"Writing is a skill, not a talent, and thus one's ability as a writer can be improved by thoughtful effort. The problem with some people is that they graduate college as good writers, experience early success on account of that, and thus never devote themselves diligently to the relentless quest for improvement that could make them great writers."
. . . my tastes tend toward hot chicks like Jillian Bandes:
Jillian is a wonderful, intelligent human being who -- last time I heard -- was dating my buddy J.P. Freire, so I actually know her. I point this out because I wouldn't want to be accused of discriminating against my buddy Jimmie Bise, who covered the same Steny Hoyer event but who is not a hot chick.
Also, Jillian Bandes (a) was a victim of the Culture 11 Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion, and (b) has never linked my blog. But it's not like my feelings are hurt or anything like that . . .
Gadhaffy Dhuck is a fantastic post about ol' Moammar, mentioning M's disgruntlement with the Swiss over M's son Hannibal moving elephants through the Alps or something, and there having being Swiss hostages taken as a result of the spat.
The idea of taking Moammar himself hostage during his US visit would achieve cosmic justice if they held him in Greenock Prison until he wised up and released the Swiss hostages.
But that kind of heavy-handedness is wrong if the West does it, I suppose.
Knowledge is Power reports on the sudden assault on Glen Beck's character, in the form of a site: http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com
That's "Glen Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990".
If the allegation is true, let us support justice.
In the case that this allegation proves nothing more than a tasteless attack, then we know what we need to do: the starboard side of the blogosphere must team up and support Glen Beck for a Senate seat.
Update: Teach pulls the plug. A sophomoric prank. Nevertheless, seeing Beck in the Senate would be a fine reward for the service he's rendered his country. Watching Harry Reid's head 'splode would also be good justice.
Erick Erickson picks up Mark Tapscott from The Examiner. The question at hand is where to channel the Tea Party enthusiasm.
Now, Allahpundit has a clip that kind of shows us what were up against, in the form of Pete Stark. Note that the F-bomb at the end is perfectly SFW, since Congressmen are above anything like an FCC regulation, or a tax law, or any other such minutia.So, as I was saying earlier, the concept of debt is outside my ken. Apparently, personal debt and government debt are completely separate things, and if you don't have a PhD, you're unfit to converse with Pete Stark on such an important topic as economics.
Now, I have a couple of academic credentials, though no PhD among them. Maybe I'll pick up that challenge again later in life. The really big, galactic questions like the universe, and the really small questions like particle physics, are indeed outside current understanding. In between these bookends sit relatively trivial economic questions.
To Rep. Stark I say: let's call your bluff, and see if you're nothing more than some cheap Oz hiding behind a sneering attitude instead of a curtain. Bleg: what's a good book on these financial questions written at between the Dummys and graduate level?
Returning to the Tea Party question, Mr. Erickson, if we just
...sign up for your local political party, encourage and support like minded candidates, and throw the kleptocrats out of office.
my fear is that we get nothing more than a pack of Starks for the trouble: apparatchicks whose lips support conservativism, but, like the Starks, have a slit up the back of the suit for the hand of the plutocrat. Frum doesn't seem to be attacking incumbency very much on his site, but the un-American concentration of power in DC has to be seen as the malignant tumor that will metastasize into tyranny in X decades.
None of the GOP hopefuls (that I've heard of) seem to be much more than cut/paste replacements for the party in power. Is the National Funk Congress waiting for the adrenaline to wear off before it simply declares victory?
And that, concluding, is the dilemma of the GOP: is it going to play American, or political class? Geniuses like Stark, apparently, can play drums, bass, guitar, and sing at the same time. Those of us in the mortal category think this band would rock a little harder if it was other than the All Pete Stark Review. Because even these PhD weenies do miss a note here and there.
If the GOP takes the political class route, then it really is time to say "screw the dumb stuff" and morph the Tea Parties into an actual second party. The GOP and Democrats represent a return to a parliament, of the sort this country was founded to escape. Only this new parliament couldn't find its funk with a flashlight:
Of course, if the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," then one is tempted to ask: Is there something funky in the Potomac River's water if the last President actually to reduce the national debt was, in fact, Harry S. Truman.
