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June 4, 2008 - May 28, 2008

Friday, April 27, 2007

WHAT WE DO WITH THE LITTLE PEOPLE. He was always a little man in a suit too big for him. He's the guy who took copious notes without ever understanding the meaning of the lecture. He's the guy who got the plum assignment by working twice the hours his more talented competitors did. He's the guy George W, Bush stands behind when everyone who has stood behind George W. Bush is throwing up in the weeds because George W. Bush doesn't know when or how to fire an idiot.

Alberto Gonzales is a mediocrity. And a gross incompetent. And one of those pitiful little guys who always look like they've been dressed by their mother.

I'm a right wing conservative Republican and I'd rather have Bobby Kennedy running the Justice Department than this guy. What does that tell you?

GWB -- Buy a goddamned biography of Napoleon. Not that it will help. You've become the biggest disappointment of my life.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

THINK ABOUT IT. I know the lefties believe they're building up some serious momentum on the Global Warming fad, but it's just not the ticket to long-term ascendancy and power they think it is. Not because the danger has been overstated, which it almost certainly has been. The truth or falsity of the scientific claims is irrelevant to the question of what political advantage the Democrats can wring from them. What does matter is the elementary calculus of what makes a political issue potent enough to create a sea change in the electorate, and in this respect Global Warming couldn't be more of a loser for the party that tries to parlay it into a mandate.

Strange that the party which constantly talks about "kitchen table" issues could so entirely miss the fact that Global Warming isn't one of them. The most basic fact about a kitchen table issue is that it's something the electorate is experiencing right now. There's something that's causing them pain or want in their day-to-day lives, or there's the prospect of an immediate, achievable benefit in their day-to-day lives. That's it.

FDR rode the Great Depression to a generation of Democrat power. He was elected because the people were already suffering, a lot, and they wanted a savior. He received a second mandate after Pearl Harbor, because the people wanted revenge. Not the day before Pearl Harbor, please note, because although the world political situation was equally dire the day before, it wasn't hitting American kitchen tables and therefore wasn't important enough to occasion real sacrifice.

Ronald Reagan rode economic stagflation to power. The people were suffering 'right now' from 13 to 18 percent inflation they had endured long enough to associate with out-of-control big government policies and spending.

George W. Bush received a huge but short-lived mandate from the 9/11 attacks, because average Americans felt themselves under direct, immediate threat from a frightening, alien enemy.

A huge majority of Americans signed up for the "Global War on Terror," which was described from the start (regardless of how people wish to recast it now) as a painful struggle that could last for an entire generation or more. But just a little more than five years after 9/11, the immediacy of the fear has dissipated and "the people" want nothing more to do with fighting terrorists. Do the Islamic jihadists hate us any less? Have they abandoned their stated goal of destroying the west and creating a medieval theocracy that rules through terror, murder, and totalitarian oppression? No. But what have they done to us this week? Not much. So the people would rather think about something else, please.

And this is where the lefties have seriously bamboozled themselves. People are prepared to be "alarmed" about Global Warming precisely because it's so much less scary than murderous Islamofascist thugs who maybe can't be stopped from doing their worst. The warming catastrophe if it comes will take a long long time to reach the kitchen table, and it sorta kinda (at the moment) sounds like the ones who will have to pay for fixing it are all those rich, greedy corporations who are so much fun to hate until they start laying off the people who sit at our particular kitchen table.

But there's the rub. What happens to the appeal of Global Warming as an energizing issue when the people discover there's absolutely no upside to it? When they discover that the real 'vision' of the environmental crusaders is to exact an accelerating series of sacrifices that will hit the kitchen table damn quick -- higher fuel prices, frailer cars, lower standard of living -- with absolutely no prospect of immediate benefit other than some theoretical delay in a remote future disaster?

They're absolutely not going to buy it. They're already so fatigued with the GWOT that they're ready to turn and walk away from a military engagement with al qaeda that very few of them have sacrificed anything to support. Why on earth would they persevere in an even longer term cause that has yet to kill anyone when they finally realize that they're being asked to give up a century of technological progress and clean up after themselves like some Parris Island marine recruit?

When they find out how expensive it is to buy their electricity from wind farms and heat their houses with solar panels, they'll just say no. When you jack up their gas prices and impose SUV taxes to force them into expensive hybrids that are slower, smaller, and uglier than what they're driving now, they'll say "Hell no." And when you ask them to recycle still more trash, surrender their air-conditioners, ration their electrical usage, compost their own sewage, and become first vegetarians, then Vegans, their answer will be unprintable. Most people don't have the luxury of buying fictitious carbon indulgences just for the sake of pretending they're saving a planet that not one of them believes is in any serious danger from us, anyway. And if Kyoto or its successor reawakens the beast of runaway inflation, there aren't enough eco-platitudes in the universe to save the party in power frm the wrath of the voters.

Of course, there are probably a good many liberals trying to ride the Global Warming issue at the moment who know exactly how silly it all is. If they don't, they're fools. If they do, they're corrupt opportunists. Take your pick. If you still want to ride along with them, you have a constitutional right to be as big a fool as you want to be. But here's what you can take to the bank: the Europeans may be braindead enough to let themselves be regulated back to the nineteenth century or earlier, but Americans simply will not stand for it. And five years from now, they'll be as oblivious about the dangers of Global Warming as they are now about the several hundred million Islamic fanatics who want to cut their throats today.

