“Obama doesn’t support the “Fairness” Doctrine” is the standard response from lefties when asked about Barack Obama’s putative fascist tendencies.

Of course, it’s really not about him. It’s his caucus in Congress that’ll be the problem, that’ll push legislation to extinct conservative talk radio, and that Obama will (very likely) not veto after they ram their legislation through.

More proof? Brian Maloney finds another Tic that is committing a “gaffe” by telling the truth:

Now, we can add another Dem’s name to the list: far-left Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), who represents an oddly-shaped district covering portions of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas.

Not content to merely silence Rush Limbaugh, however, Eshoo would take her crusade to cable and satellite broadcasts as well. Could they shut down the Fox News Channel as well as commercial talk radio? How about XM – Sirius?

Anna Hush-You would tackle them all in a way that would make Vladimir, Hugo and Fidel proud, not to mention her new friend in the White House.

When it comes to the “Fairness” Doctrine, liberals are like a two-headed pit bull; Head #1 might talk you into scritching its ears – but only to give Head #2 cover to chomp onto your butt. When it comes to fighting the “culture war” in this country, there is no such thing as an honest liberal.

Oliver Stone’s next project?

Oh, was there really any suspense at all?

Stoned, the famed director who brought us the Bio on fifo now plans on making another Bio on fifo’s pimp, Hugo Chavez. Read it here.

Yep all those “progressive” mother jones, huffington post, daily kos, readers can watch another movie starring their idol from caracas.

I’m waiting for Stone’s hagiography of Mao.

Sarah Palin’s biggest drawback – and this was amply confirmed after months of reading the mainstream and left-media – was that she didn’t win over any of the movement liberals who were never going to vote for a Republican anyway.

Her greatest strength – and this is something that the mainstream media would have a hard time catching – was that she reminded an awful lot of people between the Adirondacks and the Sierra Madres of people like them.

And – just as with Ronald Reagan – talking about (or to) “people just like people between the Adirondacks and the Sierra Madres” in front of the media is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

Camille Paglia – no conservative,she – on Dick Cavett’s drive-by sliming of Palin (emphasis added):

However, Cavett’s piece on Sarah Palin was insufferably supercilious. With dripping disdain, he sniffed at her “frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences.” He called her “the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High,” “one who seems to have no first language.” I will pass over Cavett’s sniggering dismissal of “soccer moms” as lightweights who should stay far, far away from government.

Although it’s certainly worth discussing, since it would be a real slap at the feminist movement, if movement feminists actually cared about their purported goals.

Onward:

I was so outraged when I read Cavett’s column that I felt like taking to the air like a Valkyrie and dropping on him at his ocean retreat in Montauk in the chichi Hamptons. How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?

In sonorous real life, Cavett’s slow, measured, self-interrupting and clause-ridden syntax is 50 years out of date. Guess what: There has been a revolution in English — registered in the 1950s in the street slang, colloquial locutions and assertive rhythms of both Beat poetry and rock ‘n’ roll and now spread far and wide on the Web in the standard jazziness of blogspeak. Does Cavett really mean to offer himself as a linguistic gatekeeper for political achievers in this country?

Leaving slang aside, there are a bunch of major linguistic groups in this country. For Dick Cavett (or, satirically, Tina Fey) to make someone’s American-English dialect a “qualification” to serve is…

…like, wack, dude.

It’s long been a truism of American government; when some government figure calls for a “war on…” something that is not an enemy nation that is trying to kill us – see “war on poverty”, “war on drugs”, “war on illiteracy”, and so on – it never works.  “War” is a pretty specific human condition, prone to – indeed, built on – profligate waste of money and, worse, blood, as well as the suspension of reason, liberty and often questioning to complete a mission which, at the end of the day, had better be worth all of those sacrifices.  Smart people don’t use it.
To paraphrase William Tecumseh Sherman, “War is hell on political rhetoric”.

Perhaps it’s time to start retiring another term of expedient political rhetoric with similar prejudice; the ‘czar’:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touted the notion of a “car czar” Tuesday to supervise an auto industry bailout, saying Big Three executives haven’t adapted well to changing conditions.

Does Pelosi really mean “czar” – an omnipotent  hereditary ruler  who had license not only to rule absolutely, but  the means to do so without any due process, often resorting to blood-curdling cruelty?

Well, we’re talking Pelosi so – sorta:

As United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger voiced fresh confidence that an accommodation will be reached on a $15 billion bailout bill, Pelosi told interviewers it’s more critical than ever that change in Detroit be forced.

As long as that “forced change” cleans up the auto industry the way twenty years of “drug czars” have eradicated drugs and reclaimed our inner cities from organized crime, it’s all OK, right?

Background:  I’ve always supported the Boy Scouts,especially in their long-running battle against politically-correct oppressors.  And I still do.

But this story, by Doug Hester at Northern Muckraker, will provoke some thought.

Doug – as he narrates in the post – was molested by his scoutmaster, years ago, in a case that got some local publicity.  Worse – the Boy Scouts of America reacted no better than the Catholic Church did to its own responses to its own sex abuse scandals.

Read the post for the details – it’s a long post, and a good one.

But Doug didn’t write me to publicize his past.  It’s the present he’s talking about.  He’s at the BSA’s headquarters in Texas today, protesting against the Boy Scouts for their response to his and other scandals:

Why am I going public with this? Three main reasons:

1. I no longer feel overwhelming shame or personal embarrassment about disclosing the circumstances of what has happened to me, as I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide;

2. The BSA’s heartless lack of responsibility and total absence of scruples has angered me, and

3. The incredibly brave telling of their own sexual abuse histories by such people as wide receiver Laveranues Coles of the New York Jets has inspired me to do what I can to help fight further such acts and their cover-ups, as well as seek redress for victims like myself who are already permanently scarred.