So, my guess is that economic reality resides among the following:
Outside my ken. The concept of gazinta==gazoutta, or Kirchhoff's current law for you engineer weenies, doesn't seem to matter, if the borders of the United States are a meaningful boundary.
O'Rourke's Observation: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
Smitty's Worry: our adversaries, knowing that they cannot topple us in a straight-ahead military engagement, decided to pursue economic judo, and the effects are, well, cripplingly expensive.
Robert Reich wants the POTUS to "Show Courage on Healthcare". Courage would entail facing the people and saying that there is no fu[nd]ing way possible to do anything at the federal level that improves upon the situation, in a Constitutionally inarguable way, without exacerbating the crushing debt problem. Forget your wishful thinking, Mr. Reich: sane people want to know how it actually works in the decades out.
Restated, Mr. Reich, water does not flow uphill. Or it can, briefly, if blown by a strong wind. Yet the leftist blow job seems unsustainable, despite an impressive array of highly skilled practitioners and windbags.
Yeah, all the publications, the degrees from hither and yon, blah, blah, blah.
Is she married? If so, how long has she been married? Does she have any children?
I point this out because I was just looking at the sidebar feeds at NTCNews.com -- a good source of fresh blog-fodder -- and happened to notice the headline of her latest column, clicked over, and thought . . . hmmmm.
Adultery has payoffs for a woman. For example, having someone else interested in her means more resources.
So I'm thinking that this sort of morally-neutral anthropological attitude toward adultery doesn't make her a Girl Just Like The Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad, y'know? If the "sexpert" happens to be single, my hunch is she's likely to stay that way.
Maybe some of you bachelors out here can spot me on this. Maybe attitudes have changed, but I'd suspect guys would be more interested in marrying a woman who expressed horror and repugnance at even the slightest suggestion that she would ever cheat on her mate. "Oh, no -- I'm strictly a one-man woman!"
On the other hand, if Fulbright is married, why does my cynical mind leap to the conclusion that her professional insights into the anthropological incentives of adultery for women aren't merely professional insights?
As to my curiosity about whether Fulbright has any children, that was prompted by reading her bio and seeing the title of her most recent book:
Your Orgasmic Pregnancy: Little Sex Secrets Every Hot Mama Should Know
Really? Here's where I need some of the lady readers to spot me, because I'm thinking that this isn't really one of the mother-to-be's top priorities.
In general, I have an especial scorn for the How-To-Have-Better-Orgasms genre of women's literature, seeing as how endless variations on this theme appear on the cover of Cosmo every freaking month.
By comparison, no man has ever read a magazine article to find out how to have a better orgasm, because no such article has ever been published in a magazine for men. There may be, somewhere among the 3 billion males on this planet, one who didn't figured out the orgasm thing before his 14th birthday. But they certainly don't seem to be seeking magazine advice on the subject, eh?
What's up with this? Women I've spoken to say that they read women's magazines mainly for fashion, hair and make-up ideas. I've never heard a woman admit to seeking out the How-To-Have-Better-Orgasms articles in these magazines. But maybe they're just embarrassed to admit it.
To provide that appropriated funds may not be used to pay for any salaries or expenses of any task force, council, or similar office which is established by or at the direction of the President and headed by an individual who has been inappropriately appointed to such position (on other than an interim basis), without the advice and consent of the Senate.
Because you know that, if the Community Organizer in Chief was still the Junior Senator from DaleyreichIllinois, he would want it that way.
"Go Girl" was initially designed by a doctor a few years ago but was perfected recently by a mom in Minnesota.She says the device allows females to go to the bathroom standing up and significantly reduces "accidents" on your clothes.One woman who tried "Go Girl" said, "I'm excited, I live in the woods, I like to pee and I'm going to New York for 2 weeks. Now, I can pee in the alley with the best of 'em."
As General Bullmoose said, "Progress Is The Root of All Evil."
