WELCOME TO THE BATCAVE

It's back.

From December of 2002 until December of 2008, I wrote a series of long format essays and assorted other bits and pieces, right here at Eject! Eject! Eject! When I moved to PJTV, they wanted me to move the blog with me, to the PJ Media page. PJ Media never once tried to limit or control what I wrote in any way, but the fact is, what with the banner ads and the general look being so different, it never really felt like home in the way the old place did.

She stayed boarded up from 2009 until now, the old girl did. But we are airing her out again. All of the old nooks and crannies and hiding places should still be there... the failed but noble ideas for Ejectia! culminating in the summer of 2007 remain as well. And, of course, the essays that started as stand-alone pieces that eventually ended up in SILENT AMERICA are also still there, on the right sidebar.

I did a little re-reading of the smaller items, and it's a diary not only of my life but also a kind of diary of America, at least as she was seen through my eyes. Anyway, it's all here, warts and all -- an open house from now on.

My new work will be appearing at Bill Whittle dot Net. But this will always be my first love. Thanks to all of you who gave me the chance to become the man I am today, and thanks especially for your ongoing support in these interesting times.

HE'S AIRBORNE!

Latest reports from the North American Aerospace Defense Command have confirmed that Santa is on his way!

Click HERE to see how the USAF tracks his progress and how you can find out where Santa is right now! (Just select your connection speed on the left. Flash viewer is the least demanding but lowest quality)

Also, learn about the new experimental Alaska and Northern Territory Laser Emitting Ranging System -- shown being demonstrated above by this highly-trained technician.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hi everybody.

I hope you're all having a warm and safe holiday. I've been sitting here by the virtual fire, thinking about how lucky I am and how grateful, too... and I got to thinking about the amazing toys I grew up with as a kid in the late Sixties. Really imaginative and cool stuff -- and dangerous, too! You could shoot your eye out with BB guns or burn off your precious little fingers with Creepy Crawlers. It was full-on AWESOME.

Anyway, the gang in the tech booth at PJTV went to the trouble to make a great Christmas set, and if you want to see some videos from The Golden Age of Toys, all you have to do is click HERE. (Just select a speed on the left and the viewer will auto-install for high-def playback with a broadband connection. If you don't want to view in high-def, just click on the FLASH PLAYER.)

The folks at my new PJTV family put it up for free -- without registration or subscription. We hope you have as much fun watching it as we did making it.

AND YET AGAIN, WITH FEELING

There is no better land to live for.

(You can view this message, rather than read it, on PJTV by clicking here. It's absolutely free and requires no registration; just select your connection speed on the left and off you go. That's how I'd prefer you see it, for what that may be worth.)

Tuesday night of last week, I got a call from a good friend of mine. I just wasn’t in the mood to take it, you know? You’ve been there. Anyway, he didn’t leave a message.

The next day got away from me, but the day after that I called his cell on the way to work just to catch up. His wife answered the phone. And then I found out that my good friend Richard had died in his sleep the day before. Just like that. Gone. He left a wife, a five year old daughter, and a son who’s not yet one.

So this is my Thanksgiving message. It’s not dreary or sad at all – on the contrary.

You see, my friend Richard worked for Boeing. He was a defense contractor, and, like so many of his fellow employees, he was a true-blue patriot who loved his country and spent his life making sure that she did not come to harm. I am thankful to him for that… to Richard and all those others, and I am thankful to live in a time where the very idea of a person in their mid forties simply up and dying is so stunning and unheard of that it takes a week just to process it. It’s because of men like Richard that we don’t have to worry about armed invasion – a fear borne by pretty much every human throughout all of recorded, and pre-recorded history. And I am especially grateful to the millions of other hardworking, dedicated people that have so far pushed the boundaries of medicine and science that death itself – which was commonplace for my father’s generation – now seems surreal and almost unnatural.

But of all the things I am thankful for on this most American of holidays, nothing surpasses the pride and gratitude I feel to live in a country where I may sit in this chair and write about whatever I damn well please, without fear of retribution or intimidation. It’s an amazing right. And I’ll continue to sit here and rail against the things I feel hurt our country and our people, knowing in my heart that the instant the people I oppose so passionately actually start to suffer the loss of their rights or freedoms I will be there defending them – armed, if necessary – and that the vast majority of them will do the same for me.

