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"How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?"Mr. Frank, you utterly refuse to consider the question at face value. Your behavior here is a sorry piece of work, a disgrace to your state, and your country.
Do not be deceived! Even though this . . . fetal tissue has already been named (Elizabeth Christina Price or Michael Thomas Price) it is wrong to speak of it as if it were human and had "rights." What kind of extremist wing-nut Christofascist wack-job are you?This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP -- unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.Christopher Orr of The New Republic:
I was trying to think of a framework that captured the no-enemies-on-the-right dynamic that seems to be pushing the GOP further and further into the political wilderness. . . .So there seems to be a certain sort of bipartisan consensus that the GOP is now fully committed to pandering to Buchananites, Birchers, goldbugs, gun nuts, Paulistas and sundry fringe types, and yet . . . I dunno. I'm not feeling the love here.
Everyone tries to outflank everyone else to the right--zero votes on any Obama-supported bill! a hyperconservative budget with no numbers! a hyperconservative budget with made-up numbers!--because there's no obvious, non-heretical way to establish yourself as a player otherwise. Denied the opportunity to govern (by their own intransigence as much as by the size of the Democratic majority), they have nothing to do but campaign 24/7.
Studies of the effects of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia and the Netherlands by Stanley Kurtz raise at least the inference that when there is a powerful (and ultimately successful) campaign by secular elites for homosexual marriage, traditional marriage is demeaned and comes to be perceived as just one more sexual arrangement among others. The symbolic link between marriage, procreation, and family is broken, and there is a rapid and persistent decline in heterosexual marriages. Families are begun by cohabiting couples, who break up significantly more often than married couples, leaving children in one-parent families. The evidence has long been clear that children raised in such families are much more likely to engage in crime, use drugs, and form unstable relationships of their own. These are pathologies that affect everyone in a community.Personally, I'm from the "judge the tree by the fruit" school of thought. I know "2+2=4" with the same clarity that I know what "marriage" means. The same people that are for thrashing traditional symbols are frequently the global warming zealots and endorsers of perpetual financial motion machines (bailouts). Bad ideas are tacky in the sense of sticking to each other as well as making lousy fashion.
Over the years, the GOP scored political benefit by playing on the resentments and fears of voters, but after the wreckage of the Bush years, Americans seem more interested in solutions than scapegoats. Conspiracy-laden rhetoric is unlikely to resonate far beyond the party's core base of supporters. . . ."For the good of the party," he says, which prompts me to Google up his biography:
Republicans need to make a decision: Are they going to cater to the paranoid fears of self-styled "truth tellers" like [Glenn] Beck, or are they going to present a substantive policy alternative to Democratic rule? For the good of the party, and the country, let's hope it's the latter.
Yeah, buddy, when Republicans want lectures about "the good of the party," you're the go-to guy, ain't ya?Previously, Mr. Cohen served in the U.S. Department of State as chief speechwriter for U.S. Representative to the United Nations Bill Richardson and Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat. He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, and as chief speechwriter for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT).
It’s Easy to Call Someone a Conspiracy Theorist When You Can Just Make Up What They Believe(Via Memeorandum.)
Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. . . .This isn't a newspaper column. It's an English-comp theme that any bright college psych major could have written. There is no attempt at reporting, no effort at timeliness or relevance.One gets the mental image of Brooks reclining on a divan, reading an article in Psychology Today and saying, "Oh, I'll write about that." And -- voila! -- second-hand expertise.
Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong. . . .
What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history.
As always, Brooks approaches his subject with the general idea, "What do the 'experts' say? What is the prestigious, fashionable, high-status thing to say about this?" He is merely a mirror of the attitudinal dispositions of the elite, a sort of living sociological treatise on the current mood of our decadent intelligentsia.More comment at Memeorandum.
Uh, "the GOP Congress"? Was this a "push poll"? But never mind that. What did the polls say about Bill Clinton in April 1993?The latest New York Times poll is loaded with good news for the Obama administration and news that would be devastating for the GOP if it were ever able to penetrate the conservative-media echo chamber. . . .