To that end, I would consider it a personal favor if the regular readers here would support my efforts by calling Mr. Mazzuca at 972-580-2000 and expressing disappointment with the way that victims of sexual abuse by leaders in his organization have been treated both in the past and quite recently, and urging him to make even a token attempt at offering these permanently damaged people a way to regain at least a small part of what was stolen from them, in an effort to make their lives a little easier and more complete.

Additionally, I would very much appreciate it if people would publicize my quest through word of mouth, email, blog posts or any other means available to them. Furthermore, if anyone has direct knowledge of any other victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the Boy Scouts, please direct them to me, and reassure them that I will treat their personal information with the utmost confidentiality.

Once again, interested people can also follow my efforts to reach a resolution to this issue at The Boy Scouts Don’t Care.

There are plenty of people who’ve had their lives immeasurably changed for the better by Scouting.  But while every group will draw its “bad apples”, larger organizations – not just the Scouts, but the police and other official bodies – need to learn how to handle this kind of thing.

And Doug’s story is a compelling one, and well worth a read.

…it was AIDS that was going to reach across all divides – national, affectional, behavioral – and kill us all.

Or, y’know, maybe not:

As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease’s spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

“AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it’s just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies,” said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.

“The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, … too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory,” he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

AIDS in its day was a dreadfully scary epidemic, and it killed an awful lot of people.  It was also a political football, and one of the first examples of systematic politcally-correct groupthink dominating policy on a key issue.  AIDS became a politically-correct policy football from the very beginning, costing scads of lives in the process.  Case in point; nations that followed the same sorts of rigorous public-health practices that the US had in attacking all sorts of epidemics in the past – like, say, Cuba – and had the political courage (or lack of political opposition, in Cuba’s case) to focus their national policy on the real causes of the epidemic (behavioral vectors like sharing needles and unprotected sex practices) escaped the worst of the epidemic.  The US and much of the western world wasted much time on politically-correct diversions; “Anyone can catch AIDS”, we were warned throughout the ’80s and ’90s, even as the evidence mounted that straight, non-IV-drug-users who eschewed promiscuity and approached sexuality with a certain amount of prudent, albeit unerotic and less-than-romantic clinical due diligence, were actually quite unlikely to be at especial risk. 

The reason given was to avoid stigmatizing gays.  And gays rightly feared stigmatization; one would be willfully obtuse to say gays haven’t suffered from discrimination.

But how many lives was that feel-good exercise worth?  Because it certainly sacrificed many, and diverted much funding, awareness and effort early in the epidemic’s course.

The UN bureaucrat who would lose his job if that were universally recognized begs to differ:

Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It’s valid to question AIDS’ place in the world’s priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.

As with any deadly epidemic, it’s legitimate to avoid complacency.  But there’s a real question:  does AIDS need to have the same level of global mobilization that it has had, and still has today?

It’s not a loaded question.  I’m genuinely curious.

As I noted the earlier in a piece I thought I’d posted Friday, but did not, Sisyphus at Nihilist In Golf Pants commented on the State Arts Board’s grants of taxpayer money to “promising” “Minnesota” artists and their art. 

Now, for years I’ve said that conservatives need to get engaged in the world of the arts; to stop ceding this utterly important aspect of the human condition to the grant-pimps, the pseudoacademic weenies – the left.  Conservatives need to make their presences felt in literature, music, theatre, film, multi-media, comedy (albeit I think we can, and must, continue to cede dance to the left, since I have no idea how to take a conservative swipe at that particular medium.  I’m open to suggestions). 

In this spirit, Sisyphus takes a game swat at proposing his own grant applications (and, it seems, granting them, if only fictionally):

1. $3,000 to purchase extra large glass basin and cases of light beer for composition of art work in which an entire year’s worth of Nick Coleman columns are submerged in the collective artists’ urine.

Sisyphus makes a fantastic effort at getting the ball rolling.  But we need to build on this to achieve more.

So here’s your assignment:  Read the State Arts Board’s list of grants.  And fill in your own applications in the comment section.  We’ll be taking applications for

• Music
• Photography
• Media arts/new media
• Poetry
• Prose
• Dance,
• Theater
• Two- and three-dimensional visual arts

Take your best shot.  The best?  Well, maybe we’ll just forward them to the SAB and see what happens. 

You never know.

One of the more frustrating aspects of the Columbine shooting was the reports that the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team waited for four hours before entering the school. They were worried about bombs; the police’s SOPs said, essentially, that it was better to leave the students and staff inside the building on their own than to risk police lives to a potential bomb threat.

It doesn’t impugn the courage of any officer, or the integrity of the Jeffco SD, to say that when in doubt, police procedure left the citizen on his or her own – but I can’t imagine the frustration and horror that the parents outside must have felt, as the hours ticked by, knowing their kids were inside the building, not knowing if they were alive or dead but knowing that there were a whole lot of cops in battle rattle waiting in the assembly area not rushing in to save them.

Of course the horrific toll among New York’s first responders on 9/11 showed that astounding bravery is a common trait among American cops and firefighters. When the “standard operating procedure” is to go in and do what they’ve been trained to do, the police, fire, paramedics and other first responders in the US – and, I suspect, most of the world – step up and do the job.

———-

But when I saw reports like this one from Mumbai – that the Mumbai police froze under fire from the terrorists during last week’s terror attacks – I thought about a couple of lessons that smart people learned from the wave of mass shootings in the US, among other places.