There was a headline on the Drudge Report on Tuesday about a Russian analyst predicting the break-up and fall of the USA. Don’t hold your breath, comrade. Today, all across this country, millions of people who go head-to-head on red state/blue state issues will go home, eat a bunch of turkey, and then passionately, perhaps violently, go at it again watching Auburn take on Alabama, or Florida play Florida State. And we’ll get about as hot and excited as we do about politics, and none of it will matter. Because when all is said and done, we’re all Americans, together. That’s not something that Russian analyst – or just about anyone else who’s not a part of this raucous, screaming family – has ever been able to figure out.

My office is located just a few blocks from LAX. Driving in to work today, I watched a Qantas 747 rotate, climb into a clear blue sky, and head on out to sea. I’ve been on that flight… twelve and a half hours at 85% of the speed of sound, and nothing but water after the first mile. We watch movies and eat dinner, perhaps sleep for a while, eight miles above the earth, flying through the sub-zero air with the speed of a musket ball.

This is a world of miracles. My friend Richard helped build them. We’re pilots, Richard and I, and pilots say “our friend has ‘Gone West.’” Someday, when they are older – and if I haven’t gone west myself – I’ll tell his children what kind of man their father was, and the part he played keeping this magnificent family safe and free and, for the most part, thankful.

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone. We earn it, every year.

TRAINING DAY

In which a lunatic has an aneurism over apparently nothing.

Next April, I’m going to turn fifty. I’ll be fifty years old. Good lord.

Somehow, I’ve managed to get this far without working in a large corporate office. So today I got my first taste of a world that most of you are already much more familiar with than I am: the world of modern American big business. So what lit me up like a Fourth of July skyrocket was something that seemed to mean nothing at all to the other 23 people in the room, because today, for the first time, I had to attend a mandatory sexual harassment training course.

Now, before I get up a really good head of steam and a decent running start, let me say a few things.

First of all, I work for a great company, full of creative and terrific people, and, by some miracle of chance, not a one of them are stupid, boorish, authoritarian or in any way less than smart, well-meaning people. I understand, also, that the reason for these sessions is to provide legal protection to the company, so that if a harassment claim is made, they can say, “look, we did everything we could to combat this sort of thing.” I get all that.

I also understand that other companies are not this fortunate, and that racial, sexual and other forms of harassment go on daily and cause great harm, both in terms of productivity, and more importantly, spiritual well-being. No one should have to endure attack or intimidation. So if you think this is going to an appeal to “lighten up,” you’re going to be disappointed. For me, this is not about actual harassment, which needs to be ruthlessly exterminated from the workplace. This is about something else again.

Where do I begin?

Well, first of all, I find it deeply offensive to my personal sense of honor and integrity to be punished or otherwise lectured on something I did not do. Period. And to be subjected to two hours of second-grade style, “who can tell me what Johnny did wrong by telling Sarah she has a hot body” lecturing infuriates me on many levels.

To begin with, I do not need to be told this is inappropriate behavior. I already know that is inappropriate behavior. I learned that was inappropriate behavior not from the State of California or a battalion of corporate lawyers, but from my parents, who raised me to be polite, well-mannered, and who spent much of their own youth trying to form me into a civilized gentleman. I know, I can see the smiles on many faces already. It’s like I’m speaking in Aramaic.

I was treated to a video that had precisely the same emotional pitch and condescension as the old ABC After-School Specials, which is appropriate when aimed at 10-year-olds but in a room full of adults was unimaginably cloying and infantile. In this helpful lecture on the evils of hateful stereotypes, a clueless, insensitive white male managed to offend everyone without the dimmest awareness of his own boorishness until confronted and re-educated (with a rising string section!) by emotionally advanced, sensitive (yet strong!) women and his solemn, understanding (but firm!), black male superior.

I’m getting a little tired of this movie. I see this movie everyday.

But what really set me off was learning that there are “protected categories” of people who apparently have special claims on being harassed, and that these groups include, but are not limited to:

“Race, color…” [in case you happen to be green or of some color not associated with your race] ”…religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, pregnancy, childbirth…” [this being different from pregnancy presumably only if you are actually giving birth right there in your cubicle] “…physical disability, mental disability, age, military status or status as a Vietnam-era or special disabled veteran, marital status, registered domestic partner or civil union status, gender (including sex stereotyping and gender identity or expression), medical condition (including, but not limited to, cancer-related or HIV-related), or sexual orientation.”

