Waiting For O-Dough: Act II

by Smitty

Waiting for O-Dough: Announcement

Synopsis of Act I: Stacy met Smitty on the Porch, and they awaited O-Dough. Bob Belvedere and Lucky came by, Bob ate lunch, and departed.

(Smitty sits on the couch. Enter Stacy at right.)
Smitty: Good morning. Once again you neglect the shelter of the porch.
Stacy: Well, I prefer the comfort of my ditch.
Smitty: Even though the union thugs beat you?
Stacy: It's just a flesh wound. I think it's more the union management than the actual workers. The management is less competent. The real troops will bite your leg off, I hear.
Smitty: You'd think if they had O-Dough, they could buy some real victuals.
Stacy: Maybe they're waiting for O-Dough, too.
Smitty: How about those two that were here yesterday?
Stacy: Belvedere and Lucky? They work for Congress. They don't need O-Dough.
Smitty: Should we apply for government jobs?
Stacy: Why? We're supposed to get our O-Dough any day now. If only the mail wasn't so slow. Why don't they just use FedEx or UPS?
Smitty: I didn't realize that FedEx and UPS still exist.
(Lucky comes back in from stage right, encumbered as before, with Bob Belvedere's eyes covered. Lucky stops in the middle of the stage. Belvedere wanders forward, trips, sprawls.)
Stacy & Smitty: Let me help you up. (Jump off the porch to assist Belvedere up.)
Stacy: You were here yesterday.
Bob: I was?
Smitty: Yes. Have you called Congress? Did you remember to mention our O-Dough?
Bob: What are you talking about?
Stacy: You came by here, had some lunch, and then went off. Claimed you worked for Congress. That's why you can have what looks to be nothing other than a slave (though, as long as he's a consenting adult, there's nothing wrong with that).
Bob: Did I say I work for Congress? To you? I would have been more discreet than that, if it was true.
Smitty: Well, there you have it. Stacy, we're just going to have to go and find our O-Dough.
Stacy: Do you have a map?
Smitty: It's behind the couch. (He starts to rustle behind the couch, creating a cloud of paper and debris.)
Stacy: But if we leave, we won't be here to take receipt of our O-Dough. We'd better stay.
Bob: What's this O-Dough you expect, then?
Stacy: Our kickback for our years of patience!
Smitty: The economic stimulus that will create more jobs than it destroys!
Stacy: The worker's paradise we were promised by Progress!
Smitty: The end of all systemic risk!
Bob: Yes. That's all well and good, but where does this O-Dough come from?
Stacy: The Treasury Department cuts a check.
Bob: And how did the money get to the Treasury Department?
Smitty: A goose laying golden eggs?
Bob: Right, although it's really more a duck. A mandarin duck. It's been all fowl play since the Federal Reserve Act. Now, what do geese do?
Stacy: They float in water.
Bob: What else floats in water?
Smitty: An island.
Bob: Just so. Now, if there is a problem with the goose providing the golden eggs, what should you do?
Stacy: Wait for someone to give up an island for the Treasury Department.
Bob: Precisely. Now, it's late. I must be going. The madness of men has driven sight from my head.
Smitty: Since you know so much, do you really work for the Congress?
Bob: I wouldn't accuse it of being work. I'll leave you two to the toil of the human condition. "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more." Take me out of here, Lefty. Best wishes on the O-Dough, gentlemen.
(Lefty and Bob exit stage left.)
(After a moment, the Boy re-enters, stage right.)
Stacy: Have you seen the postman?
Boy: He's already been by, while you were talking to that blind man. You didn't get anything.
Smitty: No O-Dough today?
Boy: No, and the rumor is that it might not be for some time. They just discovered a few hundred fresh pages of legislation governing O-Dough. Got to take time and follow the law, you know.
Stacy & Smitty: *Sigh*

PORTICUS RUIT

Copyright 2009, Christopher L. Smith

Doctor Zero examines the myth of government job-creation

If you don't understand what's wrong with the repeated claims of the Obama administration that the stimulus has "saved or created" jobs -- pick a number, any number -- you really ought to read Doctor Zero's post at the Hot Air Green Room.

What is sad is that this should have to be explained at all. Frederic Bastiat understood this fallacy -- the parable of the broken window -- more than 150 years ago. The coercive power of government, when wielded in an effort to control the economy, is always ultimately destructive.

Keynesian talk of "multipliers" of federal spending are nonsense on stilts. No, change that -- nonsense chugging three Red Bulls and bouncing around frenetically on a pogo stick. It is a confusion of two separate phenomena:

• Case A: You are studying the economy of Tupelo, Mississippi. Sen. Trent Lott inserts a measure into a federal transportation bill to do $2,000,000 of improvements to a local roadway -- widen it, repave it, upgrade the traffic signals, etc. The total value of that project to the community is actually greater than $2 million. Better roads increase commerce and help attract business. The employers of the paving company spend their earnings in local stores. Et cetera. Thus, it might be said that there is a "multiplier effect" in terms of local economic impact of this road project.
• Case B: The Democrats who run Congress hate Trent Lott, so they reject his highway-improvement project for Tupelo. Thus, if the locals are really serious about the project, they'll have to come up with the money themselves. So the Tupelo City Council meets and passes a tax hike to raise the $2 million project. Does the same "multiplier effect" apply? No, because the "multiplier" mainly reflects secondary impacts of the addition of federal money to the local economy. If Tupelo builds the project by taxing its own citizenry, whatever gains are made by the improvement of the highway must be balanced against the $2 million taken out of local pockets by the tax hike.

Therefore, whatever the federal government does in terms of job creation at a national level through additional spending cannot really have a "multiplier effect" because one way or another, this spending is funded by taking money away from the taxpayer. For the federal project to truly "create" jobs, it must be argued that the spending by the government has greater value than if the money were left with the citizenry to spend, save or invest themselves.

You may believe in the magical "multiplier effect" of federal spending, but you cannot prove it, because the evidence points the other way: Private investment ultimately creates more jobs than does government spending. And the fact that the stimulus is funded by deficit spending only compounds the problem, because now you must subtract from the value of each dollar of spending some small amount for interest on the debt created by spending borrowed money. The more money government borrows, the less money is available for private loans or investments.

The fact that the Democrats in Washington belief that spending $787 billion of borrowed money has some kind of magical job-creation impact only goes how utterly out of touch they are with economic reality. The Keynesian "pump-priming" theory, by which they attempt to justify this, simply does not pass the smell test. Eventually, that borrowed money must be paid back, but in the meantime, interest must be paid, and all the while, government borrowing has the effect of siphoning capital away from the private sector.

As I said, it shouldn't be necessary to explain this. My explanation may not be easy to understand, but if so, that's just a reflection of my shortcomings as a journalist. There is a fundamental economic reality that is really quite simple, once you get over the attitude that there is something magical about the economic power of the federal government.

