I notice a trend around these parts to follow in the footsteps of those who predict the imminent implosion of dinosaur or zombie media.  True, newspaper after newspaper is folding, fewer and fewer people are getting their news from television and radio news sources and so forth.

But.

Radio was going to kill the newspaper.  It didn’t.

Television was going to kill radio and the newspaper.  It didn’t.

The internet has been just about to kill radio, television and the newspaper for a few years now.  And (you guessed it!) it hasn’t.

Old technologies hardly ever go away completely.  There are still buggy whip manufacturers, for instance, although now most of their clientele is in San Fransisco, featured in a Zombie Time special, usually.  Despite the advent of digital video, you can still buy movie film, yes movie film, if you know where to look.  Despite the advent of digital still images that are finally almost as good as 35mm negative film (Don’t get me started on the superiority of slide film.  Just don’t.), Fuji, Kodak and Ilford are still being sold in reasonable quantities from Adorama and B&H.  Sure, you can no longer get them in the 20 pack as you once could, but the 5 pack is nearly as convenient.

There are even damned fools wasting their time learning how to knap flint spearheads and hunt boars the really old fashioned way.

I bet most of them vote Republican.

I often say (jokingly, of course) that Pol Pot had the right idea in his approach to academics.  I also like to point to Little Matty Yglesias as a prime reason to burn Harvard to the ground and salt the furrows.  Again, a jest.

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to find the whole situation funny, what with this kind of bullshit going on.  If any Left-leaning institution is in trouble enough to make it to the NYT, you know that there’s a whole lot more shame to be discovered.  Anyone who doubts that academics rip off the rest of by sleazing up to the government teat, which we pay for with our tax dollars, only need read this article with a critical and jaundiced eye to finally get it.

Hat tip Insty.

The one thing I absolutely despise about today’s American Left is their absolute shameless cowardice.  These people are deathly afraid of admitting that they are communists, now that 90 years of history has shown communism and it’s retarded little brother socialism to be utter failures as methods of government.  Ask any member of the House of Representatives if they are a socialist and in almost every case you’d get a firm “Hell No!”

But 70 of them are, according to the Socialist Party of America.

70 out of the 255 Democrats are actually Socialist.  Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

If I wanted to taste the barrel the wine came in, I’d chew on an oak branch.  The French are the worst wine makers on the planet!

Not much to connect the two, is there?  Well, there wouldn’t be in a sane world.  But we live in Bizarro World, where someone who has yet to do anything of significance can become pResident with 52% of the popular vote.  Two years in, we’re still waiting for that numbskull to do anything significant that is also good.  I imagine we’ll be waiting for quite some time.

The latest immigration idiocy had me a bit flummoxed, I’ll admit.  There is no reason for a pResident to take such a wildly unpopular stance on the subject, to the point of bringing lawsuit against a state for enforcing Federal Law.  These actions have pretty much guaranteed that his party will lose both the House and the Senate, and there’s a good chance that any Governor that supports him will lose their next re-election bid as well.

So why?

That Dimocrats are economically illiterate is, by this point, simply beyond argument.  It is as self-evident as the Rights enumerated by our Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Bear that in mind, when you’re trying to figure out why these power-mad morons are doing whatever it is they’re doing.

Deep down inside, Obumblefuck knows it too.  But he’s in a bind.  He can’t ask the Republicans for advice (not that the current crop in Washington would be much help), and he certainly can’t be seen to do nothing, as that is anathema to the average Dim.  So he’s trying to pump up the economy the same way Slick Willie and Greenspan did, by inflating the housing market.  The problem is, there isn’t enough demand for houses, and there won’t be, as there just aren’t enough Americans that need them.

So he’s up to his usual tricks of circumventing the law (legal immigration, in this case) to achieve his goals.  Damn the soaring crime rate, we need people who can purchase houses!   Damn the integrity of our country, we need home buyers!  Damn the meaning of citizenship, just give us another housing bubble!

Or so he thinks.  Eight Governors have already joined with Arizona’s Jan Brewer, and I don’t think that train is quite full yet.  If the FedGov doesn’t get on board with the States posthaste, we may see a whole lot less FedGov a whole lot sooner than we ever could have hoped and dreamed.

Edited: The second to last paragraph was unclear and obnoxious.  Some will still find it obnoxious, but at least they’ll be clear on the reasons why.

Now maybe we can find a more manly sport to obsess over.

Like knitting.

Which descriptive of their Democratic Dirtbag Darling will the media use this week?

Startled?

Well, alright then.  Can’t say I think much of the ability of any analyst that was startled by that, but ok, if you insist.

