100,000 Attend Nation's First 'Welcome Home' Parade for Iraq War Veterans
—Gabriel Malor
"It's not necessarily overdue, it's just the right thing," said Radford, a 23-year Army veteran who walked in the parade alongside his 8-year-old daughter, Aimee, and 12-year-old son, Warren.Radford was among about 600 hundred veterans, many dressed in camouflage, who walked along downtown streets lined with rows of people clapping and holding signs with messages including "Welcome Home" and "Thanks to our Service Men and Women." Some of the war-tested troops wiped away tears as they acknowledged the support from a crowd that organizers estimated reached 100,000 people.
Fire trucks with aerial ladders hoisted huge American flags in three different places along the route, with politicians, marching bands - even the Budweiser Clydesdales - joining in. But the large crowd was clearly there to salute men and women in the military, and people cheered wildly as groups of veterans walked by.
Nice.
Related enough: The Tenth Circuit ruled yesterday (PDF) that the Stolen Valor Act is constitutional. The Ninth Circuit went the other way last year, holding that lying about military service is speech protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court will ultimately decide the issue later this year.
Con Air, In Space
—Ace
Kind of neat.
I like the hero's introduction -- he's 1, he's the best there is, but 2, he's a loose cannon.
They really say that.
Some writer really s t r e t c h e d his craft right there.
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Palin on Establishment Cannibals
—Gabriel Malor
Sarah Palin's latest post taking the Establishment to task for using Alinsky tactics against Newt Gingrich is noteworthy for how out of step it feels with the rest of the Tea Party and, indeed, Gingrich's own campaign.
Rather than reject Alinsky's rules for radicals, the Tea Party has adopted many of them in the spirit of fighting fire with fire. Tea Party leader Michael Patrick Leahy wrote a book about it called "Rules for Conservative Radicals," which encouraged conservatives to "follow the tactics of Saul Alinsky, but apply the morals and ethics of Martin Luther King." James O'Keefe was also inspired by Alinsky, particularly Rule 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-affiliated group (although it's based in D.C. and chaired by uber-Establishment figure Dick Armey), boasted in 2009 that "Rules for Radicals" was the first book given to every new employee. Conservative organizers were teaching activists about "Rules for Radicals" at training sessions throughout 2009 (see here, for example).
So it's surprising to me to see Palin complaining about Alinsky tactics now. Having enthusiastically embraced these tactics back when their anger was directed at Obama, it's not surprising to see Republicans pointing their new-found tactics at each other. A tool is a tool and there's no denying that these folks want to win, whether they're competing against Obama or competing against a fellow Republican.
And speaking of a fellow Republican who employes Alinsky tactics, I can think of nobody in the campaign less enthusiastic about Alinsky than Gingrich. Here's Phil Klein:
On NBC's "Meet the Press" this past Sunday, Gingrich attributed his South Carolina victory to two things. The first was the economic pain that people were feeling. He then continued, "The second, though, which I think nobody in Washington and New York gets, is the level of anger at the national establishment."Gingrich's clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky.
"The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy,'" Alinsky wrote in "Rules for Radicals." He went on to reveal that, "Today, my notoriety and the hysterical instant reaction of the establishment not only validate my credentials of competency but also ensure automatic popular invitation."
Though Gingrich has spent several decades profiting from being part of the Washington establishment, the fact that he's been attacked by so-called "elites" has become self-validating.
The whole thing is farce from top to bottom. Gingrich as a Washington outsider? Get real.
Saturday Afternoon Open Thread
—DrewM.
Because I'm a giver.
Added [rdbrewer]: Bloody Pingu
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George Will On Generalissimo Obama
—Andy
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." ~ George Orwell
Today's must-read, via Jonah Goldberg.
The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands.
Whether they're fetishizing China, attempting to reorder society to combat fictitious global warming or taking over the healthcare system, rest assured that when you cut through their high-minded bullshit, the heart of a petty tyrant beats in every "progressive".
Saturday Morning Open Thread
—Andy
Truman linked this campaign to stop the Navy from naming a ship after miserable cretin John Murtha in the sidebar. If you're looking for something to do today, this would be a good use of a few minutes of your time.
Overnight Open Thread
—CDR M
As Americans, we are used to achieving success in truly tough and demanding times or while attempting to strive for some unachievable feat. It started with the Revolutionary War and continues to this day with our battlefield achievements and technological advancements. But what if something went wrong and things didn't go as planned or hoped for? Doomsday Speeches: If D-Day Or The Moon Landing Had Failed.
On June 5, 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower wrote down a message, carefully folded it, and placed it in his wallet. It contained a public statement in case the D-Day invasion failed. Twenty-five years later, in 1969, Richard Nixon's White House drafted a speech to use if the moon landing was unsuccessful and the astronauts were trapped on the lunar surface. This is not alternate history. This is very real history, about leaders preparing for a contingency that never transpired. More than anything, the messages reveal the fine line between triumph and disaster.
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Shipdriving, It's Hard or Something
—Dave In Texas
After the Costa Concordia accident I joked (badly, I know), "did Joseph Hazelwood get another job with a cruise line?"
State officials were scrambling Friday to determine when — or if — they would repair an 80-year-old bridge over Kentucky Lake that was ripped through by a huge ocean-going cargo ship on Thursday night.Two sections of the Eggner Ferry Bridge, which carries U.S. 68 and Ky. 80 over the lake, were destroyed by the northbound Delta Mariner, a 312-foot ship carrying rocket components from Decatur, Ala., to Cape Canaveral in Florida.
I realize this isn't a NASA mission per se, but, dude. Did you not see that bridge thingy up ahead?
Fortunately no injuries, other than wounded pride, were reported.
Bridge stories always make me miss a former cob-logger, Dr. Reo Symes. He had a thing about bridges.
via Mare over at the H2. The happening place for news of the day and big boobs on Friday. It's this, I don't know, this thing they do. Too much trouble to explain.