1. You can not count on the police to save you from even petty street crime, much less this sort of systematic assault.
2. When you leave both raw courage and standard procedure out of the equation, remember – the police aren’t soldiers. They are trained to uphold the law; to maintain control of situations where they generally have the advantage. Police do not train to fight pitched firefights against disciplined, motivated, military attackers – not even the SWAT teams.
3. The only places on earth that are truly remotely safe from this sort of assault are the places where terrorists know that death (to them) doesn’t necessarily wear a uniform and drive in a plainly-identifiable car; places where the civilian population aren’t soft targets, like sheep in a pen. Nearly every mass-shooting in the United States in recent years has happened in places where the civilian isn’t allowed to have the means to self-defense at hand; schools, malls that are posted “no guns“, New York subways, colleges that are “gun-free zones” and the like.

Indians – individual Indians, anyway – seem to be learning all of these lessons; Sebastian D’Souza, the photographer who got so many portfolio-worthy shots of the gunmen as they carried out their mayhem, famously wrote:

The gunmen were terrifyingly professional, making sure at least one of them was able to fire their rifle while the other reloaded. By the time he managed to capture the killer on camera, Mr D’Souza had already seen two gunmen calmly stroll across the station concourse shooting both civilians and policemen, many of whom, he said, were armed but did not fire back. “I first saw the gunmen outside the station,” Mr D’Souza said. “With their rucksacks and Western clothes they looked like backpackers, not terrorists, but they were very heavily armed and clearly knew how to use their rifles…

…

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D’Souza added: “I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera.”

Mumbaiian blogger Amitabh Bachchan’s post on his reaction to the attack has been getting a lot of attention (emphases added); like a lot of Americans when faced with this sort of unreasoning malice, he’s taken a sensible precaution and drawn a metaphorical line in Mumbai’s beach sand:

My pain has been the sight and plight of my innocent and vulnerable and completely insecure countrymen, facing the wrath of this terror attack. And my anger has been at the ineptitude of the authorities that have been ordained to look after us. I have simply loved and endorsed the sentiments expressed by one of those that came on for comments on the Arnab reportage, Suhel Seth. They were strong, precise and most apt. And of course I have had the greatest pride in those from the forces that have and continue to fight for our freedom. Brilliant officers and police personnel have laid down their lives for us. I can only but salute them and respect their sincerity in the call of duty.

The response needs to be much more than symbolic:

I have been at the receiving end of a million calls and an equal number of sms’s the whole day to come live on TV or on the print media to express my views on the current situation and am being lured by words such as ’we need you to speak to express solidarity and for the people to maintain their calm’.

This is disgusting !! I will NOT do that. TELL ME AND ORDER ME INSTEAD THAT WE REQUIRE FOR EVERY INDIAN TO GET UP AND WALK INTO THE FACILITIES WHERE THE ACTION IS ON AND I WILL BE THE FIRST TO WALK. But, please do not ask me to come and make sloppy statements that will do nothing more than create viewer interest in said particular channel ! I respect what the media is doing in serving the nation with its continuous information bulletins and I admire the brave and diligent manner in which they have devoted themselves to the cause. But what they expect me do I find against my ethics and want to be excused from it…

…As an Indian, I need to live in my own land, on my own soil with dignity and without fear. And I need an assurance on that.

And at the end of the day, one person is responsible for that assurance:

I am ashamed to say this and not afraid to share this now with the rest of the cyber world, that last night, as the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do.

Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver, loaded it and put it under my pillow. For a very disturbed sleep.

The responses in his comment section and the Indian (and other) media have been the sort of thing that any American Second-Amendment activist is well used to hearing. Bachchan responded in a way that’d do any of us proud:

The act of pulling out my revolver is a symbolic metaphor, a figure of speech, to demonstrate my complete loss in faith in the system and in the governance, in providing me, a citizen of India, with my rightful sense of security. It is to demonstrate that now I shall have to personally look after my family and myself and not depend on the state. A state that is just so miserably incapable of protecting its citizens…

…For too long we have remained the servile submissive nation. There has been no strong adjective to describe our character.

I’d love to interview Mr. Bachchan on the NARN one of these weekends.

The lessons should be obvious:

1. Every citizen in a truly free society should have not only the right, but the means to ensure their own security.
2. Indeed, it should be considered a duty, alongside voting and jury duty, for every citizen in a free society to be competent, equipped and capable of defending him/herself and his/her family from whatever disorder threatens them.
3. No society that infringes those rights and responsibilities is really “free”, other than the “freedom” the coop of chickens enjoys as long as someone else keeps those foxes away.

Citizens in any “free society” should be a pack, not a herd or flock.

(Via Collins)

I was listening to Keri Miller’s “Midmorning” show on MPR last Friday. In the second hour, she was interviewing some sixties’ folk-scene retread (the program archive seems to have left the hour blank).

Miller asked – with a face that sounded straight (I’m paraphrasing very closely): “Now that Obama has been elected president, do you think American people are ready for the sacrifices he asked of them?”

I almost swerved into an oncoming car.

“WHAT SACRIFICES did he “ask” of the American people?” I yelled at the radio, not quite remembering that I didn’t have a mike in front of me. “When did Obama talk about sacrifice? He couldn’t even articulate the sacrifices he was going to “ask” the American people in the debates, for crying out loud? Five’ll getcha ten the typical Obama voter is thinking “Yippee! My mortgage and gas will get paid!”

Seirously – what “sacrifices” did The One “ask” of anyone?