ObamaCare speech may be a recipe for easy hits.

by Smitty (h/t Memeorandum)

If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out.--BHO

Now, contrast this with the Fourth President, James Madison, who had written in Federalist #62 (Federalism, Mr. Obama: do you speak it?), emphasis mine:

It will be of little avail to the people,
that the laws are made by men of their own choice,
if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read,
or so incoherent that they cannot be understood;
if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated,
or undergo such incessant changes that no man,
who knows what the law is to-day,
can guess what it will be to-morrow.
Law is defined to be a rule of action;
but how can that be a rule,
which is little known,
and less fixed?

I can't really decide which misrepresentation of what's in the plan I prefer. Shall we go sweep left?

Then again, given the Constitutionally indeterminate nature of the entire ball of wax, the gross fiscal irresponsibility of eating this much of the economy when said economy is Tango Uniform, and the sheer disingenuousness of acting this on fire about something that will not be in place until 2013, a pass right might make more sense:

This blog expects to be called out for this grossly bratty act of misrepresentation, Mr. President. And may millions of red, white, and blue flowers of principled disobedience bloom in peaceful opposition to the high-handedness on display, sir.

• Dan Riehl has a stream of conscious tweets.
• Director Blue demolishes four lies.
• Confederate Yankee was wildly unimpressed.
• Don Surber is pessimistic.
• Cato cleans copious clock with a time-stamped, multi-expert gadget that is well worth review.

But let me tell you why none of this is meaningful. Rather, let Carol Tackett explain. The quantity of other Americans who are, or are not, happy with their situation isn't relevant when you're laid out, needing health care, and want your own full value delivered. "They're changing the policy, I'm doing my best, here's a complimentary iPod loaded with Obama speeches to tide you over until we can get that for you."--Ain't. Gonna. Cut. It.

However, the perpetrators of the disappointment shall have long since departed the pattern by the time the true nature of the suck is apparent.

Update:
Legal Insurrection points out an accusation of prevarication yelled in the POTUS direction.

Update II:
Fix Director Blue link. Thanks for the boot to the head, Dan.

Reply to Ron Rosenbaum

I'm running late for a buffet reception, but I couldn't leave until I offered a Hayekian response to Ron Rosenbaum in the Hot Air Green Room:

It is one of Hayek's famous essays which I would like to call to Ron Rosenbaum's attention. In The Mirage of Social Justice, Hayek dismantled this commonplace concept, demonstrating how the pursuit of "social justice" leads to harmful outcomes contrary to the benevolent intentions of those who subscribe to such doctrines. . . .
What Hayek is saying is that "social justice" requires treating people as groups, rather than as individuals -- an error similar to the Jim Crow laws that the civil rights crusade sought to overturn. Indeed, with no intention to invoke Godwin's Law, we might say that "social justice" shares with Hitler's categorical antagonism to the Jews this conception of people in terms of groups and not individuals.
The pursuit of "social justice" -- accompanied by a rhetoric of "rights" misappropriated to describe what would be more accurately term entitlements — inexorably leads down that same path that Hayek described as The Road to Serfdom. Only an extremely powerful government can apportion outcomes in the egalitarian manner intended by the phrase "social justice," superintending the welfare of specially protected groups. As government power expands, individual liberty is eroded. . . .

Read the whole thing. I'm in a hurry to get ready to go travel The Road to Free Buffet.

Waiting For O-Dough: Act I

by Smitty

Waiting for O-Dough: Announcement

(Smitty sits on the couch, trying to get his boot off. Enter Stacy at right.)
Smitty: (Giving up on the boot again) I got nothin'.
Stacy: Yeah, me too.
Smitty: I reckon we're morally equivalent, then.
Stacy: Yep.
Smitty: So, where'd you hang your hat last night?
Stacy: A ditch.
Smitty: There was room for you on the porch!
Stacy: Sure, but your snoring is enough to wake the dead.
Smitty: Hmm. Maybe that's who keeps getting in line ahead of me for the sleep apnea appointment.
Stacy: When, that famous event?
Smitty: Dunno. Can you help me get this boot off?
Stacy: How cool we were, Smitty, long ago, before even CPAC, when the presidential campaign wasn't an ignoble train wreck. When there was a possibility of a real economy. When we weren't stuck here, unemployed, waiting for O-Dough…
Smitty: I said, can you help be get this boot off?
Stacy: Oh, alright. (He stoops, grabs the boot, tugs mightily. Simultaneously, Smitty comes off the couch, landing on the porch. Stacy steps back, looses his footing on the corner of the television and lands on the porch. The boot traces an arc out into the yard.
They both slowly rise.)
Smitty: Do you see where my boot went?
Stacy: It's out in the yard, past the second truck.
Smitty: Will you go get it?
Stacy: Ain't my boot.
Smitty: I cain't go in that yard barefoot! Until I get me some O-Dough, there ain't no way to cover the payments on what you'd catch walkin' out there with nekkid tootsies.
Stacy: Oh, alright. (He goes to get the boot, comes back. Smitty stares at the collection of junk on the porch.) I was wonderin' on my way over here: you ever read the Bible?
Smitty: I heard of it.
Stacy: Do you remember the Gospels?
Smitty: I remember dad had rituals to get the truck started. He called them the 'Go spells'. Lost dad, lost the spells, the truck ain't moved in years.
Stacy: That sounds like a Country Dungeouns and Western Dragons song. Are you a musician?
Smitty: (Gestures into the window, where a guitar with two strings is visible on the table.) Isn't that obvious?
Stacy: What about the two thieves?
Smitty: Were they in the Legislative or Executive branch. With 537 to pick from, why just the two?
Stacy: I'm not talking about the government, silly. The Gospels. The crucifiction. The two theives.
Smitty: Why didn't the government offer them free health care?
Stacy: What are you, stupid? The government carried out the crucifictions. It was the opposite of health care.
Smitty: Are you saying the Roman government was like the Bush administration?
Stacy: You are so completely dense. Maybe we need a change of scenery, to give you some fresh air. This porch is too depressing.
Smitty: We can't leave. We're waiting for our chance. The big bailout. What's owed us for all our suffering. O-Dough. It should be in the mail soon.
Stacy: How soon?
Smitty: That's not clear. Digging us out from under the wreckage of the previous administration has been hard. There is so much unfairness. Such a lack of social justice, income justice, racial justice, economic justice. It's taking time to get down to the "just us" justice.
Stacy: Right. You hear that, coming around the corner of the house?
(Enter Lefty stage left, on a leash, carrying: a seabag, a folding chair, and a picnic basket under a large coat. Lefty advances around to the middle of the porch. A whip cracks, and Lefty stops, cowering, but with a hint of a smile. Bob Belvedere at stage left. )
Stacy: Are you the postman, come with our O-Dough?
Smitty: Yes.
Bob: I present myself: Bob Belvedere.
Smitty: Isn't our postman named Bob? He brings the O-Dough!
Stacy: Curb your enthusiasm.
Bob: What is this O-Dough?
Smitty: It's the big cash infusion that is going to lift us from this porch!
Stacy: It's the social justice we are owed!
Smitty: It's the re-distribution of wealth away from the evil capitalists and toward the people!
Stacy: O, the answer to the evil W!
Bob: Never heard of it. (To Lefty, cracking whip) Set up for lunch! (Lefty sets up the chair in front of the porch, opens the seabag, extracts a folding tray, and works on lunch preparations. A tablecloth, a bottle, and a basket appear before the hungry eyes of Smitty and Stacy. Bob sits.)
Smitty: What's up with him?
Bob: Hey, the new jobs program is a huge success. Look at how Lefty is employed.
Stacy: But, aren't you violating OSHA regulations here?
Bob: I might be, if I didn't work for Congress, where none of the laws apply.
Smitty: Really? What's Lefty's career path, then?
Bob: Well, as a junior intern for the Ways and Means Committee, he has to be tested, which is what we're up to here. Following the success of this Training Run (heh), he'll be allowed to take calls from donors, lobbyists, and industry to request certain language in legislation. (Bob extracts a sandwich from the bag and devours it.)
Smitty: Really? What if Stacy here would be interested in such a position?
Bob: Well (A giant swig from the bottle), I imagine if Stacy were suitable for such a position, I should have heard of him. What year did you graduate Yale, Stacy? Or was it some other Ivy League school?
Stacy: Well, it was really Kudzu League… Hey, next time you call back to DC, can you ask what's up with the O-Dough that Porch Manqué Productions was supposed to get?
Bob: But off course. Now, you are aware of the suggested campaign contributions? One hates to dwell on the minutia, but the time of the Government is precious, and it takes time to work all the way down the list. You have to take responsibility for yourself and the management of your position on the list. (Another tremendous bite, and the sandwich has disappeared. A long quaff of the bottle, a belch, and a sigh. Stacy and Smitty look on, eyes and mouths watering.) Well, lads, we really must be off. Lefty, clean up. (Lefty carefully stows all the debris with practiced ease. Bob cracks the whip, and they exit stage right.)
Smitty: Is it too late for the mail today? Bob really got my hopes up about the O-Dough.
Stacy: Probably. Maybe tomorrow.
(A boy wanders in from stage right.)
Smitty: Say, lad: have you seen the postman?
Boy: Didn't you? He was just by. His bag looked totally empty. If your box is empty, you struck out.
Stacy: Do you know of anyone who's gotten their O-Dough?
Boy: I hear rumors, but no one in this area, that's for sure.
Smitty: Thanks.

