Hey, It's Only Rape

Let us revisit an NFL issue that is really about liberals. When the video of Ray Rice knocking out his fiancée in a New Jersey elevator hit the news, liberals went crazy and sanctimoniously demanded that anyone accused of domestic violence be immediately terminated and shunned by society without trial and rights be damned (“NO TOLERANCE!!”). I noted at the time that as always with liberals, this extreme reaction was just a knee-jerk response meant to satisfy their self-righteousness, and that before things were over, they would completely flip their “principled” positions. Not only did they do that, but now uber-liberal sportswriter Peter King is actually arguing that we should ignore serial rapes. No... I'm not kidding.

When the Rice issue first arose, every single liberal sportswriter I can name immediately dashed out columns trying to outbid each other on smug political correctness... Rice needs to be suspended! Suspended?! Heck, he needs to be banned for life! For life? You mean forever!! Hell yes! And the NFL needs to get back the money they paid him! And it doesn’t matter that his stupid fiancée doesn’t want him punished... victims can’t be trusted when they defend the accuser..

Essentially, no punishment was harsh enough. Rice’s rights meant nothing to these writers because they claimed that domestic abuse is such a horrible thing that ideas like innocence until proven guilty should be pushed aside. The allegation itself should be enough to destroy this man’s career and ban him for life, and shame on the NFL for not acting on this immediately!... that was the take every single liberal took on the subject.

But these are liberals who were doing the talking, and as I’ve pointed out many times, that means they make extremist snap judgments, which they immediately use as a way to smugly claim moral superiority and then judge conservatives harshly for not being as “enlightened” as they are. But they won’t stick to these extremist positions. To the contrary, they will reverse their position as the “fairness” of the situation shifts until they are actually taking the exact opposite position they originally took... though they will still wallow in their claims of moral superiority for taking the extremist position. Thus, when the situation is the powerful Rice versus a helpless woman, it is ok to punish Rice harshly because she is the victim. But once it becomes the powerful NFL versus the helpless Rice, then Rice becomes the victim and they see it as unfair to let the NFL harm him.

In this instance, it took a few days for the first liberal to break ranks. This liberal realized that by suspending Rice without a hearing, the NFL was harming the career of a young black man in violation of the union contract the NFL has with its players... and that’s just wrong. With a handful of additional players soon finding themselves suspended as well (this time without videos to bring out visceral emotions), the cabal of liberal sportswriters soon began to fret about the players’ rights and how the evil NFL was trampling all over them. Bad NFL! Why would you do such a thing?

Not only did these sportswriters attack the NFL for acting before all the evidence was in, but they wanted the NFL to wait to do anything until after the criminal trials were done. Moreover, they decided that banning a player for life was just too harsh. Why would the NFL ever think this was ok? In fact, not only was banning too much, but suspending the player with pay was considered too harsh according to these liberals. Yep. And they smugly proclaimed that they were the defenders of civil rights.

So that’s where things shook out. These liberal sportswriters claimed moral superiority because they took the principled position that someone accused of domestic abuse must be immediately terminated and shunned from society. Then they flipped that around when the NFL punished Rice and they claimed moral superiority for protecting the rights of Rice... the same rights they demanded to have stripped. Talk about ironic! And the whole time, they accused anyone who didn't agree with them of being evil. Amazing.

And now it gets worse.

Among the smuggest of these liberals was Peter King of Sports Illustrated. This guy is an obnoxious, brainless, groupthink-bound liberal who thrives on liberal smugness, all the while imagining that he is a moderate and that everyone except those crazy right-wingers must naturally agree with him. King went through the exact process outlined above, from demanding immediate execution without trial all the way to blasting the NFL for being too harsh. Now he’s done this...

King is one of the few voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And Darren Sharper is up for consideration this year for entry into the Hall. Who is Darren Sharper? Sharper is a defense back for the New Orleans Saints who arguably belongs in the Hall for what he did on the field. But there is another side to Sharper too. See, Sharper has been charged with drugging and raping three women in Los Angeles, two women in New Orleans and one woman in Arizona. Yep. He stands accused of drugging and raping six women!

Naturally, King is outraged by this and wants to keep him out of the Hall of Fame, right? I mean, if just the allegation of domestic abuse is enough to ban someone for life from the NFL without even waiting to see if the allegations are true and despite the pleas of the victim not to punish the player, then surely six separate rape allegations in three different states is enough to avoid giving a player the discretionary honor of being elected to the Hall of Fame, right?

Wrong.

King thinks the Hall of Fame voters need to ignore the rape allegations. Here is his reasoning:

I mentioned in this column last week that former Green Bay and New Orleans safety Darren Sharper would be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame for the first time in 2016. . .

Sharper stands accused of serial sexual assault in California, Arizona and Louisiana, in some cases by using drugs on the women he attacked.

So some media people, and quite a few fans, picked up on my note, and the reaction was intense: How can you consider a man sitting in jail, accused of drugging multiple women and raping them, for the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

I understand the emotion involved in a case like this. The crimes are deplorable and reprehensible, and if true, Sharper should be imprisoned for a very long time. [BUT]

To clarify the way the Pro Football Hall of Fame works, we have a bylaw that says we can consider only football-related factors in determining a candidate’s worthiness for election....

Maybe you would say: If a candidate is convicted of a felony, he cannot get into the Hall of Fame. Leaving the scene of an accident is a felony. Arson is a felony. Selling drugs is a felony. Animal cruelty is a felony. Should those crimes be enough to automatically eliminate a candidate?

Maybe you would say: Don’t complicate things! It’s obvious that a very serious crime, such as murder or rape, should bar a candidate from the Hall. Obvious to whom? There are 46 voters for the Hall of Fame. Do you want to leave it up to the conscience of each individual voter as to what constitutes a crime serious enough to ban a person from the Hall?

I don’t. The voters for the Hall of Fame should consider what a player did on the field, and the influences of a coach on the game and how many games he won, and the contributions that other figures have made to the sport.

Beyond that, the slope is far too slippery.

Did you see that? Some voters might think rape or murder is a serious enough crime to consider, but King sees that as too dangerous of a slippery slope. Hence, he argues that the voters need to do what the bylaws say and ignore these rapes. Isn’t it funny how he took such a harsh position (ban a player for life and end his economic career) because of a single punch, which the victim doesn’t even want punished, but when it comes to something far less live-affecting (being elected into an honor society), he argues that we should overlook serial rapes. Un... f*cking... believable.

The hypocrisy of this is stunning.

Moreover, keep in mind that the left loves to accuse the right of condoning rape. Outside of a couple of religious zealots, however, no one on the right has ever condoned a rape that I am aware of. Yet, here is smug liberal King doing just that: “Ignore the six rapes because he deserves this award!”

Welcome to the mind of liberals.

Thoughts?

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You Are Not Charlie

Three thoughts today that have come to bother me lately.

(1) Je suis Charlie. You may have noticed dozens of celebrities lately wearing buttons or designer t-shirts with the French phrase “Je suis Charlie” upon them. Translated, this phrase means: I am Charlie. And the idea in wearing this phrase is to show the world that the wearing celebrity supports the French newspaper and its staff who were brutally assassinated by Islamic extremists last week. This bothers me. Why?

Because there is an intense egotistical, self-centeredness to this phrase, which lets the wearer inject themselves into the event in a way that never happened. Indeed, rather than just stating their support for one side or the other, this phrase goes further and suggests that the attack was an attack on the celebrity themselves... as if this had been an issue dear to the heart of the celebrity and that they themselves were involved in it to such a degree that they too share the same or similar danger/risk as the victims because of their pursuit of this cause.

Yet, this is bunk. These celebrities never were involved in this issue. They weren’t there on that fateful date. They never supported this newspaper or its mission publicly before this. They never once showed an ounce of courage against these killers. They never even took their own opportunities to make bold statements of a similar nature – to the contrary, these cowardly celebrities typically condemned the paper and others like it for being “provocative” to Islam. But suddenly, through the wearing of the one button, they are not only claiming that they support Charlie’s mission, but that they are part of it. Bullsh*t.

Even worse, many of these cowards are calling each other “brave” for taking this very easy stand.