As we’ve seen in California since the election, the only really acceptable form of discrimination is against blasphemers against PC – in this case, Christians in the Castro District in San Francisco:

At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like “haters” and “bigots”. Since it was a long night, I can’t even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said “Hey, that’s not yours, can you please give it back?”. He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said “No, tell him I forgive him.”

They got video.

I fully expect to see a proposal to make fundamentalist objection to the gay lifestyle declared a hate crime in the next four years.

In the wake of the “historic change” on Tuesday, the question “who has a better sense of humor – liberals or conservatives?” may become a pivotal one.

And the answers? Well, they’ll surprise…

…well, anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, or who is driven entirely by media meme and dogma. You know who I’m talking about.

Psychology Today notes:

To look into this question we approached 285 individuals in public places in Boston, asking them to answer a few questions about their political beliefs, and most importantly to rate how funny they found 22 jokes (see all jokes below). Some of the jokes we used were more funny, some were less funny, and in general they fell into seven categories: race, religion, golf, employment, Jack Handey’s deep thoughts, marriage, and family. Participants were asked to rate each joke on a scale from 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious).

At the end we had 140 self declared liberals and 145 self declared conservatives, and the results were not at all what we expected. As it turned out conservatives gave significantly higher rating to the jokes in each of the seven categories (see table below)!

So, is the stereotype of liberals as being funnier completely off? When we asked our respondents to self-report how funny they are, liberals indicated that they were funnier. This means that liberals are not finding life to be funnier, but they think they are.

If you’ve comparison-shopped a MOB party and “Drinking Liberally”, or gone to both Nihilist In Golf Pants and Clicking Spot for entertainment, this comes as no surprise.

This piece in the NYTimes analyzes the “issue” further, and draws more – and similar – conclusions:

“Conservatives tend to be happier than liberals in general,” said Dr. Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. “A conservative outlook rationalizes social inequality, accepting the world as it is, and making it less of a threat to one’s well-being, whereas a liberal outlook leads to dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a sense that things need to change before one can be really happy.”

And of course, there’s a certain amount of Pauline Kael Effect going on, too:

Another possible explanation is that conservatives, or at least the ones in Boston, really aren’t the stiffs they’re made out to be by social scientists. When these scientists analyze conservatives, they can sound like Victorians describing headhunters in Borneo. They try to be objective, but it’s an alien culture.

The studies hailing liberals’ nonconformity and “openness to ideas” have been done by social scientists working in a culture that’s remarkably homogenous politically. Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one on social science and humanities faculties, according to studies by Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University. If you’re a professor who truly “seeks new experiences,” try going into a faculty club today and passing out McCain-Palin buttons.

Could it be that the image of conservatives as humorless, dogmatic neurotics is based more on political bias than sound social science? Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviews the evidence of cognitive differences in his 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” said that while there were valid differences, “liberals and conservatives are roughly equally closed-minded in dealing with dissonant real-world evidence.”

A friggin’ commie professor would say that.

(Via Sanden Totten @ MPR’s LoopHole)

…have apparently gotten together and tubed same-sex marriage in California:

A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California led Tuesday, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.

The Democrats won the election – but even in California, most Americans are conservatives, even if they don’t always vote (or know) it.

It’s no secret; I mix it up with a lot of the local leftybloggers. 

In most cases, it’s fairly good-natured stuff; it’s business, not personal.  I respect those of them that can write – Jeff Rosenberg and the former members of the late New Patriot kolkhoz, among a few others; some of them return the favor. 

 With others – most of them, in fact – we leave each other in splendid isolation.

Of course, some leftybloggers are a bunch of hysterical nutslaps.  These specimens take their dim, context-challenged whacks at me, and in return – in the rare cases when I can be bothered – I demolish whatever passes for their “points” between 5:30 and 5:35 AM, and then go have a bowl of oatmeal and put the laundry in the dryer.  I almost feel bad – I feel like I’m picking on the retarded kid, almost.  But it’s gotta be done.

Anyway, that’s been the pattern for a while now; the occasional nod, the broad ignore, the occasional gleeful pelting with rhetorical rocks and garbage.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

But there’s a new wrinkle on the horizon.

A few months back, I noted that there’d been long-standing rumors around Saint Paul that Senator and Mrs. Coleman had an “unconventional” marriage.  I wrote “It’s been an open secret forever in Saint Paul and Minnesota politics; Norm and his wife have a rather unconventional marriage”

And apparently more than a few leftybloggers have taken that offhanded mention – of a Saint Paul rumor – as some sort of unimpeachable source on the subject (example).  Of course, they blitzed on the context, not only of the “quote”, but of the post from which it came, which was to hammer on Fast Eddie Schultz’s boundless hypocrisy. 

So while I’m flattered (koff koff) to be considered a definitive, unimpeachable source on the subject, the simple fact is – I’m not.  I reported on a rumor that’d been rattling around my town for a while.  That is all.

So let me break this down for those of you who might have missed the blazingly obvious; the only fact that matters is that Senator and Mrs. Coleman are still married.

Look – I’m all about traditional marriage.  And let’s face it; if there were the faintest impetus to split, it’s not like being divorced is a barrier to anyone in this day and age; Rudy Giuliani and his admittedly colorful marital history were serious contenders for the presidency (indeed, in some ways a better contender than the one we got).  And yet, whatever the truth behind their marriage is (and once again let’s be clear here – its none of your damn business, and mine either, and if you ever, even once, said that the nation needed to “move on” during the Clinton Administration, you really need to “move on” yourself, and right now), they are together after a bazillion years. 

And that’s pretty cool.