Jay Cost: Obama Is a Rolodex Socialist
—Ace
Those are my words. Cost says Obama isn't a socialist, according to the usual meaning.
He doesn't believe in revolution.
What he believes in are clients, bagmen, payoffs, and ward-heeling.
It’s not just that Obama is a big government guy in the progressive tradition, which conservatives have opposed for more than a century. It’s also that he’s a client guy, meaning that his idea of big government inevitably has special payoffs hidden in it somewhere. And more than even this, he's a boundless client guy in what should be an age of restraint. Payoffs to party clients are one thing when the economy is growing at a four percent rate per year; that is a situation where the times are so prosperous that government patrons are really just drawing upon the national surplus to satisfy their partisans. But when the economy is growing at less than two percent per year, barely enough to keep up with population growth, paying off party clients is actually like robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And while Obama and congressional Democrats have put off that bill -- in the form of our trillion-plus deficit -- conservatives are not fools. They know they'll be asked to pay up sooner or later, and with a stagnant economy that means less money in their pockets, in part because the president wants to hold together his voting coalition.That's what's so bad about Obama.
Democrats are just a collection of rent-seekers, beak-dippers, and vig-skimmers, who have convinced themselves that it is not only acceptable that they should collect rents, dip their beaks, and collect a vig on everyone else's transactions, but that to deny them such rents, dippings, and vigs constitutes the most hateful, vicious, and fundamentally un-American behavior they can conceive.
If a guy comes over to your business and begins demanding that you do x and pay y tithe to group z, and is all up in your grill about it, you'd probably either call the cops or spare them the trouble by getting out your gun and telling the miscreant to remove himself from your site or be removed from the earth.
But these cats get a degree in Public Policy and worm themselves up the Media-Distributionist Complex, and suddenly that behavior isn't merely legal -- now they've got the coercive force of the government on their side.
And then they ask: What's the problem? I'm smart. You're not as smart. I am telling you how to better allocate your small pile of money for the benefit of society; and sure, it just so happens my salary is coming out of a skim from your wealth.
Why don't you thank me for telling you how to best direct your own resources, instead of being all angry about it?
They just don't get it and never will. They just don't understand why you're having such a hard time accepting them as your new cadre of government-appointed bosses, ordering you about and taking the larger half of the fruits of your labor.
And they also just don't get that --
1. Even if they were smart, you weren't looking for a new boss.
2. You don't accept that they're that smart. In fact, you think they're kind of douchey faegelas who don't know shit about shat.
3. You also reject the weird premise that a certain type of ability, like intelligence, naturally makes one party a master and a complete stranger a slave. Why shouldn't we just say that physical might creates such a relationship, as was true for the first 10,000 years of human existence?
And what's the ultimate justification for all of this? We voted. A group of us got together and decided we would rather have your wealth in our pockets than your wealth in your pockets.
See, we voted.
Now--
What's so bad about Obama?
No Bounce in Polls For Obama's Address
—Ace
People also tend to change the channel on a show when they realize it's a rerun.
Especially if they didn't like it the first time.
Packed House? Gingrich Campaign Avers Debate Audience Was Stacked In Favor of Romney
—Ace
We seem to be getting rather far afield from the actual issues in this campaign, and more on the rules about audience participation and ticket allotment.
“They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, a Gingrich adviser, told the Post.But that’s not the case, according to both the Florida Republican Party and the Romney campaign. The party, which doled out 900 of the 1,200 tickets, says most of them went to “rank and file” Republicans.
I guess if "Debates" are central to the case for your nomination, this becomes a concern.
Science Shocker: Men Have Psychic Ability To Tell When Women Have Their Periods, Just By Listening To the Caterwauling Piping Out Of Their Yap-Holes
—Ace
Via Instapundit, this just popped up in my NSS (No Shit Sherlock) feed.
I like this part:
(For those who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the female reproductive cycle, women are most fertile during ovulation, when their ovaries release an egg, and least fertile during menstruation, when they shed the unfertilized egg and the lining of the uterus.)
That's for Andrew Sullivan. They might have added further, "Andrew, we're talkin' about the baby-hatch!!!"
A study had men listen to ten women at various points in their menstrual cycle, and guess which stage they were at.
The men had a one in four chance of guessing correctly, but they actually did so 35 percent of the time, a significant difference, the researchers say.
So there you go.
...So what was it about the women’s voices that gave away their reproductive status?
Ahem.
In another run, men weren't told the test was to guess at menstrual cycle state, but were just asked to judge the voices on "attractiveness." In this test they said the ovulating women were had the most "attractive" voices, 34% of the time.
Hormones induce the vocal changes that give women away. “Vocal production is closely tied to our biology,” Pipitone says of men and women. For example, “Cells from the larynx and vagina are very similar and show similar hormone receptors.”
No comment.
You Know Who Doesn't Agree The Economy Is Improving? Fed Chair Ben Bernacke, Who Intends To Keep His Zero-Interest-Rate Cheap-Money Policy Going Through 2014
—Ace
This is monetary stimulus. You don't do stimulus in a naturally-growing economy.
Mull that one over: The Fed is declaring that it needs to run the same super-easy monetary policy when the economy is growing by 2% or 3% as it did amid the worst of the financial panic. And keep doing it past the horizon. The unavoidable implication is that the Fed doesn't think the economy will grow any faster until what would be halfway through Mr. Obama's second term. The other implication is that the Fed has no idea what to do other than to push even harder on the monetary accelerator. Maybe this time, it hopes, the economy's clutch will engage.
...It's no coincidence that such a restatement of principles is coming now, when the Fed is looking to justify its extraordinary monetary interventions. If there were any doubt about this intention, Mr. Bernanke put it to rest in his press conference when he said more "quantitative easing" is likely if growth doesn't accelerate soon.
Facts: 1.7%. Crisis-level monetary stimulus. "Quantitative easing."
Spin: Green shoots. America is Back!
Simple question, really: If the economy is recovering, then why isn't it recovering?
