Mr. Rummel describes his encounter with a buggy whip salesman, and he was very nice to the misguided soul - I usually just laugh out loud an shut the door.
Strangely, he does consider the Plain Dealer to "energetic" compared to the Columbus Dispatch - perhaps in the same way live sloths can be called energetic compared to dead sloths.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Immigataion Reform
Via Hot Air, I found this piece of hyperventilating, panty bunching, giggle fodder from some euro-type who, when the inevitable demographic shift occurs, and England becomes an islamic country, should not under any circumstances be given refugee status. Make the twerp stay in his own fouled nest.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Department of not getting it department
So I was listening to the local talk radio on the way to the store for extra bacon for the pig candy and there is this fellow - a serious lefty lawyer who gets a couple hours of rebuttal time on Saturdays to balance the Medved/Prager/Ingraham blabfest from the rest of the week.
He was one of the "Bush -worst- president- in the- history- of- the -U.S." sort of people and all that implies, and he's livid- sputtering, and stomping his little feet over the Palin pick. From what I could gather - between bouts of spittle-flecked microphone biting, he felt that MaCain chose the Alaska Governor in a cynical, underhanded attempt to turn the simple country folk, what with their cow milking and hay making, against their dazzling urbanite betters and thus drive a wedge between these heretofore natural allies in the battle against the Darth Vadars of the Republican party. He was shocked that a political organization would stoop so low as to pander to different demographic groups. Any political organization other than the democrats that is.
Apparently, his thinking goes, if the party of Lincoln wins with a strategy like that, it puts at risk gender norming, race-based college admissions, minority only business enterprise zones, taxing the successful to ease life for the stupid, hate crimes legislation, and sending global warming deniers to re-education camps - you know, the things that bring us all together in one big warm hopey-changey group hug.
With all due deference to anecdote not being data and all, I would beg to differ.
I do not have many acquaintances amongst the Bumpkin-American sector, but my travels to today's gun show did reveal a surprising number of people who were excited about the prospects of a Palin/McCain administration (yeah, I know she's not supposed to get top billing) ... old guys.
I hear your objection. I was at a gun show, and gunnies are a target audience for the republicans, but I was paying attention to the people who were visibly, and volubly happy; people who would go out of their way to bring up their love of the vice presidential nominee, and the ones who stood out from the crowd were the codgers.
One guy - a wrinkled, gray haired vet, was telling everybody who came to look at his wares that he was switching from Bob Barr to McCain because of Sarah Palin, another (full disclosure: father of a friend of mine) who could best described as a 77 year old anti-authoritarian populist who wasn't going to bother voting this year, sees her Governorship as a Harry Trumanesque figure. Hell, even Breda's 80 year old uncle (more than one purple heart from Korea) is dancing little jigs because Sarah Palin reminds him of his own wife.
I can't believe this represents any kind if intent on the part of McCain, but I think it does show there's votes to be won in the unlikeliest of places, and if this till now marginalized constituency
has become energized- there's no telling who else the democrats - a party who practically specialize in sneering condescension - have pushed past the point of no return.
He was one of the "Bush -worst- president- in the- history- of- the -U.S." sort of people and all that implies, and he's livid- sputtering, and stomping his little feet over the Palin pick. From what I could gather - between bouts of spittle-flecked microphone biting, he felt that MaCain chose the Alaska Governor in a cynical, underhanded attempt to turn the simple country folk, what with their cow milking and hay making, against their dazzling urbanite betters and thus drive a wedge between these heretofore natural allies in the battle against the Darth Vadars of the Republican party. He was shocked that a political organization would stoop so low as to pander to different demographic groups. Any political organization other than the democrats that is.
Apparently, his thinking goes, if the party of Lincoln wins with a strategy like that, it puts at risk gender norming, race-based college admissions, minority only business enterprise zones, taxing the successful to ease life for the stupid, hate crimes legislation, and sending global warming deniers to re-education camps - you know, the things that bring us all together in one big warm hopey-changey group hug.
With all due deference to anecdote not being data and all, I would beg to differ.
I do not have many acquaintances amongst the Bumpkin-American sector, but my travels to today's gun show did reveal a surprising number of people who were excited about the prospects of a Palin/McCain administration (yeah, I know she's not supposed to get top billing) ... old guys.
I hear your objection. I was at a gun show, and gunnies are a target audience for the republicans, but I was paying attention to the people who were visibly, and volubly happy; people who would go out of their way to bring up their love of the vice presidential nominee, and the ones who stood out from the crowd were the codgers.
One guy - a wrinkled, gray haired vet, was telling everybody who came to look at his wares that he was switching from Bob Barr to McCain because of Sarah Palin, another (full disclosure: father of a friend of mine) who could best described as a 77 year old anti-authoritarian populist who wasn't going to bother voting this year, sees her Governorship as a Harry Trumanesque figure. Hell, even Breda's 80 year old uncle (more than one purple heart from Korea) is dancing little jigs because Sarah Palin reminds him of his own wife.
I can't believe this represents any kind if intent on the part of McCain, but I think it does show there's votes to be won in the unlikeliest of places, and if this till now marginalized constituency
has become energized- there's no telling who else the democrats - a party who practically specialize in sneering condescension - have pushed past the point of no return.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Funny thing happened on the way to the coronation.
Now where was I? Oh yes, McCain, Palin, Biden, Obama, and Sun Tzu. Old Sunny was hell on wheels in his day, so much so, that a lot of modern folk think he has the skinny on winning at any endeavor from hostile takeovers of companies to getting the girl of your dreams to go out with you instead of Bob down in accounting.