In my inbox today, this e-mail message from Mitch Stewart of the Obama "grassroots" group Organizing For American, to the spam-listers:
Robert -- At the beginning of August, President Obama wrote to the OFA community to challenge us to work hard, break through the noise and give the American people a voice in the fight for health insurance reform. It wasn't easy: With Congress back home, special interests and partisan attack groups went into overdrive spreading lies, and the media seemed to broadcast any story of conflict or division they could find. But you accepted the President's challenge -- and delivered. See it for yourself: Check out the latest photos and stories from around the country. Our strategy for the month was simple: engage the millions of individuals who know we need change to fight the lies and tell the truth, build support for reform, and ensure that support is highly visible while members of Congress are home gauging public opinion. We continued our methodical, battle-tested approach of volunteers reaching out online and offline in every part of the country. We offered the facts, answered questions and engaged those who were ready to get involved. And the results were extraordinary. OFA supporters like you came together in an unprecedented way over the past four weeks -- and it couldn't have happened without the individual volunteers who make it all possible: Folks like Rebecca E. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who voted for the first time last year -- and collected more than 1,800 health care declarations this summer. Across the country, we've collected more than 1 million signatures in support of the President's core principles for health insurance reform. Supporters like Nita L. in Longmont, Colorado, who organized hundreds of supporters in her town to come with her to talk with their member of Congress about how much this fight means to them. They were among the more than 70,000 folks who showed up at 350 town halls -- where supporters of reform at times outnumbered opponents by 10-1 -- and volunteers who made 65,000 trips to local congressional offices. It's the people who made more than 100,000 calls to Congress to thank representatives fighting for change -- like Nancy T. in Hendersonville, North Carolina, who hosted a health care phone booth because, after her heart transplant, she knows that no American should have to choose between financial ruin and getting the care they need. It's the 1,500 supporters who filled a local recreation center in Kansas City, Missouri, at a town hall meeting with Senator Claire McCaskill, and the 2,500 people who jammed the streets to hear from Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio -- just two of the more than 4,000 events where folks gathered to show their support across all 50 states in August. All of these signatures, calls, office drop-bys, conversations, gatherings, and town hall meetings, all of the late nights, homemade signs, long hours in the sun, and tireless volunteers who make it happen -- totaling more than 1.5 million people who've taken part in this campaign for real reform -- it all adds up to one incredible movement for change. Check out the latest photos and stories from the field to see this movement in action: http://my.barackobama.com/ontheground As Congress returns to D.C. and we roll up our sleeves for the final push toward reform, we know the hardest work may yet lie ahead. The special interests and those in Congress who have pledged to oppose the President no matter what will stoop even lower in the weeks ahead. But you should never doubt that we face the coming challenges together, as part of something far larger than any of us alone -- and far stronger than the old broken politics that have preserved the status quo for long enough. Our strategy is working. We are going to win this thing. Americans will finally get the health insurance reform we all need.
Thank you for making it possible,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart Director Organizing for America
Why did this make me think of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
A 65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks . . . About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street. A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.
As the headline genius Confederate Yankee says, that's clear-as-mud reporting, the gloppy stuff required by the elite journalistic insistence that ObamaCare is the sum and essence of "reform" and that anyone who opposes ObamaCare is therefore anti-reform. (Cf., "anti-choice," "anti-gay" and "anti-immigrant.")
Then again, considering that opponents of ObamaCare are "Right-Wing Terrorists," maybe the finger-biting MoveOn thug was engaged in anti-terrorism.
UPDATE: Just when you thought the arguments for ObamaCare could not possibly become more retarded, there's always Ed Schultz:
Schultz, on his Sept. 2 MSNBC program, 'The ED Show' told viewers he believed Jesus would vote for a government public option.
Michelle Malkin asks, "Where are Barry Lynn and the anti- 'theocracy' crusaders now?"
I've been thinking lately that conservative elites are reaching a moment similar to that which confronted liberal elites in the late 1960s. At first they saw the rise of SDS, the Black Panthers and other extreme left groups as cannon fodder that could be used to achieve liberal goals. . . . But one day liberals realized that the extremists couldn't be controlled and threatened anarchy. . . . I think conservative elites today see the teabaggers, birthers and other kooks as cannon fodder for larger conservative goals the same way liberals originally saw student radicals in the 1960s. I think one day soon something like the Harvard library burning is going to make conservatives realize that these people present more of a threat than a tool for advancing conservative goals. . . . [Y]ou can’t pour fuel on the fires of peoples' emotions the way Glenn Beck does on a daily basis without getting an explosion at some point.