Act II

Copyright 2009, Christopher L. Smith

Sowell the Magnificent

For years, I've recommended Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed as the best one-volume analysis of liberalism. And now Dr. Sowell applies his analysis to the subject of Obama's health-care address to Congress:

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013! . . .
If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it. . . . .

A familar tactic known as the fait accompli -- it is always more effective to act, and then explain your action as a thing already done, than to seek permission to act.

This tactic is beloved of school boards and county commissions. Enact the potentially controversial new policy without calling too much attention to the change, knowing that repealing a policy is a task more difficult than arguing against a change in policy. The status quo always has the best of the argument against novelty -- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and the "better the devil we know," etc. -- and so local goverments are always doing things this way.

This just doesn't work in the glare of national politics, when trying to pull a fast one against organized opposition. The Clintons came out of Little Rock accustomed to always having their own way, and were blindsided by the opposition in Washington. I'm thinking Obama was too used to the way things were done in Chicago and Springfield, and is now learning the same lesson the Clintons learned. What I can't understand is how someone as cagey as Rahm Emanuel miscalated so badly.

Auguries of Economic Apocalypse

Last week was an excellent week for gloom and doom, not least because idiots were optimistic, a topic addressed in my latest American Spectator column:

Six months into a stock-market rally, Wall Street apparently saw more good news last week when a Labor Department report showed employment had jumped to 9.7 percent in August. Exactly why Friday's news -- joblessness at a 26-year high -- produced a 97-point gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a good question, but if the stock market were perfectly predictable, we'd all be rich. . . .
First the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have pumped hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into the system, justifying the stimulus-and-bailout policy as necessary to avert a financial cataclysm. Yet the augurs who study the entrails of the economy are muttering darkly about the inauspicious omens.
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden gave a happy-talk presentation -- "Rainbows! Unicorns! Recovery!" -- about the miraculous effects of the $787 billion stimulus package that President Obama rammed through Congress in February. Once more trotting out the administration's rhetoric about jobs "saved or created" (pick a number, any number), Biden declared, "In 200 days, the president's Recovery and Reinvestment Act isn't just working . . . it's working toward something: It's working toward a more resilient, more transformative economy."
Surely, many economists greeted this declaration with arched eyebrows. What, exactly, is a "transformative economy," and in what sense is it "more resilient"? Never mind. Being liberal means never having to define one's terms.
Biden showed himself adept at the art of ambiguity when he proclaimed to his Brookings Institution audience: "The Recovery Act has played a significant role in changing the trajectory of our economy, in changing the conversation about the economy in this country. Instead of talking about the beginning of a depression, we're talking about the end of a recession eight months after taking office."
Well, who is "we"? It is by no means universally agreed that the U.S. economy is now bound for the sunlit uplands of prosperity, and many of the financial augurs perceive that we may be approaching an economic abyss. . . .

Read the whole gloomy thing. And expect further omens of catastrophic Obamanomics at NTCNews.com. The revolution will not be televised, but the apocalypse will be blogged.

UPDATE: Doug Ross anticipates Zimbabwe USA.

UPDATE II: Taxpayers get screwed:

The federal government is unlikely to recoup all of the billions of dollars that it has invested in General Motors and Chrysler, according to a new congressional oversight report assessing the automakers' rescue.
The report said that a $5.4 billion portion of the $10.5 billion owed by Chrysler is "highly unlikely" to be repaid, while full recovery of the $50 billion sunk into GM would require the company's stock to reach unprecedented heights.
"Although taxpayers may recover some portion of their investment in Chrysler and GM, it is unlikely they will recover the entire amount," according to the report . . .

In other words, the auto bailout was a taxpayer-funded swindle, cheating the legitimate stakeholders on behalf of the UAW bosses. Oh, and here's some more cheerful news: Inflation's back!

UPDATE III: Read Max Baucus's lips: More New Taxes!

