperate, bald-faced, sneaky, pandering, deceptive, superficial, cheap, calculated and condescending.

Had I not already been inspecting their behavior for a few years, I’d start to seriously think that liberals are simply opposed to solving problems. As it is, this is just frosting on the cake, for I’ve had that figured out for some time now.

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An Ignorant Conversation
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Becky says this is a thoroughly ignorant conversation…

…and on that statement, she gets an approving nod outta me.

In fact, what the GOP campaign managers really should do, is sit down in front of this one clip and see how many chinks in the left-wing armor they can find. These “gentlemen” are not just speaking for themselves.

My favorite? The thing at the beginning is tempting — it’s cute when liberals believe in God so selectively, as in “proof there is a god,” small-g, and then tacking on afterward as an afterthought, oh yeah, right, hope nobody gets hurt — but my mind wanders closer to the end. There’s a contradiction between choosing a woman as a running mate, and chuckling in tacit approval when Hillary is called a bitch? There’s hypocrisy there? How so? Where lies the logical contradiction in proffering the notion, presuming McCain did so proffer (which he didn’t), that Hillary’s more of a bitch than Sarah Palin?

I’m tempted to defend the notion just to make a show of how big a heap of evidence there is to legitimize it; but of course, in so doing, I’d be legitimizing the attack.

Instead, I’m inspired to think of an occasion yesterday in which I was called out by a leftward-leaning gentleman in Canada, for another one of my crass generalizations: “Liberals are sexists.” The usual retort — I know of more than a few liberals that aren’t. He does have a point, since it’s always an invitation to re-think when individual attributes are ascribed to aggregate entities.

But can it not be denied, that there is something to the liberal mindset that treats men and women differently? With men, I get to pick and choose where to fling my criticism, with surgical precision, and our liberals won’t utter a peep of protest so long as I don’t say anything nasty about liberals. That guy is a jerk; this guy over here is an asshole; that other guy over there is a slob. Liberalism, being the modern embodiment of all breezy, casual, weak and lazy thinking, sees all of womanhood as part of a common unicellular construct — and so by implication McCain called Sarah Palin a bitch when he chuckled along with someone else calling Hillary one.

Future generations of younglings will wonder why, in our day & age, there was something wrong with calling certain women “bitches” after they had labored for so long and hard to be thought of that way. I’m not talking about children-of-children-yet-unborn, or anything. I think the children asking that question at some future point, are already breathing and suckling and filling diapers right now.

And among the “ladies” who have renounced any right or privilege of indignantly demanding “how DARE you call me a bitch??” by laboring long and hard to be thought of in exactly that way…Hillary Rodham Clinton ranks sky high. It is her political identity. It is her schtick. It is what she brings to the table in politics. It has been her persona since Gennifer Flowers’ face was on the tabloids. In sixteen years, she really hasn’t had too much else to say about things or too much else to demonstrate to us about herself.

And don’t even ask which one, between Clinton and Palin, I’d prefer to hear talking about something for a couple hours at a time. The former First Lady makes my head hurt. Whoever’s been coaching her that she should talk like that all the time is probably responsible for saving the country.

Thing I Know #58. To insult a man says nothing about other men, but for some reason, anything said against one woman is perceived to be said against everything female who ever lived.

Update: Cassy has an excellent roundup at Right Wing News as well as at her own site, of some more leftist idjits jumping on this “wonderful that Gustav hits when it does” bandwagon. Including this.

And others.

It would appear a talking point got faxed out from some central location.

She offers a hat tip to Michelle, who adds,

God is not on your side, gloating sleazeballs.

And you should just see how, over the years, I’ve seen people work their cackles up when I dare to suggest that perhaps when liberal politicians measure their own policies in terms of how those policies would “help the least among us,” they’re setting themselves up to have a stake in more people falling into the demographic of those “least” — miserable…dependent…perhaps even endangered, or terminally sick. Supposedly “non-partisan” people just fly off the handle at the suggestion. How dare I imply that politicians and journalists might actually want people to suffer?

I’m pointin’ on up to the video clip…and I’m a-restin’ my case.

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VPILF
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Oh Dear Lord, I wish I’d thought of that.

H/T: Rachel.

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Pam in San Bernardino Has Never Seen High Noon
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Via Rick, a discussion taking place on Desperate Preacher, kicked off by Pam with some comments that are truly ~~asinine~~ noteworthy:

In John McCain’s recent commercials, he calls himself the Original Maverick. In our household, we’ve had some different responses to this. I’d like to know how you hear it and what you think he’s trying to communicate.