Now, I know that some of you are thinking that I’m splitting hairs, but this really does bother me. It is one thing to state support, it is quite another to claim a similar status. Indeed, consider this: if a mother loses a child, would it be appropriate for me to wear a button saying this was my child too or does that not seem that I am injecting myself too personally into something where I have no right to claim to speak for that level of intimacy with the event. And then to act that this is brave when the celebrity has done nothing more than wear a mass produced button shows a blindness to the difference between taking a stand and cynically wanting the world to think you took a stand.

Further, there has been a fascinating related story making the rounds. Lots of liberals are suddenly upset at a new McDonald’s commercial in which the company shows sign after sign where franchises put up signs of support for various tragedies and outrages, everything from the simple “We support our troops” to well wishes for Katrina victims to signs related to 9/11. These liberals are upset that McDonalds is “exploiting” these events to sell products. Yet, at the same time, they think it’s brave for their fellow actors to wear “Je suis Charlie” signs to up their publicity quotient, even as they have never once done anything to defend freedom of speech or freedom of worship against Islamic extremism.

How hypocritical is that? McDonalds actually puts its money where its mouth is by donating money, goods and time, by letting soldiers eat free, through the Ronald McDonald House, etc. These celebrities by comparison have done nothing... or have even been on the wrong side. How twisted is it to see the fake and false “Je suis Charlie” button as courageous, but then to condemn the McDonald’s commercial as exploitive. That’s bunk.

(2) Raising Breast Cancer Awareness. A similar issue involves the delusional, self-centered idea of “raising awareness” of breast cancer (or other causes). Millions of people get together each year to do things they enjoy, like holding dinners or participating in charity walks, and they do them in the name of “raising awareness” so that they feel they have done something special. But they haven’t.

Seriously, is there anyone who needs their awareness of breast cancer or AIDS or homelessness raised? Does anyone not know what these things are? And if there is, will some schlub walking through a park actually give them the knowledge they are missing? Hardly.

Sometimes these events are connected to fundraising, which is a valid (i.e. useful) form of charity, but many are not. Many simply traffic in the delusional idea that the participant has done something worthy of praise merely by seeking to “raise awareness.” This is pathetic. It is again this self-centered impulse to inject oneself into a tragedy and to demand praise for working to solve the problem, when the reality is that all the person did was wear a ribbon or button that changed nothing. It is pure arrogance to draw attention to yourself as somehow having worked to fix something when all you did was have a good time which resulted in zero positive effects toward solving the problem.

(3) Carving Trees Is Not Cool. Finally, in a related note, there is a commercial that just makes my hypocrisy radar explode. The entire premise of the commercial is about two people going into the woods to find a tree upon which they carved their initials when they first fell in love. The idea is to revel in how cute and romantic a gesture this is and how happy it makes them to revisit what they did years later... as they enjoy the product (some granola snack) of course.

What bugs me here is that at the bottom of the screen, these good liberals commercial makers write the following: “Carving trees is not cool.”

See why I’m annoyed? Here you have liberals lecturing us that we should not be carving anything into trees because that is morally wrong. Yet, at the same time, they are using the romanticism of carving your initials into a tree to sell their product. This is just like Hollywood telling us that guns are evil but then using gun violence to sell their films... or claiming to support freedom of expression against Islamic terrorism when the same people will turn around and lecture us on being “provocative” by using that freedom of speech... or condemning McDonalds for showing its signs of support while calling celebrities brave for wearing buttons that serve the exact same purpose as those McDonald’s signs.

Thoughts?

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Ha Ha Ha Harvard

Wow. Sometimes, it takes the eggheads a long time to catch up to what the rest of us already realize. This seems to be the case with the good liberals at Harvard, who are shocked that Obamacare is going to cost them more. Read these complaints and laugh that a supposedly super-intelligent person could only now be getting this...

The background is this. Harvard has decided that it will make its professors and staff pay more toward their own healthcare because of the changes Obamacare has caused. Not only did many of these same professors advocate for Obamacare, but some even helped draft it. Harvard economist David Cutler, for example, advised Obama on the law in 2008. He now notes that while Harvard remains a very generous employer, the school’s professorial ranks have so far avoided being asked to pick up the added costs Obamacare has imposed... until now.

Others are less sanguine about this.

Harvard Professor of classics, specifically Virgil, Richard Thomas slammed the higher fees he will be paying, calling them “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”

Wow. Ok, let’s start with that. For a highly paid Ivy League college professor to whine about higher costs being “regressive” is delusional. Costs are regressive when they are imposed on poor and middle class people, not people earning six figures and more. Did old Dick not realize when he and his rich friends pimped for this that the heaviest burden would fall on the middle class? Does this 1%er not realize that the rest of us have no sympathy for the tiny percentage increase he needs to bear when the rest of us have been ordered to pony up 20% of our incomes to satisfy his need to feel generous? A-hole.

As for the corporatization of the university, what did old Dick expect? His buddy Obama created a law that handed vast amounts of power to health insurance companies. In so doing, it slaughtered the freedoms of consumers, of doctors, and of hospitals. Should we really feel bad that Harvard has decided to act “more corporate” by passing along costs that Dick and his buds forced onto Harvard and the rest of the nation’s employers?

Mary “Dirty Froggy” Lewis, a professor of French history, has taken the lead against the cost increases, calling them “a salary reduction.” Le shock! Did she not understand that would be the effect when she and her buds imposed this law on the rest of working America?

She goes further too, noting that “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.” Uh, yeah. Was this unclear when you passed this? This law results in a massive monthly pay cut and then, to protect the vested corporate interests, forces you to pony up cold hard cash to meet your deductibles and out of pocket limits right at the point where you get sick. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, and it absolutely shouldn’t outrage the people who pimped for this.

Mary “Still, But Not Deep” Waters, a professor of sociology... whatever that really is, whined: “It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” and “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”

Wrong actually. The law sought to save money by shifting costs onto healthy people who wouldn’t otherwise buy insurance. It only whacks sick people because they are the ones trying to use this largely worthless coverage. As for the resources, Shallow Mary clearly doesn’t understand that when you impose a cost on something like a corporation, it tries to pass that on. Just as Mary would never accept a pay cut to let Harvard increase the salaries of the cleaning staff, Harvard will not take a pay cut just because Mary got a law passed to give her more health benefits.

As for the “what is the crisis” question, shouldn’t we all be asking that? Only 15% of Americans lacked health insurance, and every one of them still had a right to seek treatment. So where was the crisis? Moreover, with only 6.3 million people signing up out of 49 million, it’s pretty clear there never was a crisis. So Mary... STFU.

Ultimately, what’s really hilarious about this is the shock that these nasty changes they imposed on the rest of us 310 million saps are only intolerable now that they are applying to our elite brethren, who assumed they were immune from the consequences of their actions.

Kind of makes you smile, doesn’t it?

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The Left Assasinates Two Minority Cops

This weekend, an angry black male named Ismaaiyl Abdula Brinsley, walked up behind two New York City cops and assassinated them by shooting both in the head as they sat in their cruiser. The two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, were part of an initiative to help reduce the crime in city public housing by just maintaining a police presence that local residents could turn to for help. This was murder. And make no mistake, this was caused by leftists and race baiters like Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and Mayor de Blasio.

The murderer in question came from Baltimore to do his dirty work. On the way to New York City, he also shot an ex-girlfriend. Before he left, he wrote on Facebook that he intended to kill some "pigs" in retaliation for Michael Brown and Eric Garner... people he wouldn't even have known about if the left hadn't turned them into their latest grievance.

Naturally, the left jumped up and immediately tried to disassociate themselves from this double murder, but that's just evidence that they know they are at fault. Indeed, within hours, de Blasio, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and the families of Garner and Brown all issued statements that tried to shift the blame away from themselves. None of them actually condemned the murders. Indeed, de Blasio issued a statement that avoided any sort of condemnation. He spoke theoretically about how the police protect us from the "forces of criminality and evil" and how "it is an attack on the very concept of decency" when they are attacked. Notice that he never connects his theoretical opining with what happened to these two officers, he never mentions the event, and he never expressed outrage.

Holder was just as bad. Check out this non-committal statement: "Our nation must always honor the valor — and the sacrifices — of all law enforcement officers with a steadfast commitment to keeping them safe. This means forging closer bonds between officers and the communities they serve." Gee, did something happen? Is there something we should honor? Was there a sacrifice? Or does he just mean generically? Notice there is no mention of murder, outrage, families without fathers... all the things he would have raised if a cop had assassinated two drug dealers. Notice there is no promise of an investigation. There is no demand to find out what caused this thug to decide to murder two cops and to implement reforms accordingly.