THE O'REILLY FACTOR. The lure of celebrity is a powerful thing. Once you get the taste, it's apparently impossible not to want more. Famous people invite you places, give you opportunities to do things you never dreamed you were good at, and eventually you start believing you're good at all kinds of things, including things you should absolutely stay away from. That's when your friends should have the courage to step up and say, "Stop it! At once!"

We don't blame Michelle Malkin for catching the celebrity bug. She's hardworking, energetic, dedicated, and nice looking. Her blog is justifiably popular because it's as fearless as she is and updated at an almost frightening pace every day. She's become a regular guest on Fox News and even a sometime guest host for that ultimate glory-seeking publicity hound Bill O'Reilly. Her year-old multimedia blog HotAir has become brazen enough to employ the O'Reillyian tactic of self-promoting a FNC television gig for its own principal. So far so good. Nothing wrong with being ambitious and self-confident.

But recent events are a cause for grave concern. Especially because it's Michelle Malkin we're talking about here, who has been pitiless in her contempt for Hollywood celebrities who think their popularity as entertainers also means they are world-class intellectuals who should lecture the rest of us about politics, values, and lifestyle. One of Michelle's own colleagues, Laura Ingraham, has written a book about such celebrities called "Shut Up and Sing." That's exactly opposite the advice Michelle Malkin needs to hear from the rest of us as loudly and insistently as necessary.

First, there was this very odd bit of performance art from HotAir the other day:

HONESTY. God, how I love this book cover. The sharp knowing eyes. The wry knowing smile. The dark suit that is somehow an all-encompassing foreground and background. The grandiloquent, allusive title that is nevertheless dwarfed by the name of the author. It's perfect. How can it not remind us all of MacArthur's West Point valedictory -- Me, Honor, Country?

Don't know how to break it you, all you boomer, X, Y, and XY generations of the once great nation called the United States. It's over. Today's Drudge item is as perfectly emblematic as the cover:


Boo. Hoo. He was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America. And we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he once made a remark that became symbolic of the failure of his entire organization to do its job for the people he was sworn to serve? Is there anyone out there who believes that the thousands of anonymous intelligence operatives who risked death and torture for their country in the certain knowledge that their contributions and sufferings would never be known by the public are somehow honored by this kind of narcissistic self pity from the director of the CIA? If a CIA agent is trained to die without any hope of rescue or recognition, why in hell should a CIA director complain if his own reputation is tarnished in the prosecution of American foreign policy as the duly elected president conceives it?

But he's far from the only one. There has been a constant stream of subversive, self-aggrandizing books by those whose whole power to serve the U.S. government resided in their capacity to listen and speak honestly to the President, whose confidence in their input rested largely on the knowledge that candid conversations about matters of state would not be spilled into the public trough.

Thanks to the likes of George Tenet, Colin Powell, David Frum, Richard Clarke, and God only knows how many other narcissistic crybabies, it will never again be possible for a president of the United States to converse with advisers without contemplating the self-serving books they will write, and publish, while he (or she) is still in office.

Sorry. I can't forget what everyone else -- and I do mean everyone -- has forgotten. The United States of America is the most powerful and benevolent nation the world has ever seen. The decisions that have to be made on behalf of our own ctizens and the world are frequently difficult, complex, morally contradictory, and nearly impossible to make. The leadership of no other nation in history has ever voluntarily confronted the murderous intentions of its rivals without permitting itself the option of annihilating them by any means possible. Thus, the much pilloried Bush adminsitration has continuously faced a situation without precedent in human history -- fanatical, mortal enemies bent on the destruction of the nation they serve, enemies who could be reduced to ash in approximately 60 minutes without significant risk of retaliation, but who will not be exterminated because we choose not to do so for moral reasons.

The question that must be asked is why this heroic moral choice should lead to the end of the most basic principles of loyalty, honor, and integrity by those who have been so privileged as to participate in the experiment.

The answer is apocalyptic. Such lofty expressions of merciful intent lead inevitably to the lowest, most venal reactions by those who detect the weakness inherent in mercy. They know they can get away with personal treachery to further their own interests.

George W. Bush's real weakness is that he is not Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, Saddam, Castro, or Pol Pot. That he is far more like Portia than Caesar is a promise of doom. In the days of Octavian, Powell, Tenet, Clarke, and Frum would never have lived to write their whining memoirs about their superiority to those from whom they took their orders. And the citizens of the Republic would have been safer abroad as a result. But there will be no American Augustus to lay the groundwork for a second American Century. There will be, however, (count on it) an American Cleopatra, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, and an inevitable sacking of the capital of the world.

Rejoice, all you nihilists. Your fondest, deepest wish, the slashing of your self-hating throats by oppressed barabarians, is one step closer than it was yesterday. Happy?

Sure you are. It's called thanatos. The only spiritual abstraction you can imagine...