Now this, my friends, is how an apology is done.  All the so called “leaders” we have in office could learn from this.

But it must be said.

Our refusal to agree with you does not in any way, I assure you, stem from failure on our part to understand what you are conceited enough to call your ideas.  We understand these brain-leavings of yours just fine.  I daresay any child able to write the alphabet, nay, any child with a rudimentary grasp of the everyday language of their society, understands your immature blathering.  Pretending we don’t just demeans you and (mildly) annoys us.

Nor is it ignorance.  We are a well read lot, actually being in class while you fine folks were still struggling to roll your hungover asses out of bed.

You may now skip directly to calling us evil, since that’s all the Fundamentalist Mindset has left.

Thatisall.

Here is the article from Instapundit to Reason.   Go read it, then come back for my rant.

Now – do you know why the contract specifications are that long?  Do you?  It isn’t because some drone somewhere thought it would be fun to write the specifications for a contract to those exacting requirements – it is because every army – since before Hammurabi (my WAG) has been utterly screwed when receiving supplies and equipment from authorized contractors.

Boots that wouldn’t last a week; blades that were as brittle as glass; rotten meat, weevilly bread, cordage that fell apart faster than clothesline, tents that couldn’t keep out dew, gunpowder that wouldn’t light – the list goes on as long as there have been militaries.  If you want to get exactly what you have ordered, then that contract has to be as precise as can possibly be – because all of the contractors are friends (and donators) to people who can get the contract assigned and cover for any deficiencies when they arise.

It has nothing to do with ‘idiot stupid government wanting to regulate everything because it can’ and everything to do with the military being sick and tired of getting the worst clapped out crapped out whoreson rerfuse ever foisted off in this sector of the galaxy since the last millenium began.  Just because some ‘friend’ of some one higher up got a contract and read it one plausible way when common-sense would read it another.

Go back and read history; read historical fiction; and you will find tales of supplies that were deadlier than any foe.

And that is where I have my problem with Libertarians.  They see a contract with the requirements written that way and say ‘just another example of stupid government’ when the real answer is ‘another example of writing a contract to protect the government from thieves’.  If you think that Ford Motor Co. doesn’t write supply contracts with very strict specifications; that Burger King does not write contracts with very strict specifications – then you are living in a fantasy world.  If you want to have the free market take its place, bidding for contracts, then you have to endorse the idea of a very detailed  contract being set forth with the bid so that the contractor knows what he must do, and the government can know what it can expect to receive.

And if you do not accept the government offering such a detailed contract to be bid upon, then you are fine with substandard provisions and equipment being procured and sent to various military units, and if you are fine with permitting substandard contractors weasel-room, then you can go fuck yourself – because I don’t agree with that.

It is detailed.  It isn’t an accident.  There is a very good reason that the contract is so detailed (see the cold record of history.)

And if after this rant you still can’t understand why there is such detail, then shove your latest issue of ‘Reason’ so far up your nether regions that you get paper cuts on your cerebral cortex.

I was over at The Other McCain today and read a piece called ‘Fun, Lighthearted and Accesible is OK, but how About Winning Elections?’  The discussion was on a new website, Ricochet, and Dan Riehl’s reaction to it.  Of course, read the whole thing, but Dan is more concerned, and Stacy shares the concern – that conservatives are more concerned with creating vehicles to propel themselves forward, to ’make stars’, then in actually winning elections.

I can say that I never identified the ‘make stars’ thing, but on reflection I can see that and the potential problem there – focussing solely on me, me, me isn’t going to get a conservative agenda going anywhere, and it certainly isn’t going to lead to the take-over of an electoral vehicle – a political party – that is necessary to electoral success.  (Of course, some people may not want electoral success because it is far more fun and far easier to be on the outside sniping and snarking than on the inside trying to make a policy work.)

Again – Dan and Stacy can discuss this better than I can.  What really struck my attention was in the comments.  Thrasymachus left this comment:  

Why should conservatives worry about winning elections? Conservatives have won plenty of elections and it hasn’t made any difference.

Conservative media figures do what they do as criticism of the system, without any real hope of changing it. Deep down I think conservatives are afraid of what would happen if they really did get control. What happened fronm 2001 to 2007 was seriously distorted by 9/11 and the war; but even so there is little reason to a conservative government would change anything. Too much power lies outside the control of government, in the judiciary, the media, and the educational establishment, to make much difference.

Stacy responded to this comment with his own:

If you believe that you can’t make a difference, that is a pretty good guarantee you won’t make a difference. Change begins with the belief that change is possible. As grim and discouraging as events may be, pessimism is never warranted, because pessimism is an argument for doing nothing.