Hey, Bruce, I love hyperbolic analogies as much as the next guy, but . . . nah. Bill Ayers and Mark Rudd were never TV stars. They were not leaders of a populist mass movement.
The New Left was almost entirely a rebellion by spoiled brats, the impudent offspring of the elite. The anti-war radicals weren't even a majority of college students in the '60s, much less a majority of the entire Baby Boom generation.
Taxpayers raising hell at congressional town halls are not the same as 19-year-old punks burning draft cards. The Tea Party movement is not the new "Mobe" and Birthers aren't the Merry Pranksters.
In general, the Left is not the Right. It is therefore an error when the Left supposes that Howard Dean was their Goldwater and Obama is their Reagan, just as it is an error to confuse Sean Hannity's "Freedom Concerts" with Woodstock. At some point, the fundamental differences overwhelm the superficial similarities.
But thanks for giving conservative bloggers an excuse to link The New Majority. (C'mon, Dave, denounce me, buddy. "Unserious" is a good place to start. And inarguably accurate, too. But a full-out flame-war would be good for both of us.)
I still love to hang out with hoodlums, like VodkaPundit: "The President of the United States --whether an Obama a Bush or a Lincoln -- is not my son's daddy." You tell 'em, Steve! I'm with VodkaPundit!
Read the whole thing. Composing a 3,800-word essay in less than seven hours? Not bad for a hoodlum. Ah, if only Tonya could see me now . . .
"People have to understand the context, timing, and culture of this speech." ... "It's not about the text. He'll actually deliver a very innocuous speech. I can guarantee you that. But in these classrooms that are living laboratories for left-wing activism, what your are going to get are over-zealous teachers, teacher's union brass, who are in the hip pockets of the Democrat party, urge their kids to write letters, to demonize ObamaCare opponents, to call them opponents of change."
Meanwhile, Daphne of Jaded Haven is having none of this:
My children are not pawns. I have every expectation that their public education will be rhetoric free. I should be able to vet any blatant political message passed through our schools. My sons will not be viewing this historic piece of political claptrap, I could not give a good damn about Obama's benign educational message. He is using his bully political platform in an inappropriate manner and this family is more than glad to quietly dissent.
Whatever sycophants are advising the President, somebody has got to tell him to lay off the kids.
Increasingly less nonsense will be tolerated from the man. Going after the kids promises to bring enough momma bears roaring out of the woods that even a narcissist with his head parked halfway up his digestive tract is bound to hear something. Will the Community Organizer in Chief expend double digits off of his approval rating on this misguided venture? Why yes; yes, he could.
One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it? Or is this more of a protest in principle at the idea of the president giving a captive audience of schoolkids a pep talk on civics? ... Irresistible exit question: If it's true that "state indoctrination of children is a hallmark of totalitarian government" (never mind that various subtle forms of indoctrination are happening in schools constantly), does that mean atheists were right all along in opposing prayer in public schools?
Michelle dispatched the opening paragraph in the Fox clip above. The stereotypical Allahpundit exit question, often interesting, is unintelligible here. The First Amendment reads as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Thus, the same amendment protecting speech also separates church and state. Where the country has gone off the rails is allowing Critical Theory to drive towards a separation of church and culture. Into this breech steps an ideologically driven President.
So, amongst all of the people who should give their actions review, the atheists may want to consider whether the current situation is at least somewhat predicated upon their focus on the relatively innocuous.
As Michelle notes above, the speech itself won't dare offer ammunition to critics, any more than a brief, benign, ecumenical public prayer. The fact that this is the overture to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge writ large is what should concern us all.
My daughter recently told me that she appreciates that my grandkids wear uniforms at their charter school. I have no doubt that soon all children at public schools will be wearing uniforms as well. Won't they look nice in those cute little brown shirts?