Thanks to ATaLien.
Shocker: Isalmists In Egypt's Jihadist Spring Now Kinda-Sorta Taking Hostages
—Ace
Soft power. Soft, flaccid, shriveled power.
The junta that runs Egypt has banned a group of Americans and Europeans working on democracy promotion from leaving the country, among them the son of Ray LaHood, President Obama's Transportation secretary.Sam LaHood, the director of the International Republican Institute's (IRI) Cairo office, told the Associated Press that he was turned away at the airport last Saturday as he sought to fly out of the country. It has since emerged that a number of other employees of foreign NGOs have been barred from departing, stemming from the December raids by Egypt's ruling military on their offices, among them those of the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
...
Egypt alleged that the groups were illegally funding local political groups, and seized computers, documents, and cash in the armed raid. But preventing their executives from traveling – presumably because criminal charges may be brought against them – is a major escalation.
The organizations agitate for human rights and democracy and so forth, and Egypt's junta of paranoid Islamists see this as a foreign conspiracy to inject non-Islamic thoughts into their backwards medieval horror show.
Thank Goodness Obama demanded Mubarak depart immediately, rather than oversee a year of democratic institutions-building in advance of his departure.
Meanwhile, in Syria, a massacre of up to 30 people.
A "terrifying massacre" in the restive Syrian city of Homs has killed more than 30 people, including small children, in a barrage of mortar fire and attacks by armed forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, activists said Friday.
Cute Animal Videos
—Ace
Giant bunny eating banana, deer and kitten cuddling, and nursing an abandoned baby fruit bat.
The fruit bat is named "L'il Drac."
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Weekend Swinger Cuckold Party Goes Great, Until Someone Busts Out the Bear Mace
—Ace
I trust everyone is right at this moment googling "Bear Mace" and seriously considering ordering it.
"Do you think you can come here all weekend, **** my wife and nothing will happen?"
So what happened is that a couple, a man and woman, invited this Internet Stranger over, apparently to sex the wife, but let's face it, ass gas or grass, no one rides for free.
Prosecutor Gary Dow told the court that the weekend 'had gone well' before matters escalated.
It's important to enter that into the legal record.
He said Mr Greenan [Internet stranger] had been woken up on the couch at 4am by Reid [Weirdo Married dude] who invited him into the couple's bedroom for a smoke.Mr Dow said: 'The complainer sat on the toilet seat and Mr Barclay held a phone out to take a photo.
"The complainer."
'He told the complainer, "smile for the camera."'He went to get up and Leanne Reid said "f****** smile". She also had said that she was going to get a knife to stab him.
'Mr Barclay then said to the complainer, "Do you think you can come here all weekend, **** my wife and nothing will happen?".'
Barclay then instructed Reid to give him the [bear] repellent, which he told police he had bought in Canada, before he sprayed it on his victim.
Mr Dow added: 'The complainer then ran out of the house leaving his belongings.'
Hold on to your hats:
Representing Barclay, defence agent Neil McShane told the court that drugs had played a part in the weekend's events.
They took ketamine. I don't even know what that is. But I always hear about it in these weird sex situations. It's frequently name-checked on CSI.
It seems to be some kind of veterinary anaesthetic which induces hallucinations in humans.
Ketamine can be used in podiatry and other minor surgery, and occasionally for the treatment of migraine.
Well!
I don't get this whole "have sex with my wife" thing. I always think that that stuff is Gay Substitute Sex for Guys Who Don't Want To Think They're Gay.
Anytime you've got another dude as a critical actor in your swinging sexcapdes, I've got a news bulletin for you: You're gay. You're just getting Close to the Fire without touching the Fire, but you're really, really interested in that Fire, aincha?
Just my opinion.
Anyway, Bear Mace and ketamines. Weird internet sex parties.
Totally a CSI episode. All you need to add is anaphylactic shock (from the Bear Mace) and then the couple disguising the accidental killing as self-inflicted, add a little bit of blah-blah between Marge Helgenberger and her stupid gangster father, and you're all set.
2011 GDP Growth Rate: 1.7%
—Ace
The Q4 annualized quarterly rate is supposebly (which is like supposedly, except with the added implication that you'd have to be extra dumb to accept this at face vaule) 2.8%, which isn't good, but the actual rate for the year 1.7%.
By the way, Bush's average growth rate from 2001-2005 was 2.8%. More than a point higher than Obama's "recovery." And if you remember, Bush's recovery was considered horrible, virtually a depression.
Now when Obama hits 2.8% for one quarter -- just one quarter -- it's great. That 1.7% rate for all of 2011? Also pretty great.
That said, I was listening to Adam Carolla, and he and Allison Rosen were discussing the economy and its likely determinative roll in the 2012. Carolla successfully diagnosed the situation -- It's not what the economy's actually doing, but how the media will spin it -- but then added that it was his impression things were in fact getting better.
That worries me. I always like getting the input of less-partisan types, because it's their beliefs, not ours, that swing elections.
And even after noting that of course the media is going to spin this as an improving economy, he said he sort of felt like it was an improving economy.
Krauthammer: Obama's War on Wealth
—Ace
When Mom herself tells you an article's good, it has to be linked.
Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of “tax the rich.”After all, what’s he got? Can’t run on his record. Barely even mentioned Obamacare or the stimulus, his major legislative achievements, on Tuesday night. Too unpopular. His platform is fairness, wrapped around a plethora of little things, one mini-industrial policy after another — the conceit nicely encapsulated by his proclamation that “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or to Germany.” As if he can command these industries into existence. As if Washington funding a thousand Solyndras will make solar economically viable.
Soviet central planners mandated quotas for steel production, regardless of demand. Obama’s industrial policy is a bit more subtle. Tax breaks for manufacturing — but double tax breaks for high-tech manufacturing, which for some reason is considered more virtuous, despite the fact that high tech is less likely to create blue-collar jobs. Its main job creation will be for legions of lawyers and linguists testifying before some new adjudicating bureaucracy that the Acme Umbrella Factory meets their exquisitely drawn criteria for “high tech.”