These – including but not limited to -- “protected categories” are areas in which “harassment” is especially hurtful, as far as I can understand it… which is not very far at all. Can you – offhand – think of any kind of harassment that does not fit into these categories? I suppose saying hateful things about the Florida State football team is okay as long as I don’t use the word “Seminoles” (which would then become offensive on the grounds of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry and military status; to which, I will add as a Gator fan regarding FSU grads, mental disability and – what the hell – sexual orientation.)

All of this is mere sophistry and cover of course, for the essence of the 22 page workbook I received (and for which I was not given a crayon with which to write nor a gold star when it was completed) was boiled down to a single sentence, in bold italics at the bottom of page 15:

It is not the intent of the alleged harasser, but the impact on the recipient.

It doesn’t matter if you meant to hurt someone. As long as someone was hurt, then harassment took place.

Now at the end of all this, the facilitator – who is clearly a lovely person, for this is not aimed at her – smilingly told us not to be paranoid but just to be careful not to offend anyone. And the other 23 people nodded happily and made jokes and goofed around to show how lighthearted and un-paranoid we suddenly all were. And yet, this harassment and sensitivity training did not succeed fully, because there was one person who was offended, and who in point of fact felt extremely harassed. And that person was me.

Perhaps, in future editions of the handbook, we can add another victim group to the protected category: rational adults. Perhaps I might contribute a chapter to this sensitivity training. Something like:

“The rational adult is a small and shrinking minority in the workplace. His cultural heritage – which is just as valuable as anyone else's! – has taught him that “personal responsibility” means he has a right to feel insulted, offended and harassed when being lectured on things that he did not do, nor would ever contemplate doing. In this ancient and primitive culture, a person’s “honor” and “integrity” are relied upon to govern behavior. If such a person unknowingly gives insult, they will “apologize.” According to their tribal ethics, people who intentionally harm, insult or harass others deserve to be fired on the spot.”

I am told this course was “preventative” – to stop harassment before it happens. Fair enough. Tomorrow, perhaps, we can have a course on how to prevent office electrocutions by sticking screwdrivers into the sockets, or a poison-prevention class involving two role-players and a gallon of copier toner, or perhaps we can facilitate a upper-level meeting to try and determine what warning placards may be missing from every object and sharp corner in the building, or a support group for those people rendered incapable of speaking or smiling for fear of giving some kind of unintentional offense to someone. These are all areas ripe for new legislation and demanding of state funding. Because when you really get down to how much unintentional offense there remains left to give, you can see we have a genuine crisis on our hands.

Look, there are two ways to prevent young children from drowning:

1.Place barricades, gates, locks, and other restraining devices around any body of water large enough to immerse the child’s head in; in addition, provide education, audio-visual instruction, role-playing and other methods to inform young children on the dangers of inhaling large amounts of water – whether it be fresh water or sea water – and to provide the funding, continuing outreach and community activism necessary to make sure that ALL Americans are prevented from encountering these deadly dangers wherever they may be found.

Or:

2.Teach your kid how to swim.

My parents – remember them? – taught me at an early age that what people said or thought or wrote about me did not have the power to hurt me – only I can allow them to do that. My self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem are earned, and not given, and are therefore mine – impervious to anything in the outside world, which is why I am willing to sit at this desk, as the only one of 24 happy, smart, creative people, and look like some reactionary nut case for being enraged about the fact that we willingly submit ourselves to insults to our personal honor and integrity that our forefathers would never, ever have countenanced. And I am ashamed on behalf of them. But just me. No one else thinks anything of it at all.

And so, with smiles and good will all around, behind a plate of donuts and cartons of morning orange juice, we again fall another step from the adult world of action and consequence, to the warm, friendly, everlasting childhood of kindergarten, where no one’s feelings can ever be hurt and teacher is always there to make sure – in her gentle but firm way – that there will never be harmful consequences to your actions because your actions will be so curtailed in advance that offending someone – like feeding and housing yourself – are things that we simply no longer have to worry about any more.

And the endless sleep, in the warm, clean, fluffy bed, continues unabated.

Forever.