First time we heard the commercial, both my husband and son started yelling “Goose!”, much to my amazement. I didn’t understand it at all. They said it was a reference to Top Gun, and that Maverick was a character in the movie, as was Goose.

I pictures guns and cowboy hats, and a swagger down a dusty street.

Neither of these images work for me as an appeal for Presidential Character.

Any thoughts?

My comment at Rick’s place speaks for itself. (DP, by banning Rick, has indicated that the place desires to be an echo chamber above all other things, so I’ll keep my silence there out of respect for their wishes.)

Rev Pam wishes to broadcast to the world wide web that she has never seen High Noon before.

Very well. Noted.

You remember High Noon, don’t you. It’s a movie where the bad guy is coming to Hadleyville on the noon train, and the Sheriff understands a confrontation is in order. All the citizens of Hadleyville go hiding behind doors and shutters, leaving him to face the evil alone. The “consensus” of the town seems to be that evil, in fact, doesn’t really exist — or if it does, it’ll just go away if it’s ignored. Only the Sheriff understands this is wrong, and in his solitude he is not deterred.

Arguably, if this is not the best western movie ever made, it could very well be the western movie with the strongest connection to the unsettling conundrums that surface from time to time in real life.

In fact, I would argue that this is what makes a western movie. Clarity of moral definition…coupled with ambiguity about what to do. Personal safety placed in the corner directly opposite from the “make sure good prevails over evil” corner.

That’s why our leftists hate cowboys so much. Well, it’s true. High time someone said so.

Fuquod, being a keyboard-building fool, chimes in with the discredited chickenhawk argument:

…and rick…did you even attempt to serve?

We call them “keyboard builders” here because their argument is predicated on the notion that if you aren’t personally doing something then you have no business thinking positive thoughts about anybody else who is doing it, nor are you permitted to so much as to acknowledge, audibly or in silence, that what they do needs doing.

The argument they seek to make, depends completely on this nonsensical premise. Not just a little bit. Completely.

So I figure every time I read this argument, and it was typed into a computer somewhere, whoever said it must build keyboards for a living. I mean, the accusation they’re leveling is one of hypocrisy, so I know no way could those guys be hypocrites. They have to be building keyboards.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

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Twelve Thoughts (Plus Some Miscellany) on the Palin Pick
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Just some stuff I’ve been noticing since the news broke about Sarah Palin. Apart from sharing blogger friend Phil’s sense of alarm that my age is very close to that of one of our fifty state governors. And training my brain to remember, when the eyeballs see “Palin” in written form, that the name rhymes with “sailin’.”

1. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Hold-outs, like me, are vindicated. If we all “banded together” and “showed our support” as my right-winger brethren were telling me, today we’d have a McCain/Lieberman ticket. I guaran-damn-tee it. When people who own decisions are sleeping restlessly, or not sleeping at all, good things happen. And, in politics, if you want to decide things…DON’T. Nobody gives up anything to make friends with someone who is already thought of as a friend. Especially a devoted, loyal friend. It just doesn’t make strategic sense to do that. Loyalty is not rewarded here, and that’s why people don’t like politics very much. Nervous nellies and nay-sayers, like me, gave you Sarah Palin. You’re welcome.

2. No question about it, the chicks are excited. It’s Easter Sunday in the Church of The Goddess. This was a very smart move for McCain. We’re talking millions, maybe tens of millions, of votes. Dare I hope California will turn RED? Yeah that’s still far-fetched…in fact, Obama still might win…but it shows the scope of what an advantage this is, that California going for McCain has become a possibility worth pondering. I just hope with all this estrogen lathering up, the shirts are still being ironed and the samriches are still being made.

3. There is some consternation about the real possibility that history will be made by a pro-life conservative Republican woman. Being from a planet called “Earth” and having warm blood, I’m naturally inclined to accept there was something insincere, from the very get-go, about the whole “Get A Woman In There” thing. Otherwise, Palin’s ideology would inspire no such squeamishness. People who face this conundrum need to examine their own motivations and examine them hard. They are NOT quite so much in favor of “equality” as they’ve been fooling themselves into thinking.