What Obama offered the nation Tuesday night was a pudding without a theme: a jumble of disconnected initiatives, a gaggle of intrusive new agencies and a whole new generation of loopholes to further corrupt a tax code that screams out for reform.
If the Republicans can’t beat that in November, they should try another line of work.
Good article.
I wish people would focus more on Obama's odd conception of the role of government in the economy.
He only cares about the "dividing up the wealth" agenda.
He's not at all interested in how that wealth actually gets created. Or in fashioning policies that encourage the creation of wealth.
In fact, as Krauthammer notes, when asked in the 2008 campaign if he would raise capital gains tax rates even knowing that would 1) retard growth and 2) produce lower government revenues, he said, yes, certainly he still would raise them, because raising the tax rate was a good in and of itself.
It's fairerer or something.
If America's big problem was that we had a huge, huge pile of excess money and needed some pissant bien pensant to think of exciting new ways to spend it-- well, in that situation, certainly Obama would be a candidate worthy of serious consideration.
But that doesn't seem to be our problem. Quite the opposite. The problem seems to be that we don't have much excess money we're looking to waste. The problem seems rather that we have not nearly enough excess money. In fact, we're at negative 16.4 trillion dollars in the Big Pile of Excess Money Needing Spending column.
And Obama's plan? Let's argue over divvying up the profits even though we don't have any profits and in fact are 16.4 trillion in the hole.
Fear Factor Stunt Involves... Drinking Donkey Semen
—Ace
Seriously? A major corporation -- well, okay, it's not major, but it is still a broadcast network -- signed off on this?
And they did sign off on it. They had problems with it, but then gave it the green light.
Associates: Ron Paul Proofed, Signed Off On Newsletters
—Ace
Come on. Was this really some kind of actual question?
Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period, and the two men discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” are more likely than others to respond.Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.
Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said that Crane’s account “sounds odd” and that Paul did not recall the conversation.
At the time, Paul’s investment letter was languishing. According to the person involved with his businesses, Paul and others hit upon a solution: to “morph” the content to capitalize on a growing fear among some on the political right about the nation’s changing demographics and threats to economic liberty.
The investment letter became the Ron Paul Survival Report — a name designed to intrigue readers, the company secretary said. It cost subscribers about $100 a year. The tone of that and other Paul publications changed, becoming increasingly controversial. In 1992, for example, the Ron Paul Political Report defended chess champion Bobby Fischer, who became known as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, for his stance on “Jewish questions.’’
...
“The real big money came from some of that racially tinged stuff, but he also had to keep his libertarian supporters, and they weren’t at all comfortable with that,’’ he said.
In related news, a pitch for some new book on the essential truthiness of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was discovered on Paul's Campaign for Liberty website. It's now been zapped without explanation, though the screenshot remains.
I'm sure Paul didn't know about that and didn't solicit that. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. But after Ron Paul sending the message for 20 years that Neo-Nazis were welcome in his libertarian club, Neo-Nazis strangely derived from that the belief that they are welcome in his libertarian club.
Half in the Bag Review of Red Tails
—Ace
This is the Plinkett guy and a confederate, though he doesn't play Plinkett. (Oddly, when Plinkett appears in these, he's played by someone else.)
The argument is between "forgettable bad movie" (Plinkett's confederate) and "trainwreck" (Plinkett).
It turns out the opening scene doesn't have the white pilots behaving cowardly in running away from German fighters. Instead, they were behaving retardedly. Apparently the Germans keep running a game on them where they engage, then fly away, and the white fighter pilots chase them... leaving the bombers defenseless against the real German fighter offensive, which now comes, and wipes out the convoy.
Apparently the order "Yeah, don't do that anymore" doesn't work with the white fighter pilots, which is the reason they have to bring in the black pilots.
That's... dumb.
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Diane Sawyer Commercial For Obama: He's A Fighter And What A Hero, He Saved a Pretty Young Aid Worker
—Ace
He says he wants the second term "badly" because the American people really need it.
Diane Sawyer then essentially calls him a hero ("bold") for ordering Seal Team Six into action.
Only a Democrat's military successes count.
Sawyer's toughest question for Obama is, seriously: Why are you only talking about your economic successes now? Why did it take you three years to talk up the great things you've done for the economy? That's a paraphrase, but that is her big tough question for Obama. (At 3:00.)
Oh by the way, that question was submitted by "partners" at Yahoo. Diane Sawyer's taking questions from other people, but it seems only questions about why Obama's taken so long to tout his accomplishments.
She then hits him with a hard-hitting question: Does your family now have the clip of you singing Al Green as their ringtone?
And the devastating follow-up: If you lose the presidency, will your little daughter Sasha be sad?
No, that's not a joke. She asks that.
ABC brands the interview "candid."
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Top Headline Comments 1-27-12
—Gabriel Malor
Friday!
Just a day after denying reports that he was considering folding up and leaving Florida before the primary, Rick Santorum is folding up and leaving Florida before the primary. Says he'd rather do his taxes.
Survivors of the Costa Concordia will be given lump-sump compensation payments of about $14,400, I assume in exchange for signing a liability release.
NYTimes: actually, Romney paid more in taxes than he owed. Oops.
Overnight Open Thread
—Maetenloch
At least profession-wise as measured by a recent Gallup poll.
Well for damn sure not Congress.
In fact the 7% "very high trust" number for members of Congress is actually the lowest number ever recorded since the polling began in 1976. But of course when people answer this question what they really mean is how much do I trust members of Congress except my own representatives whom I love and insist on re-electing 94% of the time.
And high school teachers - and teachers in general - seem to get undue respect and trust IMO. Not that they shouldn't get *any* - but higher than policemen and clergy? Really?
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Liveblogging the CNN GOP Presidential Debate
—Andy
CNN. 8pm Eastern.
I wish I could say I was excited about another debate, but I've seen enough of these to last a lifetime.
