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Archive Listing
January 23, 2011 - January 16, 2011

Monday, May 24, 2010

Speakers of Truth, Part II:

The Importance of Reason

Melanie Phillips. I'm going to give you two opportunities to
watch her C-span video because it's so crucial that you do.
I ask 16 minutes worth of watching. They'll be the best spent
16 minutes you've spent on internet video this year. My word.

IS INSTAPUNK MEAN? I'll begin by citing one of our commenters on the previous related post, JS:

The problems the Left has caused do not need book length explanations or solutions. They are simple to see and simple to solve. They are easy to recognize and easy to fix, as they are in direct opposition to everything this country was founded on. But all I ever read is "We can't say that! We'll get in trouble!"

I know JS thinks I'm occasionally guilty of this as well, but he should draw heart from the fact that I think he is 98 percent right. That's my second opportunity for asking all of you to watch 16 minutes (at least) of the Melanie Phillips video. In that time, she effectively demolishes the argument for global warming, the "Bush lied, people died" argument against the war in Iraq, the victimization of Israel as the source of oppression in the Middle East, and the arrogant irrationalism of Dawkins and company in promoting atheism as the 'reasonable' antidote to malignant religious faith. She also expressly confirms the validity of common sense in opposition to the anti-rational nonsense promulgated by the intelligentsia. That's a lot of ground to cover in 16 minutes.

I'll wait while you watch. (Feel free to watch longer. She covers a lot more territority with a lot more specificity if you have the patience. If you hang on through the Q&A session, you'll also experience the unique cultural tic known as the "Oxford stutter.")

Without quoting word for word, I'll paraphrase a few of the more memorable points of the video for those who are, well, impatient. They are, interestingly, all points which have been made explicitly here at InstaPunk over the years (Lake? Eduardo? Care to fisk this post with IP links? If you have the time... I understand if not), except possibly for the first one, which we have only speculated on:� in America, we have cultural wars; in Britain they have cultural collapse. Others? Science has itself become a religious faith, admitting of no dissension that is dealt with factually or by any means other than ad-hominem attack. The assault on formal religion by secularists is specific to Judeo-Christian religion and is purposed overwhelmingly toward the repeal of Genesis, because it is the moral order represented by an absolutist creator god which is most unacceptable in an age which bases its moral relativism on the absence of any objective truth.

Continuing... Ironically, what unites the supposed rationalists of secular evangelism is an apocalyptic 'millenarianism' derived directly from the Old Testament concept of Original Sin. In short, man must be punished. But not for sins against God. Because it's western civilization itself which must be punished in particular for sins against minorities, the earth, and, presumably, the universe. All of which is, in the aggregate, insane, irrational, and disposed against civilization in favor of barbarism. One questioner pointed out that usage of the word 'civilization' was never plural till the middle of the 19th century. Its historically singular form was an ideal expressly opposed to barbarism. The idea that all human organization above the level of hunter-gatherer subsistence represented some variety of civilization was the beginning of multi-culturalism -- and moral relativism.

She also made another point repeated here almost ad-nauseam. That the age of reason and science was almost purely a product of Judeo-Christian believers -- uh, the people who invented reason in the first place and still practice it -- which means that the concerted attempt we see today to synonymize faith with irrational superstition, resistance to science, and unthinking (conservative) stupidity is both malicious and false (i.e., The World Upside Down). Which led somehow to the metaphor of the choir. Phillips says at one point she realized that the admonition against preaching to the choir was wrong. The choir needs to be motivated to keep singing, because all the most highly 'educated' voices are telling it to remain silent.

But the Oxford journalist is trumped in some respects by JS. And I think she'd agree. "The problems the Left has caused do not need book length explanations or solutions. They are simple to see and simple to solve. They are easy to recognize and easy to fix." That's her point, made so much more laboriously, about common sense, which transcends pure reason because it seamlessly encompasses human wisdom as well as history and nature. A point I think we made here at less than book length.

Which has always been our bottom line at IP. It's the real reason we get into such big fights with the sophisticated folks who become mesmerized by the ins and outs of Washington politics, who's up, who's down, who's got a point this time, who's not phrasing or packaging things right, and who might have the better argument in the current political environment.

It's all bullshit. Common sense is still what matters. Big organizations are soul-destroying, the more so the bigger they get. It's a corollary of the clichee about absolute power corrupting absolutely. Our government is too big and getting bigger. Hell, General Motors was too big, which is why it failed. AT&T was too big, which is why breaking it up created a technological explosion whose shrapnel you all carry so happily in your pockets and purses. Big is Jabba the Hut. It fattens, wallows, crushes freedom and creativity. No big deal. Simple human math.

Which is why human math does contain absolutes. Lots of things don't have to be nitpicked, refuted, argued codicil by codicil or misrepresentation by lie into the weeds. They're just wrong. Flat wrong. From the beginning. Like the healthcare bill. Too big, too voracious, too squashing, too sprawling in its inevitable unintended consequences.

Which is where the New Media have a tough call. We've been exceptionally tough (and some would say mean) to the ones who choose to follow the details for us, so that we can fight like The 300 at the last stand in the halls of congress. But details are their own monster. They're what old-time fighter pilots called target-fascination. You bore in so single-mindedly on the bullseye that you wind up flying into the ground. Alternatively, you begin to believe that being adept at target practice is a substitute for killing the enemy.

Note that the choice of metaphor here is key. We are fighting a war. The enemy is every bit as ruthless as the Pacific foe in WWII that thought nothing of smearing the brains of Philippine babies across the walls of Manila hospitals. If you get it into your head that you're better at gunning down training targets than they are, you're not there when they get out of their planes and hit the newborn wards. That's why we're mean.

This is not a game. It's not a college debate. It's not an Olympic fencing match. It's a war. What are the sides?

The answer to that is daunting if not downright terrifying. It's us -- the common sense American conservatives -- against an Islamic fascism that can't be named, a European cultural and moral exhaustion that can't be forestalled, a burgeoning population of tin-pot, appeasement-emboldened dictators around the world, a secular know-it-all nihilism that can't be out-shouted, an increasingly supine population of government dependents and self-styled victims in the industrial world, and a traitorous, self-hating elite in our own country that has somehow appropriated the media, the academy, science, the public school system, the entire federal and state bureaucracy, and even a significant mindshare of organized Christian churches into a cult of anti-American sedition.

In these circumstances, it doesn't matter that we are technically the majority, as we are and have always been. It matters that we have let them gather unto themselves all the reins of power.

To the extent that we consent to dance with them employing all their tools of distraction -- wit, rhetoric, charge-and-counter-charge -- and gull ourselves with the delusion they're 'playing' the same way, we lose. Everything they do is aimed, always, exclusively, at our throats. They're trying to kill us. And while we struggle to be civil and 'fair-minded,' they're succeeding.

That's why I'm mean to AllahPundit and Ed Morrissey and InstaPundit and Ace of Spades and Protein Wisdom and every other conservative site that thinks it's competing for mindshare in an open market of ideas. It's not an open market. It's a war. I don't want any internet accolades or conservative trophies. I want to defeat the enemy. Utterly. Devastatingly. Forever.

