I stumbled across an article in Slate which makes the point: beer makers, especially the trendy micro brewers, are addicted to hops:

So when a homebrewer friend recently decided to visit my husband and me from Tennessee, I was excited to spend time with a kindred spirit, someone with whom I could share my favorite brews without having to make a hard sell. The first brewery I took him to was Hopworks Urban Brewery, where I ordered us a pitcher of the Velvet English session beer.

After a few sips, I noticed that he had pushed away his glass. “I’m sorry, guys,” he said when he noticed our puzzled expressions. “This is just way too hoppy for me.”

I was floored. Session beer is light and drinkable—it’s called session beer because you’re supposed to be able to drink several over the course of a drinking session without ruining your palate. If one of my favorite session beers was too hoppy and bitter for an avid beer drinker—for a homebrewer who is currently brewing beer to serve at his own wedding—what would he think of the famed Pacific Northwest IPAs? Do friends let friends drink only pilsners?

That’s when I realized that I had a problem. In fact, everyone I know in the craft beer industry has a problem: We’re so addicted to hops that we don’t even notice them anymore.

The problem is endemic. And I think the last sentence reveals the problem: suds-heads have become desensitized to the bitterness of hops.

We can see the problem of desensitization everywhere in society, actually. We see it in the currently flourishing IRS scandal, where a corrosive Democrat-Media complex demonized Tea Party groups and people whose only crime is to actually think that the Constitution should perhaps be read for comprehension rather than "interpreted as a living document," and that progressive (pun intended) desensitization soaked into the fertile ground of the IRS.

This doesn't excuse the oppression coming from the IRS. Far from it. It simply highlights once again that this kind of political power is just too dangerous to hand to anybody.

Anybody.

Because it's far, FAR too easy to go down the path of thinking you're the "good guy" while you're happily suppressing your neighbors and friends. For their own good, you see.

Stabbing injures several on Lone Star College Cy-Fair campus



Knives don't slash people. People slash people.

Inanimate objects are tools. They don't do anything. They don't think, don't feel, don't care. It is the purpose to which people use the tools which is the issue, despite the incessant partisan ideological shrieking of the control-freak media and their pet politicians.

Story headline stolen from a line by Ace of Spades

Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism

Ratios of commentary/opinion to news content on "news" networks:

MSNBC: 85% commentary/opinion, 15% news;

Fox News: 55% commentary/opinion, 45% news;

CNN: 46% commentary/opinion, 54% news.

Note that MSNBC's commentary/opinion consists overwhelmingly of leftist propaganda, tropes, and groupthink, while Fox presents a range of leftist, conservative, and libertarian viewpoints. (I never watch CNN so I have no idea what their ideological mix is.)

The heartless abuse of a victim of a horrible crime, in order to advance a cynical, ideological agenda.

Follow the link.

Item: Democratic Assemblyman Arrested After Allegedly Threatening to Shoot Fellow State Representative

Item: Va. lawmaker who brandished AK-47 during legislative session was disbarred following assault, death threat

These are not your average Democrat-in-the-street. These are elected representatives, for whom your average Democrat-in-the-street voted for and put into positions of power and authority.

The fact is that everything the Democrats and "progressives" think about Republicans and "conservatives" is the result of psychological projection. This is a core cause of the Democrat's excessive, paranoid fear of guns, and their unthinking terror when considering economic freedom in general.

In fact, "conservatives" are more able to understand the motivations of "progressives" than "progressives" are able to understand "conservative's" motivations. This is the plain implication of Jon Haidt's research

If Democrats and "progressives" (which, by the way, includes the overwhelming majority of people working in journalism) want to find the greater part of the problem with political discord today, they need to consult the closest mirror.

Hat tip: Freedom is Just Another Word transitive via IMAO.

First, David Zurawick in the Baltimore Sun:

ON MSNBC, the ratio of negative to positive stories on GOP candidate Mitt Romney was 71 to 3.

That's not a news channel. That's a propaganda machine, and owner Comcast should probably change Phil Griffin's title from president to high minister of information, or something equally befitting the work of a party propaganist hack in a totalitarian regime. You wonder how mainstream news organizations allow their reporters and correspondents to appear in such a cauldron of bias.

I thought show host Sean Hannity of Fox News defined party propagandist. But while his channel was bad, it wasn't as bad-boy biased as MSNBC.

The ratio of negative to positive stories in Fox's coverage of President Obama was 46 to 6.

Next the Pew Research Center release:

From the conventions until the first debate, a period of improving polls for Obama, Romney suffered his period of the most negative coverage; just 4% of stories about him were positive while 52% were negative. Coverage of Obama during this period was fairly evenly split (20% positive vs. 24% negative). That narrative reversed sharply with the first debate. For the next two weeks, Romney saw the mixed treatment (23% positive vs. 23% negative) while Obama was caught in the critical loop, with 12% positive and 37% negative. After the second debate, coverage returned to its more general pattern, with an edge for Obama.

In other words, the media attempted to cover itself from the charge of bias after the first debate which showed Obama to be completely unfit for the office, but returned to cheerleading for him after he performed adequately after the second debate--admitted to by Pew by the phrase "coverage returned to its more general lpattern, with an edge for Obama."

Now, I heartily dislike Hannity's program on Fox News, as being a bad combination of talking-points recitation and shouting matches. But MSNBC at almost any time of day or night is utterly unwatchable by anyone who actually seeks to fairly hear both sides of pretty much any issue. As Zurawick notes, MSNBC is not a news channel, it is a propaganda channel promoting the Democratic Party and socialist "progressive" causes.

And almost all professional journalists share that "progressive" worldview with the MSNBC Ministry of Misinformation, making it almost impossible to actually have a real and honest discussion of any issue of public interest. The professional media is all too often focused on belittling and shouting down any non-socialist, non-Keynesian viewpoint. That's not journalism. That's an ongoing, relentless apologia for the Left.

I couldn't care less what the 2012 election says about the future of the Republican Party.

I do care somewhat however about what the 2012 election says about the future of the United States, and of the world. And in my humble opinion, what is says is nothing good for either my country or the world.

Same as it ever was.



To my dear, beloved Democrat-voting fellow citizens:

You broke it. You fix it. Everything that's wrong with this country is either your fault, or you've made it worse because of your well-intentioned but naive policies (and I'm offering you the most charitable interpretation possible here). Good luck in the next four years, because you're gonna need it.

You can't blame Bush any more. This mess belongs 100% to Obama now--and to the Democratic Party. And since none of you high-minded Democrats know why it's going wrong in the first place, you won't be able to fix it. And since your idea of constructive engagement with Republicans and free-enterprisers is to loudly shout "SHUT UP!!!" whenever we have the temerity to say "uh, excuse me, have you really thought through what you're gonna do?" you have made yourself totally immune to anything but your comfortable, disastrous groupthink.

My prediction for the next four years: It ain't gonna get a lot better.

It is a comfort to me that I am not always right. Perhaps you know-it-all Democrats could try some humility some time. But I fear that humility is an emotion you have no further use for, in your march to the grand collective "progressive" future.

Done with politics. For a while anyway. It's all on you now, Democrats. For the love of Gaia, don't screw up too badly.

Obama: "Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others."

The Constitution of the United States, Amendment I: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

And this guy is supposed to be a "Constitutional scholar?"

The United States, as a nation, respects no faith whatsoever. That is what "religious tolerance" means: you tolerate religions other than your own. You don't have to "respect" them.