The Brooklyn NAACP went even further in trying to make this sound like it was just a random event with no particular cause: "Gun violence continues to plague our city and we remain committed to working with both members of the community and law enforcement to address it in a nonviolent, peaceful, and productive way." Oh, so it was "gun violence"? It wasn't some thug who stated that he was coming to kill cops in retaliation for something the NAACP has been pounding away about. Do you think they would be as generic if it was a KKK member who wrote on Facebook that he was coming to NYC to kill two blacks in retaliation for the murder of some white woman by a local black thug? Doubt it.

Then you have Al Sharpton. Holder and de Blasio want to keep this event as far away from them as possible. That's why they are speaking in terms of theory and hypothetical sacrifices. Sharpton, however, knows he can't get away with that because he got in much deeper. Indeed, while Holder and de Blasio have encouraged the murder of these two cops only at a distance by not condemning the attitudes that lead people like Brinsley to do this and by pushing the idea that blacks are helpless victims of a murderous system, Al is actively stoking those flames in rally after rally by pushing the idea that white's don't value black lives and white cops are racists who will always be protected by the system. Hence, Al must work harder to separate himself from the atmosphere he has created. Consequently, he states: "We have stressed at every rally and march that anyone engaged in any violence is an enemy to the pursuit of justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown." Funny, I don't recall that. All I recall is the constant claims that blacks can't get justice, that cops are racists, that the system thinks blacks don't matter, that whites don't value black lives, and that every black is in danger of rogue cops hunting them down.

Look, the left caused this just as sure as Hitler caused anti-Jewish pogroms in Germany in the 1930s. These people are stoking up the black community, telling them that they are victims of a system that is designed to allow racist cops to murder black males, and they lie and distort the facts in every instance they can find to prove it. You simply can't beat that drum, a drum which tells people that the reasons their lives stink is that some powerful group has victimized them, without the weaker-minded members of that group deciding to avenge themselves.

This is nothing new for the left. The left works by agitating people to violence. Then it quasi-condemns the violence to assuage their collective consciences while simultaneously actively condoning the causes and justifications that drove those people to violence. If any of these people who claim to want to stop violence actually were opposed to violence rather than just violence "against their own," then Sunday would have been a day of mass rallies at which people like Al Sharpton and de Blasio call Brinsley a murderer, condemn his violence, and make it crystal clear that they will never endorse, support or encourage violence to achieve their cause. That didn't happen.

And let me add this: these people are much worse than the cops they are condemning. Brinsley and anyone who spurred him on are cold-blooded killers. They encouraged a stupid, unstable, evil young man to murder two innocent people at random. By comparison, the cops accused of killing Brown and Garner at worst acted negligently or recklessly and ended up killing those young men by accident or as a result of a situation that spun out of control. Neither cop set out to kill anyone, but Sharpton, Holder and de Blasio's drone did. And if they can't see the fundamental difference, then they are morally vacant, worthless human beings. Equally to blame are all those smug leftists who have been attending marches, whining into microphones or even posting asinine thoughts on Facebook or twitter are to blame. You people got two minority police officers killed, two families left without fathers, all because you childishly express your selective outrage in ways that encourage others to kill. By the way, smuggies, to add the cherry to this crap cake, you also will be to blame the next time some young cop remembers this assassination and overreacts out of fear for his life. Nice work.

Thoughts?

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Idiocy and Ebola... Huffpo Style

So I found myself following a link which promised an educational article about Ebola. Sadly, it turns out the article was at HuffPo, so the chances of learning much fell to zero. Ultimately, the article told me nothing except that some woman thinks protective clothing is hard to wear. That's it. Well, actually, the article also told me again how poorly leftists “reason”... it’s just not natural to them.

I don’t remember the name of the woman who wrote the article and I don’t really care, but she spent several pages whining about how hard it is to put on, wear and then remove the protective suits that hazmat teams wear. None of that was particular shocking. Finally, she came to her conclusion. This is where it got stupid. First, she began her conclusion by claiming that our response to Ebola has “drawn out the true vulnerabilities in the health care system.” Interesting. Up to this point, the article has not addressed this issue in any way, so this conclusion comes from out of the blue and you should take it with a grain of salt.

So what does she tell us? Well, she begins by noting that we spend trillions of dollars on healthcare, but we spend it all wrong. Oh no! See, we don’t spend it on “population health.” Sadly, she never tells us what that means or how we misspend the money. So her point is lost at best.

Next, she proclaims that Ebola “should not be a threat to American citizen.” Heck, I agree! And if we kept it from entering the country, then it wouldn't be. But that's not her point. Instead, she says it shouldn't be a threat because we have clean water, information, a means to educate ourselves, proper hand-washing procedures and protective suits.

Ok, hold the phone. Apparently, our little airhead doesn’t realize that this single case of Ebola came from Africa via a man who lied to get on an airplane. It didn’t spring up in the US because we let our water get dirty, because we failed to educate the population about the safe handling of anything, or even from a dirty American toilet seat. So how does any of the above change what happened, much less cause it? It can't, so she's wrong... again. The only reason Americans are facing a possible Ebola problem is because no one has bothered to contain the disease by quarantining the carriers. Funny how she never mentions that. In fact, see how she continues:

“We have the technology, and we certainly have the money to keep Ebola at bay. What we don’t have is communication. What we don’t have is a health care system that values preventative care...”

“Preventative care”? WTF?! Is she really saying that the reason that two or three Americans have Ebola is not because they were infected by the man from Africa but because our insurance-based system doesn’t pay for people to engage in preventative care to prevent Ebola? Would Ebola screening and mammograms have done anything to change this result? Hardly. Again, she's a moron.

It gets worse:

“... What we don’t have is an equal playing field between nurses and physicians and allied health professionals and patients.”

Huh? How does that matter? This is union bullship and has nothing to do with how the Ebola virus works. The lack of communication that failed in this instance was the CDC failing to provide proper guidance to basically everyone who asked them, and that’s on Obama and his team... not some made up lack of unionization of nurses or socialization of hospital structures. If you want to make that kind of claim, you damn well better have at least a grain of evidence.

She continues blathering:

“What we don’t have is a culture of health where we work symbiotically with one another and with the technology that was created specifically to bridge communication gaps.”

Really? It’s interesting that every doctor I’ve ever visited has worked symbiotically with their nurses and staff. Where isn't this true? Again, the real problem here was the CDC and Team Obama politicizing this issue, not some phantom lack of communication among the hospital staff.

“What we don’t have is the social culture of transparency, what we don’t have is a stopgap against mounting hysteria and hypochondria, what we don’t have is nation[sic] of health literate individuals.”

This is so typical of the left. First, note that her position would be entirely flipped around if Bush had been president. Then she would talk about the failure of the evil Bush Team to protect the poor stupid public. But with Obama in charge, she goes the other way and blames the public for making a big deal about what's been done to them. That's calling blaming the victim. And keep in mind, this woman is herself making a big deal about this. In fact, she’s taken an isolated incident which has affected only a handful of people and would have been far less if the CDC had done their jobs, and she’s using that to recommend an unrelated wholesale restructure of the health care industry. That's called exploitation. That's called generating hysteria.

Also, isn’t the word “hysteria” sexist? The left has made this claim in the past.

Finally, our politicized ditship says the following:

“We don’t even have health-literate professionals. Most doctors are specialists and are well versed only in their field. Ask your orthopedist a general question about your health -- see if they can comfortably answer it.”

Wow. First, every specialist I’ve ever met also has basic medical knowledge. Secondly, it’s so painfully obvious that queen ditship doesn’t understand the concept of specialization. Specialization is a way to improve the breadth and depth of skills available. By letting people specialize, you let them focus on areas that a GP simply wouldn’t have the time or skill to do. There is nothing at all wrong with this. In fact, only a retard would say that a cancer doctor must also know how to perform plastic surgery or set bones or handle pediatric indigestion. Humans specialize so that everyone can cover manageable areas and together create a much stronger healthcare system, a system that covers more areas and in greater depth than would be possible without specialization... every field does this. A system that didn’t have specialization is a system that wastes training, wastes skills, and results in lower quality service. And pointing at a plastic surgeon and saying, “He’s not skilled at fighting Ebola” is as stupid as pointing at a waiter and saying, “He’s not skilled at writing computer code!” But ditship doesn’t realize that because her mind is weak and politicized and she's anti-doctor.