Obama has a 66 percent approval rating, which is the highest this poll has recorded, while the GOP's favorability is at 31 percent, the lowest the poll has recorded in 25 years of asking the question. Arguably more remarkable still is that, asked whether Obama or the GOP Congress would be more likely to make "the right decisions about the nation's economy," respondents broke for Obama 63 percent to 20 percent. That means that even within the 31 percent rump that holds a positive view of the GOP, at least a third trust Obama's instincts on the economy equally or more.
Don't you people understand that it doesn't matter how "popular" you and your policies are, if what you are doing is the wrong thing to do? And that it doesn't matter how clever and persuasive your arguments are, if your policies bring disaster?As a question of electoral politics, it matters not a whit, in April 2009, whether a poll shows that people "trust Obama's instincts on the economy," if Obama's instincts are wrong, and they are. It Won't Work.
My family lives on the west side of Los Angeles. I face the same choice as many urban families: Will the kids attend public or private schools? Should one minimize opportunities for one's own child in service to the greater good?Never mind whatever advice she got from the Slate columnists. Here's what I wrote back to the person who sent me the column:
In our desire to protect our children physically and academically, we send them to very expensive schools that are inherently segregated ethnically and economically. We, being white, educated, and comparatively affluent, are the agenda-setters in society. The agenda does not include fierce protection of the public school system we value in general terms but abandon in our own specific cases.
And so we've let down our future fellow citizens by turning our backs on them. And we've certainly let the government off the hook yet again, by individually shouldering the burden of quality education for our own children and letting the public schools crumble. Advice?
Eloise
Very interesting. "Eloise" . . . has obviously bought into the collectivist liberal mentality and cannot think clearly. In terms of one's own children's education, how is the interest of "society" best served? Obviously, by providing them with the best possible education, so that they may be productive citizens. If every parent would only do that -- concentrate on making their own child the best they could be -- then "society" would be much better off. But "Eloise" has apparently bought into the collectivist mentality to such an extent that she feels guilty about her choice of private education. She thinks she should be supporting public schools by entrusting her own child to their misguided hands.I say that guilt-ridden rich liberals are mystifying, in that I cannot understand successful people who don't strive to support and strengthen the system of free enterprise whose blessings they enjoy. But the habits of such people -- who always seek to exempt themselves from the disastrous consequences that liberal policies inflict on others less fortunate -- are, as I said, predictable. Thomas Sowell wrote a whole book about it.
Their worldview is a house of cards, and they dare not examine any premise of their syllogism for fear that the whole thing will come crashing down. So they lie to themselves and ignore the contradictions and blame others for their own unhappiness. Ayn Rand had these people pegged.
Oh, and I guarantee you, "Eloise" chose a private school where the overprivileged children are all indoctrinated with the same self-contradictory liberal worldview. (Monica Lewinsky received such an education at John Thomas Dye School and Bel Air Prep, and certainly exemplified its principles.) The phenomenon of guilt-ridden rich liberals is somewhat mystifying, but their habits are utterly predictable.
-- RSM
Spitzer took his rehab campaign to the "Today" show where he couldn't manage to sound minimally contrite in answering Matt Lauer's questions about his sneaky expensive whoring. "I've tried to address these gremlins and confront them," he told Lauer. The "gremlins" made him do it!Lo and behold: Spitzer managed to discuss his non-command of his wedding tackle without blaming George W. Bush! You say jackass, I say Progress!
That girl you introduced me to at CPAC .... is she really a lezbo? If so, what a waste of lipstick.My reply:
No, she's not a lesbian. Perhaps you've misunderstood a joke.His reply:
Phew. You'll have to explain the joke at some point. Is she in on it?We'll let Suzanna explain all this. After she strips nude at the Tea Party in Richmond, Va., and Jello wrestles Monique Stuart (with right-wing lesbian Cynthia Yockey as the neutral, objective referee) for romantic rights to Jason "Big Sexy" Mattera.
