WienerGate: Synopsis.

I always feel bad for people surnamed Wiener. Everyone who dislikes them has an instant, lazy insult. So I have steered clear of Anthony Wiener (D-NY), however silly and irritating he would seem to be, because it's just too easy.

But for a man, surnamed Wiener, to (allegedly) send a picture of his...(*sigh*) wiener to a woman not his wife? On Twitter?  Seriously?

MSNBC's Lynn Mucken on High Gas Prices: Suck it Up, Proles.

This is a month old, but hardly past its Mock-By date, especially for this web site. Out come the Fisking Shears:

It's my new thing.

The Anti-Retards are Serious

They have a web site. And nearly a grasp on the situation:

When they were originally introduced, the terms “mental retardation” or “mentally retarded” were medical terms with a specifically clinical connotation; however, the pejorative forms, “retard” and “retarded” have been used widely in today’s society to degrade and insult people with intellectual disabilities

So I pointed out when I last addressed this issue. But they fail to carry the water all the way:

Why "intellectual disability" is replacing "mental retardation"

The R-word, “retard,” is slang for the term mental retardation. Mental retardation was what doctors, psychologists, and other professionals used to describe people with significant intellectual impairment. Today the r-word has become a common word used by society as an insult for someone or something stupid. For example, you might hear someone say, “That is so retarded” or “Don’t be such a retard.” When used in this way, the r-word can apply to anyone or anything, and is not specific to someone with a disability. But, even when the r-word is not said to harm someone with a disability, it is hurtful.

Because of this, Special Olympics and the greater disability community prefers to focus on people and their gifts and accomplishments, and to dispel negative attitudes and stereotypes. As language has evolved, Special Olympics has updated its official terminology to use standard, people-first language that is more acceptable to our athletes.

The treadmill is there, but they refuse to see it.

I found this website via Popeater, which has done more to advance intellectual disability than any other corner of the 'net.

Kim Kardashian could not be reached for comment,
as she has a big retarded wedding to plan.

Pawlenty Runs Right

I've got nothing against Hermann Cain. He seems a likeable chap, and he's got the principles of governance down solid, at least rhetorically. But he may not have the resume for the job (Emphasis: May not. The guy was a director of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank). Tim Pawlenty, on the other hand, has a record that sound just about right:

I signed a budget that actually reduced state spending in real terms for the first time in the 150-year history of our state. I led the charge to move Minnesota out of the Top 10 highest-tax states. I passed market-based health care reforms and introduced merit pay for our teachers.

It wasn't easy. We had a brief government shutdown and had one of America's longest-ever public employee strikes. I also set a record for vetoes and for using executive power to force spending cuts. We balanced every budget during my time as governor while cutting state taxes.

It would be nice to get an idea of what "market-based reforms" meant, and how well they're doing in Minnesota. But this sounds like the best resume we've got going right now. If he comes through with telling hard truths about farm subsidies in Iowa, he might be the Real Deal.

And If We Don't Give the Palestinians What They Want....?

When I was 16 years old, I believed that Israel and Palestine could come to some kind of agreement and just drop everything. I believed that this was about a homeland. I no longer think so, because I became convinced of the reality that Mark Steyn is talking about:

“That’s why there was no peace in 1948, no peace under the British mandate in the 1930s, no peace at the time of the 1922 partition because one party to the dispute wants to kill the other. So, if they are wedded to that, then you got to put pressure on the party that doesn’t want to kill each other, to make concession – to keep throwing concessions in the face of the beast that wants to devour it and I think that’s – if you look at where he’s applying the pressure, I think that tells you a lot about the fundamental fraudulence of these negotiations.”

Now it could be that all this talk of wanting to drive Israel into the see is so much bluster. But if you were an Israeli Jew, how much would you want to bet on it? Palestine could have had peace in 1999, when Israel offered them more or less the same deal that Obama wants them to offer now. Palestine chose war, instead. Because war is what they want.

So war is what Palestine gets. And so long as Israel refuses to surrender anything to an enemy they have no reason to trust, it's a war they will slowly lose.

Target vs. Walmart

I'm a Target shopper, too; mostly out of convenience (our Target is closer), partially out of not wanting to overload my daily redneck quotient. I even pronounce it "Tar-zhey," de temps en temps, albeit not without some self-directed irony.

But I love the fact that Walmart exists. I love that you can by shotguns and ammo there. I love that it pisses off the terminally bourgeois. And I'm not above shopping there; when I lived in Southern Maryland I went to the Walmart frequently.

So huzzah to both of them. May their struggle for market share go on like Coke and Pepsi's.

I Would Like to Believe Pejman Yousefzadeh...