And you know what? Even if she was right about any of this, and she isn't, the cost of changing all of this is astronomical compared to quarantining the 2-3 people with the disease... "quarantine" is a word she never uses, by the way. Think about it. Putting 3 people in a hospital isolation ward for a month will cost a fraction of the trillions it would cost to remake the system as she wants it... and which changes aren't in any way justified by this Ebola event.

Sadly, articles like this will continue to get the mouth-breathers at Huffpo to rail against the parts of the healthcare system that work while hypocritically excusing the failures of their God Obama and his politicized, incompetent CDC team. Leftists suck.

Thoughts?

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Wake Me Up Before You Vote Vote

I saw an odd headline the other day about Michelle Obama. According to the headline, she was encouraging “women and minorities” to “wake up,” like some sort of call to arms. This struck me as an interesting appeal, especially given Obama’s track record with both groups. But it turns out that wasn’t what she meant. She literally meant to wake up and not to sleep through voting day. Good grief.

To start with, let me laugh at Michelle Obama having to tell her supporters to get their lazy butts out of bed. That really adds to the stereotype of her followers being lazy and useless, and it explains why they aren’t more successful. Seriously, what normal person needs to be told to get out of bed by their leaders? The pathologically lazy is about all who come to mind.

She did try to expand the point a bit to include those who simply aren’t paying attention, but that hardly makes it better. Basically, she wants her supporters to go grab their sleep nephews or college dorm mates, their indifferent aunts and neighbors, and the rest of their lazy families “who are like, no, I ain’t going to vote, or I couldn’t wake up.” So I guess laziness runs in families. Anyway, nice grammar, lady.

But let's look at the bigger picture, shall we? Let us assume Madame O actually meant “wake up and realize what is happening to you.” This is a rather ridiculous thing for her to say. Do you know why? Well, consider her behavior and her husband's record and you'll see.

First, Madame O has spent her time suckling off the taxpayers. Five star hotels. Shopping in the most expensive shops around the world. Taking Air Force One to restaurants. This woman has lived like Marie Antoinette on steroids. For her to claim that somehow these poor, supposedly-oppressed women and minorities should support her is borderline insane. Imagine if Warren Buffett made the same appeal! Not to mention, they already support her! Every penny of the social security they collect from the few who work and every dollar of the benefits the rest get that gets taxed goes to pay Michelle's lavish lifestyle. So her appeal to wake up really should be met with, "What the hell are you doing with my hard-earned money?"... and maybe a guillotine.

Then there’s her husband. He has presided over a collapse in minority employment, minority household incomes, and minority net worth. They took the brunt of the housing bubble because they owned the subprime homes and nothing was done to bail them out. They were tricked by liberals into getting worthless degrees in African American or Gender Studies which left them unemployable and with vast debt. Liberals run the schools that seem to specialize in not teaching minority kids to read and write or do math. And Obama has done nothing to shake any of this up, even as middle class white parents are pushing their kids into charter and private schools at amazing rates. To the contrary, he's tried to block the door to save his teachers union buddies. He didn't fix the housing issue either, preferring instead to send trillions to the nation's largest banks. He's done nothing to help small (minority) businesses get credit either.

From the ranks of identity politics, he’s presided over the collapse of the black Congressional district under the Civil Rights Act with nary a genuine peep. He’s watched helplessly as voter ID laws quickly spread around the country. He’s whined, but done nothing else, as Affirmative Action basically has been strangled by the Supreme Court. He did appoint a black guy as Attorney General and an Hispanic chick to the Supreme Court, but neither is all that competent and won't make anyone proud. Beyond that, his minority appointments have been few and far between, and the White House continues to pay women far less than it pays men, not to mention it fought the extension of benefits to gays for as long as Obama thought he could. And look at Hispanics. He’s made all kinds of false promises to them!

So what exactly has Obama done to help minorities? We know what he’s done to crush them, but what has he done to help? The answer is nothing.

You know, Michelle is right, it is time for minorities to wake up and to see that Obama and the democrats are not their friends. So yeah... wake up. Oh, and get out of bed and get a job.

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Eric Holder's Legacy Is What?

There was an interesting article at Politico the other day. The article was written by a liberal who tried to explain Eric Holder's legacy. Despite being an attempt to make Holder look good, and even claiming that Holder was leaving "on a successful note," what struck me was how poor the article was at actually finding a positive legacy. Observe...

The article begins by admitting that not everyone views Holder positively... talk about understatement. The Republicans treated him like "a punching bag" over the "gun-tracking operation" Fast and Furious. They held him in contempt for not turning over documents related to that too, which is something that "will never totally be erased from his record." Oh, and he wasn't tough enough on Wall Street. But beyond that, Holder did some great stuff. Here's the list:

(1) His primary legacy will be his commitment to equal justice for all Americans.

(2) He had a prominent place in Obama's administration and lasted longer than most of Obama's Cabinet secretaries.

(3) He's black.

(4) His handling of Ferguson solidified his civil rights record as someone who cares about equal justice for all Americans.

Hmm. Ok. Let's examine these "four" points.

First, points one and four are the same. You can't double count his support for equal justice for all Americans by separating out instances. Hence, there are only three points here. Further, this claim is utter horse poop. Holder is notorious for taking the position that the nation's civil rights laws do not protect whites. His Justice Department pursued no cases of abuses by minorities. So the only way to say this is true is if you assume that whites are excluded from his commitment to equal justice. In other words, praise for his commitment to justice for "all" requires and asterisk that says: "statement does not apply to 72% of the population".

Further, let me add that Holder wasn't pro-gay when it came to marriage or benefits until five years into Obama's term. I guess they don't count either. And this is the same man who tried to argue that the terrorists at Gitmo had no rights... a position Bush never came close to taking. Clearly, they don't count either.

I would say honestly that what characterized Holder's term was an unprincipled laziness and indifference combined with a knee-jerk pro-black impulse. That's about it. And let's take a look at Ferguson. How brave has Holder really been? From the sound of things, the Ferguson police force is an epic mess. They clearly have not learned any of the policing lessons other departments have learned over the past 50 years. So what did Holder do to change that? Gee, he said he would send in DOJ to examine the department and put them under a form of super secret probation. But here's the thing, for as long as I can recall, most state and local police departments have already been subject to this. So this is nothing new. And what has this new plan done? Well, to hear the locals whine about it, nothing has changed. The police don't seem to have changed either. Essentially, Holder showed up, lectured us that we're all racists, did what Justice always does, and went back to his office to play with himself. Nice legacy.

And speaking of race, Holder is the guy who bizarrely claimed that America wasn't brave enough to talk about race when that's almost all we've been talking about since the 1960s... if not the 1860s. What else did he do to bring the country together or fix the racial divide? Nada... zip... jacksh*t. Again, nice legacy: one stupid speech and doing what DOJ already does one time.

As for number two, what kind of legacy is that? He was a lackey. Gee, thanks. Seriously, outlasting other cabinet secretaries is not evidence of quality. To the contrary, it's more likely evidence of anti-quality, of a man who never raises his head to cause problems or draw attention. As for being prominent, Holder is no more prominent than most other recent Attorneys General, and he's far less prominent than the dozens who actually did their jobs. In fact, had Holder done his job, he would have had bunches of things to investigate within the administration, but he chose the lackey route over the integrity root... and being a lackey never scores you a positive legacy.

As for being black, give me a break. That's the kind of "accomplishment" losers hide behind. If Holder had real achievements, the last thing anyone would be saying is, "Gee, his big accomplishment is being black and holding the job," especially as he didn't really earn the job -- he was appointed by his friend.