How many shootings do there have to be in the news before we wonder about the wisdom of allowing just about anyone to get a gun in America? Our gun culture is completely out of control.OK, let's be clear that he's talking about the Binghamton massacre (13 victims) and the nut who shot four cops (three fatally) in Pittsburgh. What do we know about these specific cases and the perpetrators? Here is a video about the Binghamton killer: So the Vietnamese immigrant was angry about losing his job and upset that his unemployment checks were too small, and therefore shot a receptionist and 12 fellow immigrants. This makes no sense, and how he got the gun, I don't know. Maybe the Vietnamese have got a "gun culture" problem we need to look into. Now, let's look at the Pittsburgh case, which Dave Neiwert blames on Glenn Beck, but which Cenk Uygur blames on an out-of-control "gun culture." Unfortunately for Niewert and Uygur, the key witness in the case blames . . . the family dog:
On April 4, 2009 at approximately 7:03am, Allegheny County 911 dispatch received a call from complainant Margaret Poplawski for a domestic incident involving her son [suspect] Richard Poplawski, who she wanted out of the house because he was giving her a hard time. . . .Now, you can blame the dog. Or you can blame Mrs. Poplawski. Or you can blame Glenn Beck. Or you can blame a "gun culture."
Complainant Margaret Poplawski reported that she awoke early on this date to discover that the dog had urinated on the floor inside her house at 1016 Fairfield Street, at which point she awakened her twenty-two-year-old son, [suspect] Richard Poplawski, to confront him about it. Mrs. Poplawski reported that she called 911 dispatch, and two uniformed police officers responded to her address at 1016 Fairfield Street a short time later, at which point she opened the front door of her residence and admitted them, saying "come and take his ass."
The Tea Party movement seems to get bigger every day, but that is not the case for Democrats.This is our Community Organizer in Chief (COC) here.
"And I should add that this gloating has been, and is now, bipartisan: Many Republicans have been deeply resentful of the influence exercised by Christian conservatives. The fact that John McCain was able to get the 2008 GOP nomination, after infamously insulting the leaders of the Religious Right as 'agents of intolerance' during his 2000 primary campaign, is perhaps the best evidence for any argument about the declining influence of Christian conservatism."
"All learning is individual. . . . You can teach a group, but only the individual learns. . . . Therefore, the idea that a school is 'good' because the students on average score well on standard tests is fundamentally false."Once you understand this, you realize what's wrong with The Myth of the Good Public School. The school is taking credit, as an institution, for the individual achievement of its students. The "good" school doesn't necessarily have better facilities or better teachers, it simply has more good students.
Note the reference to "experts." Where do you go to school to become an "expert" on breasts? Perhaps I could get a scholarship, some work-study credits or something in the Obama administration's vocational retraining program.The bra market is expanding, literally. Up to 40 per cent of Australian women now buy bras with a cup size of DD or higher, new figures from lingerie suppliers show. In the 1950s, the most common bra-cup size was a B - three sizes less than a DD. Modern breasts are getting so large that some bra companies have introduced cup sizes as high as K, The Sunday Telegraph reports.
Experts blame the cleavage boost on obesity, contraceptive pills and artificial hormones. Myer lingerie buyer Kerryn Sawyer said sales of DD-plus bras have grown from about 20 per cent of sales to 28 per cent in just five years.
And where did the ideology that actuated the American Revolution originate? Who first came up with the idea that laws should be passed only by elected legislators? We did. That idea was Britain's greatest export, our supreme contribution to the happiness of mankind.*The initial letters (the first two letters for the first word) of "quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization."
Forget subsequent flag-waving histories of the War of Independence, and go back to what the colonist leaders were arguing at the time. They saw themselves, not as revolutionaries, but as conservatives. In their eyes, they were standing up for what they had assumed to be their birthright as freeborn Englishmen. It was Great Britain, they believed, that was abandoning its ancient liberties.
And here, my friends, is Britain's tragedy. The things those colonists feared - the levying of illegal taxes, the passing of laws without popular consent, the sidelining of Parliament - have indeed come about. They have come about, not as the result of Hanoverian tyranny, but in our own age, driven by rise of the quangocracy* and the EU.
To put it another way, British freedoms thrive best in America, and British patriots should be campaigning to bring them home. I'll be staying here, Larry, working to repatriate our revolution.
"This provocation underscores the need for action -- not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons."
"He is not a fringe player. He is a public face of the [Democratic] party and their go-to guy on new media. Conservatives should not hesitate for a second to hang his despicable, slanderous words around the neck of every single left-wing politician in the country. They bought him and his hate willingly and eagerly. Let's make sure we don't let them off the hook."