Beauty Queen 4. The child born with Downs Syndrome. I didn’t mention it for two reasons. Nobody would be mentioning it if she was a man; and if I was the child, I wouldn’t be too pleased, years down the road, with all these archives of articles about how my mom is the second coming of Florence Nightingale just because she didn’t kill me. C’mon, she’s pro-life, and she isn’t a damn hypocrite. Good on her, but some things don’t need to be talked about ad nauseum.

5. A lot of gals are saying what Hillary said. Some are considering voting for the McCain ticket even though “[Palin's] policies would be terrible for the country.” What a bunch of disgraceful, embittered old cows. I hope they vote for McCain/Palin, and then never vote in anything again. They just admitted to wanting to hurt the country to support a woman! It’s a national disgrace. Oh, and yeah, Hillary still can’t stop talking that way ALL THE TIME.

6. A lot of references to Palin’s speech, which, frankly, I found offensive. And not just a little bit. Glass ceiling, shmass shmeiling; yes, it’s irritating when you are judged by your class membership, because you have no control over that. You rise above it by running on your individual attributes. And people aren’t actively keeping you out of things when they’re being mentally lazy — it’s a passive obstruction, not an active one. Men run for office because in order to run for office you have to leave yourself open to confrontation, attack, and ridicule. Women are up to enduring ridicule, occasionally, like an occasional cat is willing to go for a swim. Palin, I believe, understands this was a load. I see it as something she had to say. She had to hit a “home run” on this, and that was the magic elixir. It reflects on the rest of us, not so much on her. I’ll look past it.

7. I do NOT see anyone falling for the “inexperienced” talking point. Just a handful of DailyKOS folks…that’s about it. I’m still surprised the Obama camp had the big brass balls to trot that one out.

Palin 8. I do NOT see anyone falling for the “town of 9,000″ talking point. Not at all. And this idea of having everyone who lives in a town with 9,000 or fewer people call & fax the Obama campaign, is a fantastic idea. I’ll be paying close attention to that one.

9. A lot of guys “would hit that.” Interesting that this prurient desire sports just a hint of the “forbidden fruit” about it; when childish schoolgirls squeal around Obama as if he were the reincarnation of Johnny Fontaine, there’s a slightly different connotation involved. Anyway, I think Gov. Palin is pleased with what she’s got at home. I’m happy with what I’ve got at home too, so I’ll follow her lead. But NO question, the lady is a looker.

10. If I didn’t know one thing about Sarah Palin or any of the other players, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about conservatives and liberals, I’d vote McCain/Palin because there’s someone on that ticket who isn’t a senator. I’m a little surprised McCain hasn’t been talking that one up.

11. I’m looking forward to seeing Palin repeat some of what George W. Bush said about defending the country vs. appeasing foreigners — following up “the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.” That line drew APPLAUSE. So take that “Bush’s third term” thing, and shove it down Obama’s throat. Something along the lines of “yep, that’s our goal.” You’ve got the political capital to do that now.

12. I do NOT see any conservatives expressing newfound reluctance now that they have to have to vote for a girl. I have not seen so much of a speck of evidence for that. C’mon guys, we’re supposed to be a bunch of damned sexists here. Doesn’t living up to a reputation mean anything to anyone anymore?? Well, I’ll live up to mine — I’m an equal-opportunity sexist. Palin’s a good running mate for McCain, but if somewhere there was a man who would make a better one, I’d say he made the wrong choice. There isn’t. She was, as I said before, the best choice he could’ve made, and being a woman has nothing to do with being a good Vice President. I hope, while the Republicans gulp this intoxicating elixir of identity politics by the gallon, they don’t get punch-drunk on it like the democrat party has been since the 1950’s. But…they probably will. That’s bad for the G.O.P., over the long term, because it diminishes what distinguishes them from the democrats. But good for the country if Palin shows the kind of leadership she’s been showing in Alaska. That’s a trade I’ll take.

I have a dream, that one day our children and our children’s children, will judge each other by the content of their character…and not by the configuration of their genitals.

I wonder if my “girlfriend” from third grade has ever thought of me. Probably not. But chicks-in-glasses have meant something completely different to me over the last 34 years, than they did in the eight years that came before. That’s just an added plus for Sarah.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

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A More Serious Voter Test
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

About a week ago I put out a voter test, because contrary to popular belief, the United States Constitution does not guarantee a right to vote. That test was tongue-in-cheek; it didn’t make much of a point about anything, other than that we have a lot of extreme dimwits walking around voting.