To overcome the lack of enthusiasm, even the extreme ennui shown by *ahem* certain parties, we're going to mix it up a little tonight.
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Open Thread/Open Blog
—Ace
I've got to knock off for the day, at least for a few hours. I was up late last night attacking the troll ergie/Raykon/GayLord and I've got migraines from being on the computer so much the past couple of days.
I don't think there's going to be a liveblog tonight, but who knows. Andy seems determined. He's just crazy enough to do it alone.
[Update - Andy] It's on like Donkey Kong! Or Donkey punch. Whichever.
Backlash Frankenstein
—rdbrewer
Hoo-boy, sure has been a lot of anti-Newt coverage lately. It has made some strange allies of people like ABC reporters and Matt Drudge, for example. Of course, there's a risk with all the over-the-top coverage. I don't think people like it very much. It's going to end-up helping Gingrich, just like the nasty ex-wife coverage did last week.
Backlash Frankenstein
Way to go guys. You're pissing people off and galvanizing support for Newt. I said during the last debate liveblog his opponents need to be careful: "That's not a layer of fat; that's 'corbomite.'" That's nerd-fu for a substance that blows up in your face when you try to attack.
Jonah Goldberg said in his Newtzilla piece a couple of days ago:
Six weeks ago, during the last Newt Gingrich surge, I wrote here that “conventional weapons are useless against Newtzilla. . . . Everything bad about Gingrich — the flip-flops, the wives, the ego — is known. Once voters have convinced themselves they can overlook that stuff, it’s hard to change their minds simply by repeating it.”
In fact, repeating it makes him stronger. For many people, anyway.
Below is video linked at HotAir of a nice speech by Newt where points out that Mitt Romney isn't as smart has he thinks. "And we aren't that stupid."
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Madonna Will Be "Bringing Gay to the Super Bowl," One of Her Dancers Says
—Ace
I was just saying this. You know the problem with homsexuality?
It's underexposed. We need to talk about it some more.
I need to be further familiarized with a subculture celebrated by about 40% of 1% of the population.
MADONNA is “bringing gay to the Super Bowl.” That’s what we overheard one of her dancers say at the premiere party for Her Madgesty’s “W.E.” at Top of the Standard on Monday night. On the red carpet, Madonna told us she’s “extremely nervous” about the big game, but looking forward to singing her new song, Smells Like Pleather.
I made that song title up.
No but I'm glad she'll be there. The Super Bowl has been very stodgy of late, with lots of very old acts appealing primarily to the over-45 set.
Madonna will bring a fresh, youthful breeze of novelty and vitality to the game.
Below, a walk-through of "Her Madgesty's" performance.
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Science: Low IQs Linked To Conservative Beliefs, Such As Racism And Fascism
—Ace
I'll let you read the article.
Now you'd think the guys announcing this decision must be pretty smart. I mean, if you're going to lay down this kind of smack, you'd better be buttoned-up and squared away as far as your own brainpower.
Right?
Except while reading this I came across this--
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
Obviously any ideology is an attempt to deal with complexity and unknowns -- ideology provides a rough guess or rule of thumb in new situations.
And obviously the leftwing has all sorts of simplistic bromides precisely like this.
Did they test to see how leftwing dummies might cling to simplistic pablum?
Nope!
But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general."My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Speculation.
Let's not bother testing that. Let's get out the door with the conclusion that rightwingers are dummies.
Oh, and, by the way: Let's define "conservative beliefs" as "racism" and "support for near-fascism."
Because you know all those freedom loving liberals would never, ever support a government that intrudes into people's personal choices and dictates the legally-permissible choices.
via @allahpundit
Another DoE Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Files For Bankruptcy
—Ace
Venture Socialism and Trickle Down Government-- catch the fever.
An Indiana-based energy-storage company, whose subsidiary received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department, filed for bankruptcy Thursday.Ener1 is asking a federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in equity funding.
....
“While it’s unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit,” Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said in a statement.
Sure does! Why, that new infusion of $75 million (or whatever) into Solyndra, curiously timed to get the company past the 2010 elections, sure worked magic there, too!
And lookie here! We have another election coming up!
Via Iowahawk.
I Know Kung Fu: Researchers Think It's Possible To Teach Through Direct Stimulation of the Visual Cortex
—Ace
Like on "Chuck," OgreGunner says.
University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.
"Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning," said lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe of the part of the brain analyzed in the study.
Visual Cortex, not cerebral cortex.
One Thing To Keep In Mind With Newt's Debating Skills...
—Ace
Before I get to my blab-blab, here's Jonah Goldberg on the Unconquerable Newtzilla, and Politico on the Drudge/Coulter/"Establishment" efforts to stop him.
("Establishment" is in quotes there because I do not subscribe to the Foundational Myth of the Newt campaign that anyone who opposes him is establishment, and we oppose him because we're afraid he'll "shake up Washington."
My fear -- and most people's fears -- is that he won't shake up Washington, because Obama's reign of terror will continue into 2017.
I'm not super-afraid of Newt's policies -- though I'm not crazy about Draft Boards for Immigrants or some of the other policy widgets -- I'm afraid of his inability to get into a position to actually implement them.)
Anyway, on debating skill:
Who did you think won the 2008 debates?
I don't know if I'm hopelessly in the tank or what, but I thought Palin beat Biden, and I thought McCain beat Obama in their debates.
Before you say "McCain didn't take it to Obama" or "McCain failed to make an issue of Fannie/Freddie" -- I agree. I'm not saying he deployed every weapon available to him. I'm not saying he showed much backbone or fight.
He was bad.
And yet, I think, he won.
And so did Palin.
I think.
Most of the commenters here at the time seemed to agree.
I thought so at the time and said so. I was mystified that snap polls always showed Obama and Biden winning.
People are too dumb, mostly, to parse. For example, when Obama was winning in the polls, do you know what they also claimed?
