My youngest granddaughter, Kendal, sings "Happy Birthday" to me.
Post 1,575 Happy Birthday, Grandpa
Monday, February 28, 2011
Happy Birthday, Grandpa
My youngest granddaughter, Kendal, sings "Happy Birthday" to me.
Post 1,575 Happy Birthday, Grandpa
Sunday, February 27, 2011
This Week's Best of Rule 5
• LABELS:
Rule5
The Other McCain: Principles of Blogospheric Success
Related source » Rule 5 News
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
— by bobbelvedere, 17 FEBRUARY 2011 (thecampofthesaints.org)
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| Rosamund Pike Image via The Camp of the Saints | Malin Akerman Image via The Camp of the Saints |
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Post 1,574 This Week's Best of Rule 5
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Maintaining Personal Accountability
Image via WikipediaThe Care And Feeding of a Self-Respecting Human Life
Life happens. And so does shit.
Self-respecting human life, however, requires personal accountability. In order to live a life that is distinguishable from that of a stoned hippie, a mindless liberal, or a goat, one must embrace personal accountability.
Moreover, one must periodically take stock of the trajectory of one's life to fulfill the requirements of membership in the community of self-respecting humanity. Taking stock in the last year of each decade of life is a reasonable schedule for a personal census.
- Herewith a sample strategy for personal census-taking:
- Age 9
- - Hmm ... Maybe there is more to life than just obeying Mom and Dad; or trying to out-fox them? I wonder what being an adult is all about?
- Age 19
- - Oops ... People expect me to make decisions about my own life. What kind of adulthood is available to me? What kind of life will suit me for the long term? What is reasonable to aspire to? Is there more to life than getting laid?
- Age 29
- - (a) I'm still living with Mom and Dad. Do I enjoy this no-account life of a fugitive from adulthood?
- - (b) I'm making an effort to embrace adulthood. What more can I do?
- Age 39
- - (a) I've been an adult for half my life to date. Have I fully embraced personal-accountability yet?
- - (b) No? Do I intend to continue living the life of a no-account?
- Age 49
- - Looking back on the past half-century, what are my prospects for the next? This is the last good chance to shape up, or ship out to mid-life crisis. Which will it be?
- Age 59
- - Have I done most of what I planned for my career? Maybe it's time to consider retirement?
- Age 69
- - How is retirement shaping up? Is anything worth tweaking?
- Age 79
- - Is that all there is? Time to stop kicking that inconvenient truth down the road.
- Age 89
- - Jello, again? Jello?
- Age 99
- - Has anybody seen my head? I can't find my head ...
Post 1,573 Maintaining Personal Accountability
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Chicago Sends In the Clown
Rahm "It Up Your Ass" Emanuel
Image via The Daily Caller
Related source » Rahm Emanuel elected mayor of Chicago in low turnout election
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been elected the next mayor of Chicago. […] The election featured lower voter turnout than expected.” [emphasis added]
— Steven Nelson, 02/22/2011 (dailycaller.com)
"Lower voter turnout" for a bunch of low-life candidates. Seems appropriate.
Another instance of the adage, "The public gets the government it deserves".
Post 1,572 Chicago Sends In the Clown
There comes a time in every person's life …
… to pause; and face reality. Just do it!
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| Image via Theo |
Related source » Obama and Me
The confession of a man obsessed.