This is something that I have seen on other sites – HotAir and Ace for examples.  There will be these commenters who are The True Conservative-servative-servative and are so rock-ribbed they bathe in battery acid and scrub their patriotic chests with steel wool.  And so many of them are so pessimistic I wonder why they just don’t go and suck start a .38 and get it all over with already.  I am sure you have read them – the Democrats will cheat and win; ACORN will steal the election; the media will lie and sheeple will believe it all; the Republicans will blow it as always; RINO’s will betray us; the teachers will poison our children against us; and so on forever and ever.  A litany of villains and evils assailing the ‘True Conservatives’ so that no conservative will ever be able to win an election – and even if a conservative does win an election that conservative is not sufficiently conservative.

These ‘True Conservatives’ are just like Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, they have worked themselves into such a despair that even if they are actually loyal and not a traitor of any kind they are having the same effect as a traitor.  Their pessimism and gloom drives down the spirits of others and makes it more difficult for any fight to be taken to the progreesive left, let alone to win that fight.  In my view these ‘True Conservative’ Denethor’s are more deadly than any ACORN or any biased MSNBC because they try and convince others to do nothing – and doing nothing is what the progressive left desires from the right.

More and more I am thinking that these pessimists, these Denethors need to be called out on their doom and gloom whenever and where ever encountered.  Because they certainly ain’t helping, and if you aren’t helping, then you are hurting, and if you are hurting, then you are an enemy.

Last Friday I was at a sports bar after work. Yes, I was drinking beer (PBR) and watching the big screens, and using the net because this place has wi-fi.  Then an infomercial went up for Time-Life Records.

Yes, it seems they are still in business.  Anyhow, as it was going on I started an e-mail to my little brother.  This is my rambling commentary while watching this infomercial:

This post at HotAir caught my eye.  Read the whole thing.

Done?  Okay, just after thinking a few minutes I can see some tactical and strategic positives to these developments:

1)  Boots On The Ground:  They ain’t ours and ain’t NATO’s.  Various other African countries are providing the troops and good for them.  No coffins returning to the USA for the liberal bedwetters’ to wet themselves over in eager anticipation.  I am certain they will be disappointed they won’t have the bloody shirt (and the box it is in) to wave about.*

2) Somalians Fighting Somalians:  I cannot say that I am heartbroken.  Brigands fighting brigands, pirates fighting pirates – and each ratting the other out to various joint task forces for revenge-on-the-cheap?  I approve.  Heck – it isn’t like that hasn’t happened before in the world – darn near predictable here if you get the right stage set.

3) Concentrating Bad Guys:  Putting large numbers of them in a narrow place where both sea and air power can be used against them is always to our advantage.

That’s all I can think of right now.

*Obama may be President, but the ‘true believers’ are very disappointed because he is still blowing up foreigners in the name of the USA – and if they could find enough coffins to go all weepy over they would.

Comes from being so widely read (oh, that it were well instead of widely!), I suppose.  Does the following sound familiar to anyone?  I said it recently, but as I did I kept feeling like I was quoting or paraphrasing someone.

“My friends are neither so dear nor so rare that I will tolerate their
impugning my integrity. Should you mistreat me, you shall be astonished
by the swiftness with which I replace you, oh false friend!”

Sounds almost classical like, don’t it?  And we all know I ain’t that lyrical!

One of the main Conservative arguments against the idiotic social experiments of the Left is that government, once expanded, never again retracts.  It’s a valid point, but all too many are using it as an argument against trying for the repeal of the latest HRC monstrosity.

Prohibition was repealed, and so too can this be.

Now why don’t we all try manning up a bit and keep fighting this thing?

What are the Democrats going to do when the last white male in the party gets over the “white guilt” that inspired them to vote for Obama, and leaves the party?  Certainly they can’t go through life as The Party of Wymyn, though they’ve tried hard enough till now to prove their utter pussitude.

To All Evil Minions:

There is a mandatory training session scheduled for all minions - and no, a dentist appointment or a family member’s funeral won’t get you out of this.

Why?  You can blame minions #43 and #52 for this – or take it out on their surviving family members.  Let me drop this little hint across your futuristic-styled helmets:

If you have the hero that is going to save the world from my plots, and you have him bound and gagged in an alpine chalet, and you are going to detonate the explosives to crush the chalet under an avalanche -

(a) shoot him in a vital spot like the head (the BIG head, you idiots – with your marksmanship you need directions like this); (b) start your snowmobiles before you trigger the avalanche.

If the Obama stimulus money wasn’t so good I would eliminate half of you and turn your corpses in for ‘Cash for Clunkers’ like the late, lamented OddJob did with a recalcitrant mafioso in that documentary I had you watch.