What the Baucus proposal means in real terms is that a family of four with a household income above $66,150 would face a tax of $3,800 if they do not obtain health care, while an individual with income above $32,490 would face a tax of $950.

Meanwhile, Cato's Andrew J. Coulson explains how Obama's stimulus spending on public schools is actually hurting the economy. Man, this is turning out to be a great day for gloom and doom!

Tristero, you ignorant twerp

You can judge an idiot by the authorities he cites:

I thought they were serious people interested in a genuine meeting of the minds. I was dying to have useful conversations with intelligent conservatives, who knew how to write and also knew how to debate.
It has never happened. It will never happen with the Robert Stacy McCains of the world, for they are not what we think of as conservatives. They are probably best described as part of the group that flirts with what David Neiwert calls eliminationists and eliminationist ideas . . .

"Eliminationist" being a perjorative description of an outcome in domestic politics similar to the triumph over the Soviet Union, which collapsed from the weight of its own inherent contradictions, once Ronald Reagan resolved to call evil by its right name. To the extent that a conservatism that genuinely succeeds -- rallying a majority to a decisive rejection of liberalism -- would "eliminate" the political viability of its philosophical antithesis, then the term is accurate.

The problem of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was that it sought to co-opt liberal policy ideas -- No Child Left Behind and Medicare prescription drugs being the most significant examples -- as a sort of pre-emptive compromise. This had the opposite of its promised political effect, since it involved a "conservative" paying rhetorical tribute to policy ideas that were the opposite of conservative.

If, as we were led to believe in the case of NCLB, experts in Washington have all the answers to assuring educational excellence, then why not give the federal government complete control of American schools? The fundamental premises of NCLB therefore being antithetical to any recognized meaning of "conservative" (in its American sense, as opposed to some universalist philosophical "conservatism" detached from the constitutional principles of the Founding), then the "success" of NCLB would have had the effect of invalidating basic conservative principles.

Of course, NCLB has been an abject failure, producing none of the promised policy benefits in terms of educational improvement, while spectacularly failing to "take away an issue" from the Democrats, which was its aim as political "strategery." By attempting to pass off this Big Government boondoggle as "conservative," Bush succeeded only in confusing people about the meaning of conservatism.

Karl Rove envisioned a "permanent Republican majority" to be obtained in a "center-right" nation by this sort of unprincipled "triangulation," blurring the edges of partisan loyalty by seeking compromise between right and wrong, offering voters a Laodicean blend of truth and error.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it appeared as if Rove and the Republicans might actually achieve this dubious objective. With the economy buoyed by tax cuts -- the one inarguably conservative policy that President Bush implemented-- and with attention focused on national security issues, the GOP stunned the Democrats in the 2002 midterms and handily dispatched John Kerry in 2004.

Ah, but fatal hubris had already taken hold, and in the next two elections, the Republicans who had sowed the wind reaped the whirlwind. Now, in 2009, the liberals stand triumphant, and we see many in the GOP arguing for a "pragmatism" even less principled than the bankrupt politics that have led the party of Reagan to a low ebb of influence it has not seen since 1977, or perhaps even 1965.

"Eliminationist," bah! As if Dave Neiwert wouldn't eliminate conservatives if he could. Let us return to the vacuous arguments of Tristero:

Whatever you call them, they hate liberalism with a passion. And by "liberalism" I mean liberalism as in the Enlightenment and the American Founders such as the Jefferson of the Declaration and the letter to the Danbury Baptists. These are people who are still fighting the battles lost by the Federalists in the earliest days of the United States.

What Tristero knows about the Founders is as a thimble to my ocean -- to accuse me of siding with the Federalists (e.g., Hamilton, Adams) rather than with the authors of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798! Tristero could more accurately accuse me of sympathy with the Anti-Federalists (e.g., James Mason and Patrick Henry) who opposed ratification of the Constitution on the grounds that the central govenrment created was insufficiently limited, and would ultimately prove hostile to liberty.

Tristero knows even less about the ratification debates than he knows about Jefferson. Years ago, while visiting a girl in Charlottesville, I was able to spend a day at Monticello and found myself standing before Jefferson's grave, pondering that pregnant riddle: Why would a man who had twice been elected president, rather than to list such an honor on his tombstone, instead command that it should note his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom?

This question long burdened my mind, and I studied that document intently over the years so that I might almost cite by memory the key passage:

[T]hat to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical . . .

Intimately familiar with the text, I am also well-versed in the historical background of abuses caused by the establishment of religion, abuses which Jefferson sought to spare his fellow Virginians. But "establishment of religion" does not mean what Tristero and his fellow liberals have been indoctrinated to believe it means. People who file federal lawsuits, claiming their "civil rights" have been violated if a pastor is invited to say an invocation over the public-address system before the start of a high school football game, are not friends of liberty but its worst enemies.

The problem of the "Naked Public Square" -- the cultural vacuum carved out in our society by the advance of militant secularism -- is far from the contemplations of a Tristero, content as he is to think in the superificially convenient categories furnished to him by his indoctrinators.

Accept these prefabricated categories and the selective narratives provided to you by your professors, and you are mentally enslaved, incapable of forming genuinely independent conclusions. There is an entire universe of facts you've never encountered, yet your conception of your self as "educated" serves to stifle any sense that you ought to inquire further. These, you see, are the liberals who don't get the irony of their "Question Authority" bumper stickers!

Like so many other liberals, Tristero you possess the arrogance of ignorance, presuming that no one can possibly know facts that you do not. Ergo, if anyone does not share your opinions, this must somehow signify their intellectual and moral inferiority to you, Tristero, who can't even accurately describe the political landscrape of your own country during the life of Jefferson.

Facts you do not know, Tristero? That I am an ex-Democrat, perhaps? That if I had been content to accept prefabricated ideas, I might still be a Democrat? You do not know me, and you don't know what I know and yet, in your vast ignorance, you are going to lecture me about the Founders? Make. Me. Laugh.

And now, Tristero, to your conclusion:

I'll simply conclude by repeating what so many of us have said: our political discourse is deeply askew. Norman Podhoretz's and Robert Stacy McCain's ideas would have only a marginal impact and distribution in a healthy discourse. Instead, NoPod, a truly troubled soul, is thought a serious intellectual, and the likes of McCain are heard everyday in the drooling rants of Beck and other clowns. They can't be ignored, but they also can't be engaged. Believe me, I tried. I learned.
Finally, don't be fooled if, like Huckabee or Gingrich, they seem personable. They have a long history of acting on their hate and rage. These are ugly, ugly people.

Well, you may be the first liberal ever to describe Newt Gingrich as "personable," a term that few Republicans of my acquaintance would apply to the former Speaker. As to the "drooling rants of Beck" -- do you perhaps mean the investigative reporting that led to the recent resignation fo Van Jones?