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“What I found equally galling was the free pass he had been given by the dreamstream media and the Leftosphere in general, which garnished every faux pas, every lame decision, every piece of vacant bombast as an illustration of Obama’s unquestionable genius. It reminded me of the way Greeks tend to treat their students and children, as never failed to amaze me during the years I lived in the country. They ask a boy his name. “Takis,” he says. “Bravo,” they reply. In what other country, I used to wonder, do you get praised for knowing your name? […]
By then I had decided that it was my moral duty to expose him in my writing and conversation for the charlatan and threat I knew him to be. As Frank Fleming has so aptly put it, “what a disaster it would be to appoint a mediocre legislator full of empty platitudes as president.” Indeed and rather absurdly, I felt a bit like a Paul Revere riding into the environing darkness to alert the unwary. It wasn’t long before I was knocked off my horse. […]
Ideally, such errancy will change as 2012 approaches and chastened electors start to recollect the way back home. Obama may not be a god, but he might be a godsend insofar as his destructive tenure should serve to warn Americans of the folly of electing a rhetorical windbag of a Marxist persuasion to the highest office in the land, without having done their due diligence. Or will they succumb yet again to what Mike McDaniel describes as “the rhetoric of the community organizer, the union boss, the black liberation theologian, the socialist”? […]
Having installed a comparatively sober administration composed of mature adults, Americans would then be able to go about their ordinary lives once more without having to periodically descend on Washington or join protest movements or fret about their children and grandchildren crushed under cordilleras of unpayable debt or brace for the next, increasingly likely terrorist attack or defend themselves against SEIU thugs or wonder what happened to the dollar or watch illegal aliens jump to the front of the college and university queues or bring cameras to voting stations or avoid the Arizona-Mexico border when vacationing or toil with scant success to find a doctor should Obamacare kick in, as we do in my country under our single payer system. […]
— February 23, 2011 - by David Solway (pajamasmedia.com)
If you care about the quality of your life, your children's and grandchildren's lives, and the well being of humanity's last best hope, the United States of America, please read David Solway's entire essay. It is a beautifully written compendium of, arguably, the ugliest period in American history.
Post 1,571 There comes a time in every person's life …
Monday, February 21, 2011
On Presidents' Day, are you disgusted yet?
The Obama: 44th Ranking POTUS
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| Hopey-Dopey (Image via Theo) |
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| Image via American Power |
Related source » Why Obama and the Dems Blundered in WisconsinAre we there yet? Are we having fun yet? Are we disgusted yet?
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“The plan seems to have been born both within the war room of the Democratic National Committee and within the Oval Office. The overall coordination for the operation was the remnants of the president’s 2008 political campaign organization, Organizing for America (OFA). The strategy would be launched by the DNC and by the president, who, during the height of the Egyptian crisis, incongruously granted an exclusive interview to a Milwaukee TV reporter over union policy. While Cairo burned, he took time to decry a Wisconsin governor’s effort to rein in the budget and limit union benefits. Shaping the narrative for the attack, he said that Gov. Scott Walker’s effort “seems like more of an assault on unions.” […] Getting OFA and the president to act in close coordination was itself no small feat. The plan included busing in thousands of government employees, arranging for Democratic lawmakers to flee to an adjoining state, flying speakers and political organizers into Madison, organizing thousands to leave their jobs in public safety and in classrooms, and staging rallies inside and outside the statehouse. They even enticed sympathetic doctors to draft bogus doctor excuses for government workers.”
— February 21, 2011 - by Richard Pollock (pajamasmedia.com)
The President of the United States of America is actively engaged in organizing and promoting highly partisan activities in order to subvert the legally constituted legislative process in the State of Wisconsin, one of the 50 States in the Union. Please consider the enormity of such an abrogation of His Presidential Oath of Office.
Is there, finally, no decency left in the Presidency of the United States?
Post 1,570 On Presidents' Day, are you disgusted yet?
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Disgusting Behavior at Columbia
Leftists Polluting Columbia University
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| "Racist!" students yelled at Anthony Maschek, CU freshman and former staff sergeant awarded Purple Heart (Image via American Power) |
Related source » Hero's unwelcome
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus. "Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran. Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military. "It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you." Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.”
— ANNIE KARNI, February 20, 2011 (nypost.com)
I received my master's and doctorate from this once-great university. Now, decades later, everything I read about what goes on there disgusts me. The hippies of the sixties and their decadent offspring have turned this campus into the cesspool it is today.
F*ck them all, including the University President, who allowed I'madinnerjacket to speak there a few years back.