A FLAG, ON A HILL

As Civil War battles went, it was a small and insignificant affair. But in terms of story – and especially, in terms of lessons – it’s one of my favorites.

The war had not yet fully turned in October of 1864. And even though Stonewall Jackson had been dead for well over a year – killed by mistake by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville -- the Shenandoah Valley still belonged if not to Jackson then to Jackson’s ghost, for it was there that he and his “foot cavalry” had won their eternal place in Valhalla. Jackson’s tactical brilliance and the endless series of Union routs still hung like clouds of gunpowder in the valleys and hollows of the Shenandoah.

And so it came as no surprise to either the Union or the Confederate soldiers on the banks of Cedar Creek to see, once again, a blue rout – men throwing down rifles and knapsacks and running for their lives, dodging perhaps the few hissing musket balls fired at their backs, but completely unable to escape the jeering and the insults and that high, horrible Rebel yell, as that pack of feral wolves descended on their camps, drank their coffee, ate their rations and sat going through their personal effects, admiring photos and reading letters from their sweethearts. Not a loss, but a rout. Another rout. The latest in an ongoing series of routs without end. Or so it must have seemed.

The Union general was a young man, new to his command, and who in point of fact had been back in Washington during the defeat. But as he rode toward the sound of the guns that morning, curiosity turned to apprehension, and apprehension to something worse, as he crossed Mill Creek and came upon a low hill, to see before him “the appalling spectacle of a panic-stricken Army.”

Phillip Sheridan was his name, described by Shelby Foote as a man with the face of a Mongol Warlord and hair so short and dense it made his head look like a bullet with a coat of black paint.

Sheridan’s first instinct was to form a straggler line and prepare for the final Rebel assault. But the Rebels were too busy celebrating. And after he caught his breath, Little Phil noticed something surprising: not a broken and routed army fleeing for their lives, but small groups of men boiling fresh coffee, speaking to one another calmly and cheering him as he rode by.

One of his aides described him at that moment: “As he galloped on, his features grew gradually set, as those carved in stone, and the same dull red glint I had seen in his piercing eyes when, on other occasions, the battle was going against us, was there now.”

You bet it was.

The closer Sheridan came to the battle, the more cheerful and animated his defeated men became. Encountering a small group of them, Little Phil would stand in the saddle, and give a jaunty salute – as if to congratulate them on a great victory, rather than another humiliating defeat.

The result was electric, if not universal. Amid the cheering, one infantry colonel – whose descendents perhaps would go on to become campaign advisors – stood in Sheridan’s path and begged him not to go on.

“The army’s whipped!” he cried.

“You are, but the army isn’t,” growled Sheridan, who then put the spurs to a horse who’s back was taller than he was and rode to the scene of the disaster, shouting, “About face, boys! We are going back to our camps! We are going to lick them out of their boots!”

His men were not beaten. They just needed leadership.

“We are going to get a twist on those fellows, men!” he shouted, pounding down the pike. “We are going to lick them out of their boots!”

And that’s what he did, too. He and his routed army went back to that field and licked those Rebels right out of their boots.

“Run!” he shouted, standing in the stirrups. “Go after them! We’ve got the God-damnedest twist on them you ever saw!”





Battles don’t always go that way. But sometimes they do. It depends on whether the individual soldier still has any fight in him.

It has been a source of delight for me these past few days to see nothing but evidence of this, all across our defeated lines. Nowhere have I heard a shred of defeatism or despair. On the contrary. In point of fact, the magnanimity and graciousness I have seen in defeat in so many places on the right tells me that this is an eager and seasoned army, one able to look defeat in the face and own up to the errors in tactics and strategy that got us there. And nowhere do I see a call to abandon our core principles and sue for terms, but rather that our loss was caused precisely by our abandonment of the issues which we hold dear and which have served us so well on battlefields past.

So consider this, my fellows in arms:

On Tuesday, the Left – armed with the most attractive, eloquent, young, hip and charismatic candidate I have seen with my adult eyes, a candidate shielded by a media so overtly that it can never be such a shield again, who appeared after eight years of an historically unpopular President, in the midst of two undefended wars and at the time of the worst financial crisis since the Depression and whose praises were sung by every movie, television and musical icon without pause or challenge for 20 months… who ran against the oldest nominee in the country’s history, against a campaign rent with internal disarray and determined not to attack in the one area where attack could have succeeded, and who was out-spent no less than seven-to-one in a cycle where not a single debate question was unfavorable to his opponent – that historic victory, that perfect storm of opportunity…

Yielded a result of 53%

Folks, we are going to lick these people out of their boots.