And really, why would anyone think that -- compared to you, Tristero -- Norman Podhoretz is a "serious intellectual"? He only spent three decades as editor of Commentary, one of the nation's most influential monthly journals. His most recent book is, what, his 11th? He was a student of Trilling, he knew Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, to say nothing of his acquaintance with such historically significant figures as Ronald Reagan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

That you should sneer at me, Tristero, is not in the least surprising, but to condescend to Norman Podhoretz as a "troubled soul" -- well, no one can say that your observations about "drooling rants" from "clowns" lack for authenticity, as you examine the subject of your expertise every time you look in a mirror.

Conservatives and their "long history of acting on . . . hate and rage"? That's hard to do when we're laughing our asses off at the likes of you.

If you care about the Constitution, you might be considered a 'tenther'

by Smitty

Virginia Virtucon links a Washington Times article with the following:

The 'tenthers'
Liberal activists have a new name to disparage conservatives: 'tenthers.'

The nickname refers to those who cite the 10th Amendment to argue that federal intervention in areas not authorized by the Constitution, like health care for example, is unconstitutional.

This follows other names such as 'birthers,' 'deathers' and 'tea baggers.'

I don't know whether to be pleased that the loonie-left are showing some cognizance of the Constitution, or projectile-vomiting-sickened that the best closest they can come to understanding is turning a crucial piece thereof into an epithet.

In a lengthy conversation with someone on the left today, whose intellect I generally admire, I was told that all of the objections to the current administration's agenda are founded in fear and raaaaacism.

Not even taking a highly abstract route, arguing that the problem has built in the last century, as evidenced by the incumbency rate and the national debt, could spark legitimate dialogue.

Pointing out that the raaaaacism charge is symmetric, and is every bit as much a tool in the hands of the ones charging it as it is a millstone about the necks of the (I couldn't guess how large) group who may actually have a DNA-based objection to the current POTUS bought me nothing. Anyone who subscribes to raaaaaacism should be forced to take a Biochemistry course, IMO.

So we concluded with the point that I should read BHO's books, so that I can admire hims as well (her point), and that dismissing counter-arguments as raaaaacism and fear-mongering is intellectually dishonest (mine). Then we agreed we love each other and that we should steer clear of politics.

Overall, I felt as if it was a religious discussion. Which is worrisome.

The Runaways: Joan Jett movie!

Until I read this People magazine article, I hadn't realized that filming is under way for a new film biography of Joan Jett, entitled The Runaways.

I'm old enough to remember when The Runaways stirred a lot of reaction among rock fans -- especially concupiscent teenage hoodlums like me. I was 16 when they issued their first LP and I remember seeing their photo in Creem magazine and saying to msyelf, "An all-chick rock 'n' roll band? Playing their own instruments? Weird."

Yeah, there had always been chick singers, but mostly they tended toward sappy love-song stuff or -- far, far worse -- whiny folk-music nonsense a la Joan Baez. And then there was Heart: A real rock band fronted by the Wilson sisters, who could honest-to-God play guitar. But an all-chick band? Absurd.

The big obstacle to such a project? Well, whoever heard of a rock 'n' roll drummer with a vagina? Get real. That probably had something to do with why The Runaways, as a band, mostly sucked. But when Joan Jett went solo, she rocked.

So I'm looking forward to The Runaways, especially the steamy nude shower scenes and the part where Joan gets all butch-dominant with Cherie Currie . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That stuff's not actually in the movie. Those were the fantasies of a concupiscent teenage hoodlum circa 1976.

UPDATE: Little Miss Attila informs me that I have neglected to note her online shrine of her schoolgirl crush on Joan Jett. Attila is living proof that not ever ex-lesbian is all preachy-and-overcompensating-a-bit-too-much. Her erstwhile preferences are admitted but not shoved down our throats.

That last figure of speech reminds me of another 1976 hoodlum fantasy scenario involving Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, but I digress . . .

And, hey, what's with this Lita Ford fan club in the comments down there? She never impressed me as particularly hot. I'm all about Joan and Cherie, OK? You want chicks who are famous for actually playing guitar, there's Melissa Etheridge . . . uh-oh. I'm about to digress again, aren't I?

UPDATE II: Little Miss Attila links back, mentioning another chick-rocker from the '70s, Suzi Quatro, who was hot. The mnemonic trigger now sparks a dim memory from when I was maybe 14 or 15 and briefly had a thing for Toni Tennille. My adolescent erotic interests were idiosyncratic and eclectic and . . . well, bad and sinful in ways too disgusting to admit. To confess, in 2009, that I once felt amorous stirrings toward a woman whose hits included "Muskrat Love," should give you a hint of how monstrously depraved I was.

I can neither confirm nor deny . . .

. . . being The Prowler, whose identity has long remained a closely guarded secret of The American Spectator. Not even Sidney Blumenthal nor federal grand juries have been able to discover the identity of this Argus-eyed investigator of things sinister, hidden and usually Democratic.

The fact that The Prowler has been sleuthing around with sources unnamed for longer than I've been writing for the Spectator might be seized upon as a clue. And the fact that The Prowler is able to get inside dirt from the White House counsel's office -- the inside story of Valerie Jarrett's involvement in the Van Jones debacle, no less -- might also have evidentiary value.

Yet such are the Spectator's concerns for the security of The Prowler that anyone who wishes to be associated with this prestigious publication must undergo a blood-oath ritual, swearing in a graveyard at midnight never to aid the persistent attempts by our nation's enemies to identify The Prowler. Therefore, if anyone wishes to suspect me of being that mysterious phantom, I am forbidden even to deny it.

However, if you wish to subscribe to The American Spectator, you may one day have an opportunity to meet The Prowler, who always attends the magazine's annual gala dinner -- this year's lavish soiree will be Nov. 19 at the Capitol Hilton -- although he is recognized only by those who have sworn the blood oath. The Prowler might be that elegant fellow drinking extra-dry martinis at the gala reception, or entertaining his dinner companions with subtly ribald jests. Although the uninitiated guests won't recognize The Prowler, they'll nonetheless be able to tell their friends they were at the same gala with him.

By the way, the September issue of The American Spectator -- available for $6.95 wherever fine publications are sold -- features my 3,000-word in-depth article about the IG-Gate scandal, entitled "War On Watchdogs," beginning on Page 46.

Subscribe to The American Spectator now. The Prowler awaits you . . .

The Tanenhaus Republicans and the Architecture of Intellectual Prestige

Should you wish to develop a critique of the conservative movement, yet are incapable of genuinely original thought, try to avoid borrowing your second-hand ideas from an avowed enemy of conservatism like Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times. (Y'all reckon his Buckley bio will get a good review?)