So seriously, where is Holder's positive legacy? His race is irrelevant to his accomplishment, except among liberals. His time in office produced no real groundbreaking changes of any sort. To the contrary, his department seems to have presided over a period when the Supreme Court took great delight in bitch-slapping everything Holder and friends thought would be law forever, and Holder did squat to fix it. He turned a blind eye as incompetence and law breaking ran rampant in Obama's administration. His pronouncements on race were rare, awkward, wrong and racist. His pronouncements beyond race were even more rare. He did nothing to clean up Wall Street, something both left and right would have agreed needed to be done. In fact, despite the left claiming he scored "record settlements" from some of the bigger banks, the stock of each shot up when the dollar amounts were announced. He took the "human rights outrage" of Gitmo and basically punted to the next administration. The legal advice he gave Obama about the filling of appointments was so bad that everything Obama did ended up being overturned by the courts. And so on.

Beyond that, I'm simply not sure what else to say about the man? He's an arrogant turd with the record of a lazy fool who likes the smell of his own farts. I would tend to think that almost anyone would have been a more effective Attorney General in almost every way.

Am I missing something?

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SNL: Obama Is Unparodyable

From the continuing category of how delusional liberals can be, we had a series of articles about Saturday Night Live last week in which they openly spoke about how they hoped to hurt Sarah Palin, how they hated the idea they helped George Bush, how they struggled with parodying Obama, and how they are just comics without bias.

The one that really got me, of all of this, was their discussion of Obama. In particular, check out this quote from SNL producer/writer James Downey:

“If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, 'Degree of difficulty, 10-point-10. It's like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled. . . There's not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature.”

This is why Downey wrote his Obama “jokes” as being “about the effect he had on other people and the way he changed their behavior.”

Uh. No flaw to hook onto. Really?

Ok, how about this... even when Obama was still a phenomena, the joke about him (a MUCH repeated joke) was about him needing a teleprompter to sound erudite. That’s a HUGE treasure trove of caricature. In fact, when he spoke away from the teleprompter, his speech patterns became dangerously close to being a classic speech impediment. At the very least, he did things they poked fun at Bush and Palin and Clinton and Bush for.

Within weeks of taking office, you had Obama getting flipped the bird by tiny Honduras. How is that not ironic and funny? That’s the mouse that roared. In fact, it’s the mouse that told the Messiah to f-off.

Then suddenly you had Obama moving the Oval Office to local golf courses. He became so out of touch that he even found himself having to ask “whose ass to kick”... a classic “Read my lips” parodyable moment. At the least, his golfing deserved(s) a running skit where he would strip off his suit to reveal golf clothes beneath or hiding golfing gear around the office.

What else? You had him insulting the British by returning gifts and by not telling them he had dumped terrorists in their territory. He gave the queen an iPod with his own speeches on it... talk about arrogant and tacky. His wife went on insanely expensive vacations (I still remember them attacking Nancy Reagan for having expensive tastes). He got ignored at Copenhagen. He sent a ludicrous plastic-prop reset button to Russia. He told a nasty and inappropriate joke about Hillary drunk texting him.

And most importantly, none of this is political. None of this is aimed at his ideology or could be considered a political attack on him. In other words, all of this could be done safely without them having to poke fun at their own beliefs... not that a true “political satirist” as SNL often likes to consider itself would have a problem poking fun at their own beliefs. In fact, if you add that to the mix, you get these things too:

● His frosty relationship with Congressional and Senate Democrats, including his refusal to help them shape Obamacare.

● His failure to close Gitmo or stop torture or stop droning.

● The courts throwing out almost every executive decision he’s made.

● The surge in inequality and poverty.

● The lack of jobs and their attempt to pretend otherwise: “created or saved.”

● More debt than every other president combined.

● Cronyism, zero oversight over Wall Street, “too big to fail” becoming “too even bigger to fail.”

There is a wealth of material here, material that would have been easy fodder had the President been Bush or Bush or Reagan or Romney. Yet, somehow Downey and the others weren’t able to see any of this. Imagine that.

Not coincidentally, Jay Pharaoh, who does the Obama impression now for SNL stated in the article that he wanted to be sure that Obama wasn’t offended by his portrayal (they even dropped a skit that Obama felt was inappropriate). It’s funny how that was never a concern with Republicans. To the contrary, check out this pretty stunning quote from cast member Horatio Sanz...

“I always kind of felt bad when Will Ferrell did his Bush impression because he was such a good old boy that you really didn't think, ‘Oh, this evil little rich prick whose dad and his friends got him in office.’ You thought, ‘Oh, he's just a good old guy I'd like to drink beer with.’ As funny as Will's impression was, the audience as a whole, the whole country, would probably see that as, ‘Oh, I like Bush. Because he's Will.’ You know, if Will hadn't done that impression, or at least made him likable, it may have tipped it the other way. I honestly think so. We made up for it. I think Tina's impression basically killed Sarah Palin.”

Bias much?

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ISIL = Worse Than Hitler

It seems that things are about to blow up with regard to ISIS or ISIL or whatever they want to call themselves. So we should probably talk about them. Here are my thoughts.

● Islam Is The Root Cause: It’s funny how liberals love talking about root causes when it comes to crime or domestic violence or poverty, but somehow it’s anathema and racist to talk about it when it comes to Islamic terrorism. ISIL like al Qaeda and the thousands of other Islamic terrorist groups have continued to show that Islam breeds terrorists. There is no denying this. Hundreds of thousands of Islamists have joined these groups with the intention of hurting, killing and maiming innocent and unsuspecting people all in the name of spreading Islam by fear and force.

● Backing Into A Corner: Team Obama is really backing themselves into a corner on this ISIL issue. For years now, they have denied that al Qaeda or Iran or anything else really poses any threat to the United States or her people. Yet, this past week, various Obama team members, including Defense Secretary Hagel, played up ISIL as “something we’ve never seen before” and “more dangerous than al Qaeda.”

This is bizarre. Team Obama are literally backing themselves into a corner where they will have no choice but to start a ground war to eliminate ISIL. Indeed, it’s impossible for Obama to make ISIL out as an existential threat to the United States and the free world and then do nothing about them. And don’t forget, this isn’t a group he can sanction with any credibility.

● Elitist Priorities: It’s funny to me that the left always attacked Bush and Bush and Reagan for not caring about “real” people but instead only acting when the interests of their friends were at stake. So what are we supposed to make of this? Until ISIL decided to kill a journalist, Team Obama completely downplayed the threat from ISIL. Sure, they had taken over 1/3 of Iraq and a good chunk of Syria, but they were nothing but a group of thugs who would soon fail once the Iraqis got their act together. This wasn’t our problem.

Then they killed a journalist... a sacred journalist... and suddenly Team Obama springs into action: “This is an outrage! This is unheard of! They’re worse than Hitler!” What kind of statement is that? “Gee, so sorry all you dead Iraqi Christians and you wrong kind of Muslims, sorry all you girls who lost your human rights, but all of you together do not add up to the worth of the life of a single journalist.” This is what caring about real people is supposed to look like?

● Stop With The Money: One of the things Hagel said was that ISIL is better at fund raising than al Qaeda ever was. He links their funding to their threat level. As I’ve pointed out many times before, I find this to be intensely stupid thinking. It doesn’t take money to be a great terrorist. I can cause more chaos in this country than al Qaeda ever did with just a good set of tools. This idea that it takes money to rain destruction on a country is silly

● Cover-Up: Finally, I don’t think ISIL is any worse than al Qaeda, but I think Team Obama is pushing this line because he doesn’t want to be the president who let Iraq become a failed terrorist state. Hence, he’s planning to send in the troops. And the only way he thinks he can justify that while still pretending that Bush’s invasion was inappropriate it to pretend that something bigger and more dangerous has invaded Iraq than what caused Bush to go to war in Iraq. Ergo, his decision was smart and justified whereas Bush was being stupid.

Thoughts?

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Democracy Is Not Broken

For several months now, everywhere I’ve looked, there have been articles attacking the idea of Democracy (e.g. “What’s gone wrong with democracy”). These have come largely from the leftist MSM trying to come to terms with why people aren’t satisfied with their policies. Their conclusion is that something is “wrong” with Democracy. Let’s talk about this.

Before we start, let’s understand why the MSM is waxing philosophical on this. Whenever leftist regimes fail, the MSM always ponders if the “real” problem isn’t that the world is broken. This is why at the end of the Carter years, you saw all these articles about the US being ungovernable and “too large to be run by one man.” This is a leftist self-defense mechanism to help them avoid the fact that they failed, and it’s no different this time.