There is much to do. That a man with such overt Marxist ideas and such a history of association with virulent anti-Americans can be elected President should make it crystal clear to each of us just how far we have let fall the moral tone of this Republic. The great lesson from Ronald Reagan was simply that we can and must gently educate as well as campaign, and explain our ideas with smiles on our faces and real joy in our hearts. For unlike the far-left radical who gained the Presidency on Tuesday, we start with 150 million of the most free and intelligent and hard-working people in the history of the Earth at our backs, with a philosophy that -- unlike theirs, which has resulted in 100 million dead in unmarked graves -- has liberated and enriched more people and created more joy than any nation or combination of nations in our history.

How can we lose this greater fight, my friends? How can we lose, unless we give up?

HISTORIC

It is with the utmost sincerity and genuine goodwill that I wish to congratulate Barack Obama and the millions who supported him on your historic win this evening.

My hope is that this will lift your spirits from the traumatic eight years they have endured, and restore to you the conviction that this is, and was, and always will be your country as well as ours. I hope that, over time, you may come to see in this great victory tonight perhaps a sense that the cards are not and were not hopelessly stacked against you, and that tonight you simply did what we conservatives did on this same evening four and eight years ago – make a better case to the American people. And you did it by a far greater margin than we did on either of those occasions.

To our liberal and Democratic opponents: this night is yours. Indeed, the next four years are yours. Starting soon I will begin again to argue as best I can against many of the policies and philosophies that President-Elect Obama represents. I hope you will keep in mind that I do so not out of personal animosity towards him or his supporters, but only towards the ideals he espouses, and that only because in my studies of history and human nature I have found many of them to be unsound.

When he is inaugurated, President Obama will be my president. He cannot be otherwise. I will disagree with him at just about every turn, likely, and that is my right and duty as an American. However, in an emergency he will have my unqualified support, and I will always wish him wisdom and hope that he may do what is best for this great country of ours. I do not wish – I do not ever wish – to see my country suffer so that I may gain political leverage. If at this same time four years from now, President Obama has acted in such a way to make us more prosperous, more safe and more free, it will be my greatest pleasure to admit I was wrong about the man. I look forward to that day. I hope to see it come to pass.

Regardless of all of that, we have together achieved something noble and magnificent tonight. We have, after a long and hazardous journey, taken the final step in erasing the one real stain on our nation's history. That war is not over, but it is won. And we may all take a great deal of pride in that.

This much, from the bottom of my heart, for you and your side.

As for our side... We have tried, and failed. Tomorrow we will try again. And then we will begin, with a confident and joyous heart, to examine how we have failed the American people in regard to making clear the moral and philosophical underpinnings of our philosophy. For anyone that fully understands these philosophies, presented calmly and with wit and humility, will come to our side and never leave.

So again, to Senator Obama, Senator Biden, and all their families and supporters -- please accept my deepest congratulations on a spectacular victory.

ASTEROID!

Inescapable cataclysm! Total destruction! Nowhere to hide! Make peace with your God!

Prepare yourselves, sayeth the news. This thing is coming and you can’t stop it. You’ve seen the numbers. Banks of supercomputers refining to the eighth significant figure the precise moment of impact; the location down to a half mile. The giant Obamaroid bearing down on us: unstoppable by mere puny earthlings; a rock the size of Ireland, immutable, inevitable, crushing and final. Run all you want; you’ll just die tired. This is it. The end of all we hold dear.

And what advice do we hear from political science advisors, our best and brightest stalwarts rallied to stave off this disaster? What say these wise men in white coats, men that spend decades in labs, dissecting every trend and poll, crunching numbers and assaying intentions to the milligram? What help might we look to them for?

Ah! Some instructions! Something at last, some hope to cling to! Let me just check the official printout here…

On the morning of impact, grab the sturdiest chair you can find. Move it away from all doors and windows. A basement is your best bet, if you have one. Place the chair in any doorway underneath a load-bearing beam – a steel I-beam is ideal. Sit down and place your feet about two feet apart, firmly pressing down on the floor. Open your mouth slightly to relieve the overpressure from the impact, and the instant you see the flash of light, close you eyes immediately, lean forward as far as you can, put your hands over your ears and kiss your ass goodbye.