Of course, Al and Franny Franken have also been married forever, and that, too, is a wonderful thing.

The difference, of course, is that Franken represents a party that piddles on the family.  I’m not talking the hoary “family values” cliches left over from the eighties – I don’t care that Franken wrote for Playboy, and that he cusses when he does his speaking engagements.  I don’t even care so much about gay marriage – I oppose it on religious grounds, but support civil unions – and while I believe that kids’ development is best served by hetero parents (because kids need male and female parents, all other things being equal), I also think adoptive gay parents are a better option for kids than, say, a single parent.

But the Democrat party piddles on the family in many more subtle ways than that.  It is utterly beholden to the teachers’ unions, and that union has done more than most forces in our lives to undercut the family and trivialize parents.  Hollywood (of which Franken is a part) plays its role as well.  And the stresses caused to middle-class families by relentless taxation do nobody any good – to say nothing of the catastrophic role that liberal politics have played on economically-disadvantaged families, especially African-American ones.

So as a general rule, Republican candidates are better for families than Democrat ones, no matter what their personal lives might be.

I said might.  Again, none of your damn business – but the Coleman marriage, unlike about half of the marriages in our society, has lasted. 

So all of you leftybloggers who are using me as a source on the subject of Coleman’s marriage?  Make sure you update your coverage to include this last, binding bit.  If you don’t, you’ll be guilty of wantonly selective quoting; you’ll be called on it. 

I can say that; apparently, I’m the authoritah.

Noooo, nooooo – of course our vacation plans in Omaha have nothing to do with this story.

 Frustrated parents are dumping their teenagers at Nebraska hospitals — even crossing state lines to do it — and the state Legislature has scheduled a special hearing to try to stem the tide…Nebraska’s “safe haven” law, intended to allow parents to anonymously hand over an infant to a hospital without being prosecuted, isn’t working out as planned.

Of the 17 children relinquished since the law took effect in July, only four are younger than 10…On Tuesday, a 14-year-old girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was abandoned at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, just across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs…”The few situations we’ve seen so far demonstrate the need for a change in Nebraska’s safe haven law,” Gov. Dave Heineman said in a statement Monday. “In the coming legislative session, I will advocate for changes that put the focus back on protecting an infant in danger. That should be our priority.”

All 50 states have safe haven laws, but only Nebraska’s lacks an age limit.

 No, leave your IPod in Saint Paul.  Really.

(Via Ed)

(more…)

Barack Obama is buying his own satellite television channel. This is cause for

1) Elation – as this opens up a whole new category of bloggfodder, derision and political satire

2) Concern – What sort of propaganda can Obama have in store for his hypnotized minions, given his series of associations with anti-American far left radical thinkers and activists (some would say even terrorists)?

Bill O’Reilly (paraphrased from his radio show this morning): Why does Obama have to buy Channel 73? He already owns MSNBC.

Looking to the future…

Cable companies will offer one-channel plans.

Obama’s minions will walk the streets like zombies, wearing Obama logoed T-Shirts saying Change: to 73

Whoopee Cushion will leave “The View” and will have a new show on Obammy-73 called “The Pew” (not as in church – as in olfactory dissatisfaction).

Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama will host a perky morning show:

“Good Morning God Damned America”

Bill Ayers will host a new show about blowing up public property for fun and entertainment:

“Smash ‘n Grab”

Tony Rezko will host a home improvement show:

“Steal It, Fix It, Sell It, Prof-it”

The possibilities are endless…

I commute via bike. I do it because I enjoy it, because I’ve lost 2-4 pants sizes in the past five months, and because it’s a just-plan-good time.

Although I just started biking seriously again in June of 2007, I had a ton of experience as an urban and distance biker. I’m pretty defensive (and I write that knowing that in doing so I’ve very likely written something that can be used as an ironic coda by some jagoff in the event of a mishap in the future), because when biking in the city, everything you do can kill you, and everything you don’t do can kill you, and everything someone else does or doesn’t do can kill you.

Which was what I worried about last spring, when I saw hordes of new bicyclists joining us out on the road. You could tell lots of them were newbies; I saw lots of telltale signs of the less-experienced biker; innocuous ones like coasting down long hills (better to keep pedalling, even if it’s just freewheeling, to keep your muscles from cooling off), and serious ones, like zoning out on busy streets. I joked with a few other bikers that we could expect a heavy toll of accidents among all those newbies out there.

Sadly but inevitably, that’s pretty much what happened.

Being a conservative and a biker, I get plenty of flak from both sides; some conservatives take the car culture as a matter of pride (as do I – or as would I, if I had a cooler car) and take a lot of really dumb rhetorical swats at bikers; many bikers are pretty chauvinistic about their left-centeredness.

There’s a big, important story in there; bikes are different than cars. Some cities – like Boise, Idaho – recognize that bikes are not just spindlier looking cars, and have changed their laws (bikes can regard stop signs as “Yields”, and stop lights as signs). The changes will do doubt piss off drivers – although they shouldn’t, since people who follow the laws will never run afoul of each other anyway. There are good, health and safety-related reasons for these changes. Which doesn’t change the fact that some bikers are just plain dumb and/or inexperienced (above and beyond the whole “Democrat” thing), and some conservatives say really dumb things about bikers.

No big surprise there, right?

Of course, given a choice between a real story and a dumb sideshow, the local alt-media knows what to cover.

Emily Kaiser caught Anti-Strib being un-PC:

The latest from the Anti-Strib blog is sure to get hardcore bikers and Sen. Barack Obama fans riled up. After recent reports of deaths and injuries due to the increasing numbers of commuters taking to their bikes for a primary mode of transportation, the Anti-Strib blog says it might help Sen. John McCain win the election.

