Category: Uncategorized

A WTF? Whip!

No, not the President’s “Win The Future,” whatever the hell that means. The other one.[*1]

The West Wing, Season II[*2] . Via Instapundit[*3] . “Obama didn’t know what he didn’t know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel’s replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, “You know, I’d make a good chief of staff.”” The words idiot savant come to my mind whenever I seriously consider Barack Obama’s intellectual capacity . . .

Dunning–Kruger effect[*4] . Also via Instapundit[*3] . “The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.” Yeah. Barack Obama. And, actually, most of the people who think themselves the rightful rulers of this (and most other) countries.

Democrat tries to boot Giffords from committee assignment[*5] . Via Hillbuzz[*6] . California Democrat Loretta Sanchez is a nasty piece of work.

Royals are on the clock[*7] . Kansas City, we’re told, has the best minor league system in all of baseball. They’d better.

NASA Press Conference: We Found a Galaxy Formed Only 500 Million Years After the Big Bang[*8] .

The Battle Over the DSM-V (Or “DSM-5,” Since Roman Numerals are Getting the Axe Too)[*9] . Is psychiatry suffering from its own Dunning-Kruger effect? If everyone can be diagnosed with some psychiatric problem of one kind or another, is it time to perhaps look at psychiatry itself as the problem?

Two More Cruise Lines Cancel Mazatlan Calls; Reports of Increased Violence to Blame[*10] . Princess and Holland America bail on the Mexican Pacific coast port.

The President as Micromanager[*11] . Via Instapundit[*3] . “While watching the speech, I tweeted that “Obama sounds remarkably similar to the CEOs I used to listen to on earnings calls: the ones with mediocre EPS and a failing business model.” This wasn’t a crack at Obama, or Democrats; it was a reaction to the content. And after watching the responses, the impression lingers–indeed, maybe it’s strengthened. “

Ancient body clock keeps all life on time: studies[*12] . “The studies also suggest that the 24-hour circadian clock found in human cells is the same as that found in algae, and dates back millions of years to early life on earth. . .”

A tyranny of the heavily armed?[*13] Glenn Reynolds once again attempts to acquaint the “Reality-Based Community” with reality: “It’s not like the “bitter clinger” line is anything new. The trouble is, these folks liked the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, so long as it wasn’t actually, you know, proletarian. ‘Cause those proles are just icky.
. . .
“Hooded protesters. Molotov cocktails. Three dead by fire, four hospitalized. This is Piven’s idea of a proper “people’s movement.” This is the kind of violence she (Frances Fox Piven) was advocating. This is what she’d like to see happening in America, to Americans. And this is what her allies are trying to minimize, or distract attention from, by making false accusations aimed at innocent parties. Just for the record.”

And, for those of you who remember the Seventies: “Whip Inflation Now!”

W T F ???

What Federal programs to cut?

Via Insty.[*2]

Then we can move on to other monstrosities and clusterf*cks like the Department of Education, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, . . .

Not with a scalpel, but with an axe . . .

The Big Civility Lie

Where is the offended outrage from our friends on the left at this ridiculously incivil outburst,[*1] where a Congressmen accuse his fellow House members of being, essentially, members of the German Nazi party of Adolph Hitler? Surely anything that pegs the Godwin’s Law[*2] meter is a textbook example of incivil discourse, isn’t it?

Of course, there will be no expressions of disapproval from the leftist mainstream media or the socialist Democrats. This guy is just saying what they all really think.

The only appropriate, civil response is: BITE ME.[*3]

Playtime is over, dickweeds. You’ve been taking advantage of the better nature and, frankly, the superior morality of your political opponents and victims for far too long.

Guess what? You’ve gone too far.

You have sown the wind, and you shall reap the whirlwind. Dickweeds.

You want civility?

You first.

See, there’s a very, very popular saying and sentiment among the regular people, the Country Class,[*4] the just-plain-folks that you self-styled leftist/”progressive”/elitists so clearly despise. It is:

“Never start a fight. But always finish one.”

Now, my fellow Americans who have nothing but contempt and disdain for so many of your own countrymen . . . would any–ANY of you care to “revise and extend your remarks?”

People don’t like line-jumpers

“We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else,” he said. “Well, the fact of the matter is, we are held to a higher standard in so many other areas, and I think we need to take a hard look at exactly how the TSA interact with members of Congress.”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), assistant minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.[*1]

Can’t you just feel the sense of entitlement oozing from this guy?

Back of the line, buddy.

The left, having sown the wind, now beholds the whirlwind

I couldn’t have said this better myself:

For a decade, from the election of Bush 43 forward, the Left has lied and cheated as it tried to return to power. Al Gore made a mockery out of the American electoral system by being a spoilsport over Florida, which Bush indeed won by 537 votes. Dan Rather forged a document to try to derail Bush’s re-election. Twice Democrats stole U.S. senators from the Republicans. After voting to support the war to get by the 2002 election, many Democrats quickly soured on the war. The profane protests were cheered by liberals who misattributed “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” to Thomas Jefferson; the words belong to the late historian Howard Zinn.

Once in power, liberals were the opposite of gracious.