You know, I love cheap sci-fi. And one of my favorite lines from an absolutely terrific little cheap sci-fi film is this: History is-a made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.

This attitude of despair is being trumpeted from the left for the sensible and understandable reason that if they lose this election – with all the advantages they have at this precise point in time – then they can never win. Not ever. And the media is pulling with their teeth now, because if Obama loses they will have destroyed their credibility – for nothing.

That’s all fine with me. I know what they and the press sayeth. Sayeth I:

If we are mark'd to lose, we are enow
To do our party loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
Let he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not vote in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to vote with us.
This day is call'd the eve of Elect-ian.
He that votes this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Republican
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is the fourth of November'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his hands,
And say 'With these I moved yon levers on election day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What votes he did cast that day.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that shares his vote with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen and lady pundits now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their book deals cheap whilst any speaks
That voted with us upon election day.

The original is a speech promising glory in the face of overwhelming defeat. King Henry V went on to win perhaps the most miraculous victory in the history of mankind.

This is not an asteroid we face. It is not preordained, unstoppable, inevitable. It is a choice made by human men and women, an individual decision made a hundred million times and not the cold, precise product of gravity and mass.

My friend Iowahawk writes some of the most brilliant satire I have ever read. He likes to come across as a beer-swilling gearhead – because he is – but look at this [ http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/balls-and-urns.html ] analysis of what probability and polling is and isn’t, which I will proceed to steal a graph or two from, simply so that I may bask in its reflected glory:

You take a simple random sample of 1000 balls from an urn containing 120,000,000 red and blue balls, and your sample shows 450 red balls and 550 blue balls. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the true proportion of blue balls in the urn."

(And what, I wonder, if all around you, every day, you are told by all of the coolest, hippest, prettiest balls that your color is mean, irrelevant, unpopular, un-cool, evil, old, incompetent and probably racist? Would you stick to your guns in the face of that, or keep your mouth shut and show ‘em when the curtain closes?)

Iowahawk concludes:

If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to
Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Well said, buddy. And finally, this, from Zombietime.com:

It may very well be that an army of glum, dispirited and pessimistic conservatives will reluctantly trudge to the polls on November 4, each one imagining they are the only remaining person in the entire country voting for McCain, and lo and behold -- they'll turn out to be a silent majority after all.

That may be the most prophetic sentence of the year.

I don’t want to be the person who sat home and missed being a part of that. And I won’t be.

See you there.

To comment on this article you can go here.

AFTERBURNER!

I am very happy to announce that The Powers That Be have decided to move ALL of my Afterburner editorials at www.pjtv.com into the free, unregistered section. Even better, I have been asked to ask you to vote on which ones you think are best.

You can find the complete list of them here.

There’s a thumbs up / thumbs down button next to each of the eight entries (and there will be three new ones per week for the foreseeable future). Now I know that, like me, you are constitutionally incapable of actually pressing the THUMBS DOWN button. But you can hit THUMBS UP for the ones you like the most, and you can vote for more than one. Any kind words you may choose to leave will go on my Permanent Record.

We’re still trying to figure out just where to put these editorials. Right now, the content at PJTV falls into three categories: FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED and SUBSCRIPTION. Free is free and painless: just select HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW or FLASH quality, and off you go. REGISTRATION simply requires an email address and a password, and I can assure you personally that those addresses are not sold or used for any kind of spam. And finally, there are SUBSCRIPTION options that allow you access to everything on the site.

Needless to say, the goal of Pajamas TV is to gain subscribers, and we’re trying to find the best way to do that. One of the things we’re doing with this contest is to make the Afterburner segments available for free for a week or two as they become available, and then perhaps retire them to the REGISTERED section where an email address and password would allow you to see all of them in “the vault.”

Pajamas TV is still in Beta, and we’re still trying to get a handle on where to put these things. If you have an opinion – a printable opinion – then feel free to add it when you vote thumbs up on one of the individual videos.

PJTV is determined to become an alternative news and opinion source. In addition to the editorials, I generally do two or three interviews per daily episode, and I can tell you I have a chance to ask the kind of in-depth questions you would never see elsewhere.