Gosh. Hyperbole. Hardly new at Anti-Strib – or the City Pages, for that matter.

Not that it matters; I haven’t read a dead-tree edition of the CP in years, and doubt I’ve willingly patronized one of their advertisers in even longer.

But the comment section was where things got interesting mildly loathsome. “Scottsdale Woman”, proprietor of local deranged-nutbar hangout “Mercury Rising”, wrote:

Oh, and by the way: A heavy-duty cyclist of my acquaintance [I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that “heavy-duty cyclist” bit, picturing a 400 pound guy on a recumbent – Ed.] wants you to know two (2) [Two (2)? You mean deux (II)? Please be more specific – Ed.] things:

1) Your comments are being reported as terroristic threats to the Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments, and:

Oh, goody.

This is, of course, the same whinging crone who responded to my call for vigilance of anti-RNC protestors by calling me a “provocateur”. But let Tracy Eberly take a joking swipe at her 400-pound friends, and suddenly she’s Ms. (?) Law and Order?

(And if there’s anyone at the metro police departments would could pass this “forwarding” on, that’d be much appreciated).

And I loved this bit:

2) A growing number of cyclists now carry handguns.

Wow.

I’d go to Mercury Rising to see how Scottsdale Woman stood on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, but that’d involve…well, going to Mercury Rising. That’s just crazy talk.

But it’s ironic, isn’t it, that Wes Skoglund was partly right? That there are people out there who will turn traffic accidents into shootouts? Of course, like Scottsdale Woman, they are lefties and Obama groupies, not actual gunnies. Not that that’s a surprise.

And while as a long-time carry-permit-reform activist I would never dream of confirming or denying anyone actually carries anything, and stipulating that it’s very hard to find a good carry rig for biking (yet another reason to eschew that skin-tight lycra crap), I have to ask – how in-freaking-credibly stupid is this “woman?”

She’s taking it on herself to remind the car-driving public – even the a**holes who don’t like bikers – that some of us might be carrying?

Thanks for nothing!

“She” also does a drive-by outing of Tracy Eberly’s place of employment. Which brings us to a modest proposal.

This city is clogged with anonymous bloggers, invariably lefties, who make scabrous claims and gutless ad-hominem attacks from behind pseudonyms, taking big, brave (and usually fact-challenged) swats at peoples’ ethics, personalities and histories. Some of these attacks – like “Scottsdale Woman’s” in the City Pages – are direct attacks on peoples’ livelihoods.

I can’t help but think that some of these people would be a lot more polite if they – like most of us conservative bloggers, Hinderaker and Johnson, Morrissey, Brodkorb, Banaian, Eberly, Tucci and, er, yours truly – had their real names out there.

So maybe it’s time to abolish the anonymous leftyblog; to find, and “out”, the most egregiously gutless, the ones that attack from cover and skitter away behind their anonymity.

Not to say it’d be easy; it’s not that hard to cover your tracks in the world of blogs.

But if there’s one thing conservative bloggers are good at, it’s finding things we’re not supposed to find. And if there’s one thing anonymous leftybloggers are good at, it’s having stuff we’re not supposed to find.

No, I have no idea how. Just saying.

No, not even close.

But it’s pretty beat up this week. And it’s not even it’s own fault.

Capitalists are advised to gird their loins, keep a stiff upper lip, turn the other cheek and brace for impact over the near term.

Especially in the Twin Cities.

Over the next couple of weeks the downtrodden, the liberal media, and any other self-appointed disenfranchised victims with a pen or a microphone are going to come out of the woodwork and point their ignorant editorial finger at the “capitalist fatcats” who are ruining our country. All the while failing to realize whose name is on their meager paychecks or whose enterprise and the philanthropy it made possible, funded the grant or the foundation that put them on the air or puts their drivel on paper.

They’ll blame unfettered capitalism for all our nation’s troubles (giving Global Warming a break for the time being) and cite the real estate meltdown and it’s newly minted (pun intended) cure.

And the alleged scheme by John Petters isn’t helping either. The timing could not have been worse for free-market proponents.

Oh, and they’ll somehow blame George Bush even more.

They’ll forget how the Kennedy’s made their money (which was has since been outlawed by securities regulators among other authorities), and the Carnegie’s, the Gates’, the Rockefeller’s and the rest of the benefactor families that turned capitalism and the American Dream that is it’s upside into the largest charitable foundations in America. Their foundations fund the arts and education; they fight poverty and disease wherever it is found in the world. No doubt it is done more efficiently than any government agency ever could.

Nonetheless, stand by for the knee-jerking.

I remember reading a book about thirty years ago – The Social History Of The Machine Gun, or something like that.  It was a pseudo-academic treatise, adapted for some shred of popular market appeal, that talked about the social roots of fully-automatic weapons.

In one of the first chapters, they included the plans for an early, rudimentary multi-chambered cannon.  It dated back to the 16th or 17th century, and had five or six chambers attached to a circular plate; the plate could be rotated to push the chambers up against the barrel for firing – sort of the anscestor of the Gatling Gun (or, for serious gun geeks, the multi-chambered Aden gun).

It had one extra feature noted in the plans; it used a traditional round chamber to fire round bullets “for use against Christians”, the plans noted (I’m paraphrasing).  But if the troops were facing Moslem troops, the plate could be swapped out for one with chambers bored for square bullets (and no, I don’t recall any plans for square barrel bores), on the theory that square bullets would cause grislier wounds and do more damage.  Of course, being Mohammedans, the extra cruelty was justified, at least to the inventor.