...that inflation isn't really a problem. I really really would. But when the article he links in support of this thesis offers the following bizzaritude, I can't:

The recent pace [of inflation] can't be sustained, but food and energy will continue to rise.

The hell? In what universe is a consistent rise in food and energy prices NOT inflation? Why on earth would anyone suppose that a rise in the thing that humans and their machines need daily will not drive up prices in other sectors?

It's a plumb good thang I kin dine on
squirrel pies and old shoes.

It's Funny Cause It's True...

Stacey McCain reveals the true info source behind the Bin Laden Raid.

I Thought the French Beheaded Their Aristocracy

Apparently I was mistaken.

This morning, I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.

Does this American judge not know that he is dealing with Strauss-Kahn, Comte de Money, Baron du Socialisme, and Seigneur De La Marmalade-Douche? Quelle effrontery!

Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. is Awesome(O). Atlas Shrugged, Not So Much.

I've heard of this guy before. Ace of Spades has a serious Ewok crush on him. But I didn't know he had a blog. But it's going on the roll now, because this...

Don't get me wrong, though; I miss Olbermann. Dylan Ratigan, the reject from the "Young Turks" website who replaced Keith, is a complete tool. Ratigan has an apropos last name and a non-telegenic face. His voice is grating, and he can't form a coherent sentence. A humorless jackass with a two-bit haircut and a one-bit brain.
Don't even get me started on Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz. They always look like they are sucking on lemons and announcing the apocalypse. Lawrence O'Donnell stares into the camera with all the fake gravitas of a hypnotist who learned his craft off the back of a cereal box. Give it a break, losers.

...made me laugh harder than any blog post in a while. Then he gives the new Atlas Shrugged film, and Ayn Rand's prose a much needed rogering:

I read her books when I was in high school, then college, and I thought they were pretty bad even back then. As I re-read her tortured and miserable prose today in preparation for this review, I could only hear Eric Cartman's "Awesome-O Voice" saying "I. Am. John. Galt. I. will. bore. the. collectivists. to. death. and. save. the. world. with. lots. of. words. saying. the. same. thing. over. and. over. With. Uhm. Adam. Sandler."

That there's funny, I don't care how Objectivist you are.

Feminists are Stooges.

Stacy McCain again piles on the No Boys Allowed Club. This time, his target is Stephanie Coontz and her anti-mythological mythologizing. Naturally, he cannot resist quoting her during the Great Lewinsky Betrayal:

So we see that, at a time when the Predator-in-Chief was caught perjuring himself about an exploitative affair with an emotionally unstable subordinate less than half his age, Coontz’s principle concern was that the scandal was distracting attention from the important issues that mattered to liberals. Whatever credibility Coontz as an advocate for the equality and dignity of women in the workplace, she was willing to cast it aside — ignoring Clinton’s sordidly sexist behavior — rather than to let Clinton’s conservative critics gain any advantage by the exposure of his Oval Office affair.

Which reminds me of my own rant on this subject, from my baby days as a blogger:

And all you feminists out there: the fact that you stood mum while he sidestepped that very same law you fell over yourselves applauding in '94, the fact that you threw every nasty caveman stereotype you claim to abhor at Jones and Lewinsky, that you lined up to protect this Lothario, tells me everything I need to know about you. Like your spiritual mother de Beauvoir, you don't care what the Power does to others as long as you have a room of your own.

This is tangential to McCain's point, however, so Read the Whole Thing.

The ISI are Spies. This is What Spies Do.

The pundits are aflutter with the question "What the Hell was Osama doing in Pakistan?" (Not small-arms training, obviously.) Everyone's bubbling with consipiracies about what the Pakistani ISI knew and when they knew it. Michael Ledeen runs this to the hilt, suggesting that not only might the ISI have a motive for betraying Osama...

There are many possible reasons.  One is that things were going badly with us — look at all the tough language coming from the likes of General Petraeus and from leading members of Congress and several spoon-fed journalists — and the gift of bin Laden would make for a happier Obama administration.

...so might Al Qaeda:

The war in Afghanistan is going badly for al-Qaeda. We’ve been slaughtering them for many many months, just read the military reports. So their recruitment is down, their fund-raising is down, their morale is down. Inevitably, this sort of thing produces divisions within the organization. Some of them want to fight on, others say let’s cut our losses and focus on the opportunities elsewhere…the world is changing, after all…

It's not that implausible. On the other hand, Five Rupees points out that intelligence organizations often have blind spots:

Look, if the mil-ISI knew everything there is to know about everything, there’d never be another terrorist attack in Pakistan (they’d just be restricted to Afghanistan and India). Clearly this is not the case. They are evidently caught off guard time and again. Just a couple months ago, there was a suicide bombing inside an army compound in Mardan. More relevantly, less than two years ago was the raid and hostage-taking attack at the army’s headquarters! The headquarters! And this is leaving aside all the terrorist attacks on civilians targets throughout the country that these brilliant and resourceful organizations should ostensibly have intimate knowledge of.