That seems a perfectly innocent state of affairs — until you stop and realize everyone gets one vote and only one vote. So when a mouth-breather goes out and casts a vote without knowing what he’s doing, it cancels out your vote, along with all the research you might have conducted behind it. You might as well not have engaged in any of it.

But anyway. What follows is a far more serious test. It raises a point for each of the ten questions on it…along with an eleventh point. And the eleventh point is, we have a lot of people walking around who are not stupid, not dimwits, in fact are perfectly productive and intelligent people. But they don’t put too much thought into voting. That problem is worse than the problem with dimwits voting, because these folks understand they’re not stupid, and they’re right. They’re intelligent. But thoughtless.

So give it a try, to make sure you’re not one of them.

1. When the minimum wage is increased from a lower rate of X to a higher rate of Y
a. Everybody who previously earned something between X and Y, now earns Y
b. All jobs that pay between X and Y, are outlawed

2. When it is illegal to own guns
a. Guns disappear
b. People who follow the law can’t have guns, but people who don’t follow the law, might

3. When the tax rate on a commodity is raised 10%, you can count on collecting 10% more revenue from this tax
a. True
b. False

4. People hurt and kill other people because
a. They’re impoverished
b. They are lacking in respect for human life

5. What we know about illegal aliens is
a. That they’re here to work hard, follow the law, and take care of their families
b. We don’t know anything about them, including who they really are, because they’re illegal

6. If you run an office with ten black women working in it, and two of them quit, and you hire two white guys in their place, you have
a. Decreased the diversity of the office
b. Increased the diversity of the office

7. If you inherit money from someone who paid taxes while they were earning it, and estate taxes are collected, that money has been taxed
a. Once
b. Twice

8. If your husband asks you nicely to bring him a beer, and you refuse to do it, you are
a. Standing up for the rights of women everywhere
b. Being an obstinate, irascible bitch

9. When people engage in discrimination, the rest of us have to
a. Force them to stop doing it, until the day discrimination is gone forever
b. Draw our own conclusions about their judgment and character

10. American values are
a. Separation of church and state, equal protection under the law, womens’ right to choose, fair and equal distribution of wealth, diversity
b. Privacy of religion, free exercise thereof, inalienable rights granted by a Creator, equal protection under the law, freedom over security

Scoring:
Ten percentage points for every question answered with “b”.

90-100: Go ahead and vote
70- 80: Vote with caution
50- 60: Discuss issues with friend or relative who got higher score, then vote
40 and lower: Don’t vote; there are wonderful reruns on the idjit box on Tuesday nights

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How About Letting the Taxpayers Keep It?
Friday, August 29th, 2008

A mystified taxpayer writes into the Sacramento Bee on August 26.

Let us buy things, not pay taxes

Would the Democratic Assembly please tell citizens why paying taxes is more important than spending one’s money as one chooses? Why are government programs more important than consumer items that actually generate tax revenue?

When tax revenues fall, hello, there is a reason. Why should we, and especially those on limited incomes, be forced to pay higher taxes rather than on goods and services of our choice?

Just asking for clarification.

– Cynthia Van Auken, Chico

An eyeball-rolling fan of big government responds with mock patience, today. Like, what the hell is the matter with this beleagured taxpayer, is she stupid or something?

Tax dollars benefit the economy

Apparently, Cynthia Van Auken is the product of private schools, uses an autogyro for transportation, has a private security guard and a superior fire retarding system for her home. Otherwise, like most of the rest of us, she has benefited from the taxes we all, including the employees of civil service systems, pay (”Let us buy things, not pay taxes,” letter, Aug. 26).

When we build roads, the private sector, under the supervision of civil servants, makes money that goes directly back into the economy. When we hire teachers, our children grow up able to make a decent salary, and the teachers’ salaries go to purchase products and pay taxes. These tax dollars benefit the economy just as much as the dollars spent by those who don’t pay taxes. I suggest Van Auken could benefit from a short course in economics. We must pay for services we want to use, be they airports, highways, police departments or fire departments.

– Joy M. Doyle, Sacramento

I couldn’t resist adding to the melee. Being evil, and all.

Lady,

Just what do you think people do with money when they are allowed by their gracious and benevolent state government to keep it? Stick it up their butts, or something?

Whereupon I yanked that virtual draft out of my virtual typewriter, crumpled it into a virtual ball, and tossed it in the virtual wastebasket.

Rolling a fresh virtual sheet of virtual paper under the virtual platen, I began anew:

Cyntha Van Auken was “just asking for clarification” but Joy Doyle bit her head off. I hope she enjoyed doing it.