The polls said that not only was Obama winning, but that people thought he would be:
-- Better on reducing the deficit
-- Better on protecting America from Al Qaeda
-- Better at having voluntarily spent 6 extra years in a hellish Vietnamese prisoner of war camp so that his comrades could go home first
I made up that last one, obviously, but the point is that when people said "I like Obama more" they did not actually parse between this attribute and that one. They did not say "Well McCain would be better on defense policy, but Obama's better on giving me goodies."
They just said that Obama was better at everything.
And this included the debates. The public favored Obama/Biden, and felt that Palin was dumb and McCain was Bush, and even in debates where they actually had (I thought) prevailed over their stutterin' prick opponents, they just said "Obama won."
Any serious car fan debating, I don't know, the Corvette vs. the Mustang, is going to probably parse out things like "Well, the Corvette has a better growl and better tires, but the Mustang is better from zero." Or whatever. You know what I mean. They care sufficiently about the question to think hard about the advantages of one and the advantages of the other.
On the other hand, if you're a dope, as I submit most people are as regards politics, you know, the people who "start paying attention" two weeks before a presidential election, you're not interested in the question enough to bother thinking about it like this.
You just pick one. Let's say the Corvette. Which is better at cornering? The Corvette. Which is faster? Corvette. Which is cheaper? Uh, I don't know, must be the Corvette.
In fact, I know a lot of that must be going on with me, and I watch this stuff a lot. I don't favor Newt, so the debate performances that impress so many other people leave me cold. All I see is Think Outside the Box question evasions ("My plan for health care? I want to cure polio, not treat it") and Coulter-esque media-bashing, which is fine and all, but I don't favor Coulter for president (or any position of responsibility, actually) either.
Based on my fellow conservatives' positive reaction to Gingrich's debate performances, it must be that he's actually winning these.
But if you hooked me up to a lie detector, I'd say "I'm not impressed" and I'd pass the test. Because I'm not lying. I just don't think he's doing that great.
In other words, my underlying, overarching impression of Gingrich colors, unavoidably, my evaluation of his debate performances, such that I wind up not parsing between the two.
Rather than parsing between my evaluation of Gingrich as a candidate and as a debater -- two different things, which I could find tend towards opposite conclusions -- it winds up that they both point the same way for me.
The same way those dumb moderates who pay attention three weeks outside an election found that every question and every debate favored the guy they had decided to support.
Just something to keep in mind. In all likelihood, who the public thinks "won" a debate is pretty much going to track with who they've decided they're supporting, no matter what happens in the actual debate.
By the Way: Since I posted this, whoo doggie, has Drudge gone anti-Newt. It's now officially ridiculous.
I have a theory about the Drudge/Coulter hate, by the way.
My theory is that Drudge and Coulter were seriously emotionally invested in the Clinton Impeachment thing more than most partisans. As invested in it as we all were (and I was seriously invested myself), they were even more invested in it.
It wasn't just politics to them. It was personal -- this was Their Thing.
Now, Newt's affair complicated the narrative for them on this.
It could be that they are so angry about that, blaming Newt for letting Clinton escape (which is a silly notion; he was getting away anyway), that they are especially hostile to Newt, for destroying their Big Project.
Governor Scott Walker Gets Decent Numbers In Advance of Recall Election
—Ace
CAC writes in an email, regarding Walker's head-to-head numbers with a variety of potential Democratic rivals:
Scott Walker (R-inc) 50% Tom Barrett (D) 44%Scott Walker (R-inc) 49%
Kathleen Falk (D) 42%Scott Walker (R-inc) 49%
David Obey (D) 43%Scott Walker (R-inc) 50%
Tom Cullen (D) 40%Of these Obey isn't likely to run himself though he hasn't ruled it out. Numbers from Marquette U- PPP was showing a trend in favor of Walker last year ending with a final WI 2011 poll giving Walker a narrow edge, that apparently has expanded significantly.
They also polled Obama-Romney and found Romney trailed Obama by 8. Mind you in January 2008 McCain who lost the state by 11 was leading Obama, also Wisconsin was a very close loss (and polled so) in both 2000 and 2004 for the GOP.
Walker seems more and more likely to survive the effort by unions to out him.
The article on the poll is here.
Brian writes to contrast Walker's approval numbers (51-46) with Gray Davis' (20-70). Gray Davis lost that recall, of course, but look at those numbers.
Walker's numbers seem to be improving. Let's hope they improve further.
America's Lost Common Culture
—Ace
Maetenloch linked this in the ONT last night. It seems like it should be discussed by people who aren't drunk.
He sets up two hypothetical towns -- "Belmont," upper middle class, and "Fishtown," working class; both are mostly white -- and uses thej to illustrate data from the latest General Social Survey.
In Belmont and Fishtown, here's what happened to America's common culture between 1960 and 2010.Marriage: In 1960, extremely high proportions of whites in both Belmont and Fishtown were married—94% in Belmont and 84% in Fishtown. In the 1970s, those percentages declined about equally in both places. Then came the great divergence. In Belmont, marriage stabilized during the mid-1980s, standing at 83% in 2010. In Fishtown, however, marriage continued to slide; as of 2010, a minority (just 48%) were married. The gap in marriage between Belmont and Fishtown grew to 35 percentage points, from just 10.
Single parenthood: Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.
In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education—women, that is, with a Fishtown education—were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among the college-educated women of Belmont, less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970.
Industriousness: The norms for work and women were revolutionized after 1960, but the norm for men putatively has remained the same: Healthy men are supposed to work. In practice, though, that norm has eroded everywhere. In Fishtown, the change has been drastic. (To avoid conflating this phenomenon with the latest recession, I use data collected in March 2008 as the end point for the trends.)
The primary indicator of the erosion of industriousness in the working class is the increase of prime-age males with no more than a high school education who say they are not available for work—they are "out of the labor force." That percentage went from a low of 3% in 1968 to 12% in 2008. Twelve percent may not sound like much until you think about the men we're talking about: in the prime of their working lives, their 30s and 40s, when, according to hallowed American tradition, every American man is working or looking for work. Almost one out of eight now aren't. Meanwhile, not much has changed among males with college educations. Only 3% were out of the labor force in 2008.