The brilliant Dan Riehl observes Rachel Maddow's MSNBC guest host Ana Marie Cox (speaking of "sworn enemies") interviewing Tanenhaus "discussing how WND is the equivalent of the Birchers today? Detailing how the Birchers were shut down." Dan continues:

Going on about the lack of intellectuals in conservatism today? Questioning where the Republican leadership is?
Damn! Almost seems to me I heard precisely all that just recently.
Then going on to pull in NRO, claiming that NRO (wink wink) only pretended to reject, while bringing forth new evidence, in the Birther conspiracy? Calling today's conservative "mouthpieces" pseudo-intellectuals? Do they mean Talk Radio? I'd bet they do.
No point in reading The Next Right anymore, perhaps. I can just wait to catch the latest young conservative wisdom on MSNBC. . . .

Ouch. Here's the MSNBC video, so the reader may appreciate the extent to which the liberal Tanenhaus has influenced this species of "conservatism":

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What astonishes me is that these Young Turks, who conceive of themselves as infinitely superior to their elders in terms of intellectual sophistication, fail to recognize that they are being played as suckers in a very familiar sort of hustle. I explained this four months ago in "The Republicans Who Really Matter":

The Republicans Who Really Matter can be relied on to reinforce liberal stereotypes of the GOP, and to pen op-ed columns offering "helpful" advice to the Republican Party which, if followed, would lead to certain electoral disaster. . . .
No Republican pundit is ever going to become influential by buddying up to Wayne LaPierre or right-to-lifers; make favorable mention of environmentalism, however, and MSNBC producers will flood your inbox with e-mail invitations to a 10-minute guest segment on "Hardball."
One reliable method for advancing to the pinnacle as a Republican commentator is to argue that the party is badly divided, and to blame this fragmentation on some constituency universally loathed by liberals. . . .

The inarguable fact that liberals dominate the publishing industry, academia and other such institutions of intellect means that liberalism and its advocates possess a prestige that no out-and-out conservative can ever enjoy.

The Monopolization of Prestige
Neither Joseph Farah nor Dan Riehl will ever be published by the New York Times, will they? If Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin or Ann Coulter wrote biographies of William F. Buckley Jr., would their books be praised in a feature NYT book review? Would they be excerpted by The New Republic?

Of course not. Liberals would never lend the prestige of their institutions to such avowed enemies of liberalism. And anyone who desires to research the career of Buckley may easily discover the vehemence with which he was once denounced by liberals -- up until such time as liberals discerned that they might use him as a weapon to attack other conservative targets.

To be the sort of conservative intellectual acceptable to liberals, one must never make a criticism of liberalism that is genuinely effective, an argument that undermines the prestige of liberal ideas and liberal heroes. Why? Because once an intelligent person comes to suspect that liberalism does not deserve its prestigious reputation -- well, the emperor has no clothes, you see? Therefore, Pinch Sulzberger hires a neurasthenic weakling like David Brooks, and not a vigorous, forthright and courageous advocate of conservative ideas.

At some level, the shrewd and ambitious young Republican-leaning writer perceives all this. He understands that he can gain an especial distinction by courting the praise of liberals, in quite the same way a junior varsity cheerleader can become "popular" by dating the defensive line of the varsity football team. And the analogy is all the more apt in that the JV cheerleader who seeks the easiest way to "popularity" so often condemns as ill-motivated hypocrites those more virtuous girls who eschew her ways.

'Boring' or Burkean?
When, in a symposium on Tanenhaus, Austin Bramwell declares that conservatism is "intellectually boring," he is in one sense quite correct. The basic principles of American conservatism -- the defense of constitutionally limited government, opposition to the welfare state, sympathy for tradition, foreign policy based on strength, sovereignty and national interest -- are so well-known that they offer no attraction to those who crave novelty in political thought.

The upstart who desires to gain a reputation as an "innovative" thinker is welcome to seek employment outside conservative politics, if he is not content to find new ways to celebrate old verities or new arguments with which to eviscerate liberals.

Instead, what we see over and over -- see Brooks' disastrously influential "National Greatness" as a textbook example -- is an enthusiastic race to get ahead of the Zeitgeist, to become the Promethean author of a new Welltanschauung, to establish one's place as the founder of Some Other Conservatism.

Wise men are not deceived by these pretentious intellectual hustlers. When a self-described conservative begins slinging around words like "creativity" and "progress" in political discourse, it is not generally taken as evidence of doughty resolve. Rather, it is wise to suspect such a person of being what the Brits would call a trimmer.

The Cruelty of Ambition
Conservatism is a philosophy of opposition. Excuse me for repeating myself, but some of our Young Turks do not seem to be paying attention to the lessons.

They invite chastisement, lest they become still more impudent (if such a thing were possible). I call them "Young Turks," but they rather remind me of certain Young Hegelians of yore, unwisely eager to hasten the historical synthesis. Their conceited trust in their own superiority is dangerous, perhaps more to them than to the hoary elders of the "movement" whom they seek to supplant, and I suspect there would be far less tolerance of dissent if these ambitious youngsters were mounted in the saddle and empowered to wield the whip.

We need no Nietzschean ubermensch nor Platonic archons to rule over us, to enlighten our supposed benightedness and soothe us with their tendentious myths about Olympian idols. This dishonest campaign to employ the aid of Tanenhaus to enlist the departed Buckley as a ghostly advocate of Pragmatism deserves to be rejected with extreme prejudice. And any Young Turks who desire to keep pursuing this approach will do so at peril to their own ambitions.

Whatever the Zeitgeist amongst the intelligentsia, the balance of power within the conservative movement does not favor "Pragmatism," which means that would-be leaders of Some Other Conservatism will suffer from a shortage of followers, and will find themselves isolated and ignored.

Even while I was writing this little essay, the brilliant Dan Riehl was busy discovering what sort of advice Sam Tanenhaus offered to his own party in 2003. The liberal Democrat urged Democrats to embrace their own radicals, while the same liberal Democrat's arguments are now being used to urge Republicans to purge Joseph Farah and WND.

"Maximize the contradictions," as Abby Hoffman said.

Announcement: Waiting For O-Dough

by Smitty

Flush, in the manner of a defective toilet, with the success of OediPOTUS Wrecks, Porch Manqué Productions and its publisher, The Other McCain, were poised to move forward with equally ambitious, dramatic, culturally significant work.

But the budget just wasn't there. So, like any shameless contemporary American outfit, they sought a bailout. When in Rome, do as the Georgians, no?