This time, the left has concluded that there is something wrong with Democracy itself because supposedly (1) it can’t solve problems and (2) it doesn’t lead to content citizens. The left bases this on the struggles it has had fixing the world economy, getting credit for making our lives better with Obamacare, passing their agenda like getting the public to agree to tax hikes or sacrificing to stop global warming climate change, their inability to solve any of the wars they’ve started (see e.g. Syria), and the near collapse of Democracies in places like Argentina and Russia and the growing unrest and chaos in Brazil, etc. Moreover, despite their best efforts to “help us,” the public just keeps getting angrier and angrier with them. Hence, there must be something wrong with Democracy!

But is there really? Well, no.

The first thing to note is that Democracy isn’t an instant process. In other words, it is wrong to assume that Democracy works like a machine which spits out a solution when you turn it on. Democracy is a process that can take years to find a solution and can take many twists and turns getting there. In that regard, it’s like the stock market. The market doesn’t zero in on the right price and stay there, it gets there little by little, often overshooting in either direction, but generally getting it right over time. Democracy is the same thing... it can be very wrong in the short term, but generally finds the right solution over the long term.

So anyone expecting a simple, instantly correct solution from Democracy will always be disappointed. Yet, this is what the left premises these arguments upon. Even worse, the left has wrongly defined its own desires as right. Basically, its argument is that “we are offering the right things... the public is resisting... hence, the public is wrong... and since the public can stop us in a Democracy, Democracy doesn’t work.”

This kind of thinking is how you end up supporting Hitlers and the such. If you believe this chain of logic, then dictators offer the promise of cutting to the chase and imposing “the right” solutions immediately. By comparison to these kinds of thinkers, Democracy seems slow and offers a high risk of never getting to the right place. But this chain of logic is wrong. Just because you think something is good for everyone doesn’t mean that you are right. And that is the key difference between Democracy and every other system. In a Democracy, you need to convince the public that you are right, i.e. you need to win them over to get your way. The result is a forced intellectual rigor that is much more likely to make you (1) find a genuine solution to a real problem, (2) work out all the flaws and defects in your idea, (3) obtain broad public support, which will help implement the idea, and (4) consider the benefits and harms to a wide swath of the public, which means you are more like to keep making society better rather than cause negative distortions.

A centralized government is never forced to go through this. A centralized government simply does what the handful of leaders think is right. The result is that they don’t consider the effects on most people, they are never presented with a need to work through any of the problems their ideas raise, and they lack public support, which means they will face public resistance.

As a result of this, Democracies are more stable because they do require broad public support. They are more likely to work for the benefit of the majority of the public. They are more likely to implement effective ideas as well because there is a competition of ideas, and as we all know, there is no better way to find the best solution than competition because it focuses people on what matters, it makes them put forward their best ideas and best arguments, and it creates an adversarial system that gives the opponents a chance to point out all the flaws which can then be fixed. And they are more likely to have broad public support, which means they will face limited resistance.

You don’t get any of that in any non-Democratic system.

It is no surprise that the American public is most upset about four things: (1) Obamacare, because it was steamrolled over them without any public input, (2) financial reform (all the way back to TARP), because it was done in secret and forced on them, (3) the Federal Reserve’s QE programs, because they were done in secret, and (4) the lack of jobs, because no genuine solutions have been offered. It’s also no surprise that the biggest hot button issues of the past 40 years have been foisted on the public by the courts. Unless you let the public work the problem out amongst themselves, you will never reach a long-term solution.

Finally, the idea that people aren’t content is wrong thinking as well. The lack of contentment is not a sign that Democracy is a failure, it is a clear sign that the current course is the wrong one. It is a sign that the public is rejecting the current solutions being offered and feels that the current leadership isn’t capable of offering solutions they will like. Said differently, it is a repudiation of the leadership, not an indictment of the style of government.

Thoughts?

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What War?

Just a thought tonight. Did you know that Israel has invaded Gaza? Yeah, apparently they have. Interestingly, I don't see it covered anywhere except for Fox News. It doesn't make the front page of Yahoo or the AP. It doesn't rate on CNBC except for an initial discussion of whether or not it would affect the stock market (HINT: it didn't). I don't see the bloggers screaming about it. The UN isn't awash in antisemitic dictators trying to get Israel condemned. There are no riots in Europe. There are no riots on the Arab street that I've seen. And this is despite a fairly high number of casualties.

Now, maybe, I've missed all of this. I guess that's possible. But I suspect the reality is that the world has changed. Here are my thoughts on why there is so little interest about this war:

(1) Obama defended Israel from the get-go, which shut down the American left, which is where the antisemites find a home. So the media, the peaceniks, the OWS crowd, and the Democrats all felt compelled to look the other way this time.

(2) The Europeans are feeling too shamed to address this. After helplessly watching Putin sodomize the Ukrainians and finding that they were incapable of making any realistic response because they choose their economies over their principles, the self-eunuched Europeans seem to have lost their will to cast stones on others.

(3) A lot of the usual dictators who came out and attacked Israel are dead or gone and have been replaced by the Arab Spring. The new leaders are too preoccupied trying to keep their own people happy and realize that attacking Israel won't help.

(4) The Palestinians have lost their victim status. For several years now, the Palestinians have been running their own country (effectively), and they've done a miserable job of it. This is despite billions of dollars in aid and support. So essentially, they have worn out all their excuses. Then you add the fact they keep picking on Israel when it's obvious they cannot gain anything by doing it, and suddenly people like the Saudis realize that they are more trouble than they are worth.

That doesn't leave a lot of people to care about what is happening. I think that's why this is possibly one of the least-covered Middle East events in recent history. And if I'm right, this could eventually be seen as the first step in the Middle East calming down if the Palestinians cease being a cause celebre.

Thoughts? Have I missed anything?

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The Progressive Commandments

Last week, Elizabeth "Fake Indian" Warren gave a list of eleven “commandments of progressivism.” It’s actually a pretty pathetic list and it shows how little the left has left in the tank. Let’s look at Elizabeth’s commandments...

(1) "We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it."

Funny. When Obama and the Democrats had free reign to do whatever they wanted, they passed a bill that enshrined too big to fail and made it even bigger. They also passed a regulatory bill that handed out all kinds of favors using taxpayer money and crushed main street financial organizations on behalf of Wall Street. And let's not forget that Democrats get more money from Wall Street than the Republicans do.

(2) "We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth."

You forgot the word “junk.” The left believes in “junk science” and will try to destroy anyone who questions their politicized “scientific” dogma. Further, the left opposes science when it involves improving oil and gas drilling, improving agriculture, spreading consumerism, health care technology, and weapons that can defend the United States.

(3) "We believe that the Internet shouldn't be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality."

Actually, net neutrality is about deciding which big corporations get their way on the internet, so stop being sanctimonious about it.

(4) "We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage."

The minimum wage is not meant for people to live off of. It is a starter wage for part-time workers. And rather than raising the minimum wage, which would only affect six million people out of 310 million, why not try to create more and better jobs, which would increase wages across the board. Don’t you care about the middle class or the working class?

(5) "We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them."

Uh, this is number four repackaged. Also what about casino workers and bus drivers? Don't you care about them? You don't mention them.

(6) "We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt."

Then why did you impose the student loan system on them which crushed them with debt? And why do your reforms always involve extending the length of the student loans so the students end up paying back more and for longer periods of time?

(7) "We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions."

Duh. Is this really something you think everyone doesn’t believe? Well, everyone except Obama who stripped Medicare to fund Obamacare.

(8) "We believe—I can't believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work."

Everyone believes this... except you actually. What you really mean is that you believe in the Government setting wages on your perception of who should be paid what. Equal work has nothing to do with it.

(9) "We believe that equal means equal, and that's true in marriage, it's true in the workplace, it's true in all of America."

Actually, some animals are more equal than others in your world. In fact, your world is a world of progressive tax codes to make those with more pay more, speech codes to let those in power control the free speech of those without power, identity politics which proclaims that civil rights laws apply only to certain races and genders, and so on.

(10) "We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform."

That’s an interesting nonsequitor: immigration made us great, let’s change it! Anyway, this is something 85% of Americans believe, so claiming it as being progressive is rather asinine. Also, “that means reform” is about as nebulous a statement as you could possible make. What does that mean? Of course, nothing you’ve said so far has been specific enough that a neutral observer would have any idea what you have planned, so I guess this is no worse than the rest.