There's also been a notable change in the rates of less-than-full-time work. Of the men in Fishtown who had jobs, 10% worked fewer than 40 hours a week in 1960, a figure that grew to 20% by 2008. In Belmont, the number rose from 9% in 1960 to 12% in 2008.
I'm skipping the part on crime; see it at the link.
This is surprising. Those who bitterly cling to their religion ain't who the media thinks:
Religiosity: Whatever your personal religious views, you need to realize that about half of American philanthropy, volunteering and associational memberships is directly church-related, and that religious Americans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.For example, suppose we define "de facto secular" as someone who either professes no religion at all or who attends a worship service no more than once a year. For the early GSS surveys conducted from 1972 to 1976, 29% of Belmont and 38% of Fishtown fell into that category. Over the next three decades, secularization did indeed grow in Belmont, from 29% in the 1970s to 40% in the GSS surveys taken from 2006 to 2010. But it grew even more in Fishtown, from 38% to 59%.
These numbers don't match The Narrative, which may be why the media was so utterly befuddled when reporting on the Tea Party. First thing out of the gate, they tried to report them as being Very Religious and, of course, Quite Poor and Uneducated.
Then they realized the Tea Party was actually wealthier than the mean, and began reporting on them being arch-plutocrats. Oddly, at this point, they dropped the "Very Religious" meme, I guess because It Did Not Compute that someone could be pretty wealthy and pretty religious.
Basically they just started to babble. On a dime they went from "Poor Jesus-Trash, let's mock them" to "Rich people, let's mock them."
I'm a little confused by the article, because it seems like he begins starting with an indictment of the New Upper Class (which he seems to scorn), implying that they've lost touch with the Working Class. But then he shifts, it seems, to a Upper Middle Class which he contrasts favorably with the Working Class.
Given the data points he cites, I'm not sure he can make the case the starts out making -- after all, if "Belmont" produces so many better outcomes, culturally, than "Fishtown," why would someone want to keep touch with the habits and practices of "Fishtown"? Seems like the more important question is "How do we get 'Fishtown' to take notice of the habits of 'Belmont'?"
Or is he actually saying that the true Upper Class is the most religious, and the Working Class much more secular?
Maybe it's just that the data won't support the typical screed about an out-of-touch elite or whatever but he tries to hammer the numbers into compliance. I'm not sure. But given his data, while I was all set to read a "Let's mock people who watch Mad Men" (even though I've seen the show myself) it's really, ultimately, "Hey, shouldn't people who aren't watching Mad Men try to change so they'd be the sort of people who would watch Mad Men"?
There's an old saw that goes thus: The Middle Class does most of the stuff they're supposed to do, because they are socially mobile, in both directions. Their status could rise; their status could also fall. They are then insecure in their position, which is a good thing, as it keeps them on the ball.
The elite class can afford to indulge themselves a bit, because seriously, they'd have to really try super-hard to fall into poverty. At worse they'd fall down a few pegs in the social ladder, and they've got a lot of cushion there.
But the true lower class -- not the striving class, but the lower class that doesn't hope for much improvement, and self-identifies as lower class and proud of it -- also mimics the bad indulgences of the elites, for similar but different reasons: They think they can't really fall too much farther (being near the bottom), and also doubt their ability to rise much, so it really doesn't matter all that much.
But of course it does; a steady salary of $35,000 per year is a lot different than a salary of $20,000 per year.
Thus the old conservative saw that at the top and bottom of society, you find similar moral habits; but those at the top can afford the high costs of their indulgences, whereas those on the bottom -- and especially their children -- cannot.
Interesting food for thought. The data wound up going in places I didn't expect. I am chastened to find I've bought into The Narrative myself. But despite all the rhetoric about the virtuous and industrious non-elites, it turns out that it is, in fact, probably better to be more elite.
Which I guess should have been obvious, even absent the numbers.
Media Stenography Watch
—Ace
Reporters have two problems: They're liberal, and they're lazy.
Before the SOTU, Obama's people leaked portions of the script. They announced to the media the tone they were seeking was "optimistic" and "Reaganesque," so the media would understand the tone they heard after they'd heard it.
They'd actually given the media its story for them.
I joked in the live-blog that we'd soon be seeing the headlines...
NYT: IN A SOARING, OPTIMISTIC SPEECH RECALLING REAGAN...
Whoopie Goldberg: That was so optimistic. Joy Behar: Almost Reaganesque.
Time: In a 65 minute speech brimming with optimism and Reaganesque flourishes...
Washington Post: Although Republicans sat on their hands throughout, Obama's mood was light and optimistic throughout the speech. At times, one might have mistake him for another Great Communicator -- Ronald Reagan.
Brian Willims: Certainly it was one of his most optimistic, Reagan-like performances...
Those were jokey semi-predictions. But here's the reality, at The Hill.
Confident Obama Struts His StuffA relaxed, confident Barack Obama hit a pitch-perfect high note last week at the famed Apollo Theater in New York.
President Obama sang, “I’m so in love with you” — from Al Green’s hit “Let’s Stay Together” — and showed the world just how comfortable — if not sanguine — he is as he heads into the election year.
Note a lot of these words, like sanguine, just mean optimistic.
....Both public appearances illustrate the assuredness and moxie the president has exhibited in his quest for another term. They also highlight a stark contrast with Mitt Romney, who has appeared unconfident and downright clunky in recent weeks, as he has dealt with a series of missteps having to do with his wealth and income tax filings.
Observers say it’s probably no coincidence a seemingly self-satisfied (and singing!) Obama has emerged in recent weeks, given a string of political victories and signs the economy is improving.
“Their internal polling is probably showing that things have steadied a bit and is giving him a bit of a boost,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a professor at Boston University who specializes in political communications.