This is a war for survival. We'll win or we'll lose. Which is a way of saying that I'm not being unreasonable at all. I have been scrupulously reasonable throughout the history of InstaPunk. Which is to say that I employ reason to destroy the enemy, not to persuade the enemy that I'm a reasonable guy. And, just as importantly, not to persuade my more genteel (thanks, Diogenes) allies that I am 'reasonable enough' to belong in their company. If they're not here to destroy the enemy, they may as well be Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw Haw. I have no use for them. Which is why I don't, and won't, play nice in the "New Media" circle-jerk.

By every precept of reason I know, giving equal time to enemy propagandists who have never been rational is not a function of reason. It's how Austria became part of the Third Reich. Look up the Anschluss.

Flyers Crush Habs.

PAYBACK. We win. Off to the finals. Something about the number three. You'll have to ask Mrs. CP. Or maybe Puck Punk can explain. If you can't root for us against Obama's home team, there's something wrong with you.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Speakers of Truth

People who speak the truth in this regime are regarded as rats.

H/T NRO. What better proof can you have of gangster politics -- more kindly, the "Chicago Machine" -- than the fact that its minions are so terrified of pissing off the don that they're prepared to make utter fools of themselves in public by denying even the most obvious of truths?

�

But who keeps scurrying for the corners like a trapped rodent?

�
That's why I want to give full marks to Doctor Zero for identifying the real bottom-line cause of the Tea Partiers:

The American people tired of being lied to. We�re tired of being defrauded. We�ve had it with fabulously expensive programs that do nothing but enhance the power of those who administer them. We reject the tired excuse that government only fails when it�s not big enough. We know the romance of the State is a lie. The evidence of its failure is piling up around us, at a rapidly accelerating pace.

He's right. That's the part of the Tea Party phenomenon that is Obama-centric, though it has nothing whatever to do with race. The man is 100 percent committed to lying. Not just the convenient political lies and evasions we were able to correct for with Bill Clinton, but massive, soul-deep lies about his intentions, his relation to the country he leads, and to the world beyond our borders that simultaneously loves, hates, fears, and (historically) depends upon the United States. Sure, he tells low political lies, every damn day, but what has people in the streets are the vastly bigger whoppers that he is the president of all of us, that he loves America, that he's a capitalist in good standing, and that he is committed to defending both the Constitution and American citizens from all threats foreign and domestic. His stock in trade is the BIG LIE, taken to a scale that trivializes even the standard liberal Big Lies Democrats have used to demonize Republicans since the 1960s.

More than we've ever needed them before, we need speakers of truth who aren't frightened into silence by the spreading shadow of Obamordor.

When he maunders on about social justice, redistributing wealth, and taxing the rich "who got us into this mess," we need blunt counterweights like Chris Christie, who this week threw down a heavy gauntlet of truth.

Do not mess with the Fat Man, you silly Democrats. In what may be the fastest veto in recorded history, it took New Jersey Governor Chris Christie a reported two minutes to veto a new tax grab by an incoherent Democrat State Senate that clearly hasn't realized their rubber-stamp puppet Jonny the Beard is no longer in office.

It took about two minutes from the time Senate President Steve Sweeney certified the passage of the millionaires tax package for Gov. Chris Christie to veto the bills at his desk.

"While I have little doubt that the sponsors and supporters of this bill sincerely believe that the state can tax its way out of this financial crisis, I believe that this bill does nothing more than repeat the failed, irresponsible and unsustainable fiscal policies of the past," wrote Christie in his veto statement. "Now is not the time for more of the same. Ultimately, another tax increase will punish the state�s struggling small businesses and set our economy further back from recovery."

Of course cutting taxes would help stimulate our economy but Democrats have never been known to pay attention to reality.

After the state Senate passed the bill, which had already passed the Assembly, Sweeney walked the bills down the hallways of the Statehouse, from the state Senate chambers to the governor's office. Once inside, he handed the bills to Christie, who was waiting.

"What took you so long ?" asked Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak.

Christie sat at a wooden desk emblazoned with the seal of the state of New Jersey and swiftly signed vetoes.

"We'll be back, governor," said Sweeney.

"All right. We'll see," said Christie.

I love JammieWearingFool's locution, "The Fat Man." It's surreptitiously Shakespearean, recalling the line from Julius Caesar, "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look." As Obama most definitely does. I can see the bumper stickers now: I'M FOR THE FAT MAN IN 2012. Something about prosperity and gruff candor, as opposed to plots and weaseling grudges.

When Obama bows and scrapes to our enemies and brushes off our friends and ignores the slaps and sleights and outrages committed daily against the country he's sworn to protect, we need unblinking truthtellers like Charles Krauthammer. You have to read the whole thing if you don't take any other link here. It's that important. I'm not bottom-lining it here. Can't be done. I'm just showing him off:

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture -- a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam -- is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there's no cost in lining up with America's enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

They've watched President Obama's humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.

As with the Fat Man we can also join The Hammer to our legion of plain-speaking superheroes.

But we need more than superheroes. We need people in all walks of life to be proof against 'well-intentioned' (i.e., pusillanimous) compromise.

When powerful men like Eric Holder go around Robin's Hood barn to defend the indefensible, we also need less powerful men of good conscience to stand up against absurdity (and atrocity) whenever and wherever it appears. Here's one important example:

In recent days, some of us have been ranting about the American Academy of Pediatrics, and its softening on FGM, or female genital mutilation � more modern and �sensitive� types call it FGC, for �female genital cutting.� The AAP has a rival, apparently: the ACP, or American College of Pediatricians. The latter group has just come out with a strong, unequivocal statement against FGM, FGC, whatever � a nasty practice, which Americans should think twice before tolerating. For the ACP�s press release, go here.

Three cheers for the ACP.

And three cheers withdrawn for the whole "Draw Muhammed Day" debacle. Check your courage before you throw your hat into the ring of fire. That's another important lesson. AllahPundit got snotty with me when I pointed out that I'd notified him of this post well before he linked to the "Draw Muhammed Day" exercise in sheep warfare (whose original proposer has since retreated in an ebb tide of apology and fear). Of course, what happened on May 20 was what I figured would happen. People had enough time to think about it, get scared, and toss up a cloud of posturing bullshit demonstrating the rank, stinking cowardice of journalists and bloggers in the west. (Hi, Allah!) Here's Reason Magazine's courageous protest drawing:

Note, too, that Hotair -- which also didn't participate, brave souls they -- called this, "�clever. A bit of a cop out, but clever."

Yeah. When extortion with the threat of deadly violence is on the table, the best possible response is, uh, "clever."

The InstaPunk image the fearless bloggers of Hotair assured me they never saw and so couldn't link:

Muhammed

"I wouldn't belong to any religion I made up.
Because "Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Here's what I'm asking of you. Find the brave ones. The speakers of truth wherever they are. Not the ranters or bomb-throwers. The ones who, as Howard Cosell used to say, tell it like it is. You find me the heroes, and I'll give the readers here the links.