Post 1,569 Disgusting Behavior at Columbia
This Week's Best of Rule 5
• LABELS:
Rule5
Refer to: The Other McCain's principles of blogospheric success
or “How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year”
Related source » The Sunday Best
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
Rule 5 Saturday Night: The Donald’s Daughter
Non-Woodsterman Rule 5: Sofia Vergara
— Theo Spark, SUNDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2011 (theospark.net)
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| Ivanka Trump Image via Maggie's Notebook | Sofia Vergara Image via American Perspective |
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Post 1,568 This Week's Best of Rule 5
Friday, February 18, 2011
Gaming the Equal Protection Clause
Also Known As Set-Theoretic Social-Engineering
Image via WikipediaDuring a recent guest lecture at NC State University, Michael Boskin was asked by an obaminoid in the audience why "tax cuts for the rich" is not disparaged as "social engineering". Professor Boskin replied in words to the effect that common usage for "social engineering" implies a specific policy designed to alter the natural outcome of general policy. I am not sure how the questioner received the professor's reply, but my guess is he wasn't happy with it.
You see, gentle reader, "tax cuts for the rich" is a fraudulent battle cry in The Obama's strategy for class warfare. It is an arbitrary rhetorical demarcation in the union of all people, into the so-called "rich" and everyone else. In so doing, a general policy of tax-cuts for everyone, including people who don't pay taxes (for whom a "cut" becomes a "dole"), can be enumerated as tax-cuts for the rich together with tax-cuts for everyone else.
It should be obvious to everyone, even the perpetually perplexed, that such an enumeration of arbitrary elements in a union of all people constitutes a rhetorical ploy for charlatans like The Obama and his leftist army of muckrakers. These reprobates, who prey on the ignoramuses whose votes they own, could just as easily have defined "tax cuts for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants" if they wanted to tailor their target to suit their battle du jour.
Post 1,567 Gaming the Equal Protection Clause
Monday, February 14, 2011
Is dropping out such a bad thing?
• LABELS:
It´s all relative,
Political corruption,
POTUS
As is commonly the case, it depends on the circumstances.
Image via WikipediaRelated source » U.S.' Least, Most Educated Most Likely to Find Jobs in 2010
Those with some college fared worst
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“PRINCETON, NJ -- Unemployment improved the most between January 2010 and January 2011 among Americans with a high school education or less, declining to 13.6% from 15.4%, and among those with postgraduate work, declining to 3.8% from 5.0%. […] The data also suggest there are benefits associated with completing college. The unemployment rate of 5.8% among college grads is much lower than the 10.9% among those with some college. And unemployment among college grads improved slightly over the past year, while staying flat among those with some college. […] Those with a high school education or less and those with postgraduate work saw their underemployment rates decline the most. On the other hand, underemployment increased for those with some college, to 21.9% in 2011 from 20.9% in 2010.”
— by Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist, February 14, 2011 (gallup.com)
The above excerpted Gallup findings caught my eye, and not just because they support the conventional wisdom that, "Education [Is] Key to Addressing Unemployment Challenges," as Gallup framed it. I was, however, particularly struck by the less obvious implication that dropping out of college is more significant in terms of worsening un- and under-employment prospects than even dropping out of high school!
Upon further consideration, however, a possible explanation can be deduced. I suspect that many jobs, which people with only a high-school diploma (or less) are willing to accept, can be adequately performed with only a negligible dependence on what is or isn't learned in high school. Moreover, such jobs are not likely to be acceptable to people who attempted college.
Whatever, dude. In America anything is possible. Take The Obama (Please!). He claims to have degrees from Columbia and Harvard Universities, though no corroborating evidence is available. Nevertheless, He became POTUS! Such an accomplishment has already entitled him to a Nobel Peace prize. Moreover, He is a shoe-in to make it into Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Such a country ...
Post 1,566 Dropping Out
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Occam's Razor to the Chase
Traveling Light
Related source » Column One: As the lies come crashing downImage via Wikipedia
Confronting The Obama administration’s assault on reason in the interest of ideological faithfulness, Israel is faced with very few good options.