(11) "And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!"

Wow. So the fact that less than 100 corporations can opt out of providing a certain type of healthcare benefit that you can take care of in any drug store suddenly means that women no longer “have a right to their bodies”? Talk about ridiculous hyperbole! So why should we take anything you say seriously?

As you can see, the progressives are spent. Their ideas are nebulous and unformed. The few specifics they do address are pointless, i.e. raise the minimum wage, hypocritical, i.e. regulate Wall Street!, or the worst kind of hyperbole, i.e. corporations can legally turn women into sex slaves.

Thoughts?

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Banning The N-Word

While we’re talking about race and liberals, I wanted to talk about something that recently happened vis-à-vis the NFL and how it really exposes the problem with liberal thinking. The issue involves the NFL’s proposal to ban the “N-word.”

What brought this issue to a head was the supposed bullying of Jonathan Martin. When the NFL investigated that incident, the outside investigator turned up a massive number of uses of the N-word by and between players and even involving some coaches and trainers. The NFL immediately recognized that this created a hostile work environment and a bevy of liberal journalists proposed banning the N-word by making it a personal foul (15 yard penalty for its use on the field).

Thus, begins our tale.

Right out of the gates, every single liberal sportswriter jumped on the bandwagon of this proposal and agreed that it was time to ban the dreaded N-word. This was the perfect solution to a problem that had lingered too long: closet racists using the N-word during games. Yep, despite 0 reported instances of that, these journalists just knew this was a problem. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the right thing to do to ban this word. Indeed, only a racist could oppose this idea!

Naturally, the NFL’s designated race hustler, the Fritz Pollard Alliance, jumped on board too. The Fritz Pollard Alliance is an organization dedicated to complaining that “minorities” (read: blacks) aren’t getting a fair shake in any aspect of football.

Soon, articles were being written asking why those rich, white, conservative, racist men who own the teams (like Obama supporter Dan Rooney) wouldn’t order this ban immediately. What could they possibly be waiting for, those dirty racists?

Then things went wrong.

A few days after this golden alliance of liberals declared the perfect solution of banning this outrageous word, a black football player named Richard Sherman threw a hissy fit. He called the idea racist that a bunch of old white men would tell him and his fellow black teammates what words they could or could not say on the field.

Uh oh. That does sound racist.

Now we had a dilemma. It was racist to allow the word to be used, but it was racist to try to stop players from using it. Curses!

By this point, most liberal sportswriters were running away from this story because there was no solution they could push. Of course, that didn’t stop them from demanding that “The NFL must do something!” even though their own logic made it impossible to fix this problem.

Then, the Fritz Pollard Alliance cranks got all pissed off at the young thugs (oops, that’s now a “racist” term according to Sherman) would use a word that the old pros “had fought their whole lives to stop.” You might not remember that, but run with it. The youths responded by claiming that “nigga” is a term of endearment and, thus, the NFL had no right to trample on their First Amendment rights.

This brought a round of articles from the liberals who started this craziness about how the players' First Amendment rights are sacrosanct and the dirty, racist white-conservative-owned NFL better not trample those. Oh, and the NFL still needed to fix this N-word problem.

In the end, the issue fell apart because it was unworkable from the get go.

What this was, was an attempt by liberal journalists to try to insert themselves into history by manufacturing a new civil rights issue. Basically, they hoped to bandwagon an easy victory and then declare themselves the equal of people like Martin Luther King for their bravery in stopping the outrageous use of this word. But it didn’t work. It didn’t work because the black players they claimed to be speaking for crapped all over their idea. Liberals always seem to think of the people they help as children who need their guidance, but in this case, those children easily exposed the liberals as confused fools who never bothered to understand the issue or think through their solution. These are hard times to be paternalistic.

In fact, let’s examine some of the failings of our liberal friends on this issue:

● Notice first, that liberals love speech codes. They believe that society should ban words they don’t like and that you should be punished for using those.

● Notice next that the liberals didn’t care about First Amendment rights when they liked the end result. This is typical of liberals to assume that all good people will agree with them, to assume that no rational or decent person could be on the other side, and thus to not care about the rights being trampled because those rights belong to bad people. Liberals only want to protect things they agree with. For the record, those aren’t rights, those are indulgences.

● Notice also, that they don’t understand what the First Amendment is. The First Amendment protects your right to speak from the Government, not from the NFL.

● Notice further how this issue fell apart once it became racist to be on either side. It’s funny how often and how easily liberal ideas end up in this kind of Mexican standoff. This really highlights that the complaints aren't legitimate in the first place if the same argument can make you racist for either supporting or opposing the same thing. This really points at the rotten logic of the victim movement.

● Finally, note that we again see the same pattern you always see with liberals. First, they see a problem and they immediately demand the most obvious and overbearing solution: somebody powerful ban the word! They never stop to ask if this would work before patting themselves on the back for their great solution either.

Secondly, once the original plan proves unworkable, they fall apart because they have no actual solution other than the big, obnoxious one they originally offered. Thus, their answer becomes “somebody do something!”

Third, like everything else liberals do, their solutions quickly devolve into competing interest groups, with each side trying to claim victim status. The result is a bitter debate that gets settled on the basis of who you like rather than principle.

What’s interesting to me is how consistently the things above play out when it comes to liberals. They always propose the most overbearing solution possible; they love trampling on people’s rights and doing so hypocritically. It never works and they never care if they are causing more problems than they are solving. In trying to fix something racist/sexist/etc., they always discover the children they want to help quickly see their solutions as equally racist/sexist/etc. Everything always falls apart. And yet, they smugly claim moral superiority every single time. That’s the story of liberalism time and again. This is why they judge their own actions on intentions rather than results, because their results suck.

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Misreading The War On Women

Last week, I pointed out that the fringe gets a really distorted view of reality from their leaders. To give you a sense of how distorted, let's take apart an article published at the Daily Caller about the “War on Women.”

According to the article, Pelosi and Reid are planning to use the “War on Women” playbook for the 2014 election. The author, however, dismisses this as “overplayed propaganda” and she asserts that it won’t work because the Democrats are “missing the big picture.” Hence, she boldly declares, “As a Republican woman, I say bring it on.”

Oh boy.

While it will certainly play well with the fringe, the assertion that the “War on Women” attack is “overplayed propaganda” is ridiculous. In 2012, the Democrats won a stunning statistical victory among women. They won single women by 40%. That's not 40-39, that’s a 40 percentage point difference. In other words, seven of every ten of these women voted for the Democrats. That means their “War on Women” strategy was amazingly effective, and dismissing it as “overplayed propaganda” is wishful thinking. Instead, we need to find a way to defuse it.

The author argues that this has already happened, but her argument is seriously flawed. According to her, women will now reject the “War on Women” meme because of Obamacare. See, a recent poll showed that 60% of women oppose the disastrous law. Ergo, argues the author, they will shun the propaganda of the “War on Women” playbook and will turn out to help us thump them Democrats good.

Yikes. There is so much wrong with this assertion.

First, there is no indication in that poll or any other poll that opposition to Obamacare translates into voting out the Democrats. And what the author ignores is that outside of a tiny minority, people make up their minds how to vote based on general affinity with a political party rather than the basis of single issues. So opposition to Obamacare is just one fact to weigh against things like the “War on Women,” it is not a trump that will overpower all other issues. In fact, if it were such a trump, then we would see it in the generic polls, but we don't. To the contrary, the Democrats lead the Republicans 41% to 37% in the generic polls. This would not be true if her assertion were valid.

But wait, she adds, a study by some group found that supporting Obamacare cost incumbent Democrats 5.8% at the polls in 2010. Add that to the fact that sitting Presidents lose seats in midterm elections and “[the] Republicans are once again on solid ground.”

//sigh

Ok, let’s unwind this. First, this would again show up in the generic polls, but it doesn't. Secondly, this effect was not repeated in 2012, and there's no reason to believe that this issue would vanish in 2012 only to return in 2014. Public anger doesn't work that way. It sparks, then it dies. It doesn't come and go. More importantly, she misunderstands the dynamic of the last couple elections. Obama had MASSIVE coattails in 2008 when he won and his party way over-performed what one would expect from a normal election. The result was that the Democrats won many seats they would not normally have won. Thus, 2010 represented a normalization in many ways as the Republicans won those seats back. By comparison, in 2012, Obama had no coattails and did not over-perform. If anything, he underperformed for a winner. That suggests there aren’t any overextended Democratic seats to be lost in 2014.