P.S. Something else that doesn't pass muster in the 'courage' or 'truth' department. Linking people who truly don't give a shit about Islamic extortion while you continue to hide behind wry platitudes. Hotair just linked this from Iowahawk. Like they get to borrow his brazen while they hide inside their newfound "journalistic objectivity." Kewl. Sick-making. If Hotair runs that one Muhammed cartoon its author has already paid for one more time as proof of their publishing fearlessness, I promise you I'm going to invent a way to throw up through the intertubes on a website of my choosing.

Is anybody else getting sick of the NEW mainstream media? Podcasts and contracts and cable news gigs and seeing both sides and patriotic moderation and pure C-O-W-A-R-D-I-C-E when there's really something important on the line. Like, say, the First Amendment. Which is when "clever" is enough. Really, Ed? Really, Allah? So 'clever' of you.

ADDENDUM. I like the way libs are thinking they've trounced the Tea Partiers because Rand Paul won his primary. But their only power is misdirection. They don't understand the problem they're facing. They think they've found an emblematic victim. All they've found is an outlier who may yet win. It can't turn back the tide, which is pitilessly against them:

Yes, the Pauls seem clothed in mithril. (We suspect they have curly feet to go with their curly toupees.) And they're fucking crazy. But they've served admirably as the distractions we need to storm the supreme Obama soviet.The more they make the Pauls the face of the Tea Partiers, the more time we have to make the real argument: No traitor should be president of the United States. We don't need a Sauron.

Not now. Not ever.

UPDATE. Got a response from Doc Zero, but there's no sign he was aware of the slam at his host website (or my PS or Addendum). He's not responsible for my piling on. I am. So he shouldn't be punished at Hotair for saying this on my email:

Nicely done!� Nothing baffles me more about the average, middle-of-the-road Democrat voter than their perpetual surprise at being lied to... which often manifests as a frenzied hatred of anyone who exposes the lies of their leadership.� I've seen decent, generally affable people reduced to shivering rage while trying to process the latest Obama scam.

Both politicians and private citizens may see advantages from committing fraud, but the politician is far more likely to get away with it.� How many private entities are still going concerns after decades of being caught repeatedly lying to the public, on a massive scale... let alone larger and more powerful than ever?

This whole rotten system of political hacks dodging responsibility for disasters they never saw coming will fall apart on the day we either refuse to be hoodwinked, or no longer have anything worth stealing.

Though I suspect he will be punished. Let's hope not. I apologize if I've compromised his New Media credentials. Everybody: pretend you didn't see the Doc Zero part. The best outcome will be that we never hear from him again. He'll learn that InstaPunk is persona non grata in the mainstream blog revolt against the mainstream media. With any luck, we'll see him soon on Fox & Friends. Unless he's who we think he really is, namely, an honest man.

UPDATE 2. AllahPundit is angry. I sent him a link to this post, and he sent me this:

I'm not going to harrumph at you about anything.� Here are the facts: You've been endlessly and needlessly antagonistic towards me for months.� You ripped me to shreds in one post and I was enough of a good sport about it to actually link it in Headlines.� Then you sent me a tip about a post which I never saw and you instantly presumed bad faith about that.� Now you're calling me a coward for not participating in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day even though Ed and I both repeatedly use thumbnails of the super-incendiary Mohammed cartoons to illustrate our posts about it.� And then you claim that both Ed and I have gotten "carried away" with our careers, which means ... I'm not even sure what.� That I'm a phony and you're real.� Or rather, "REAL."

You have some sort of chip on your shoulder about me, which is perfectly fine -- there are others who do too -- but you're the only one who seems to feel compelled to e-mail me to tell me just how little you think of me.� I get it, okay?� You're REAL and Ed and I aren't.� Loud and clear.� And incidentally, since you're ripping on Ed, don't you think he should be cc'd on these harangues?

So I replied thus.

Glad to hear from you. You and Ed are in business. I have no problem with that. I'm a curmudgeon. I don't think you should have a problem with that. I tend to assume, perhaps wrongly, that when I send you something you find volatile, Ed will hear about it. And vice versa. I'm thinking I do a much better job of letting people I criticize know that I've criticized them than others do, but perhaps you can enlighten me about that.

That you chose this moment to blast me tells me you might be feeling guilty. You posted the Draw Muhammed Day post and ignored my post. Maybe it was a mistake. Fine.

I don't think the sun rises and sets on what I do. But I know that I consistently write better stuff than what you post in your Green Room. If I'm crabby, you're arrogant. I volunteered to debate you about your constant, deadeningly dull atheist pose, which I'd do fairly and rationally, but you choose to ignore me. I've complimented you every bit as much as I've criticized you, and I hat-tip you both all the time, but you and Ed both have an "I'm a star now" complex which I understand but feel free to call out. I'm part of your audience, the part that sends you readers regularly, a cut above your typical commenters, who don't spell, think, or write well.

Here's the deal. I don't need your approval. I'm a writer in my own right. I have no desire to have podcasts, book contracts, or FNS interviews. I was on the Internet before you, writing a blog before there was even a name for it:

http://glovesoff.blogspot.com/1999_06_01_archive.html

I'd actually like to be your friend. But you've been pretty much of a� jerk to me. As has Ed.

I'd be happy to start over. The only thing I want is the occasional link when I write a good post, which I do at least as often as those you favor.

The Muhammed deal was especially galling to me. You have used the same cartoon for months as if it were bravery, but it isn't. And you know it isn't. You're hedging your bets. I understand that. Nobody wants to die. At first I thought Allah is trying to protect me: it's suicide to depict Muhammed as, of all things, a Jew, let alone Groucho Marx. Your email disabused me of that.

I'm not here to become famous. I'm here to fight for my country. AND to fight for the Jews, so there won't be a second holocaust. Do a search at Instapunk for the terms� Jews, holocaust, genocide, israel. Hell, do a search at instapunk for any and every great issue of the day. I think you'll find I've written� more diligently and thoughtfully on any issue you could name than you or Ed have.

I'm NOT your enemy. But I'm weary of the celebrity game. Which you ARE playing, whether you admit it or or not. Ace of Spades is a lot nastier and more profane than I am. He just doesn't criticize prominent right-wing blogs. I do. Who's edgier in that respect?

So. Here I am. Humbling myself. I ask only that you give me the even break of reading my stuff in the way that MacLeod and Doc Zero do. In return I promise to stop criticizing your writing, Ed's writing, though not your logic or lack of it. All I I'm asking for is a voice in the fight. And I DO have something to bring to that fight.

And so it goes.

UPDATE 3. So now Allah is really really pissed:

"I can't decide if you don't realize how insulting you are, if you do realize it and simply enjoy being insulting, or if you think that being insulting is proof somehow that you're a "straight shooter" who won't kiss the ass of a self-styled "celebrity" like me. But since we're not getting anywhere with these back and forths, this will be my last response to you." [It goes on like this for a while.]