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Confronting the Obama administration’s assault on reason in the interest of ideological faithfulness, Israel is faced with very few good options. The threats Israel faces stem largely from the rising forces of jihad, Islamic terrorism and religiously justified nuclear adventurism embraced by Islamist politicians and religious leaders. That is, the threats facing Israel stem largely from the forces the Obama administration has elected to ignore and deny. Moreover, the Obama administration’s singular obsession with coercing Israel to surrender still more land to the Palestinian Authority means that America’s central Middle East policy involves demanding that Israel further strengthen the unmentionable forces of jihad at its own expense. […] But doing so will not protect us when the dangers sown by the US’s strategic dementia provoke the next conflagration. Israel’s best option is to simply tell the truth as loudly and forcefully as it can and base our policies on it. While doing so will win Israel no friends in the Obama administration or in Europe, it will prepare us for the day when the wall of lies they are building from Islamabad to Cairo to Ramallah come crashing down.”
— Caroline Glick, 02/11/2011 (jpost.com)
“It will fluctuate.” — J.P Morgan, when asked what the stock market will do.
“It will complicate.” — TheBigHenry, when asked what the world will do.To compensate for the exponential complication of life in the 21st century, one must simplify one's modus operandi. An important step in such simplification is to decelerate the rate of bewilderment induced by forces beyond anyone's control.
Utilize Occam's razor. Cut to the chase. Travel light.
The days of leisurely contemplation are dwindling. Lest you savor a diet of other people's dust, you must learn to adapt to ever faster-changing circumstances. The quickest way to keep your head above water is to head for the shore of the raging rapids. They are only going to get rapider.
The Obama is a hopeless ideologue. He thinks He's a progressive but He is a classic reactionary who hearkens to all the failed ideologies. He remains deeply ignorant because He doesn't read books. Why would He? He thinks He already knows everything. He has an app for everything, but no plan for anything, except getting re-elected. His claim to infamy is exclusive reservation of Level 10 in Dante's Inferno.
Stay nimble my friends. Eschew the tried but false. Stay true to decency and common sense. Read books. Evaluate what you read. Learn to think for yourself, and always tell the truth, most especially to yourself. That is all any individual can do on behalf of the human condition.
As for The Obama and His ignorant obaminoids, as well as all the reactionaries and bigots that He bows to, let them stew in their self-loathing juices. When they and their movable feast are ready for that final inglorious journey, which they all so richly deserve, that ol' roomy hand-basket will be ready for them. Bon voyage, motherf*ckers.
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| Rhetoric |
Post 1,565 Occam's Razor to the Chase
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 — April 15, 1865)
• LABELS:
American cultural literacy,
POTUS,
Remembrance
Image via Wikipedia“..., shall not perish from the earth.”
Related source » Happy Birthday, Mr President
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
— h/t Secular Apostate
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Post 1,564 Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 — April 15, 1865)
Friday, February 11, 2011
I have read my alter ego …
… and he is a Muslim.
Related source » A Letter from a Fearfully Concerned Muslim
To an American-Jewish friend.