This piece of Reality Stage-blogging catches Smitty and Stacy as they are poised on the edge of the cusp of success, Waiting for O-Dough…

Act I is up at noon, EST on 09 Sep, with
Act II concluding at noon, EST on 10 Sep

Characters:
Stacy
Smitty
Bob Belvedere
Lefty
Boy

Critical reactions have stunned us, along with minor contusions and a possible fracture. Who knew the SEIU and ACORN were theatre-goers? Here's what they're saying:

• Samuel Beckett: Intellectual sodomy!
• Vlad the Impaler: I'd like to give Smitty tea, crumpets, and a sharp stick. And I'm out of tea and crumpets.
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn: There are archipelagos full of creeps like Smitty.
• Archimedes: You reek-a!
• Tōgō Heihachirō: This junk goes down like the Russians at the Battle of Tsushima.
• Horatio Nelson: Hei domo, Tōgō-san: sound your ship's bell. You know this leaky fishing boat really sinks like the French at Cape Trafalgar.
• Chester Nimitz: Jolly good, Horatio. But you know that this garbage scow actually hits the bottom like the Imperial Fleet at the Battle of Midway.
• Cliff Burton: I'd like to offer Smitty some free dental work. Some anesthesia, pulling teeth, you know?
• Tiberius Claudius Ceasar Augustus Germanicus: I'd throw Smitty to the lions, but that would be unethical treament of lions. Maybe wild dogs?

Very roughly, even brutally, equivalent praise for OediPOTUS Wrecks:

• H. P. Lovecraft: Typically, consumption by Cthulhu diminishes literary output. Smitty writes on; fearless, mindless, soulless. Scientifically fascinating.
• Rob Roy MacGregor: O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! A thousand words, at random spoken, Would improve upon this jackass jokin'!
• John Wayne: You've got ta be kiddin' me, pilgrim. Why, I haven't seen a manure stream that bad since they drove a herd of diarrhetic cattle across the river feedin' Michael Moore's ranch, givin' us Fahrenheit 9/11.

Copyright 2009, Christopher L. Smith

Psssst!

Not only does Glenn Reynolds like gloom and doom, he likes A Conservative Shemale, too. NTTAWWT. At least she's not 7 feet tall and depressed.

Hey, who can blame TrogloPundit for being depressed? Ever since Sean Hackbarth moved to D.C., Trog's no longer the second-ugliest Republican blogger in Wisconsin.

The Conor Friedersdorf Tar Baby . . .

. . . has done got Br'er Bill Quick all stickyfied. And thanks to Bill for sharing this chill wind from Montauk:

"I am an old hand at sailing, Mr. President, and I have learned that the winds do not always blow one's way," I said. "When you find yourself in the doldrums, I want you to know that all of us in the conservative intellectual movement will be there to blow you."
-- T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII

And as the boys at New England's finest boarding schools are wont to say, nobody blows like a Van Voohees.

The Rick Moran Pragmatism Brigade

Heed the rallying cry! To the barricades, comrades!

Movement Conservatives vs.
The Pragmatists: The Battle is Joined

There can be no compromise in this epic death-struggle over the Destiny of the Cause! Those who are not 100% Pragmatist are the enemy! Only by courageous deeds of fanatical heroism can the victory of Pragmatism be won!

Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!

Go with the seven-headed cobra logo, Rick. Nothing says "pragmatism" quite like a seven-headed cobra.

Is 'Liberal Idiot' Redundant?

Late Sunday, I was searching for a blog post that Jennifer Rubin wrote at Commentary about the Van Jones resignation. I had seen it at Ed Driscoll's blog and quoted it early Sunday morning. Then one of the commenters noted that the link had gone dead. Apparently -- for reasons unknown -- the Rubin post had been deleted.

While searching for that post, however, I noticed that Commentary had a symposium about Norman Podhoretz's new book, Why Are Jews Liberals? I skimmed over it, found it interesting and did a post with excerpts of the symposium, adding my own thoughts on the subject.

Monday evening, habitually checking SiteMeter, I discovered that I had been linked by the liberal Balloon Juice blog which ridiculously insinuated . . . well, something:

Maybe I’m too touchy about this, but I’m profoundly disturbed by the idea of relocating intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals, so they can learn about real values. Isn’t that exactly what Stalin and Mao did? Is there any Maoist/Stalinist/Leninist idea that the American right hasn’t embraced.

This is the most perverse possible reading of my post, which had observed merely that:

• Modern liberalism is predominantly an urban phenomenon;
• American Jews are more likely to reside in urban areas; and
• Therefore, if conservative Jews wish to ameliorate the prevalence of liberalism among Jews, they should think about ways to encourage more Jews to live in small towns in the Heartland.

Exactly how Balloon Juice views this mild suggestion as "Maoist/Stalinist/Leninist" defies explanation. Then again, the liberal thought-process generally defies explanation. By contrast, conservatiive thought is easily explained:

The simplest way to define conservatism is this: The belief that liberalism is wrong.

The great truths are simple truths. And the great errors are liberal errors. Speaking of liberals and errors, via Memeorandum, I find that the Balloon Juice thread is linked with a Newshoggers post about Max Blumenthal's new book, quoting this from a BuzzFlash review:

"Inspired by the work of psychologist Erich Fromm, who analyzed how the fear of freedom propels anxiety-ridden people into authoritarian settings, Blumenthal explains in a compelling narrative how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right."

Ding! Ding! Ding! Blumenthal's analysis is warmed-over cultural Marxism via the Frankfurt School:

'Cultural Marxism' and 'critical theory' are concepts developed by a group of German intellectuals, who, in 1923 in Germany, founded the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University. The Institute, modeled after the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, became known as the Frankfurt School. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the members of the Frankfurt School fled to the United States. . . .
[Frankfurt School theorists sought a] 'revolution' [that] would be accomplished by fomenting a very quiet, subtle and slowly spreading 'cultural Marxism' which would apply to culture the principles of Karl Marx bolstered by the modern psychological tools of Sigmund Freud. Thus, 'cultural Marxism' became a marriage of Marx and Freud aimed at producing a 'quiet' revolution in the United States of America . . .
The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s was set in motion and guided intellectually by the 'cultural Marxists' of the Frankfurt School -- Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Wilhelm Reich, and others.

Thus the discredited Marxist theories of the past are made the ideological template through which 21st-century "progressives" misunderstand the present. From atop my desk, I retrieve my yellowed and tattered old paperback edition of William F. Buckley Jr.'s Up From Liberalism (1961), from pages 78-79 of which I quote, in reference to the Frankfurt School's grandest project:

[O]ne needs no advanced degrees in clinical psychology and psychoanalytical theory in order to penetrate the fallacy of The Authoritarian Personality. Its thesis is very simply this: American conservatives (primarily members of the lower middle class) are the way they are politically because of marked tendencies to authoritarianism. The authors of the project began with the assumption that anyone who is opposed to the welfare state is likely to be "unenlightened" in his attitudes . . . These postulates are fed into a mill . . . to produce the stereotype: "the authoritarian personality."

Which is to say that Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, et al., were recognized as transparent frauds 50 years ago, and yet we find that Fromm's smug little theory is made the inspirational basis for a "compelling narrative" -- compelling to whom? liberals, of course -- in 2009!