And here's my response:

Fine. You're right. I'm insulting. Sorry. I was fighting this fight long before you got your first keyboard. I knew the war we're fighting now was coming 40 years ago. What pisses me off is how weak our side is. Why do the libs laugh at us and demean us? Because our side can't write a goddam sentence without making some dumb basic error. I'm older than you, I've spent a lifetime writing, and it all matters to me. You can dance all you want around the "celebrity" label, but you're making a living doing this. I'm not. I'm doing it because I can't not do it with so much at stake.

I apologize for noticing that I can't read a single post by you or Ed without wanting to rewrite it. Do you know what that's like? No. Of course not. I chastised Jonah Goldberg for a consistent error he was making, and he apologized within the hour. I'm not saying you don't have good ideas and decent insights. But you're an embarrassment. And poses you assume, like your atheism and beta male identity, are worse than embarrassing. They're just dumb.

If you ever bothered to read InstaPunk, you'd see that it's the most thoughtful and LIVING conservative blog on the Internet. We talk about everything from hummingbirds to movies to family travails to physics to sports, before we even approach politics, which we do in a way no one else does.

But you never have bothered to read InstaPunk. Which is how I know who you are. If someone "insulted" me, I can assure you I'd read everything they wrote to find out why and from where they dared to do so.

I'm sorriest about the fact that you're exactly who I feared you were. I don't need Hotair. But you need an elder who doesn't tolerate your fakery and posturing. I'm 56 years old. I'd bet a bunch you don't don't know anything more about me than that. Which is your loss. Big time. If you wanted to learn to write, I could teach you. But I'm thinking you don't. That's too bad. Not a tragedy or my secret revenge. Just too bad. Because our country needs people like you to know how to write.

QED.

The Comebacks

AS I SAY: BELIEVE. In the case of you do not know about that picture, it is from the crush of the InstaPunk Phyler make by my Montreal Candians in Thursday night.� In that picture, I think it is when the Phyler goalie start to cry about all the goal that are score to him.� But I must make the digression. I do not come to make offend on the fan of the Phyler here.� I already say that I know my Habs win the Stanley Cup this year and I am sorry about the sadness of the Philadelphia persons.� Instead I come to address two issue.

First, I need say the Punks tell me they are happy to hear the new writtings from me, but about the fact checkings maybe I am not so careful when I write. They say the post before have many error about things that are not so true. I try to take a note while they tell me all these things for make a corrections, but I already am go to the liquor store for the evening and find it hard to hear everything what they say. One note that I do take on my sheet is about the mistake with who the Philadelphia football team make a trade on. I say they trade the Michael McVick, but they actually trade his brother, Donovan. But still Michael McVick is the one who kill the dogs, and I am many anger about that. Which prove a rule about why you should not trust the persons of Irish.

There are other mistake, too, but you see I am not serious journalist of the big times, like your Keith Onothermann. I am only Puck Punk, with knowledge and love of the hockey, which I try to tell you about because so many American miss this wonderful sport. So I start to think maybe American does not care about the hockey because you do not have the understandings. Even InstaPunk say he is l'confuze about the rule in the hockey. So I decide I must explain to my foreign friends about some important things and then we all will love the hockey.

1. Offsides - Always I am watch a game of the hockey when the offsides is call and my American friends say, "Huh? What happen?" or as the internet American say, "WTF?" Then I explain about how is so simple.

A field of the hockey.

As you see above, there is the big red line in middle of the ice. Then the two blue line on each side of red middle line, and the space after the blue line with the goal make the offend zone. No man is allow to be all the way across the blue on the offend unless the puck go across first. If the defenses get the puck back all the way past their blue line, then the offend players must all touch the blue before they can go back to the offend zone, and when they go back the puck again must go before any offend player. If the rule is break, then the offsides is call and a faceoff happen.

I try to make the explain of this to my American friends, but I make only half through my talking when a glaze come on their eyes and they yawn, then they tell me the hockey is so hard to understand and they ask for me to stop the talking. But when we watch the anyfell football and I ask a question like, "Why is this team allow to advance the ball just because their ball kicker falls down?" they only answer me, "Shhhh! I try to watch game!"

And at least the hockey offside only makes a faceoff. In the anyfell the offside make the ball move more close and close to the In Zone, where the goal happen. Why? No one can explain this. And still my American friends say they are confuse about why players in the hockey some time will not cross the blue line and some time will, or why it is l'import for the defenses to push the puck across the blue line, for then all players on the offend must skate away, then skate back in, and they can get tired. So during this times of the frustrate, I only grab another Molson and try to enjoy the game to myself.

2. Power Play - when a penalty happen, there is the power play. This mean the one who make the penalty must sit in the penalty box for 2 minute and his team is short the one man. The other team now have advantage of one man and if they score the penalty is over. The most a team can be down at one time is two man.

Cindie Crosby of the Pittburg takes the penalty while losing to my Habs.

If it is a very bad penalty, like making the hate crime, then the time in the box will be for 5 minute no matter even if the team score. This is many rare, and l'especial in the playoff, because it is a big hurt for a team to make defend of the power play for 5 minute.

3. Icing - Another thing that every body always question to me about. But it is very easy to make the understandings of it! Remember the big red line on middle of the ice? Well there is a smaller red line on each side of ice that cross the goal, near of the wall. If a player on the offend shoot the puck to other side and it is not yet cross the big line in middle, then it cross the small red line near the goal, and the puck is first touch by a player of the defend team, then it makes the icing and a faceoff must happen back on other side of the ice of the team that shoot the puck.

This rule happen so a team can not score only one goal, then only throw the puck away across ice for rest of game while on the defend. There is one exception of this: if a team is defend on the power play, they are allowed to shoot puck out because they are down of persons.

This is where the strategy happen for playing the hockey.

4. Cross-Checking - Very most simple: this is when you take both hands on the hockey stick, then push them out to hit the oppose player with the middle part of the stick. Like this:

The cross check can make any body into the monster.

So there are good explaination of the most confuse rule in the hockey. Now we all are watching this weekend, yes? You are many welcome.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

A Birthday Coincidence

The holocaust angle? Just one more personal 'coincidence.'

SERENDICITY. Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He'd be 88 if he hadn't died more than ten years ago. It was also a day when Mrs. IP had jury duty and was staying home till court convened, so I dallied longer in the morning before getting to work. Over one cup of coffee too many, I stumbled on a NatGeo documentary about a P-47 that went down in an Austrian lake on the last day of the war in Europe. The P-47 was my dad's plane, 88 missions worth. An international team was determined to raise it from the lake bottom and restore it. I was hooked. The lake waters were ice cold and short on oxygen, which meant that the wreck was probably well preserved. As proved to be the case. The plexiglass cowling was intact, the cockpit dials were remarkably legible, and even the lacquered aluminum skin of the fuselage retained all its old stencilled numbers, lettering, and American star insignia. It came up upside down but in far better condition that it looks to the naked eye

The ailerons still worked freely.

Closeups showed the instruments muddy but with unbroken lenses.