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer — from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S.; with a record of participation in the most vulgar gathering of Jeremiah Wright posing as a reverend, spouting Fanonian rhetoric and bigotry; with mentors such as the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers; channelling the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Rashid Khalidi of the Chomsky school of self-loathing and sophistry — could advance through the ranks of American politics at an astounding speed, with little or no record of experience in government, to become the 44th president. In one of my columns from 2008 for the Sun Media in Canada, I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama. I was wrong in my overestimation of reason and experience among American voters as a check on the naivete of the university crowd and the duplicity of Lenin’s “useful idiots” in free societies. […] But after 1992 we have been in the state of enjoying our unrestrained appetite for endless orgy, the zeal that comes to declining bodies from the artificiality of induced eroticism by pills which give to narcissists of the “sixties” generation the pathetic sense of immortality. These are the folks the people have elected to run their lives, protect their cultural legacy, hold back the enemies of freedom, maintain balance of power in strategic and vulnerable regions of the world and, as Burke reminded his own generation, maintain the promise of the present and inheritance of the past as trustees for the unborn generations of the future. Ten years after 9/11, we, the broad public of liberal democracies, still have not fully grasped the meaning of that horror-filled morning, or understood without any apologetics or polemics the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed the deed. We remain more or less preoccupied with re-litigating the debate over the decision by the Bush administration to take the war declared upon the West into the heartland of the enemy and expunge them; and instead of faulting Bush for not going far enough at home and abroad in defeating the Islamist jihadi assault on the West, for reasons that have everything to do with the nature of our corrupted polity, we have contorted ourselves to find the right mix of appeasement. […] The fault, as Cassius reminds Brutus, is in ourselves, a decaying civilization that will be saved (if it will be) not by the snobs in Washington and New York, London and Paris, Rome and Berlin, but by our version of the unsophisticated children of truckers who are now waking up from the drug-induced stupor of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. I have hope, the eternal hope of a fearful heart, that the West will survive and yet again gather speed, but how sad are the losses and tears that have piled up — with more to come. They could have been avoided if we, as a people, were not so irresponsible or unfaithful to our history as to place at the head of our societies leaders so unworthy and clueless as the one who so unfittingly occupies the seat of Washington and Lincoln, at the head of this great republic.” [emphasis added]
— by Salim Mansur, February 11, 2011 (pajamasmedia.com)
Read it. Read the whole essay. Read it carefully.
And weep.
Post 1,563 I have read my alter ego …
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Deckchairs at the Bottleneck
Image via WikipediaInteresting Times Ahead
Related source » Obama Must Go
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“His malapropisms, however, are not only a sign of a deeply ignorant man but also a symptom of the policy miscarriages he has implemented since taking office — again, too numerous to mention in toto. The most recent, of course, is his thorough mishandling of the Egyptian imbroglio, especially his opening the door to the ascendancy of the notorious Muslim Brotherhood into the corridors of power. But given his bungling in both Iraq and Afghanistan, his unwillingness to take steps to prevent Iranian weapons and insurgents from crossing into the battle zone, and his placing American civil security into the palsied hands of Janet Napolitano, his corpse-man gaffe has distinct and ironic implications for American servicemen as well as civilians. For those who follow American politics closely, but from a privileged distance — as does this Canadian — it is hard to resist the conclusion that Barack Obama is nothing short of a national catastrophe, surely the worst presidential blight to fall on the U.S. since the woeful Jimmy Carter and probably as far back as Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce or John Tyler — take your pick.”
— by David Solway, February 9, 2011 (pajamasmedia.com)
The Obama is a runaway train-wreck in the making. But He is only the proximate cause of our impending doom. The tracks that passively enable this looming catastrophe were laid by a defect of human nature — the great reluctance and, frequently, the inability to acknowledge mistakes made. It is a matter of personal self-esteem held more closely than even personal survival.
It gets worse. This defect is so indelibly etched in our DNA that we are inclined to take such action as necessary to obviate the mere suspicion of mistakes acknowledged privately.
The circumstances couldn't be more dire. We have the proverbial ship of state in the arthritic hands of mental midgets being cheered on by corrupt groups of self-interests, ravenous free-lunchers, and malevolent powers. And no one wants to take responsibility for what is to come as a result of the violent neglect of the obvious.
My fear is that another evolutionary bottleneck is on the horizon. I won't be around to witness what, if anything, survives the interesting times just around the corner.
Chances are good that it won't be pretty.
Post 1,562 Deckchairs at the Bottleneck
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Making of an Acid Test
Image via WikipediaNeither necessary nor sufficient in a court of law, but a reasonable working hypothesis.
Western civilization has come a long way from trial by fire to the pinnacle beyond reasonable doubt. But just as any gold standard has its ideal application in matters of highest import and consequence, a reasonably effective and efficient acid test has its domain of applicability. And because of its diminished applicability, when it comes to an acid test, one size does not fit all. Nor does one flavor suit every taste.