And any ‘Cash for Clunkers’ are not to be my Dubai registered vehicles.  Use your own craptacular Toyotas for that.

Some of you are going to get that joke.  Some of you are going to need to have it explained to you.

Dip dip dip.

Hat tip Insty.

“Trust science. By this we mean a true science, based on objectively established criteria and agreed foundations, with a rational methodology and mature criteria of proof – not the multitude of pseudo-sciences which, as we have seen, have marked characteristics which can easily be detected and exposed. Science, properly defined, is an essential part of civilization. To be anti-science is not the mark of a civilized human being, or of a friend of humanity. Given the right safeguards and standards, the progress of science constitutes our best hope for the future, and anyone who denies this proposition is an enemy of science.”–Paul Johnson, “Ten Pillars of Society”

Via Hot Air, the DNC’s Howard Dean:

“One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking. …People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.”

You mean using a single weather event like Hurricane Katrina? Not only did Democrats blame the storm on global warming, they blamed warming for Blackhawk Down!

We only began to mockingly cite storms as “proof” after years of this nonsense. Although the inevitable ice storm that follows every single Al Gore appearance is too settled to dismiss. The “debate” really is “over” on that.

Let’s start with the universally agreed-upon facts:

Dr. Dean is a doofus.

And he’s using “science” as a crutch. To him, science isn’t science, but merely something that “proves” all of his favorite policy preferences and attitudes. And attitudes are the opposite of science.

If you’re against everyone having their own nuclear weapons lab in their basement, are you “Anti-Science”?

Or have you instead just made a decision about the moral limits of applied science–just like those who oppose embryonic stem cell research?

California voters were told that if they only poured $3 billion down that rathole, it would take them to the Promised Land of jobs and cures. Turns out, it was bad ethics and bad science. And now they’re even more broke.

Let’s take Darwinism. Can science really tell you exactly what happened eons ago? Especially a science whose main talking point is about what is missing, i.e.; the Missing Link? As Chesterton put it:

They talk of searching for the habits and habitat of the Missing Link; as if one were to talk of being on friendly terms with the gap in a narrative or the hole in an argument, of taking a walk with a nonsequitur or dining with an undistributed middle.

The Other McCain:

We’re All ‘Bad Crazy’ Now

We note that, in announcing his parting of the ways with the Right, Johnson lumped “creationism” and ”climate change denialism” under the heading of “anti-science bad craziness,” suspiciously adjacent to “homophobic bigotry,” with all of these bad-crazy tendencies typified by the same personalities, including Sarah Palin and various figures of the Religious Right.

Hostility toward religion, and toward the traditional beliefs associated with religion, is a necessary correlation (if indeed it is not the origin) of fanatical Scientism. To deny the existence of God is to invalidate any supernatural authority in human affairs, which necessarily means that ultimate authority must reside in human hands. This all-encompassing human authority cannot be entrusted to religious people, as they do not accept the denial of God on which such authority is premised. So Christian conservatives like Sarah Palin and her supporters are viewed by the high priests of Scientism with a horror similar to what the mullahs of Iran reserve for the infidel.

What we are witnessing is therefore not actually an argument about what science has proven in regard to climate change or evolution or anything else. Rather, when we see defenders of the “consensus” seeking to employ government authority to impose policy based on claims of scientific expertise – while they insist that official recognition must be denied to skeptics who question such claims — we are witnessing a power-grab. Just as Lenin once made “All Power to the Soviets!” the slogan of the Bolsheviks, so now our own totalitarians cry, “All Power to the Scientists!”

Americans are instinctively suspicious of such tactics simply because these tactics express an anti-democratic impulse. Invoking the prestige of Science to carry an argument about public policy has the effect of disenfranchising everyone who is not a scientist.

Or a liberal. Which is the point.

Well, then how ’bout climate science? Mark Steyn:

Let Ian “Harry” Harris, who works in “climate scenario development and data manipulation” at the CRU, sum it up. Mr. Harris was attempting to duplicate previous results—i.e., to duplicate all that science that’s supposedly settled, and the questioning of which consigns you to the Climate Branch of the Flat Earth Society. How hard should it be to confirm settled science? After much cyber-gnashing of teeth, Harry throws in the towel:

“ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?

“OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

Thus spake the Settled Scientist: “OH F–K THIS.” And on the basis of “OH F–K THIS” the world’s enlightened progressives will assemble at Copenhagen for the single greatest advance in punitive liberalism ever perpetrated on the developed world.

The anecdotal link between scientists and their government funding and prestige is fairly strong.