The .50 caliber machine guns were loaded;
the shells gleamed again after a light hosing.

The experts proclaimed that this plane will fly again.

I was struck by the fact that this is not my first P-47 coincidence. I just happened to be living in Dayton, Ohio, when Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in Dayton) dedicated a memorial to the Twelfth Air Force my dad served in. He flew out (commercial) for the ceremony and that day I had my first look at a P-47 in the Wright-Patt museum, with him there. He hadn't laid eyes on one since 1946 or thereabouts. I also got to shake hands with a few of his surviving fellow pilots. Seeing the old men and the plane on which their lives depended was a strange experience. It's at such a long remove from actual events, so evidently mothballed and still, that it seems simultaneously unreal and hyper-real, as if the vivid past really can bump the prosaic present into a roaring, screaming, rat-a-tat hell if you close your eyes for just a moment. It's awkward to shake their hands. There's nothing you can say. They know something you'll never know and even trying to put that into words would be sacrilege. You wind up wishing you weren't young and your clothes didn't fit.

More coincidence. A few years later I was serving as a consultant to Whirlpool Corporation, which had an air-conditioner manufacturing plant in Evansville, Indiana. I went there to conduct training and help coordinate labor management communications. That's when I learned that the huge brick facility with its serpentine connecting bays had been built in the first place to assemble P-47 fighter planes. The plant was dark and logistically difficult in terms of modern manufacturing requirements, filled with U-turns and cul de sacs that only made sense when you imagined their original purpose. How odd that this Jersey motorhead would somehow get to see the plant (and descendants of the people) that built the plane that kept his father alive so that I could be sired after the war. No, it's not all about me. It's about the chain of events, including U-turns and cul de sacs, that occur by apparent happenstance to give you a fuller picture of the continuum of which you are only the wagging tail. I was supposed to be seeing Just-in-Time appliance manufacturing. Mostly, all I could see was P-47s creeping though darkness to the skies of Europe.

And then one more. My dad was from southern New Jersey and he took his flight training at Thunderbird in Arizona, but it's also perversely the case that one of the premier P-47 training bases during WWII was in Millville, NJ, less than 20 miles from where he, and I, were born and grew up. Millville has never forgotten this important moment of its history, which is why the annual Millville Air Show is one of the biggest and best attended in the nation. Which I'd never attended until my Navy-loving wife (I could tell you why but then I'd have to kill you) made us go see it back in 2007. Where I saw my first P-47 outside of a museum, prepped and ready to go on the flightline

And then, by God, flying.

My dad was dead by then. but not that day, not for me.

Life is a curious thing. I never consciously sought out any of these encounters with the past. He tried more and more over the years to make his life story about something other than the war, which he had every right to do. He had many accomplishments of his own, and he suffered from the survivor's guilt we've all seen in veterans who can't be convinced that the best and bravest� didn't die in their place. But my own life keeps bringing me back to this aspect of his experience, which I know, as a son knows his father, both hurt him grievously and annealed him to the ordinary hurts of so-called real life. He may have wanted to turn his back on so much fear and pain and testing ordeals, but I can't. I feel the phantom every time I mount a motorcycle. If I screw up or get unlucky, I could die today. But nobody's shooting at me when I ride. And I'm not shooting at them. A way to stay humble as the wagging tail of the continuum.

Almost done. But one final 'coincidence' in yesterday's accidental television rendezvous. The pilot whose plane went down in the Austrian lake survived. He appeared in the show and recollected his rescue. Ditching a P-47 in the water is an incredibly tricky thing. The huge engine almost immediately plunges from the surface in a water dive. The waters that day were brutally cold. He sank ten feet or so three times in heavy pilot gear and fought his way back to the surface but didn't think he'd survive a fourth dunking. But Austrian civilians saw him in the water, and two boats raced to his aid. In fact, two women outdistanced a surviving male (a teenager at the time) who was rowing toward the downed pilot and plucked him from the water.

Which was eerily reminiscent of my dad's closest call in the war. He strafed a German ship in Naples harbor, got away with it, and decided to attempt a second pass. They blew him out of the sky and he had to ditch in the water. Same crisis. P-47 diving nose first toward the bottom and an over-clothed pilot struggling to stay afloat with one leg full of shrapnel. He got rescued by a Navy PT boat, which braved all kinds of enemy fire to salvage my dad from what he called "the stupidest thing I've ever done." He never regarded the Purple Heart he received as anything but a dunce cap.�

I can see his point. That's how he was. Surprised and mortified when he wasn't entirely sensible. But it's not sensible to volunteer for what you've coldly determined is the most dangerous role in the war, is it? That part he never successfully explained away.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Tired, Hot, and Ready for the Nasty

MOWING. Today I mowed half the grass. One acre down, one to go. Not as young as I used to be. The cut above struck me just right. I think one of the younger commenters told me I needed to hear the Zac Brown Band to avoid being an old fart. Done! I like it. But maybe I'm the only one who remembers the Marshall Tucker Band. Come to think of it, I want to go play pool in a no-good dive bar. I know the perfect one. They'll have this on the jukebox:

And I'll beat the locals at 8-ball. Like a drum. Like I always do. There's good. And then there's better. Life is a great big pitcher of cold beer.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Sometimes Spring
Comes Slowly...

This year the snow was measured in feet, not inches.

GLOBAL SEASONING. The spring rains were like the winter snows, unusually heavy. We had lakes in the yard for weeks and the grass grew and grew and the garden became a jungle. All you can do under such circumstances is wait for better days. They always come in time, just not always in the time you want. A week ago we started turning the corner. I was able to do the first cut, but only at the highest mower setting (just south of more chewed than mowed). But it was progress. Then there was the sad story of Penny I told you about the other day. Nature is a perverse bitch sometimes. She punishes, she teases, she injures you, and then suddenly she smiles like a siren. This is what we saw out back just two hours after consigning Penny to the ground.

We've had all kinds of shows here over the years -- turkeys, red-tailed hawks, competing groundhog studs holding court from under separate outbuildings, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, and a gazillion songbirds, including the world's reddest cardinal, but apart from tracks we'd never seen deer from our bay window. Until last weekend.

Maybe needless to say, the deerhound commenced to bark from his inside post, but after a few pauses and ear swivels, the visitors continued to make themselves at home munching on our overgrown greens. We watched them for twenty minutes or more. Then they meandered away. More like vanishing than leaving.

Meanwhile, Mrs. CP was (almost) equally mesmerized by the results of her new "two-feeder" strategy for attracting goldfinches, which at times had as many as ten of the yellow ones chowing down at the same time. Here's the video she was able to record, well under the peak number but you know how it goes when you're trying to photograph amazing events. The key players rarely cooperate. Your guess is as good as mine with respect to the samba soundtrack. But it's certainly cheerful, and we both needed cheerful.

The nature of a country weekend. I guess.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The War Continues

Chaz Bono hates liberty.

THE BATTLE LINES. Because I'm in a nasty mood, liberals and conservatives can very roughly be broken down like this: Libs love the First Amendment and hate the Second, Conservatives love the Second but hate the First.