I was alerted to the Deace-Minnery interview by E. Ray Moore -- founder of the South Carolina-based Exodus Mandate, an initiative to encourage Christian education and home schooling. Moore, who considers himself a member of the Christian right, thinks the movement is imploding.I know and respect Mr. Moore, and his criticism of James Dobson, et al., is dead on target. In 1999, I interviewed Mr. Moore after he published a book called Let My Children Go, in which he argued forcefully -- based on sound Bible teaching -- that Christian parents should get their children out of government schools. Having pulled our oldest child out of public school after kindergarten (our five youngest have never attended government schools), I was of course sympathetic to Mr. Moore's argument, which he summarized in a simple phrase, "Every church a school, every parent a teacher."
"It's hard to admit defeat, but this one was self-inflicted," he wrote in an e-mail. "Yes, Dr. Dobson and the pro-family or Christian right political movement is a failure; it would have made me sad to say this in the past, but they have done it to themselves."
Mr. Perkovic and other former classmates said they were surprised by this morning's events. Mr. Perkovic said Mr. Poplawski was opposed to "Zionist propaganda" and was fearful that his right to own weapons would be taken away.Tim F. enlightens us:
How is that "orderly revolution" going, Michelle? How about that laundry soap rebellion, Erick? This is what Glenn Beck's citizen army looks like. People like Michelle Malkin fantasize about citizens rising up against the (Democratic) state. They stoke their followers' paranoia with bullshit that, mostly, they know is bullshit, for ratings and a shot at political traction. Did they expect the American revolution?You know, Tim F., I've got better things to do with my life than to pay attention to liberal pretzel-logic like this, and I know Michelle Malkin doesn't have time to waste, either. So I'm just linking your idiocy in the hope that our commenters, or some other blogger like Kathy Shaidle, Dan Riehl or Jeff Goldstein, will do me the favor of taking a few moments to explain to you what a worthless waste of bandwidth you are.
Look, I’m all for finding root causes.Ditto. If you want to vent your spleen, go right ahead and vent, Alan Colmes. That's why Al Gore invented the Internet. But don't pretend that your idiotic attempts to politicize the crimes of nutjobs is Insightful News Commentary. I don't have enough snark to spare and experts assure me that we're seriously at risk of a pixel shortage.
But someone please explain to me how conservatives who espouse immigration enforcement and assimilation led a nutball of Vietnamese descent who reportedly could barely speak English to slaughter innocent people taking a citizenship test and trying to naturalize the right way?
Put the hangman’s noose down and try to make some sense.
For what reason, I know not. they are handling the economic situation and international diplomacy so well. What, as the boys would say, could go wrong?but this misses the fullness of the point: having conquered such relatively pesky problems as the economy and diplomacy, the ragged glory of the webbynets can no longer be tolerated, lest someone doubt the efficacy of the Temples:
Binghamton Gunman FeltDude, I can so relate to that. OK, so he's a Vietnamese immigrant who slaughtered 13 innocent people. But it says here "Jiverly Voong was angry about poor language skills and lack of job prospects." Exactly like a blogger with no linky-love.
'Degraded and Disrespected'
Browse around. Check the blogroll and headlines. Bookmark me. Add me on Twitter. Hit the tip jar.
UPDATE III: A commenter notes the Professor's "timely" link to an article about narcissism. Actually, I don't believe the world revolves around me. But that doesn't mean the world wouldn't be a better place if it did revolve around me.
For starters, I'm the guy who explained the principles of advanced blogwhoring (Rule 1) and reciprocal linkage (Rule 2) to the conservative blogosphere. In a single post, "How to Get a Million Hits On Your Blog," I thus jocularly* solved a mystery that had baffled all the conservative "Internet gurus": Why is the Left side of the 'sphere bigger and more effective than the Right? Two basic reasons are these:
If you're going to tell me what I should think about Afghanistan or the federal budget, please demonstrate why I should care about your opinion. What special knowledge or experience do you have about these subjects? American Spectator managing editor J.P. Freire says that the Right needs fewer Bill Buckleys and more Robert Novaks: More reporting, less commentary. He's absolutely right. But too many conservatives seem to have turned their disdain for the news media into a contempt for reporting.