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

Oh, there’s more where that came from. Go and read it here.[*1] Don Surber, the guy who wrote it, works for a newspaper. In Flyover Country, of course.

Stealing Humanity

The horrific murders in Arizona, in a sane world, would have been an occasion for most of us–those of us with no direct connection to the victims (or the alleged perpetrator)–for sober reflection. Reflection on the tenuous nature of our existence on this world, how quickly a comfortable, easy life can turn into a horrible ordeal, or worse. Reflection on the fundamentally flawed nature of all humans. Reflection, perhaps, on how we have dealt and continue to deal with those troubled souls among us.

What we have been treated to instead is the spectacle of one politically-obsessed group using the event to yet again attack the very humanity of another group.

I’m talking about people like Markos Moulitsas,[*1] figurehead of the “progressive” Daily Kos web site, and other “progressives” who rushed to use inflammatory rhetoric to accuse their political opponents of causing the shooting by using inflammatory rhetoric. I’m talking about people like “redheadonfire2” who on Twitter spewed “I think Sarah Palin should get shot instead of Gifford!!!”[*2]

The goal is consistent: to dehumanize conservatives as political opponents.

People who do not speak out to denounce this behavior, at this time, are indeed guilty of a kind of blood libel[*3] –or at best, guilty of being a silent accessory to blood libel. Does it surprise you to know that a law professor was the first to use the term “blood libel” in a major media outlet–not Sarah Palin? Why haven’t you been told that? Could it be that there might just possibly be a slight . . . bias against Mrs. Palin in the media outlets you’re depending on?

It’s become a cliche to trot out the Martin Niemoeller quote (“First they came for the Communists, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist . . .”). But consider: are there, just maybe, certain, special times in history when the quote rings particularly true?

One effect of the blood libel against conservatives is that they, the conservatives, have been denied the ability to join with the rest of the country in properly grieving and reacting to the Arizona shootings. Denied by those very people who self-righteously claim that they simply care more about people than the rest of us. The “progressives” have, essentially, stolen a piece of humanity from the conservatives that they are attacking. An objective person must at this point ask: how much do “progressives” really care about their fellow citizens, and how much of their posturing and rhetoric is just a cloak for a naked lust for raw political power?

Those on the left pointing fingers should go off and do some serious soul-searching, and remember another cliche my mother was fond of quoting: “When you point a finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you.”

Positive and negative freedom

Positive freedom is simply the freedom to . . . Freedom to do . . . whatever you want to do. Freedom of action.

Negative freedom is, then simply freedom from . . . Freedom from . . . whatever might negatively impinge on the above positive freedom. So, negative freedoms would include two of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms:”

Freedom of speech and expression;
Fredom of religion;
Freedom from want;
Freedom from fear.

Taking this view of the two faces of freedom, “The Left” tends to be willing to sacrifice positive freedoms for negative freedoms–especially positive freedoms having to do with economic issues. Paradoxically perhaps, “the left’ then turns around and sacrifices negative freedoms in the social sphere–religious and sexual mores, artistic and cultural norms–for positive social and artistic freedoms. “The Right” on the other hand tends to uphold positive economic freedoms over negative ones–the freedom to earn, keep, and use personal property–over negative freedoms such as “freedom from want;” while upholding the negative social freedoms represented by traditional social and cultural institutions and mores over “living on the edge” of expressing positive social/cultural freedoms.

I read through quite a few of the articles I found on the internet regarding positive freedom and negative freedom and quickly found myself wandering into the tall grass of Marxist muddle-headed self-contradictory pseudo-intellectual mush.

It will (I suspect) astonish absolutely no one that the mainstream philosophical definition (i.e. the Marxist definition[*1] ) of positive and negative freedom is exactly the opposite of what I define above. Thus you discover mind-bending statements like this one earnestly offered up for your consideration:

In hitherto existing Socialist states, like the Soviet Union and China, “negative freedoms” were severely restricted, while “positive freedoms” were advanced.

Got that? In the Soviet Union, in Communist China–the two states that together killed more human beings than any other two nations in the history of mankind–“‘positive freedoms’ were advanced.”

This is why socialism–“progressivism”–communitarianism–Marxism–is extremely, EXTREMELY dangerous bullshit. It is a seductive siren song for overly intelligent intellectuals with too much time on their hands and too many drinks in front of them on the table in the cozy bar adjacent to the campus where they happily study their philosophies in isolation from the real world where most of us live.

Now, consider that one of those intelligent intellectuals is now President of the United States, and famously stated that he considers the Constitution of the United States a “charter of negative liberties.”

The spin embedded in the careful use of the terms “positive” and negative” by the Marxists is–or should be–transparent. They believe in the freedom of the community (of which, oddly enough, they tend to always be the ones in charge) over the freedom of the individual, who tends to be rather difficult to control without guns and jails and massive health care programs and total control of the news media and gulags and concentration camps and pogroms against the Jews . . .

That’s what the Democratic Party of the United States in the year 2011 is all about. That’s what Obamacare is about. It’s about ensnaring you, the American people in a velvet net of “positive” negative freedoms, so that their betters–lead by Obama–can “take care of you.”

For your own good, of course.

Do you like your freedom?

Are you positive?