Ms. Doyle, can your argument take on merely the appearance of merit, if it’s presented in a civil tone? I think it could; evidently, you disagree. That’s a shame. I’ve found ideas consistently presented in haughty and condescending tones tend to be bad. I also notice Keynesian theory is often presented this way.

One other question: On your next job interview, when your prospective employer asks why you should get the job, do you intend to say something like “when you pay me money, I spend it, and that benefits everybody”? If so - that, of course, would be very silly. If not, then I’m afraid I need some enlightenment: Why should our state government get credit for spending money, when individuals don’t?

I think that’s the issue Van Auken was trying to raise. I see you pretty much sidestepped it. That’s probably because you felt the need to.

I should add that today’s letters section carried another letter making the same point as Ms. Doyle’s, but exhibiting an exception to this rule about advocating Keynesian economics in snarky, snotty tones.

Paying for our quality of life

Allow me to answer Cynthia Van Auken’s question of why paying taxes is sometimes more important than spending one’s money as one chooses.

There are things that can’t be bought but instead require the ongoing investment of all of society. The basics include roads, police and fire protection.

Then account for the fact that bad things can happen to good people. If your spouse has a stroke or your child has a disability, do you want there to be programs so that you can work, go shopping and have respite from caregiving? If you get cancer and your insurance doesn’t cover all the bills, should you face bankruptcy and foreclosure? Do you really want the kids down your street to lack quality education and job opportunities, leaving them so hopeless that they’re willing to shoot each other over the color of a jacket?

Government services to address those needs are not charity but investments in our quality of life. We can argue about which investments and how much, but let’s stop pretending that we can have something for nothing. Part of being a responsible citizen means being willing to pay for the quality of life we want.

– Kathy Campbell, Sacramento

However, I have a bone to pick with Ms. Campbell too (although I’ll not further burden my poor local letters-to-editor guy with it today).

I keep seeing the same bullshit used to defend our ravenous state government’s insatiable apetite for money.

Roads.

Schools.

Police & Fire.

Educating our chiiiiilllllddddrrreeeeeennnn…

I’ll not tear into the entrails of our state’s budget to demonstrate how off the mark this is. For one thing, I don’t have a budget I could inspect in such a way just yet! That’s part of the reason, I’m sure, Van Auken wrote her letter in the first place; there are few state-level boondoggles bigger than California’s annual clown-puppet show.

Just take it from this Golden State citizen — take my word for it.

This state spends money on a lot of other things besides schools, roads and fire departments.

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Palin
Friday, August 29th, 2008

Via Wizbang: NBC is reporting Palin is the pick. It’s coming up on the idjit box right now, channel 31 or whatever.

Awesome. I love everything about her. Almost everything. I still think identity politics are reprehensible, but it is what it is. Millions of people make their decisions according to this…and not just a few of them, are in the support base on which The Messiah was counting.

Palin For those who are not in the know: Palin is young and inexperienced, in a good way. She’s roughly my age, and offsets a resume that is thin like The Savior’s with common sense, which His Holiness has demonstrated over and over again he does not have. She’s up to her armpits in kids — five, including one in the Army, eighteen-year-old son Track, being deployed to Iraq next month. And get a load of this — she goes by a name different from her maiden name, because she happens to be married.

Let me clarify the comments about her resume. Her net (political) resume is thin, but her gross (all of it) resume is not. She’s actually done stuff. Sports reporter. Commercial fisherman. Husband Todd, a Native Eskimo, was Sarah’s high school sweetheart; he works for BP on Alaska’s North Slope and is a champion dog racer. In other words, she is not a career politician. She is a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood real person.

Pro-life. Lifetime NRA member. Used marijuana once, didn’t like it.

Ran on a clean-government campaign for Governor two years ago — won, based on that — and followed through. Shelved pork projects, opposed other Republicans in doing so; passed an ethics bill; fired a whole bunch of people; took on Ted Stevens. So aside from sporting anti-corruption credentials that are battleship-steel tough, this woman, personal-character-wise, has some real balls. And yet, somehow, she finds it possible to be in love with men…one man…and conduct herself as if she’s pleased to be married to him. So, you see, it can be done.

And what is it about chicks in glasses?