Their internal polling is probably showing that??!!
What if I drew the opposite conclusion and said it's probably showing him doing horribly with independents, the same as public polls? And so they had attempted to change the story by projecting "Reaganesque" "optimism"?
Could I get quoted in The Hill for my "probably"?
Of course not; Obama told them which story to write, and they're writing it.
I didn't watch the coverage to see if my optimistic/Reaganesque joke became the reality. If you noticed, please let me know, include the link or the quotes.
The Daily DOOM
—Monty
Liberals love to haul out the World War II government-spending canard. In their minds, it fits both their FDR-as-a-secular-saint belief system and their Keynesian spending argument. Yet America in 1941 was not much like America is now. In most ways that count, our country is a completely different place than it was then. (The past is a foreign country, as the old saying goes; they do things differently there.) Then, the population was predominately rural rather than urban; then, the workforce was heavily concentrated in both agriculture and manufacturing; then, the population was about half the size that it is now; the population also had a much smaller cohort of the elderly; the welfare state was still in its infancy in 1941; and even prior to the war, America’s industrial might dwarfed nearly every other nation in the world. The American GDP growth curve was on the verge of a skyscraper rise then (though we didn’t know it at the time), whereas now...not so much.
Here's the thing about World War II: Allied victory was not at all preordained. Had Adolf Hitler been a bit less paranoid and megalomaniacal*, Nazi Germany might well have won that war. Japan never had a prayer of defeating America, but if the Nazis had prevailed in Europe America would have been hard-pressed to defeat Japan in the Pacific theater -- we would have lost the British and ANZAC forces as allies as well as the Russians -- and there’s every possibility that the US Navy would have simply withdrawn from the Asian theater to protect Hawaii and the mainland. That war was a much more closely-run thing than many people realize. America faced enemies that were much more formidable than the ones we have now: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. “Defeat” in that war carried much more profound implications than “defeat” at the hands of a ragtag Taliban or Al Qaeda terrorist band in Iraq. The public monies spent during World War II were not expended as some wrong-headed "stimulus" effort -- it was an existential battle against powerful enemies.
(*All Hitler had to do to win that war was NOT pre-emptively declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. I doubt that FDR would have been able to convince the American public to fight Nazi Germany when after all it was Japan who had attacked us. That would have given Germany enough time to strangle Britain, consolidate their hold over western Europe, and concentrate their forces on the Soviet Union. The European war would have been over by 1943, and the Nazis would have had more than a decade to retrench before America could have seriously challenged them.)
In related DOOM-y news: 20% of young Germans have never heard of Auschwitz. So it's not just American kids who are historically illiterate.
Continue reading
Top Headline Comments 1-26-12
—Gabriel Malor
Happy Thursday.
President Obama is slipping. The State of the Union brought in 13% lower ratings than the last year and 27% lower than the year before that.
Gov. Brewer and Obama have a tense confrontation at the airport in Phoenix. She didn't just take it quietly.
Overnight Open Thread
—Maetenloch
How Deep in the Elite Cultural Bubble Are You?
So Charles Murray of the AEI has a new book out, Coming Apart, where he claims that there's now a great cultural divide separating American upper and lower classes.
America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway.
Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.
And to see exactly how isolated you are in the upper class bubble they have a helpful quiz:
And as is de rigueur for these kind of posts here is my score:
So I guess I am an effete Nancy-boy.
Well I blame society. And the appalling lack of field-trips to the local village offered at the Snottingham School. Yes and that plus the fact that the lighthouse tends to keep out the hoi polloi as well as the riff-raff.
Perhaps I should sponsor a festival of some sort where I can allow the locals to come over to the island and perform their native activities and such and then I could award various prizes. Yes that sounds absolutely perfect. Consider the Great Divide question now resolved.
Continue reading
Some Movies Were Nominated For Some Industry Awards And It's The Most Important Thing Ever Or Something
—Ace
Here are the nominations. I didn't see any of the Best Picture nominees, except for Thor.
Made you look. No the only one I saw was Moneyball. Which was good.
The rest of them are like the fake movies named on Seinfeld when Elaine keeps renting Vincent's art-house goon movies.
“The Artist”“Midnight in Paris”
“The Descendants”
“The Tree of Life”
“Hugo”
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”
"Rochelle, Rochelle: A Young Girl's Erotic Journey From Milan to Minsk"
"Sack Lunch"
Okay, those last two are just from Seinfeld. Hard to tell, though.
Like, some of these nominations were shocking or something.
This site like parodies the movie posters or something. I don't know what half of these are about, so I don't get most of the jokes.
Oh, Bother. Space Again? What Are You, Ten Years Old?
—Gabriel Malor
We've gone around on this before; in fact it seems that we must do it at least once a year.
Yes, space travel and moon bases and mars missions are cool. No, there's not a single reason the taxpayers should be paying for it simply because you think it's cool. You know what Liberals think is cool? On-demand abortion. No, there's no reason taxpayers should be paying for that either.
The idea that we must have some culturally significant and symbolic government project to spur the next generation to new heights of blah blah blah is utter crap. The moon race and the space agency incidentally aided other industries. And it eventually gave us Tang and that weird freeze-dried astronaut icecream stuff. Which is very cool and all, but I suggest to you that neither represents a GREAT WORK in the history of mankind that we would be worse off for not having.
I suppose the Baby Boomers and their parents would have just been demoralized all to hell if the Soviets had beaten them to the moon. Well, good for them, they beat those commie bastards. Now you're telling me that we have to go back to the moon and eventually Mars because if we don't we'll have lost the race against . . . who? Who are we racing? And why are we racing? And what are we racing for?
We've been to the Moon. There's nothing there. There was nothing there then and there's still nothing there except the garbage we left behind the first times we were there.
We've scoped and prodded and had our little mouse droids running all over Mars. There's nothing there either. Nothing that would justify spending taxpayer money, anyway, chasing a dream so that Newt Gingrich can call himself "visionary."