Enjoy the ride, everyone. It will, of course, be televised. Cool.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

FOLLOW-THROUGH. Is anyone else tired of celebrities who insist the rest of us should live like cavemen while they continue to sport around the world in Gulfstream jets and hundred-foot yachts? Yesterday's proposal by Sheryl Crow that we common folk should confine ourselves to a single square of toilet paper was obviously ridiculous. Yet it proves why Global Warming is such a perfect cause for idiot liberals. They love it to death because they're convinced nothing can really be done about it, which means that pious speeches and token gestures are all that's required to demonstrate absolue moral superiority over the proles.

The Kyoto Treaty they claim to want wouldn't do a damned thing to undo the catastrophe they predict for Global Warming -- except (further) beggar the Third World and plunge the civilized world into permanent economic depression. It's pretty safe to say no one is going to permit that eventuality to happen, which enables the speechifying enviro-nazis to go on shaking their heads and looking down on all the dimwits who don't buy their vision of paradise. Wouldn't it be great if there were something that really could be done, something that would force the talkers to put up or shut up?

Yeah, but there really isn't anything to be done. If the earth is warming, there's no practical way to slash CO2 emissions to any significant degree. The talkers have total license to keep on talking and trying to make the rest of us feel small. Sheryl Crow is free to pretend that a goddess like herself doesn't need more than a single square of paper to police her butt, while us lowlier apelike humans need a handful. Point made. Perfect celebrity posturing.

Or maybe not. What if there really was something that could be done to slash CO2 emissions? Something more substantive than walking around smelling like feces. Something us Great Unwashed are better equipped to do than pansy liberals. How would that go down among the self-congratulating illuminati?

The good news: there is such a thing.

It's generally the oddest items of trivia that open up whole new boulevards of thought. I followed an InstaPundit link one day last week about some current political tiff and accidentally scrolled past the referenced item to the following intriguing sentence:


The source is Mickey Kaus, who's a thoughtful and reasonable commentator, delicately poised in the middle of the road for the purpose of taking down the absurdities of both the extreme left and the extreme right. The quoted sentence is a perfect microcosm of his overall demeanor. Esthetically, he really is a liberal. He enjoys debating his lefty professor pal Robert Wright because Robert is so damned smart and, well, superior to the oafs of the right. Kaus probably goes to foreign film festivals for fun, and though he disapproves of French political treacheries, he would most likely feel more at home in Paris than in Biloxi, Mississippi. I don't know any of this for a fact, and so I'm being hideously unfair, but if I had to pick the car he drives, I'd guess a Volvo.

Why am I being so unfair? That opening statement: "I don't like motorcycles." Wow. Not, "I'm afraid to ride a motorcycle," or "I think motorcycles are unsafe at any speed," or  "I find motorcycles on the highway to be loud, unsettling, and annoying." No. We have a pure value judgment here, which is actually equated with his disapproval of any firms that would use the name "confederate." Which means that it's an ideological thing, a class thing, an us vs. them thing. He probably feels the same way about tattoos.

But there's also good stuff in Mickey Kaus. He has that old-timey liberal open-mindedness which allows him to appreciate an attractive, if alien, alternative esthetic. If he did like motorcycles, he would like the one shown at the beginning of this entry. It's called the Wraith, and it's manufactured by the Confederate Motor Company. If he'd looked at the CMC site, he'd have discovered that the company's marketing makes no use whatever of the Confederate flag. Even their tee-shirts are beautifully understated.

Monday, April 23, 2007

WE CAN HELP. Yeah, it's a bad feeling, knowing that Global Warming is going to drown New York and San Francisco and all the best concert venues. The consequences are dire. At the very least it would mean rewriting the list of terms, conditions, and perks the band would have to extort expect from promoters and producers. Think how much more complicated this clause would get:


God, you've have to specify flying boats, barges, launches, and a cabin cruiser, at a minimum. What's a girl to do?

That's why we understand her natural inclination to make suggestions. But we can't help observing that she's thinking a bit small. No matter how you perforate slice it, her toilet paper suggestion isn't going to save the concert-going public from inundation by the melting of the polar icecaps. It wouldn't even shift the balance if she issued the Luddite decree that ALL the mallrats of the western hemisphere revert to the fresh corncob solution of the 19th century (strangely practical when you figure in the fact that the Third World will no longer have access to corn for food when it's all being used for ethanol), or that women abandon disposable paper products for the re-usable cotton towels that marked the high point of Roman female hygiene.

But it was the best she could do. The amount of brainpower required to write three-chord rock and rhyming iambic lyrics is not the same as that required for saving the embattled earth from the sickening depredations of post-Neanderthal primates.

Rescue is on the way. We know what to do. And if these additional shots of Sheryl are any indication, she just might jump onto our admittedly narrow bandwagon. Tomorrow.


She might turn out to be one of the survivors. Unless... well, tune in tomorrow.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Sorry for the bit at the end. It's called greeked text, which printers (and some writers) use to represent the copy that's either not there or doesn't need to be because we all know what it will say. Now, here's a little something from the Invisible Problems section.


Your patience is much appreciated. Here's your reward. It has nothing to do with school shootings, but it is a bestseller in Shuteye Town.

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