Yet there's something else even uglier at work on the Right: Envy. Why do so many conservative wannabe pundits routinely bash Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? If it ain't envy, I'd sure as hell like to know what it is. Success should be admired, praised and emulated. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with Limbaugh or Coulter. They must be doing something right or else they wouldn't be successful. But some people always envy rather than emulate, and the negative attitudes of losers like that will inevitably destroy morale and make teamwork impossible.
People have sometimes called me a suck-up because of my enthusiastic praise for successful people, including successful conservative bloggers like Insty, Michelle Malkin, Allahpundit and Ace of Spades. In an atmosphere poisoned by the negative spirit of selfishness and envy, sincere praise is a rarity, and backstabbing criticism becomes the norm.
"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost," and for want of blunt talk about the problems of the Right, we have President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid. Some small bloggers -- including blogs that didn't even exist two months ago, as well as a certain pathetic Wisconsinite -- are now operating according to The Rules, especially the reciprocal-linkage Full Metal Jacket principle of Rule 2.
The spirit of teamwork has resulted in growth for these little bloggers, as Instapundit and others (including blog-fu master Moe Lane) have rewarded them with linkage. So as always, we express our gratitude to the man who inspired it all, Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, who now has a few words of cheerful encouragement for you:
Well, at least I'm not the only one. . . . Maybe I go about it the wrong way.Tell me about it. Smitty rocked a 'Lanche with his second post. Talk about humiliation. And then there is this clever fellow:
"But you are erroneously assuming the flux capacitator is calibrated for this type of environment. I would re-think the whole matter."Heh.
Of course, Insty kept my traffic at its normal bad weekend level, rather than letting it sink into the realm of "abysmal," by linking R. Stacy McCain, who essentially badgered him into doing it. Fortunately, there are "good karma" links to me all over McCain's page. We likes that.See, here's my theory of why you don't get 'Lanched, Attila: Dr. Helen is insanely jealous of you. So Insty can't link you, or his wife would get suspicious. (She's got a kitchen drawer full of knives, and he's got to sleep sometimes.) This is why you're the Kharma Queen of the Blogosphere. Bloggers who link you regularly get more traffic, because 'Lanching them is Professor Reynolds' way of satisfying his unrequited bloglust for you.
Here's the dilemma, though: if Insty keeps giving in like this, that dis-incentivizes the showing of restraint; Professor Reynolds is essentially subsidizing bad behavior, no?
[E]ven Brooks' facial expressions annoy me. As he sits there listening to the caller's question, his plump face congealed into a half-somnolent complacency, he puts me in mind of a fellow who's just settled down with his opium pipe and is waiting for the pleasant dreams to kick in.Since Insty's not linking anything lately except electric cars and Chris Dodd, everybody else who links here today will be celebrated with the 'Lanche suffix.
[T]he casual pleasure marijuana has delivered is orders of magnitude greater than the pain it has assuaged, and pleasure matters too. . . . That's why tens of millions of Americans regularly take a puff, despite the misconceived laws meant to save us from our own wickedness. . . .
We'll make real progress when solid, upstanding folk come out of the cannabis closet, heads held high.
So here we go. My name is Will Wilkinson. I smoke marijuana, and I like it.
"Hey, man, wouldn't it be cool if all the weedheads just came out and said, 'I'm a weedhead'? Like, a massive kind of civil disobedience thing, y'know. Because, like, they couldn't arrest us all, right?"
Our next case involves a real scumbag, "Weedhead" Wilkinson. . . . He's known to frequent locations where dope fiends play a board game they call "Risk." So, if you know anything about where this vicious thug is hiding, make that call!Why do I want Wilkinson put behind bars? Because he claims that it's "libertarian" to legalize weed. This is so atavistically retarded I don't even know where to begin explaining how wrong it is, but before I conquer Kamchatka, let me give you the capsule summary:
Legalizing marijuana will not “empower the state,” except financially, which is fine: it’s legit to tax marijuana, just as it is to tax vodka or angel-food cake. What it will do is stop the rationale we are using to put a rather obscene number of nonviolent people in prison.
You idiots! Show of hands -- how many people here have ever possessed so much as a quarter-pound of weed, huh? OK, now how many of you have ever sold a full pound of weed? How many of you people have ever been charged with a felony? Since nobody's raised their hand, please tell me what the hell makes you "experts" about any of this?