The link between liberals and their desire to use “science” to further their pre-existing preference for Mega-Government is even stronger.

But the scientific evidence for the Lost Freedom Theory, the result of a Government Big Enough to Think It Can Control the Weather, is proven, settled and unfortunately, very repeatable.

Don’t be a Freedom-Denier.

If you want to clone, then clone. If you want to rule, then rule.

But quit calling your moral decisions and political policy preferences “science”.

You’re scaring the lab rats.

Vintage cool.  The benchmark.

Seriously – go to American Digest and check this out.

(And yes – the hat tip is to me.)

I tried my first Rye Whiskey tonight, Old Overholt.  If anyone knows some other good brands they like, put me some knowledge in the comments.  And don’t even bother with Ri.  I can fairly sense the pretentious nonsense rolling off those bottles in waves, and I’ll be damned if I pay $47.00 for 750ml just to look good.

Via Hot Air, it seems that White House Press secretary Robert Gibbs came prepared with a list written on his hand.  Just like Mrs. Palin had when she addressed the Tea Party Convention.

Let us just think about that:  Mrs. Palin wrote bullet-point issues on her hand as a prompt for a speech.  The White House reacts to this by having Mr. Gibbs (the White House spokesman) do the same.  To mock her.  To mock the irrelevant hickopotamus chillbilly moron VP candidate of the failed ticket.

Ummm, okaaaayyyyy.  She is so irrelevant that the White House does this.  So much a failure that the White House draws even more attention to her.

You know, it must totally suck to be the Unicorn Rider right now, to be compared all of the time to the Vice-Presidential candidate of the losing ticket.  To have Her name always tied to your name, to have all of your supporters and employees seeing Her – the utter quitterest failure of all time – as your greatest domestic political foe.

Obama’s OODA loop – She is in it.  And Her thumb is on the trigger.

(How soon before they claim that she is a Sith-Lady?)

UPDATE:  I said this in my prior post:

“I do not often make predictions, but I am going to guess that the White House is going to place her in their considerations when they make pronouncements or propose policy.”

Got that one right.

The last Democrat Party candidate for President Of The United States Of America can’t even talk to sixth graders without the assistance of a teleprompter, and I’m supposed to get worked up over Sarah Palin scribbling four notes on her palm?

Really?  At what point did you helmet wearing short bus window licking morons lose your Goddamned minds?

Here’s a fucking clue for you, sugartits: Ronald Reagan used to use 3×5 cards, stacks of them, to deliver a speech.  And yet, somehow, everyone with a brain continues to admire the hell out of that champion of human liberty.  Palin delivered a real barn burner from four notes scribbled on her palm.  Looks like she knows the material, so would you morons mind fucking right off?

For those who are not aware, it came out that Rahm Emanual called a number of Democrat Party supporters ‘fuckin’ retards’ over a plan to target moderate Democrat office holders.  Rahm is the Chief of Staff for President Obama and is one verbal tough-guy.  Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin called him out on that, using her facebook page.  She called for his resignation for insulting those who have mental problems and mental challenges.

Rahm apologized, but had a bit of work to get his apology to be accepted.  Rush Limbaugh used this on his show and used the word ‘retarded’ several times.  Mrs. Palin has said that this is also ‘crude and demeaning’.  (There goes the hypocrisy charge – she also called out Rush.  Who will likely apologize, because he knows it will keep the issue up for one more day.)

For someone who is an ignorant chillbilly, a resigned failure, and utterly irrelevant (as I have read elsewhere), Mrs. Palin has an uncanny ability to get inside the heads of other politicians, to make them react to her.  She has thrown the Obama Administration of its stride before through facebook; she has now made Rahm Emanual apologize, at least twice, for the same thing.  She is inside their OODA loop.  I do not often make predictions, but I am going to guess that the White House is going to place her in their considerations when they make pronouncements or propose policy.

Not bad at all; not bad at all.  Someone ought to let Katie Couric know that it seems Mrs. Palin has done some readings that are politically relevant.

Ann Althousehas a post up on a poll commissioned from Daily Kos about Republican beliefs.  I will link to Althouse and her commenters because (a) she does a good job of stirring the pot, (b) her commenters are entertaining, and (c) I won’t link to Kos (I mean – why bother?).

A few years ago I did a post on public polling, linking to the National Council on Public Polls, a polling industry organization.  Their website is good – the NCPP continues to call for transparency and high standards in polling and is well worth reading.  So read the NCPP site – especially its article on 20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results.   And read Althouse on this.

(BTW – I figured out that to get all the toolbar I had to begin a post, save, and then go into the post and edit.  Funny – but that seems to work.)