People are naturally deceptive. If you don't accept that premise, then there is nothing here for you. Go look elsewhere for Mother Teresa ... Still here? Well then, you will frequently need to develop screening processes to select congenial candidates for friendship or other relationships. But first, know thyself.
At least have the good sense to know your own prejudices. We all have them, whether we are willing to acknowledge them in public or not. Usually, we are willing to acknowledge those that we secretly admire. For example, I have no problem admitting a bias for leading an ace from a holding that also includes the king in that suit. My only exception to this personal bias in defending at bridge is when my ace-king holding is a doubleton. And so, when choosing a partner for a game of bridge, I will usually disclose such a bias.
Having come to terms with and prioritized one's own biases, one proceeds to find compatible companionship in the wide world of individual collections of biases, most of which are far more offensive than the innocent varieties that tend to be disclosed without dissembling. There's the rub, the dissembling, and concomitantly the need for a set of acid tests.
Now for the purpose of this personal post — what is a useful working acid-test for Jew-hatred? For anyone who prefers friendship with people who aren't Jew-haters, not merely with those who only profess not to be Jew-haters, one needs a personal acid test that cuts through the layers of dissembling by those who are unwilling to flaunt their bigotry.
In the long sordid history of Jew-hatred there was, until relatively recent times, no need for such an acid test. People had the decency to embrace their bigotry and, indeed, not only flaunt it but crusade for it. But in the wake of the Holocaust, even though many are now crusading against its veracity, there are those who despicably deny harboring such prejudice. The trick is to trust but verify such denials. Enter the trustworthy acid test.
An acid test is a defense that needs to evolve with ever more unscrupulous offenses. No longer will a closet Jew-hater make do with the old standby, "Some of my best friends are Jewish". Anyone who buys that load of shit is a mark for beach-front property in Arizona.
My own acid test, which admittedly is not infallible and will not suit everyone who needs one, is a declaration of an incongruent animosity towards Israel. In my humble opinion, Israel is not a nation without faults. But it is far and away superior in every reasonable domain of valuation than all of the cesspools of humanity that surround it and threaten its existence. So, just as anti-Semitism was merely code for Jew-hatred, anti-Zionism is just code for anti-Semitism. It works for me.
And for me, that's all that matters.
Post 1,561 The Making of an Acid Test
Now hear this!
Now hear this!
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| Image via hotdogger13 |
Related source » “Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”
Welcome to our urban high schools, where kids have kids and learning dies.
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.”
— GERRY GARIBALDI, Winter 2011 (city-journal.org)
Fer shur, you've heard all this before. But have you really heard it? Have you heard it with comprehension? I doubt it.
As big as this socio-economic problem is, it is just part of a larger problem, of morality. And even that is an understatement of its gravity. At bottom, modern society has abandoned its link with our traditional inter-generational knowledge-base. Not only are children having children; children are no longer able to access the lessons learned by their ancestors in that most important source of societal learning — the school of hard knocks.
Why? Because today's children's parents are children whose parents had never been taught those lessons themselves. And arguably the most important lesson of all, the concept of personal accountability, has been obliterated from the consciousness of our typical family unit. I don't believe I am overstating this case. If you read my contention carefully, your comprehension will register the all-important qualifier "typical".
Our typical family unit today is stressed by various shortages. Most units focus on shortage of money, which is understandable since, as wise men have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, money is the closest approximation to the one resource that truly can not be recycled — time. But, as wise men have also demonstrated repeatedly, money isn't everything. Neither am I setting you up for that tired refrain popularized by Vince Lombardi, namely, "It's the only thing".
Of equal importance to money, and perhaps even more important, is a basic understanding of how groups of people larger than the nuclear family have managed to survive ten thousand generations of competition for access to finite amounts of natural resources. By and large, it has been accomplished in a series of fits and starts and the very gradual accumulation of an inter-generational knowledge-base of traditions, morals, ethics, and ultimately, personal accountability.