Conservatives endorse the hell out of your right to bear arms-- the NRA recommends each home have 4 armor-piercing shotguns for each resident-- but like to pretend that the First Amendment doesn't apply to sex speech or swears. Libs, who hate torture except when it comes to logic, titty-twist semantics every which direction on the compass rose to get the first clause of the Second Amendment's only sentence-- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"-- to somehow abrogate the second-- "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." On the bright side, they'll let you swear and blaspheme all you want on the fateful day IRS agents are authorized lethal force.

Granted, that's not purely fair. Lots of lefties would love to outlaw any speech that runs remotely afoul the oh-so fragile feelings of minorites, and too many on the right buy into Obama's "common sense" infringments of gun rights. And if you fairly (but why?) weighed the pros and cons of each side, one would come out the clear winner. But, broadly, this is how the two groups can be lumped. Very lumpily lumped.

That makes Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan rarer than a blue whale sighting. It's not every day that a public servant comes out against both the First AND Second Amendments. She's not even a freedom of expression Hollywood liberal. She's a full-on statist. Her article in the University of Chicago (yikes) Law Review, Kagan made a chilling case for "redistribution of speech."

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said the high court should be focused on ferreting out improper governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases, arguing that the government�s reasons for restricting free speech were what mattered most and not necessarily the effect of those restrictions on speech....

It gets worse. She goes on to outline a code of plausible deniability for judicial and legislative Constitutional violations.

Laws that only incidentally affect speech are constitutional, Kagan said, because the government�s motive in enacting them is not the restriction of First Amendment freedom but the prohibition of some other � unprotected � activity.

She argues in the piece that a law banning fires in public places is not unconstitutional, even if it means that protesters cannot burn flags in public. A law outlawing flag burning protests, however, would be, because the motive is to stop a particular protest.

How Kantian. Her whole argument rests on a robust defense of good intentions. Sadly, we can't even credit her with those when it comes to the Amendment statists love to hate.

Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man�s appeal. The man�s �sole contention is that the District of Columbia�s firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to �keep and bear arms,�� Kagan wrote. �I�m not sympathetic.

We don't need to see some thesis she wrote 30 years ago. We don't need to uncover her already-ill-veiled sexual procrivilities. We don't need to carp over military recruiters on campuses like it's nineteen sixty goddamn five. We definitely don't need some taxpayer-funded pagentry where she lies non-stop about her judicial philosophy. It's obvious what she believes. She holds government as the force for good in society, and therefore any restraint on government as restraint on good. We can predict with 99 and 44/100 percent accuracy the parts of her record that will come to light in the next few weeks.

5/20: An op-ed Kagan wrote in her hometown paper surfaces. In it, she argues that the Third Amendment does not offer "unlimited protection" against the compulsory quartering of soldiers during peacetime.

5/21: While giving lip-service to the necessity and validity of the Fourth Amendment, Kagan, in a text message commenting on then-recent DEA raids, takes an exceptionally narrow view of the Amendment's limitations. "BRDN IS ON DFNDNT 2 PRV SEARCH R SEIZR UNREASNBL ["The burden is the the defendant to prove a search of seizure was unreasonable"]," the softball-playing, bemulleted non-lesbian texted a colleague. "GVRNMNT WDNT BRK INT YR HOUS IF THY DNT HV A GOOD REASN WD THY LOL KTHXBI ["It's not like the government would break into your house or wherever if they didn't have a good reason. I mean, duh."]"

5/24: In a 1995 keynote for the Center for American Progress: "The whole concept of Double Jeporardy is an outmoded relic from a more paranoid and turbulent age. Everyone makes mistakes, and governments are no exception. If new evidence comes to light, why shouldn't The People be permitted to go to trail again for the same offense?"

And so on down to the Eighth. We already know what she'll do with the Ninth and Tenth: Fold them into paper airplanes and sail them into the nearest open wood chipper (uh, not that she's butch or anything).

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan successfully argued the government's case in front of the Supreme Court. Kagan in January compared the government's power to commit sexual predators to its power to quarantine federal inmates whose sentences have expired but have a highly contagious and deadly disease.

"Would anybody say that the federal government would not have Article I power to effect that kind of public safety measure? And the exact same thing is true here. This is exactly what Congress is doing here," she said.

The lower court's judgement was reversed seven to two. Only Justice Thomas and his kid sidekick Scalia understood the principle at stake.

Nothing in the Constitution "expressly delegates to Congress the power to enact a civil commitment regime for sexually dangerous persons, nor does any other provision in the Constitution vest Congress or the other branches of the federal government with such a power," Thomas said.

The other three conservatives on the bench? They couldn't give a crap. There's no way they're ignorant of the principle. No way Thomas didn't try to explain it to his unworthy colleagues-- unless his patience is already fried by their past obstinance.

IF THEY WON'T DEFEND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND (THEREFORE) SEVERELY LIMITED GOVERNMENT, WHAT THE HELL GOOD ARE CONSERVATIVES?

Domninion vs. liberty. Protection by government vs. protection from government. This is the conflict sifting up through the noisy silt of our cracked and crumbled national contention. It's clear what side Elena Kagan's on.

The wrong one.

Semi-Fisking Michael Kinsley

KINSLEY'S HAD HIS MOMENTS. I don't have any particular animus against Michael Kinsley. He and Jeff Greenfield were regular foils on William F. Buckley's old Firing Line show, and they distinguished themselves as clever, learned debaters with good manners and a healthy sense of humor. I've since seen Kinsley in less civil forums, but I could at least imagine having dinner with him and enjoying the conversation. Which makes him a rare bird in today's lefty flock. But he's written a column (h/t Hotair) I think deserves the level of attention known as a fisking. Which I will now proceed to do; however, he makes a few points I agree with, and I will call those out just as I will the many instances where I believe he is either wrong or misrepresenting the facts for purposes of political advocacy. Let's get started. Plain type is Kinsley. Italics are InstaPunk.

My Country, Tis of Me
There�s nothing patriotic about the Tea Party Patriots.

By Michael Kinsley

The right-wing populist Tea Party movement has politicians of both parties spooked. Democrats fear it will bring so many Republicans to the boil, and then to the voting booth, that they will lose control of Congress. Republicans fear the movement will frighten away moderates and leave their party an unelectable, ideologically extreme rump. It's by no means clear that the Tea Party movement is "right-wing." It's an easy pejorative label, to be sure, but pay attention later on when Kinsley undermines his own unsubstantiated assumption. The press, both alarmed and delighted by this political force that sprang from nowhere, is eager to prove its lack of elitism and left-wing bias by treating the Tea Party activists with respect. This is an absurd and utterly false statement. The headline of MSM coverage of the Tea Party folks is the tone of absolute contempt that has predominated in their reporting, and non-reporting from Day One. Journalists also sincerely appreciate having something new to write or talk about. It is in their interest to keep this story going. No. They don't "appreciate having something new to write or talk about" if that something new is critical of President Obama. It might be "in their interest to keep this story going," but the narrative of the MSM's rapid decline in recent years is full of instances in which political bias has prevented newspapers and networks from pursuing stories that were in their interest to cover. In sum, this is a completely empty lead paragraph, which doesn't bode well for Kinsley's argument.