Great move, Maverick. I think you just won this thing. Now tweak your platform in a few places here & there, and who knows you may even get my support. I’m speaking specifically of firing Juan Hernandez. “Immigrant rights” has nothing to do with it and is not an accurate description of this issue. Hernandez is an open-borders whack-job. And, ejecting that whole climate-change thing. Palin does not deliver a hint of change here. She’s drunk some of the kool-aid herself.

But I can get past that.

Palin, in modern times, is the absolute best walking-breathing argument we have for allowing women to continue to vote. There are other walking-breathing arguments for taking the vote away from them…Oprah…those four dingbats on The View…The Pantsuit…my two flibbertigibbet senators…Barbra…

Gov. Palin renews faith. That is exactly what’s needed; this is about the best you could’ve done, Mac. By a long shot. I’ll have to take back some of that bad stuff I said.

Update: Forgot to read the fine print. The cover is ’shopped, and credit is due to Kodiak Konfidential. Thanks to Gerard for pointing it out.

Update: The man who would have made the very best Next President possible this year, that the powers-that-be didn’t want us to be able to choose, weighs in. Fred Thompson on the Palin pick:

I am absolutely delighted by this selection. Once again, John McCain has shown that he is an independent thinker who paints in bold strokes. Sarah Palin is a conservative reformer with executive experience who will bring a breath of fresh air to Washington. She will be an ideal running mate for John McCain, and will make a major contribution to our country’s future.

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Why Healthcare is Not a Right
Friday, August 29th, 2008

Right Wing News had a contest for the best “anti-socialized” post in the blogosphere, with a $50 prize for first place.

What will happen is that bloggers will write posts about socialized medicine. They can write them specifically for the contest or just because that’s what they happen to want to write about today, but once they write the post, they’ll send me an email letting me know that they want it entered in the contest (Yes, I do have to get an email. Sorry, but these are the rules I am working under).

Then, at the end of the week, I will select the best articles from that week on socialized medicine, will rank them, and then will link all the top posts on RWN. Furthermore, all the bloggers that rank will have the satisfaction of getting their work recognized and will get traffic from RWN — but first place will also receive $50.

We didn’t enter in this one…we are The Blog That Nobody Reads, remember? Anyway, we doubt like hell we could’ve done a better job than what took the top honors this week. Richly deserving, IMHO.

Rights really only make sense in the context of a lawful society. Governments are instituted, as a basic matter, to determine where one person’s rights end and another’s begins. For example, you have a right to free speech, but others have a right against defamation. If you say something untrue and defamatory about someone, the government can determine whose right trumps.

From the perspective of the government, a right is something that can be ensured to one citizen without taxing (in the broadest sense) another citizen. For example, the government can ensure your right to free speech without any cost to anyone else. No one has to listen (you do not, for example, have the right to be listened to). Nor does anyone have to publish your work. You do not, however, have the right to a full-page spread in the Wall Street Journal. If, however, you can afford to, you can purchase one and say pretty much whatever you want.

In a (mostly) free and (mostly) just society like ours, rights are plentiful. You have, to name a few, the right to bear arms, the right to your life, your liberty, the pursuit of your happiness. To be sure, however, this does not mean the government must buy you a gun. Nor does it mean government must purchase the things that make you happy. It only means that government cannot restrict these rights without due process of la

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In the TankSunday, August 31st, 2008

More Interested In Her Policies Than Her PeriodsSunday, August 31st, 2008

Cynical and CondescendingSunday, August 31st, 2008

An Ignorant ConversationSunday, August 31st, 2008

VPILFSaturday, August 30th, 2008

Pam in San Bernardino Has Never Seen High NoonSaturday, August 30th, 2008

Twelve Thoughts (Plus Some Miscellany) on the Palin PickSaturday, August 30th, 2008

A More Serious Voter TestSaturday, August 30th, 2008

How About Letting the Taxpayers Keep It?Friday, August 29th, 2008

PalinFriday, August 29th, 2008

Why Healthcare is Not a RightFriday, August 29th, 2008

In the Tank
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

More Interested In Her Policies Than Her Periods
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Cynical and Condescending
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

An Ignorant Conversation
Sunday, August 31st, 2008

VPILF
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Pam in San Bernardino Has Never Seen High Noon
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Twelve Thoughts (Plus Some Miscellany) on the Palin Pick
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

A More Serious Voter Test
Saturday, August 30th, 2008

How About Letting the Taxpayers Keep It?
Friday, August 29th, 2008

Palin
Friday, August 29th, 2008

Why Healthcare is Not a Right
Friday, August 29th, 2008