There’s nothing new, there, of course.  A teacher of mine in high school – a Vietnam-era veteran who served in the US or Germany, if memory serves – recalled that one of the first things that the drill instructors did in basic training in wartime was to dehumanize the enemy; Vietnamese and Japanese and German humans became “Gooks” and “Japs” and “Krauts” and what-have-you.  Because killing humans is hard – but pushing a bayonet into a hateful caricature is easy.

Of course, German society (like much of Europe) had a solid head-start in dehumanizing Jews.  Hitler pushed things over the edge – but when it came to reducing a class of humans to untermenschen, he stood on the shoulders of giants.  Hateful, loathsome giants.

For most people – normal, decent people, at any rate – the first step on the road to unspeakable hatred is the belief that somehow, your opponent is less worthy of the decency most of us afford to actual humans.  And once you get past that, really, it’s a hop skip and jump to any ghastly horror you can imagine.

Emily from X Perspective is, by the way, a normal, decent person.  But a recent posts shows some of the dehumanization that is swallowing the left in re Sarah Palin.

[Not following politics this week? GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin’s 17-yr old daughter is pregnant. Which we’d ignore if Palin wasn’t adamantly anti-sex-ed and anti-abortion.]

I admit to a small amount of hypocrisy of my own here: in general, I believe we should leave the kids out of this election – it’s not the girl’s fault her mother is running for office. But this was just too spot-on not to share.

“We should leave kids out of politics – unless we really hate what their parents [supposedly] stand for?”

And then, all bets are off?  Because decency is only for people who believe as “we” do?

And where’s Palin’s “hypocrisy?”  She – and, we presume, her daughter and future son-in-law – are pro-life.  And they’re following through on that belief.  Perhaps that’s a form of logic impermeable by conservatives; either way, I’m just not seeing it. 

Leave aside that the Juno analogy is completely off.  It supports Palin’s, and the pro-lifers’, stances; the Juno character had the baby, which, by the way, pissed off the pro-abortion crowd to no end – especially here in the Twin Cities, from whence Juno screenwriter and last year’s Hottest Writer Ever, Diablo Cody, sprang a few years back; local “feminists” were in a aorta-busting froth that Ms. Cody didn’t have young Juno abort her “oops”, more or less as they are with Bristol and, for that matter, Sarah Palin.  On whom, by the way, “feminists” have also bestowed dictatorial power over her daughter and her “reproductive choices”.  But that’s just a sign of a photoshopper with no command of metaphor.

On the other hand, every time the left slags Palin and her family, there’s another struggling middle-class-or-lower family who realizes there’s somebody running for the White House who just plain gets it.  And that translates into votes.

So by all means, photoshoppers; photoshop on!

The Florida “saggy pants” law – applauded by sartorial moderates and Joe Soucherays around the nation – has been tossed:

Julius Hart, 17, was charged last week after an officer said he spotted the teenager riding his bicycle with 4 to 5 inches of blue-and-black boxer shorts revealed.

Hart’s public defender, Carol Bickerstaff, urged a judge Monday to strike down the sagging pants law, telling him: “Your honor, we now have the fashion police.”

Circuit Judge Paul Moyle ruled that the law was unconstitutional based on “the limited facts” of the case. Technically, however, the charge hasn’t been dropped yet: a new arraignment awaits Hart on Oct. 5.

Voters in Riviera Beach approved the law in March. A first offense for sagging pants carries a $150 fine or community service, and habitual offenders face the possibility of jail time.

Bickerstaff said she wants the city to drop the law — regardless of whether anyone dislikes low-riding pants.

It’s a good thing it was tossed of course – it violated the Fourteenth Amendment, unduly burdening stupid people who are slaving followers of moronic fashion.
(Via Bob at A Democracy blog)

According to Juan Cole, phone calls from known terrorist operatives overseas to American phone numbers are sacrosanct.

But if you’re an uppity Republican woman?

By now you have heard that Palin’s email account at yahoo has been hacked by those lovable scamps at 4chan. Two quick things:

1.) This merely reinforces how reckless and careless this woman is, and how reckless and careless this choice is. John McCain chose a woman so stupid she runs government business through yahoo.

It’s all whose privacy is being violated.

Juan Cole has re-passed Cenk Uighur as the most loathsomely useless liberal in the business. Again.

UPDATE:  Oh, wait – he the “loveable scamps” bit was all sarcasm, and he’d never approve of hacking peoples’ email.

Not sure where there was anything about that above the correction, but hey,a correction is a correction.

OK, Cole.  Uighur passed you again.

For now.

As you read the lefty media – everything from the NYTimes to the Strib to the Minnesoros “Independent” – make a point of looking for the subtle bits of “dishonesty by omission” in the language.

I’ve noticed for a while now that, try as you may, when the leftymedia writes about “Immigration”, they never distinguish between legal immigration and illegal immigration – as if there’s no difference between a legally-naturalized citizen who’s followed the rules, and someone who snuck across the border.

Case in point – this deeply-misleading  piece by the Minnesoros “Independent”‘s Anna Pratt:

The New York-based political group Progressive States Network (PSN) has just released a report entitled, “The Anti-Immigration Movement That Failed,” which counters media hype around anti-immigration legislation, revealing that over the past few years, states have largely enacted various policies that embrace new immigrants.

Pratt gives a short laundry list of “progressive” pro-immigrant laws – without making the distinction between laws meant to help and work with legal immigrants versus illegal ones.