A Harris poll released the last day of March reported that a third of all adults support the Tea Party, and slightly less than a quarter oppose it. Do they know what they are supporting, or opposing? The movement is not yet united on a single platform or agenda, like Newt Gingrich�s 1994 Contract With America, which started as a triumph and ended as an embarrassment. That's a pretty (conveniently) simplistic assessment of the Contract with America. The only reason it was an embarrassment was that the contract was not fulfilled, which it might have been if the MSM hadn't been such a willing accomplice in destroying Newt Gingrich. But let's move along to larger points.� The lack of specifics allows anyone who is just existentially fed up (and who isn�t, on some days?) to feel right at home. No one will demand to know what he or she is fed up with. True. Lots of unhappy people. So why are they automatically assumed to be right-wing? Especially, given that polls show high percentages of Independents and Democrats in addition to Republicans? On Web sites and in speeches, Tea Party Patriots reveal a fondness for procedural gimmicks (like a ban on congressional earmarks), constitutional amendments (term limits, balanced budget), and similar magic tricks or shortcuts to salvation. Apart from a general funk, though, the one common theme espoused by TPPs is the monstrous danger of Big Government. Sly capitalization there, Michael. As if Big Government were simply a made-up label, like your 'right-wing' characterization in the first sentence of your essay.Well done. But seriously, name something -- anything -- in the U.S. that is more 'monstrous' than the federal government. After all, 'monstrous' to most people signifies large, threatening and uncontrollable. If that's the one common theme, maybe it isn't ideological so much as existential. People of many political stripes are afraid of a government that was already big getting much much bigger and imposing more and more of its will on the citizenry. Even Michael Kinsley must know that the will of any government is exercised by force. The force of law, taxation, regulation, and policing. It's deluded to think of the adjective 'monstrous'? Really?

The Tea Party movement has been compared (by David Brooks of The New York Times, among others) to the student protest movement of the 1960s. Even though one came from the left and the other from the right, both are/were, or at least styled themselves as, a mass challenge to an oppressive establishment. That�s a similarity, to be sure. But the differences seem more illuminating. I agree. Absolutely. But probably not in a way you'd like.

First, the 1960s (shorthand for all of the political and social developments we associate with that period) were by, for, and about young people. The Tea Party movement is by, for, and about middle-aged and old people (undoubtedly including more than a few who were part of the earlier movement too). The second statement is so false as to amount to a lie. I'll explain later. If young people discover a cause and become a bit overwrought or monomaniacal, that�s easily forgiven as part of the charm of youth. uh, no. I was there, Michael. It was never charming. Smelly, stupid, selfish, and sordid, yes. Charming, no. When adults of middle age and older throw tantrums and hold their breath until they turn blue, it�s less charming. Less charming than Abby Hoffman, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn, and Bill Ayers? Well, strike me pink.

Second, although the 1960s ultimately spread their tentacles throughout the culture and around the world, politically there was just one big issue: ending the war in Vietnam. Right. More about this later. No such issue unites the Tea Party Patriots. You mean, apart from a government that is aggressively intruding itself into every aspect of the economy and private life? Which isn't an issue because you spell big government with a little 'b' and a little 'g'? You might guess from some of their materials on the Web that the repeal of health-care reform is the TPPs� Vietnam, their towering cause. But even for devoted TPPs, stripping health insurance away from people who�ve just gotten it is unlikely to summon the same passions that the activists of the 1960s brought to stopping a misguided war. Observe debater's tricks in action: the war is assumed to be 'misguided.' What if Tea Partiers assume an unfunded federal takeover of the healthcare business is also 'misguided'. But there is no rhetorical consistency here. Opposing trillions of dollars spent on a new entitlement that will inevitably increase costs and reduce quality and personal choice is reduced to "stripping health insurance away from people who�ve just gotten it." Kewl. Not only do TPPs not have one big issue like Vietnam�they disagree about many of their smaller issues. What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal. Just a reminder: we entered this essay with the flat-out assertion that Tea Partiers are right-wing, which, to me sounds very much like an ideological determination. "Abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling" not so much. That would be more, uh, emotional, wouldn't it, Michael?

The antiwar movement also worked, sort of. As did the civil-rights movement that preceded it. Antiwar protests ultimately turned the establishment itself against the war, though extracting us from it still took years. And millions of Indochinese lives. By contrast, the Tea Party Patriots, I predict, are just the flavor of the month: the kind of story that the media are incapable of not exaggerating. Because there's nothing to see here when law-abiding citizens are so alarmed that they rally in hundreds of thousands in the streets, so please move on and stop impeding the traffic. The antiwar movement and the 1960s changed America in numerous ways forever. You got that right. It got us our first marxist president. The Tea Party Patriots will be an answer on Jeopardy or a crossword-puzzle clue. Remember to phrase your preemptive, prejudicial answer in the form of a question.

A final difference: although the 1960s featured plenty of self-indulgence, this wasn�t their essence. It wasn't just their essence; it was their totality. Their essence was selfless and idealistic: stopping the war; ending racism; eradicating poverty. Good Lord. What a load of crap. You libs like Occam's Razor. Here's the simplest thought experiment: remove the draft and there is no sixties protest movement. Game, set, match. Selfless? What kind of childish romantic are you, Michael? These goals and some of the methods for achieving them may have been childishly romantic or even entirely wrongheaded, but they were about making the world a better place. Oh. That kind. The Tea Party movement�s goals, when stated specifically, are mostly self-interested. Time to note what Michael has deliberately and systematically omitted from his characeterization of Tea Party issues -- the outrage about exponentially increasing deficit spending. The oldsters who carry signs about the crimes being committed against their grandchildren in the form of gigantic federal debt are 'self-interested' are they? Quite the opposite. They'll be dead and buried long before the real bill comes due. And they lack poetry: cut my taxes; don�t let the government mess with my Medicare; and so on. I say �self-interested� and not �selfish� because pursuing your own self-interest is not illegitimate in a capitalist democracy. How kind of you to nod, however briefly, in the direction of the economic system that made this country the richest in history. (Nor is poetry an essential requirement.) Aww. I'm starting to get tearful now. Poetry isn't actually required of the citizens who want to tell their government that too much spending and regulation is too much spending and regulation. Surely, they could take a course in iambic pentameter or something... But the Tea Party�s atmospherics, all about personal grievance and taking umbrage and feeling put-upon, are a far cry from flower power. Wow. WOW. This sentence should be included in all future dictionary definitions of 'hubris.' The intent is to make the orderly, peaceful demonstrations that are Tea Parties look wicked compared to the excrement-throwing unwashed anarchists of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Good luck with that, Michael. There is a nasty, sour, vindictive tone to the Tea Party that certainly existed in the antiwar movement and its offspring, but never dominated the atmosphere created by these groups. Huh? "Never dominated the atmosphere vreated by these groups"? I take back what I said in my previous fisk interpolation. This is the sentence that should be included in all future dictionary definitions of 'hubris.'