So if you have some time, please vote your favorite Afterburner by clicking on the (free!) list here.

You can also rate our Michelle Malkin interviews (I did the last four with her, and in addition to Deep Thoughts we have a lot of laughs.) Those are – for the moment at least – also free and unregistered, as are Hugh Hewitt’s news reports.

We want to be the place to go for conservative news and opinion. If you get some time, please go take a look and tell us what you think.

SHAME, CUBED

The Drudge Report this morning led off with a link to audio of Barack Obama on WBEZ, A Chicago Public Radio station. And this time, candidate Obama was not eight years old when the bomb went off.

Speaking at a call-in radio show in 2001, you can hear Senator Obama say things that should profoundly shock any American – or at least those who have not taken the time to dig deeply enough into this man’s beliefs and affiliations.

Abandon all Hope, Ye Who Enter Here:

Barack Obama, in 2001:

“You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the Civil Rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of re-distribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

“And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

A caller then helpfully asks:

“The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama replies:

“You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way. [snip] You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

THE FIRST CIRCLE OF SHAME

There is nothing vague or ambiguous about this. Nothing.

From the top:

“…The Supreme Court never entered into the issues of re-distribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.”

If the second highlighted phrase had been there without the first, Obama’s defenders would have bent over backwards trying to spin the meaning of “political and economic justice.” We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: it means re-distribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and the hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides “deserve” it.

This re-distribution of wealth, he states, “essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.” It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the Chief Executive.

Now that’s just garden-variety socialism, which apparently is not a big deal to many voters. So I would appeal to ANY American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will BEG you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear:

“And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution – at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."

The United States of America – 5% of the world’s population – leads the world economically, militarily, scientifically and culturally – and by a spectacular margin. Any one of these achievements, taken alone, would be cause for enormous pride. To dominate as we do in all four arenas has no historical precedent. That we have achieved so much in so many areas is due – due entirely – to the structure of our society as outlined in the Constitution of the United States.

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to LIMIT GOVERNMENT. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population.

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw:

“…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

There is no room for wiggle or misunderstanding here. This is not edited copy. There is nothing out of context; for the entire thing is context – the context of what Barack Obama believes. You and I do not have to guess at what he believes or try to interpret what he believes. He says what he believes.

We have, in our storied history, elected Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives and moderates. We have fought, and will continue to fight, pitched battles about how best to govern this nation. But we have never, ever in our 232 year history, elected a President who so completely and openly opposed the idea of limited government, the absolute cornerstone of makes the United States of America unique and exceptional.

If this does not frighten you – regardless of your political affiliation – then you deserve what this man will deliver with both houses of Congress, a filibuster-proof Senate, and, to quote Senator Obama again, “a righteous wind at our backs.”

That a man so clear in his understanding of the Constitution, and so opposed to the basic tenets it provides against tyranny and the abuse of power, can run for President of the United States is shameful enough.

We’re just getting started.

THE SECOND CIRCLE OF SHAME

Mercifully shorter than the First, and simply this: I happen to know the person who found this audio. It is an individual person, with no more resources than a desire to know everything that he or she can about who might be the next President of the United States and the most powerful man in the world.

I know that this person does not have teams of highly-paid professionals, does not work out of a corner office in a skyscraper in New York, does not have access to all of the subtle and hidden conduits of information… who possesses no network television stations, owns no satellite time, does not receive billions in advertising dollars, and has a staff of exactly ONE.

I do not blame Barack Obama for believing in wealth distribution. That’s his right as an American. I do blame him for lying about what he believes. But his entire life has been applying for the next job at the expense of the current one. He’s at the end of the line now.

I do, however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: it only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation.

We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone – even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them.

Remember this, America: the press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the internet did.

There is a special hell for you “journalists” out there, a hell made specifically for you narcissists and elitists who think you have the right to determine which information is passed on to the electorate and which is not.

That hell – your own personal hell – is a fiery lake of Irrelevance, blinding clouds of Obscurity, and burning, everlasting Scorn.

You’ve earned it.

THE THIRD CIRCLE OF SHAME

This discovery will hurt Obama much more than Joe the Plumber.

What will be left of my friend, and my friend’s family, I wonder, when the press is finished with them?

After about 30 comments I realized I forgot to do what I forgot to do last time...

I will try to move the existing comments to the new forum if I am able.