Update II: VA Virtucon has a minor confidence builder.
Update III: Obi's Sister has a disturbing cartoon, plus an excellent roundup.
Update IV: Instapundit brings in some reaction from a couple of local schools. Sounds like there may be some life left in the American public school system, but I wouldn't get too enthusiastic just yet.
Adrienne gives me credit for being the straw on her camel's back, telling her she needed to shrink the art at the top of her blog.
Meanwhile, I would argue McDonnell is blowing the election in Virginia by letting the Washington Post scare him away from a 1989 master's thesis in which he wrote "that working women and feminists had been ‘detrimental’ to the traditional family and criticized federal tax credits for child care because they made it easier for women to be employed outside the home."
And the problem with that is . . .? Man up, Bob. Own it. If you're going to run away from a perfectly defensible thesis like that, you don't have enough testosterone. I got your new slogan:
But no Republican ever listens to me, so expect McDonnell to keep apologizing like a weakling sissy, undermining his own credibility until he becomes such a complete embarrassment to Republicans that his own wife votes against him.
McDonnell says that his views have changed. Maybe they have and maybe they haven't, but running from your previous views on this topic makes you a sissy. This is not a debate about the capabilities of women, but rather a debate about whether, as a whole, the society is better off for having encouraged women to enter the workforce. That, I think is a legitimate question that in no way denigrates the capabilities of women . . . I think think that it is quite clear that as [a] whole society has been severely damaged by encouraging and ultimately forcing the large majority of women out of the home and into the workforce.
Exactly. And it is a perverse mind that would imagine that a debate about whether women should be compelled into the workforce (by economic incentives created by public policy) is a debate about whether women are capable of working.
The Bob McDonnell of 1989 was right and courageous. Of course, he doesn't want to debate this topic amid a gubernatorial campaign, but at least he ought not to appear to be apologizing for a perfectly defensible argument. Don't be a sissy, Bob.
The report highlighted occasions when guards brought women believed to be prostitutes into Camp Sullivan and videotaped themselves drinking and partially undressed. It also outlined communications problems among the guards, many of whom don't speak English and have trouble understanding orders from their U.S. supervisors. "The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security," POGO said in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . . .
Yeah, because we know that Hillary Clinton would never tolerate "lewd and deviant behavior." If the guards lose their State Department jobs, maybe they can get jobs in Hyannis Port.
Just in case you weren't sufficiently bummed out by Johan Norberg's economic forecast --- catastrophically overcast with a 30% chance of Weimar inflation and widely-scattered outbreaks of cannibalism -- let me give you a few little hints of the disastrous dimensions of the incipient apocalypse:
The Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances, because of inexperience and incompetence, to head off the huge investment fraud carried out for years by the disgraced money manager, Bernard L. Madoff, the agency’s watchdog office said on Wednesday. In a damning report on the S.E.C.’s performance, the agency’s inspector general, H. David Kotz, said numerous “red flags” had been missed by the agency, including some warnings sounded by journalists, well before Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme imploded in 2008.
Why, for instance, did Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) rush through the House a bill that would give President Obama power to dismiss five inspectors general -- including the IG for the Securities and Exchange Commission -- who under existing law report to the agency heads? The IGs themselves have protested against the Larson bill, which has yet to be debated in the Senate, and it has not escaped notice on Capitol Hill that Larson is a prominent "Friend of Chris." That would be Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Dodd is under intense scrutiny for a number of shady-looking activities -- "Chris Dodd Update" has become a regular feature at Professor Glenn Reynolds' popular Instapundit blog -- and Dodd is also facing a tough re-election bid next year. No one on the Hill has yet directly suggested that the Larson bill -- which could effectively muzzle watchdogs at five federal financial agencies -- was specifically intended as assistance to the embattled chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. But as liberal bloggers used to say about the Bush administration's activities, some Republicans have begun to "question the timing."
By the way, the September issue of The American Spectator is now on newsstands, featuring my 3,000-word in-depth article about the IG-Gate investigations. Subscribe to The American Spectator now.
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