Post 1,560 Now hear this!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Art and the School of Motorcycle Blending
First you get a really big blender …
Image via WikipediaRelated source » Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (ZAMM) is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality. […] The title is an incongruous play on the title of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. In its introduction, Pirsig explains that, despite its title, 'it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either'.”
— From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What, you might be asking, does this have to do with the price of tea in Italy? There is no correlation, nor is this an inquiry into family (or any other flavor of) values. It has everything to do with practice, however.
There is a common conceit among those of an Athenian persuasion — who think their genius springs fully-armed from their exceptionalness, and think their shit don't stink. Alas, such genius is as rare as a Michaelangelo, a Shakespeare, or a Mozart. Wannabes, however, need practice. A lot.
Call me crazy, but I wannabe a competent writer. And, since I believe the birth of Athena is a mythological myth (as opposed to a real true-story, such as Moses parting the Red Sea), I need lots of practice. This is one reason I chose blogging as my major avocation in retirement.
I strive to produce a reasonable post on a daily basis, but sometimes my muse abandons the premises, as has been the case for the past few days. It's frustrating, but the really annoying thing is that she (I assume my muse is female, for if you begin with a male and take away reason and accountability ...) never gives me notice of her impending departure. But I digress ...
Anyway, I sometimes resort to seizing an incongruent opposition of terms or concepts while letting my mind wonder. (Whom am I kidding. My mind doesn't require my permission to wonder). So, on this occasion, I challenged myself to write a post whose title would contain the bizarreness of "blending motorcycles".
It could happen.
Post 1,559 Art and the School of Motorcycle Blending
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The Multicultural-Relativism of Our Discontent
Image via Wikipedia"Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York."
— Shakespeare, Richard III
Related source » The Middle East and the Multicultural Nightmare
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Obama is not a classical liberal, but rather an illiberal multicultural relativist. In his way of thinking, all cultures are equal, and so are not to be judged by transcendent, timeless abstract values, like freedom and liberty. [According to Obama] [t]hese proclamations, instead, are ‘constructed’ narratives offered up by Western chauvinists and do not take into consideration past imperialism, colonialism, and racism. Instead, equality of result — an enforced egalitarianism in the Marxist sense — is the multiculturalist creed. In such a warped world view, a Chavez or Castro who stifles freedom is not per se anti-democratic, because he does so to redistribute income, his beneficiaries being the “people”, his prey “them”. […] Finally, multiculturalism is a form of political and historical ignorance. The multiculturalist is an ahistorical fool, who confuses the cultural periphery with the core. Thus the United States is enriched by “multicultural” music, food, fashion, art, and literature from a Mexico or Kenya or Egypt. Fine, wonderful, all the better. But one, in the spirit of ‘diversity’, does not wish to embrace the Mexican judiciary, the Kenyan economic system or the Arab attitude to women. Multiculturalism is a fraud of sort, as the activist who wears the serape to campus never quite agitates for adopting the protocols of the Mexican police or the Mexico City elite’s approach to Indian peoples. We do not see signs, blaring out, “We want Nigerian speech codes”, “Treat women as they do in Saudi Arabia”, “Look to the Iranians for gay rights”. “Arabs had the right idea about slavery”, etc. When I do radio talk show interviews, usually the harshest U.S. critics are transplanted Middle Easterners who in their furor at American foreign policy never quite explain why they left and do not go back to places that they now idolize — as if the economic, political, and cultural protocols they enjoy here would appear in Gaza or Yemen like dandelions after a rain if it were not for U.S. imperialism.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, February 2, 2011 (pajamasmedia.com)
Humans are fallible (you can quote me on that); it would not have been wise to adhere to a single unifying worldview. Hence, multiculturalism evolved and provided a multiplicity of choices for advancing the lot of man, and, of course, woman. But it is a grave folly to preserve all the views that have evolved, the good, the bad, and the ugly, without using our god-given ability to differentiate the useful from the patently corrupt.
Multiculturalism offers a means to a greater end. It is not necessarily a desirable end in itself, all the more so when viewed through Alice's looking-glass.