Some people think that what unites the Tea Party Patriots is simple racism. I doubt that. Good of you. But the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. I agree. It's what's called alarm annunciation. Like setting off a fire alarm in a burning building. It doesn't put out the fire. But it identifies a problem. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing (it isn't) or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories (it mostly isn't), and not because of racism (had to sneak that one in despite the pass you supposedly gave it, eh?), but because of the movement�s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault. You're going to have to prove that particular assertion, kemo sabe.

�Personal responsibility� has been a great conservative theme in recent decades, in response to the growth of the welfare state. It is a common theme among TPPs�even in response to health-care reform, as if losing your job and then getting cancer is something you shouldn�t have allowed to happen to yourself. I'm taking notes here, so help me out: Who said that, where, and when? I'll help you string'em up. But these days, conservatives far outdo liberals in excusing citizens from personal responsibility. Come again? Can I have a video of you saying that with a straight face? To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great �other,� a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. Here's the essay I'd like to see: Michael Kinsley explaining why this pair of sentences isn't 100 percent accurate. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. TIME OUT: Just so none of you miss it. The man is telling us that democratic dissension is anti-democratic. After all, who elected this monster? uh, you mean, who elected the EPA and the IRS and the FCC and the SEC and the Federal Reserve and Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and the FDA and... Well? Who did?

This kind of talk is doubly self-indulgent. Doubly. Kewl. First, it�s just not true. What's not true? Losing our essay skills, are we? Second, it�s obviously untrue. Oh. Obviously. The government�s main function these days is writing checks to old people. You could have fooled me. I thought the government's main function these days was to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready projects, nationalize the banking, automotive, insurance, healthcare, and energy industries, and begin the arduous task of telling Americans what to eat, what they're allowed to consume in the way of information sources, and what kind of hazardous lightbulbs they have to install in their bedlamps. Silly me.� These checks allow people to retire and pursue avocations such as going to Tea Party rallies. I've got it. Let's kill'em with death panels BEFORE they can retire to such seditious 'avocations.' This basic fact about the government is no great secret. In fact, it�s a huge clich�, probably available more than once in an average day�s newspaper. But the Tea Party Patriots feel free to ignore it and continue serving up rhetoric about �the audaciousness and arrogance of our government,� and calling for the elimination of the Federal Reserve Board or drastic restraints on the power of the Internal Revenue Service. Seriously. This is the oldest liberal wheeze in the book. They've taken your money your whole working life for Social Security, which is NOT optional, but then because you accept the checks you're a hypocrite for thinking the government shouldn't saddle your children and grandchildren with more debt than their expected lifetime incomes.� But guess what? That's the definition of totalitarian logic. Once we make you dependent on us, you have no right to resist us on any of the myriad ways we intend to rule your lives. Thank you, Michael, for explaining 'democracy' to us hypocritical rubes.

�I like what they�re saying. It�s common sense,� a random man-in-the-crowd told a Los Angeles Times reporter at a big Tea Party rally. Then he added, �They�ve got to focus on issues like keeping jobs here and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.� These, of course, are projects that can be conducted only by Big Government. If the Tea Party Patriots ever developed a coherent platform or agenda, they would lose half their supporters. This is where I agree with Kinsley. But it's also where he exposes the fallacy of his entire argument. The Tea Party is not an ideological movement. Let me repeat that. The Tea Party is not an ideological movement. It's not even a party. It's a protest, an exercise in democratic dissension. It's not Republican as he tacitly admitted in his opening paragraph. It's a vigorous free expression of the loss of trust in government. It is anti-incumbent. It's a basic, utterly pragmatic "throw the bums out" movement. And unfortunately for all the intellectual liberals who presume to know more about everything than we do, the list of "bums" includes the whole damn federal establishment. Republican, Independent, Democrat, whatever, the Tea Partiers don't believe the government's claims that they can make everything better if they can just have a lot more money and control. Period.

Principled libertarianism is an interesting and even tempting idea. If we wanted to, we could radically reduce the scope of government�defend the country, give poor people enough money to live decently, and leave it at that. But this isn�t the TPP vision. The TPP vision is that you can keep your Medicare benefits and balance the budget by ending congressional earmarks, and perhaps the National Endowment for the Arts. A bullshit summation. Didn't he just say it was impossible to define a Tea Party agenda? He did. So where does this bit of omniscient reduction come from? Out of his ass.

What is most irksome about the Tea Party Patriots is their expropriation of the word patriot, with the implication that if you disagree with them, you�re not a patriot, or at least you�re less patriotic than they are. Standard liberal whining. If they ever thought about how paranoid they get when anyone uses the word 'patriot,' they might realize they're hyper-sensitive because of, um, guilt. Without getting all ask-notty about it, I think a movement labeling itself patriotic should have some obligation to demonstrate patriotism in a way other than demanding a tax cut. That sounds good, doesn't it? Provided you think American prosperity flows from the government, not the people who create the wealth governments appropriate and piss away. In their rhetoric, the Tea Party Patriots do not sound as if they love their country very much: they have nothing but gripes. The gripes are against an accelerating federal government grab of money, power, and personal liberty. Yes, of course, these are gripes against the government, not against the country itself. But that distinction becomes hard to maintain when you have nothing good to say about the government and nothing but whines to offer the country. Really. Well, you're the hands-down expert on 'whines.' That I freely concede. But I'm less clear on why we have to say nice things about the government whenever we also want to criticize it. Is that like pretending Islamic radicalism has nothing to do with terrorism? Or not offending a carjacker who wants to rape our wife and daughters because then he might get really mad? Maybe so. But a lot of us are wondering what the difference might be these days between a government that's really mad and vicious and the one we're seeing every day in Washington, DC. That could maybe be your next brilliant essay to us flyover morons.

Times are tough, and some sympathy is due. True. You have our sympathy, Michael. You used to know how to write and think and like that. We're sorry for your loss. Still, times have always been tough for many folks for one reason or another, and people didn�t always resort so quickly to all-purpose bellyaching, did they? Who didn't? You libs always did, immediately and utterly. But in recent years inchoate rage against the government has almost become part of our civic religion: the short list of values we all do share. To say, �Yeah, the government�s okay by me,� or even to express gratitude for a country that sends you a Social Security check and pays your medical bills, actually does seem almost un-American. Our new national motto is from the movie Network: �I�m as mad as hell and I�m not going to take this anymore.� And what is �this�? Ask not. Jeez. Did you actually read what you're closing on here? Or were you going to get around to that after you and all the other libs finally read the Arizona immigration bill? "Yeah, the government's okay by me." That's what you closed on. You have our (tea and) sympathy.

If I didn't respect Kinsley so much, I might have gotten rough with him. Thankfully, I overcame the temptation.

UPDATE. More thoughts on Kinsley and the Tea Party phenomenon from Doc Zero.

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