This is important, since later on she snarks:

Only in a handful of states that were already conservative-leaning were “significant anti-immigrant policies able to make headway in 2008… Everywhere else, states either stalled anti-immigrant bills or enacted positive policies to better integrate new immigrants,” the report reads.

The words “illegal” and “undocumented” don’t really pop up in the story.

Now, in the article she links, they do.  And what do they say?

Surprise!

Only 11% of undocumented immigrants live in states that have enacted comprehensive punitive policies, while a significant majority of undocumented immigrants live in states with positive integrative or somewhat integrative policies.

In other words, “undocumented illegal immigrants go where the “progressives” make them welcome”.

Hm.  So conservatives are…correct?

Look for the leftymedia to try to spread more obfuscation on this issue as we get closer to the election and beyond.

Michelle Malkin noticed something that I’ve been pointing out for years and years:

And while Democrat Party chair Howard Dean excoriates the Republican Party as the “white” party, I saw only one-non-white agitator among the pro-abortion gaggle. (This goes for the rest of the Recreate ‘68 populace, too. It’s as pale and colorless as a Colorado snowfall.) Across the street from the Planned Parenthood event, however, were many incensed black- and brown-skinned moms. Incensed, that is, that an abortion mill had been built right across from the park where their children practice football and swing on the playground set.

One of the moms, Priscilla said bluntly: “I don’t want a f**king abortion clinic in my neighborhood!” A Hispanic mother added: “It’s against the Catholic Church.” (Are you listening, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi?) When asked about her views on abortion, another black mother of three I spoke to while sitting in her minivan told me simply: “I don’t believe in it.”

Education, free enterprise and – eventually – social issues like abortion are going to be the ones that drive the Dems up on the rocks, especially with minority and immigrant voters. It won’t scupper them this election; it might take a generation.

But it’ll happen.

So, like a couple thousand of our fellow Minnesotans, I’m going to be downtown on September 1, standing along the route of the big “demonstration” by the Republican National Convention.

I’ll be among a group of a few thousand Minnesotans carrying signs that look like this…:

…and if you support the troops and their mission, I’d like you to join us. 

Here’s the current plan:

1. Meet at Triangle Park in Saint Paul.  It’s right by the Cathedral, northeast of the Capitol
   

   It’s got a memorial in it to the First Minnesota Regiment; the park looks like this:

   

2. Pick up a sign.  The current plan is to have a lot of them spotted at Triangle Park, ready to go.
3. After you get a sign, amble down to West Seventh Street, by the X. 

   

   I say “amble” because you don’t need a permit to amble in Saint Paul. 

4. We’ll meet.  And as the cloud of smug rolls by on the street, we’ll wave our signs, and smile, and let them bellow their precious little hearts out.  And we’ll show the media that not everyone in the Twin Cities is a kool-aid sotted loser.
5. We’ll go forth and win the election in November.

So you might be asking yourself – “How do I get to Saint Paul, especially given that traffic is going to be a madhouse even without a bunch of screeching weasel demonstrators trying to blockade traffic”. 

I’ll be posting some shortcuts and easy transit routes to downtown later this week.  It’ll save you a lot of hassle.  Trust me.

I can see all sorts of great arguments in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18:  if a kid can join the military and drive a submarine or operate a cannon, they should be able to get a beer.  If someone is deemed responsible enough to sign a contract, vote, have paternity enforced or be charged as an adult, they’re old enough to drink.

As MLP notes, quite correctly, over at Casual Sundays, none of those are the reasons the university presidents are talking about pushing for a lower age:

Instead of arguing for American’s rights, and against the over reach of the federal government which put the current legal drinking age in place– raise the age in your state or we’ll cut off your federal highway funds– in what universe is that not blackmail?–they are using the nanny-state-non-argument that lowering the age will cut down on binge drinking.

No it won’t.

Kids don’t binge drink because the legal limit is 21, they do it because they are morons.  Isn’t alcohol poisoning Darwinism at it’s best?

Why is it that some people (by “some people” I mean liberals), instead of reaching for a rock solid, Constitutional truth, would rather grab at the fluffy, gossamer of ‘we’re only doing it for your own good’ ?

What’s really going on here is not a push for the liberty of  American adults but a bunch of college administrator’s who are trying to preserve as much of the nanny state as possible while avoiding the necessity of answering uncomfortable questions when their students die of stupidity.

Why yes – do read the whole thing.

With DNC in mind, city bans carrying urine, feces

Poo and pee dominated a public hearing Monday on a new law that prohibits people from carrying certain items if they intend to use them for nefarious purposes.

What other purpose might there be for carrying these “products”? I’d say monger away. This is a law whose time has come!

Representatives from some of the groups planning large-scale protests during the DNC this month said the ordinance was unnecessary and accused city officials of fear mongering.

No Pun intended? 

“The intent of this ordinance is to try to smear protesters and make them look as if they are somehow criminal or somehow going to engage in some kind of gross conduct,” said Glenn Spagnuolo, an organizer with the Re- create 68 Alliance.

The ordinance makes it illegal to carry certain items, such as chains, padlocks, carabiners and other locking devices. It also prohibits the possession of noxious substances. Two of the most frequently used examples of a noxious substance are a bucket of urine and a “feces bomb.”

Police have to prove that people carrying such items intend to use them to block public access or emergency equipment or to thwart crowd control measures.

“Our intent for this bill is not about suppressing or chilling First Amendment rights,” he said.

“Young man!”

“Yes Officer?

” Just exactly what do you intend to do with that shit?”

“Exercise my first ammendment rights?”

“Put down the poop son. Before I get pissed!”