We Americans regard the CIA with the same dualism: All-Powerful Secret Masters of the Land one minute, and Bumbling Blinded Toadies Unable to Locate Their Posteriors with Both Mani and a Torch the next. They can't both be true.

So while I suspect the Pakis knew what was going on and looked the other way because they decided that Osama was worth sacrificing, I'm not going to rule out the possibility that they simply had no idea what was going on. I'm not a spy, so I don't know, and given the poor information control the White House displayed with regard to the raid, I'm not certain the spies know any better.

Corrections and Other Failures of Prophecy -- My Self-Criticism Session

Anyone who presumes to pontificate on the subject of politics runs the risk of sending the Rake of Truth right into their lying face. So, going over what's been going on of late, I'm noticing these things that I have been dead smacking wrong about:

1. I probably overreacted to the news of Obama's quiet burial at sea. We don't want to have a known  burial spot after all. And the Islamic world seems perfectly willing to believe that we did what we said we did. I still think giving him full Muslim burial is excessive, but I'm not going to jump up and down about it.
2. The Bloom has been dusted off and put right back on the Rose. Apparently the Media Industrial Complex has only been looking for a reason to rediscover their fond adoration of Fearless Leader. Wacking Bin Laden seems to have given all the major talking heads in the Democratic Party a raging assassination boner profound appreciation of Obama's Leadership.
3. Donald Trump is not going to go away anytime soon. Going all High Noon on Obama has put him right in the spotlight, which is right where Trumpy likes to be. I'm pretty sure its not going to matter, electorally speaking, but that's a subject for a different blog post, wherein I shall denounce not merely Trump but Trumpism. Just as soon as I define it.
4. P.J. O'Rourke is not only not decrepit, he's lost none of his old Parliament of Whores rage at our mountebank aristocracy. Behold the opening paragraph of his latest philippic:

Wipe that smirk off your face, Mister President. “We cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society.” Is there some Sidwell Friends night school class liberal politicians take to perfect an expression of smug disdain? When Teddy Roosevelt was demagogue-in-chief he at least had the nerve to come right out and call the successful people he despised “malefactors of great wealth.” He didn’t simper and moue at his audience. Go ahead and say it, President Obama: Let’s steal from the rich and give to the poor. Never mind that we’re doing a pretty good job of it already. The top 5 percent of the nation’s earners are being soaked for almost 60 percent of America’s tax revenue.

Read the whole thing.

When You Kill a King, You Do It in Front of Everybody.

Look, I was kidding about displaying Bin Laden's corpse to the four corners of the realm. We didn't need to mount his head on the Pentagon. But burial at sea without showing that we have the body? That's just dumb. That throws away all the propaganda value of killing him.

And handled with accordance to Islamic tradition and practice? WHY? Who that would be offended by our killing him could possibly be mollified by that? Again, not that we had to piss on it or bury it face down in a vat of pig's blood, but seriously? What do we gain by that?

Just when I was prepared to give Obama a thumb's up, too.

On the other hand, the claim that he was hiding behind women? Only to be expected. But now our enemies won't believe us.

Thoughts on Bin Laden

1. It's obviously true and totally irrelevant that Al Qaeda and the Taliban will continue just fine in his absence, just as Iraq continued bloodily after Saddam was caught and hung. It matters not. This man declared war on us, and now he is fodder for worms. The message is clear: you may run, and you may hide, and the long years may seem to stretch on, but one day you will turn around, and one of ours will be behind you, and he will put two in the back of your head, and we will take your gangly corpse and display it to the four corners of the realm. Sleep tight.
2. Teleprompter hiccups aside, Obama looked presidential last night. He's milking this win for his own political capital, and there's no reason he shouldn't. As he said, he gave the order, and it redounds to the Commander-in-Chief's credit. Democrats are going to use this as evidence that The Shadow Way, the Non-Invasion Way, is the better way to defeat terror. After all, Bush missed Bin Laden for eight years, and Obama got him in two. But there's no way we would have done so without the assets that Bush put in country. Obama relentlessly praised the men and women, military and intelligence, who made this happen. We should not pretend that they started in January 2009, whatever Double Secret Probation that the President ordered then.
3. On a religious note, I don't really care all that much about Bin Laden's Final Judgment. If he should be barking in Hell, so be it. If I should run into him in Purgatory, and we stare dumb-foundedly at one another as the last of our wickedness is scorched away from us, so be it. Bin Laden's death means that he is no longer a problem for me and my countrymen. That is enough. The Almighty has His own purposes.