And keep in mind that even in 2010 (and in 2012), the Republicans failed miserably in Senate races, i.e. races that didn't involve gerrymandered constituencies.

Further, the 2010 victory was spurred by low Democratic turnout and exceedingly high Republican turn out. Turn out should in theory favor the Republicans in 2014, except that these days the fringe pride themselves on not voting. And if they didn't turn out in 2012 when the election of Republicans could have stopped the law ever being implemented, there's no reason to think they'll turn out in 2014 when there's no chance of influencing the law and after years of smears by the fringe against the Republicans.

Finally, the author tries to bolster her argument by claiming that Democratic lies about Obamacare also will bring out these women: “If the implications of the healthcare law weren’t enough to turn away women voters, the lies Democrats have told them should.” Yeah, right. Except, this is all already calculated into the opposition to Obamacare, and all these lies were well known in 2012 and didn't swing women to the GOP.

All right. So what's the point? The point is that these are the kinds of articles that flood The Daily Caller and Breitbart and other fringe sites. Articles like this provide false confidence and keep the right from asking the basic questions they should be asking: why did women abandon us in record numbers, what about the “War on Women” proved so effective, and how do we win women back? The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have a problem. This article and the hundreds of others like it and the parrot effect of talk radio keep the far right from realizing that.

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San Francisco... Stop The Busses, Comrade!!

With Lawhawk’s passing, it’s been a long time since we had a San Francisco update, but this is too good to be passed up. I love it when liberals turn on each other... like cannibal rats stuck on a ghost ship. Observe.

For the longest time, the hard left has waged a war against the noble automobile. They hate the car and all it represents: freedom, middle class aspirations, suburbia, and Americana. Boo! Down with the evil mount of individuality! Join the collective!

And there’s nowhere more hard left than the San Francisco area. If it’s leftist retardery, they’ve put it into practice. Not that any of it has ever worked, but like obsessive compulsive lemmings, they keep trying cliff after cliff. Vis-a-via the car, San Francisco was one of the first places to impose HOV lanes on highways and provide incentives for companies to force their employees to carpool or use public transportation. Use BART or die, capitalist pigs... use BART or die.

The Bay areas is full of tech companies, and tech companies are all excellent liberal citizens. They have all the traits. They talk about how unfair corporate America’s wage practices are and then they fire their American workers and replace them with imported Indians they can pay less. They talk about the glories of government control over the little people, but then they spend a fortune avoiding taxes in every country on earth. They talk about freedom and privacy then they spy worse than the Stasi. And they are huge environmentalists who pollute worse than the steel industry and whose executives have carbon footprints bigger than most cities. Yep, classic liberals.

Anyway, they are into bussing. With San Francisco wanting to force those pesky humans off the roads, the tech companies decided to help out. They bought a fleet of busses and they run them around to various bus stops where they pick up their employees. In so doing, they theoretically save on gas and pollution and they reduce both road clutter and individuality. It's a win-win for liberals.

But there’s a problem.

See, the bus stops they use were built by the city to be used by city buses. And the fact these good rich liberals are using government “facilities” without paying for them is an outrage! It’s such an outrage that a group of Nazis has formed an outrage group called “San Francisco League of Pissed-Off Voters”... stay classy, my liberal friends, stay classy. This group, which we shall call SLOP, wants these behemoth tech giants to pay their fair share for pulling up to these bus stops no one is using.

Interestingly, Google, Apple and some others have agreed to pay $1 each time one of their busses stops at these government facilities. This will raise about $100,000 a year for San Francisco. Naturally, this isn’t good enough for SLOP. They call this “a joke” and their reasoning is that these companies make a lot of money, so they should be charged more -- that's it, no studies, no economics, just pure class hate... tasty, tasty class hate. Even when they were told that state law forbids the city from collecting more than the cost of providing the services (which is $0 here), SLOP responded that they were sure the city could find other ways to get greater payments from these companies.

I love this example. Notice all the classic liberal/leftist touches:

● Liberals try to do what liberals want, i.e. get people to use buses, and end up upsetting other liberals who want to rape them for helping out.

● A total lack of realization that if they push this, the tech companies can simply pick their people up 10 feet before each “facility” and then there will be no money.

● The outcome they want does not depend on the “crime,” it depends on the wealth status of the “criminal.”

● An utter disregard for the rule of law when they want something.

● The use of profanity in naming their group... like naughty children.

● Everyone involved is an utter, utter hypocrite.

Yeah, liberalism is great. We should find more outrages that we can throw their way to really get them turning on each other. Thoughts? It's for a good cause...

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Liberals and Alcohol

There was a fascinating study released the other day, though ultimately it’s not that surprising. What it found was that people who live in liberal Congressional districts drink more than people who live in conservative districts. And, apparently, the more liberal, the more they drink. This is no surprise.

The study in question looked at all 50 states from 1952 to 2012. What it found was that the more liberal the representative, the more people in that district drank. This is consistent with findings in Russia, where socialists drank more than their conservative counterparts, and seems to be true in Britain too, where heavy drinking correlates to voting for Labor.

The study authors speculate that the reasons for this might be that liberals tend to rebel through drinking or they believe that public healthcare will pick up the pieces if their drinking becomes a problem. Those explanations are, of course, bullspit. For one thing, there really are no differences across the country when it comes to healthcare coverage for the poor, so that can't explain these results. Ditto in Britain and Russia. As for rebelling, why would liberals increase their rebellion as their representatives became more liberal? And if you’re going to say that their rebellion depends on the federal government, then tell me why these numbers correlate to local representatives rather than national trends... and how does this work in Russia or Scotland where they’ve had nothing but liberal governments?

Anyway, the real reason is something much less flattering to liberals.

First, I’ve said this before, liberalism is symptomatic of short-term thinking. If you look at liberal ideas, liberal complaints and solutions that liberals offer, what you will invariably find is that liberals focus on the world in the short term only and they seek to solve problems immediately and only for the moment. They pay no attention to long-term effects.

Why does this matter? Because it tells us something about liberal minds. It tells us that liberals look for instant gratification without regard to the long-term harm that may cause. That means the liberals will naturally be drawn to things that are considered “sins” – alcohol, drugs, uncomplicated sex because they offer immediate pleasure and you only see the harm if you think about the effects long term. Moreover, as anyone who has ever visited a place like Vegas can attest, sins don’t come in ones. People who have them, tend to have many because it's about a way of thinking.

Now, imagine if you are someone who sees life in this manner. You drink, you do drugs, you are a sex fiend. You dropped out of school because you didn’t see the point because it wasn't helping you today. You’ve probably got a criminal record, from things that seemed justified at the time. And you don’t understand why they can’t just take some stuff from rich people and give it to you. Who would that hurt? It’s not like rich people ain’t got more than they need already.

Are you starting to see my point? This is the attitude in the Hillbilly hinterlands of Appalachia. This is the attitude in inner-city ghettos. These people live life in the moment, seeking to satisfy their immediate prurient desires without concern about what tomorrow may bring. When it comes time to vote and these people are faced with a choice between a party that stands for working your way to a better life or a party that promises to “gimme stuff,” which do you think they will choose?

Said differently, liberalism is the natural political philosophy of those to whom “sin” is a way of life. In other words, liberalism doesn’t cause alcoholism, liberalism just fits with the mindset of alcoholics... and sex fiends... and kleptomaniacs... and the lazy... and drug addicts... and anyone who acts without thought to effect.

As an aside, this also explains why so many movie stars are liberals. It takes true short-term thinking to become a movie star. The odds of being cast and then becoming famous are so infinitesimally small that if you stopped to consider them before you started, you would never go... it’s like betting on winning the lottery (another Appalachia pursuit). So when you see an actor, more likely than not, they are someone who never gave much thought to how the future would actually unfold. They simply went with their impulse to go be a star. It is natural that people like that would then also develop drug and alcohol problems, as so many do, that they would get involved in sex scandals, as so many do, and that they would become liberals... it's all in the mind.

Thoughts?

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