The Obama and his perpetually-perplexed supporters simply don't comprehend that multiculturalism (in its present-day incarnation) and moral relativism are corruptions of the truly noble concept, "All men are created equal", where "men" means humanity (including women as well as five-fifths of all non-Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and the operative word is "created". As should be abundantly obvious to all but the hopelessly fecked-up, "created" does not, repeat loudly NOT, imply entitled to equality of results.
As multiculturalism spawns moral relativism, so does the latter lead to that perversion of equality, namely bigotry. For if all worldviews are to be valued equally, then, just to mention the most egregious example, the homicidal Jew-hatred of Islamofascism is legitimized. It may all be relative, but we should at least strive for improvement, which insists on the existence of a greater good.
Post 1,558 The Multicultural-Relativism of Our Discontent
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Gargoyle Needs More Wine
Image via WikipediaThe General earned his stars and medals through military service to his country. Jarrett earned her seat at the table through personal kneeling-service to her idol.
Related source » Valerie Jarrett to uniformed general: More wine, garçon!
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“During an exclusive dinner hosted Monday by the Alfalfa Club, Obama adviser Valerie Jarret had just such a moment. And were it not for an irritated tipster, Jarret might have walked away from the dinner unblemished. According to our tipster, Jarrett was seated at the head table along with several other big-name politicians and a handful of high-ranking military officials. As an officer sporting several stars walked past Jarrett, she signaled for his attention and said, “I’d like another glass of wine.” Garçon! White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who was seated next to Jarrett, began “cracking up nervously,” our tipster said, but no one pointed out to Jarrett that the man sporting a chestful of medals was not her waiter.”
— By Mike Riggs, 02/01/2011 (dailycaller.com)
Some maintain she has no class. Others claim it's up her ass. Leftists claim she has true grit. Generals know she's full of it.
There just isn't enough lipstick ...
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| "D'you want ice wid dat?" |
Post 1,557 The Gargoyle Needs More Wine
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Mother of All Suicide-Bombs
I'madinnerjacket Wants to Wipe Israel Off the Map by Causing a
Chernobyl-Like Meltdown of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant
Image via WikipediaRelated source » Stuxnet hits Bushehr again. Russia warns of nuclear explosion
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“Iran's atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Jan. 29 that the Bushehr nuclear power plant would be connected to the national grid on April 9. He "forgot" about Tehran's promise to fully activate its first nuclear reactor Tuesday, Jan. 25. DEBKAfile's intelligence and Moscow sources reveal that on that day, Iran's hand on the switch was held back at the last minute by Sergei Kiriyenko, chief of Rosatom (the Russian national nuclear energy commission), which oversaw the reactor's construction. He came hurrying over to warn Tehran that Stuxnet was back and switching the reactor on could trigger a calamitous nuclear explosion that could cost a million Iranian lives and devastate neighboring populations. He complained to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Iranian nuclear and engineering staff were ignoring the presence of the malworm and must be stopped. […] The impression the Rosatom chief had gained from his staff at Bushehr was that the Iranian teams had been ordered to activate the reactor at any price to prove that the Islamic Republic had beaten Stuxnet. This concern overrode security. The consequences of ignoring this fearful hazard, said Kiriyenko, were unthinkable and would destroy the revolutionary Islamic regime in Tehran in their wake.” [emphasis added]
— DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 31, 2011 (debka.com)
Cutting off the nose to spite the face? D'you want fries wid dat? How about a million really crispy ones?
I'll give these mofos one thing — they are obsessed with death and destruction. It's like a cult-thing with them.
The prevailing winds over Iran are such that a lot of the radioactivity will drift towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. So this might be why The Obama wants to begin drawing down our troops from Afghanistan this year. If that is indeed His motivation, I applaud it.
C'est la vie. Live by the sword; die by the sword. Pain; what a rush. When I'madinnerjacket goes down, he goes down in the flames. There's a million of these ...
Post 1,556 The Mother of All Suicide-Bombs
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