Remarkable, really, how the Left's erroneous presumptions haven't changed at all: If the social welfare state is synonymous with enlightenment, opponents of the welfare state must therefore be unenlightened. The only question remaining for the liberal theorist is to identify the variety of psychopathology that explains this (presumably irrational) opposition.

So it is that Max Blumenthal, who no doubt favors putting the federal government in control of America's health-care system, effectively nationalizing 1/7th of the economy, presumes to diagnose opponents of such policies as suffering from "the fear of freedom."

Well, two can play the armchair psychoanalyst game, and I hereby diagnose Max as suffering from diminished self-awareness and an underdeveloped appreciation for irony.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. When you point out how idiotically circular are the "intellectual" arguments that beguile liberals, their response is the same as it was a half-century ago. The finger is pointed at you and the furious shrieking is heard: "Fascist!"

You Might Be 'Urban Modern' If . . .

. . . you don't understand why it's controversial to have a Marxist Truther as a key White House aide:

These days, the [New York] Times doesn’t consider itself biased. Instead, it's calling itself "urban modern" . . .
[New York Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati wrote:] "Call it Urban Modern. That is, I think it reflects not a left-or-right POLITICAL ideology but a geographical one, the mentality of the place it is created: 21st Century Manhattan."

Insofar as "Urban Modern" isn't just another code-word for "gay" (NTTAWWT, Gerald) what does it mean?

In a previous thread, I mentioned that city people can't drive worth crap. So an inability to understand that the left lane is for fast drivers would qualify as a defining characteristic of "urban modern." Let's try a few others. You might be "urban modern" if . . .

• You graduated from a college where the yearly tuition is larger than the annual income of the doorman at your apartment building.
• You're all about "rights" mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, but don't believe the Second Amendment really means that ordinary people have the "right" to own guns.
• You actually considered moving to Connecticut to be a campaign volunteer for Ned Lamont.
• You're a woman who wears sneakers with a business suit while commuting, switching to heels after arriving at the office.
• You have ever used the phrase "social justice" in a conversation, and weren't joking.
• You make a six-figure salary, live in a rent-controlled apartment, and vote for candidates who promise to fix the "affordable housing" problem.
• You are a magazine editor named "Gerald."

Well, that's a few samples to start the list. Anyone else got suggestions?

UPDATE: Typo corrected, thanks to smart-asses in the comments.

UPDATE II: Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack offers some good additions:

• Your definition of "crisis" is when the sushi bar down the street runs out of California Rolls.
• Even though you think people shouldn’t eat cows, you’ve never actually seen one face to face.
• You don’t know anyone whose job requires manual labor.

How do you know that Jimmie Bise isn't "urban modern"? He'd be known as Jamie, and would have a business card describing himself as an "Online Communications Strategist."

Oh, and as for sushi, I believe it was the late Lewis Grizzard who said, "Raw fish and seaweed? Where I come from, we call that bait." (The last time anyone saw an "urban modern" near Moreland, Ga., it was a writer from the New York Times -- sent down to cover the 1996 Atlanta Olympics -- who took a wrong turn leaving Hartsfield Airport. His rental car broke down on I-85. They towed the car to S&M Auto Repair in Newnan, which seemed to make the New York Times guy strangely happy. But then the guy made a lewd suggestion to Bubba, who was working the lube rack. The writer got his nose busted, got locked up overnight in the Coweta County Jail, and missed the men's gymnastics finals. "Urban moderns" have carefully avoided that vicinity ever since.)

Another hateful attack on Michelle Duggar

From a "mommyblogger" who evidently considers herself an expert authorized to condemn others:

I mean, 19 kids? 19?! . . . Is your uterus a baseball dugout? . . .
There's simply no way you can give each of those kids the personal attention he needs. . . . And using your older children as surrogate parents is a recipe for immature behavior down the road. You're robbing them of their childhoods by making them mini mommies and daddies.
Of course, some people hold you up like a goddess simply because you can procreate. You know, Michelle, earthworms can procreate. . . .
Please, Michelle, I beg of you; stop having babies. I know it's tempting to go to 20, but maybe you should just focus on the kids you already have. Mmmmkay?

One could spend a week unpacking all the malicious misconceptions in that one blog post, which bears the charming title, "A Letter to Michelle Duggar from Her Vagina," and whose author is -- what else? -- concealed by a pseudonym, "Christine."

Parents of large families have to put up with this attitude all the time in the Anti-Family Age, when the upper-middle-class suburban career woman with 1.6 children is celebrated as the belle ideal of "responsible" parenting.

Especially wrong-headed is the assertion by "Christine" that having the older children assist in caring for their younger siblings is "a recipe for immature behavior down the road." No only is there zero evidence in social science to support such a claim, it contradicts both common sense and mountains of anecdotal evidence.

Common sense tells us that children learn to act responsibly by being given responsibilities. Caring for younger siblings -- changing an infant's diaper, bathing and dressing a toddler, helping at mealtime -- is exactly the sort of responsibility that helps children develop confidence and maturity. A major reason that first-born children so often excel in leadership is precisely because they have the maximum opportunity to exercise in such supervisory duties from an early age.

Many parents today seem to believe that children are incapable of exercising any responsibility beyond "clean your room" and "make good grades." Yet anyone who has studied human society on a historic and global perspective understands that this "modern" attitude sets an absurdly low standard for children.

The idiot "Christine," in accusing Michelle Duggar of "robbing [her children] of their childhoods," shows how absurdly thoughtless the allegiance to "modern" parenthood has become. Like too many others, "Christine" evidently believes that an appropriate "childhood" should consist entirely of school and play -- a leisurely existence dominated by TV and videogames, the boredom alleviated by soccer practice and music lessons.

This is not a formula for maturity. Rather it is infantilizing, conditioning the child to expect a life of fun without meanignful responsibility. One strongly suspects that "Christine" herself had that kind of over-indulged childhood, which explains her haughty and insulting better-than-you attitude toward Michelle Duggar.

Granted, 19 children is a very large family, but the eldest of Duggars' children are now in their 20s and so far I haven't seen any evidence of the immature behavior" that "Christine" warns about. Until the reality-TV special "Duggars Gone Wild: Spring Break in Cancun" shows up on VH-1, my advice to "Christine" is: Shut your stupid mouth.

Visit the Duggar Family official site here.

Cutting through the Linda Douglass doublespeak

by Smitty (h/t Say Anything)

At some point, to their chagrin, the administration will realize that the people of this country believe them with all the confidence they hold in his Sunshine Pledge.

Leadership is founded, among other things, upon trust, Mr. President. You desperately need to figure out what you're going to do to set about rebuilding some, or it's going to be a long three years and two months to the next election.