I've read "The Art of War" and it contains much good, hard common sense distilled down to easy to apply aphorisms, the whole thing larded with a healthy dose of fortune-cookie pablum. But like the Greeks with logic, Sun Tzu gets credit for thinking of it first, and creating what is THE baby step, must read, start here, study of strategy.
The most famous of his dictates reads more or less, "know yourself and know your enemy and you will never know defeat". This is true as far as it goes, so long as one ignores luck and happenstance - having the high ground, the best army, and best plan is for naught if god decides to drop a piano on you before the fight starts.
Nonetheless, if you can apply the rule (there's the rub), your chances for victory go right up.
I'm sure there is also a political version of the book - Machiavelli wrote one, but unless one has the option of putting enemy's heads on stakes, it's not too useful for practical politics in 21st century America. Still, if there some version of "The Art of political War" available, recent events show the democrats haven't read it, because, boy did they get caught flat footed.
Our brethren on the left are running around in circles and screaming to any sympathetic ear the the filthy republicans are actually trying to win the election, that they don't understand the rules, they're... they're... fighting back.
Uh, guys it's an election contest - if only one side tries to win, the whole competition idea goes out the window.
And herein lies a little insight into the mind of the democratic party (know your enemy... remember) - they are so confident of their own rectitude they cannot conceive of someone not wanting what they are selling. It flummoxes them that given their natural superiority in this contest, that the other side would would actually even want to go through with it. They are great, they are pure, they are destiny's children, they do not know their enemy.
If failure to know thy enemy is a dangerous conceit, failure to know yourself is a fatal one. And here again the democrats fall into a trap of their own making. It is difficult to have a clear sense of self when everybody from the New York Times editorial page to the flakes at MSNBC is telling you how great you are. Barack Obama is a nancy-boy, metrosexual amalgam of white guilt and black sense of entitlement, and to call Joe Biden dumber than a box of hammers is to risk insulting the intellect of of blunt objects, yet the watch poodles of the media have convinced a good portion of the voting public that these two are the god-like harbingers of a new politics. Worse still, it seems they have convinced Obama and Biden of this too.
Now, if the Palin pick is analogous to the battles of Lexington and Concord, where the British learned the colonists would indeed fight, I would suggest the next stage should be a good old Trenton sneak attack: Send every organizer, and speaker to the innerest of the inner cities with pictures showing the fully one in ten democratic convention delegates who are NEA members; arm them with lots of quotes from education folk saying that if the people are given school choice, they won't choose the public schools, and then ask how the democratic party thing is working out for their kid's futures.
Will it change any minds in urban America? Doubtful, but howls, and screams of the Obama campaign, at even the merest possibility he could loose the hold over his people, certainly might push some of the undecideds to McCain.
And, besides as a spectacle, watching the wheels come the Obama bus would take some beating.
9-7-08 Update: I wrote the above before I found this from Caroline Glick - I'm some kind of psychic apparently.
I've read "The Art of War" and it contains much good, hard common sense distilled down to easy to apply aphorisms, the whole thing larded with a healthy dose of fortune-cookie pablum. But like the Greeks with logic, Sun Tzu gets credit for thinking of it first, and creating what is THE baby step, must read, start here, study of strategy.
The most famous of his dictates reads more or less, "know yourself and know your enemy and you will never know defeat". This is true as far as it goes, so long as one ignores luck and happenstance - having the high ground, the best army, and best plan is for naught if god decides to drop a piano on you before the fight starts.
Nonetheless, if you can apply the rule (there's the rub), your chances for victory go right up.
I'm sure there is also a political version of the book - Machiavelli wrote one, but unless one has the option of putting enemy's heads on stakes, it's not too useful for practical politics in 21st century America. Still, if there some version of "The Art of political War" available, recent events show the democrats haven't read it, because, boy did they get caught flat footed.
Our brethren on the left are running around in circles and screaming to any sympathetic ear the the filthy republicans are actually trying to win the election, that they don't understand the rules, they're... they're... fighting back.
Uh, guys it's an election contest - if only one side tries to win, the whole competition idea goes out the window.
And herein lies a little insight into the mind of the democratic party (know your enemy... remember) - they are so confident of their own rectitude they cannot conceive of someone not wanting what they are selling. It flummoxes them that given their natural superiority in this contest, that the other side would would actually even want to go through with it. They are great, they are pure, they are destiny's children, they do not know their enemy.
If failure to know thy enemy is a dangerous conceit, failure to know yourself is a fatal one. And here again the democrats fall into a trap of their own making. It is difficult to have a clear sense of self when everybody from the New York Times editorial page to the flakes at MSNBC is telling you how great you are. Barack Obama is a nancy-boy, metrosexual amalgam of white guilt and black sense of entitlement, and to call Joe Biden dumber than a box of hammers is to risk insulting the intellect of of blunt objects, yet the watch poodles of the media have convinced a good portion of the voting public that these two are the god-like harbingers of a new politics. Worse still, it seems they have convinced Obama and Biden of this too.
Now, if the Palin pick is analogous to the battles of Lexington and Concord, where the British learned the colonists would indeed fight, I would suggest the next stage should be a good old Trenton sneak attack: Send every organizer, and speaker to the innerest of the inner cities with pictures showing the fully one in ten democratic convention delegates who are NEA members; arm them with lots of quotes from education folk saying that if the people are given school choice, they won't choose the public schools, and then ask how the democratic party thing is working out for their kid's futures.
Will it change any minds in urban America? Doubtful, but howls, and screams of the Obama campaign, at even the merest possibility he could loose the hold over his people, certainly might push some of the undecideds to McCain.
And, besides as a spectacle, watching the wheels come the Obama bus would take some beating.
9-7-08 Update: I wrote the above before I found this from Caroline Glick - I'm some kind of psychic apparently.
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