A Small Dose of Sanity
But this takes all the fun away from a government determined to regulate everything.
I Want a Toyota
The first car that I bought brand new, right off the showroom floor, was a 1971 Toyota Corona. I kept it for 8 years and never should have traded it in.
Japanese cars were unusual at the time. In fact, “made in Japan” was synonymous with cheap. We had learned in preceding years that foreign cars were likely to give you more for the money, but that applied to cars made in Europe, not Japan. Buying a Japanese car was a leap into the unknown. People soon discovered that Toyota made better cars than any company in America.
Toyota currently has some PR problems, but I doubt that its cars have serious mechanical issues. I just don’t believe the runaway car syndrome, at least not as it’s being pitched. I didn’t believe the Audi 5000 had those problems despite a similar scare in the 1980s. Nobody could replicate the problem, and I find it much easier to believe that the driver went bonkers rather than the car.
The plaintiffs’ bar will have a field day before public opinion begins to turn. There are too many people who tend to blame everything on government conspiracies and corporate cover-ups. There is a large constituency for regulating just about everything, and the government is gearing up to do just that with brakes that override gas pedals. Please.
I find this much more convincing.
So I suspect that you can get a pretty good deal on a Toyota about now, and I have every reason to believe that a Toyota is still a better car than most others. But I need to act fast before the government adds another costly and useless safety device that will ensure that your cars stops when you have both pedas mashed to the floor.
Beer Party Launched
The new Coffee Party touts its philosophy: The government is “not the enemy of the people, but the collective expression of our will.”
Could Orwell have crafted a better slogan? Could any statement plead more effectively for acquiescence or appeal to a mindset of appeasement? Were these same people making this argument when Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress?
Allah Pundit observes too kindly: “I’m getting a distinct ‘beta male’ vibe from this group.
I’m not a member of the Tea Party movement, although I’ve considered joining just as a retort to those who insist on equating them with right-wing militias and attributing to them every act of violence (never mind what Stack’s manifesto actually says). Reading Frank Rich’s columns will make you “beta” in every respect. If his guilt-by-association meme catches on, I want to be sure no one associates me with Rich.
We Texans drink iced tea in copious amounts, and I occasionally indulge in a cup of hot tea (the black variety – none of that fruity stuff).
But tea, like the Tea Party, is optional, whereas coffee is essential. The Coffee Party has no business tainting the good name of that noble beverage. Really, they could have more accurately described themselves with the name of some coffee drink like cappuccino or “skinny cinnamon dolce latte.”
We live in a dangerous world when coffee becomes associated with lefty wackos. Nothing is safe.
So we must start the Beer Party preemptively. We can work out a more detailed philosophy and agenda later. For now, it is enough to ensure that beer will forever be associated with real men and good-hearted women, that it will never be commandeered by some group of effete whiners, and that’s its primary purpose will remain conspicuous consumption.
Beer is the elixir of charity, the path to clear thinking, the promoter of Gemütlichkeit, proof that God loves us, and the antidote to Frank Rich.
Photo by dr_sponge
Custer Had a Plan
I keep hearing that the Republicans don’t have a plan on health care. That charge is demonstrably false, but it persists. Just yesterday, a friend of mine posted a snide comment on Facebook, asking whether anybody really thought the Republicans would “start over” and do something about health care. The unspoken assumption is that health care is in terrible shape and anything would be better than what we have now.
The Democrats have a sweeping plan for radical change, and the Republicans don’t. Never mind the polls showing that people mostly like what we have now.
I readily concede that the Democrats have a plan. Custer had a plan, too. It was a bad plan based on a false assumption that Indians would never congregate in such large numbers. Therefore he believed he could send half of his troops to attack one end of their encampment while he led the rest around to the other end. No one was able later to ask Custer just how far away he thought the other end was or how many Indians he expected to encounter along the way.
So while the Democrats prove their willingness to go charging into the situation with no concern for the consequences, with no idea where they might come out on the other end, I find myself siding with Major Reno, who led the initial charge into the Indian camp while Custer set off to implement his grand envelopment. Reno recognized a disaster in the making and went into a defensive position, holding on until saner commanders arrived on the scene.
The Wrong Answer to Bullying
Is bullying the same as lynching? I suppose so, if you think hurt feelings are the same as death by asphyxiation.
But if you can’t distinguish verbal criticism, which is constitutionally protected, from homicide, then perhaps you should find a job other than law school professor. Instapundit links to this abstract of an article by Michael J. Higdon of the University of Tennessee College of Law:
[M]y article argues that bullying on the basis of gender non-conformity is, in essence, a form of lynching. First, both are driven by unwritten social codes—in one instance, white supremacy; in the other, gender stereotypes. Second, both are carried out by perpetrators who do not act in isolation but with the support and sometimes involvement of the larger community. As I explain, one of the reasons gender-based bullying is so frequent is the degree to which peers and school administrators ignore such behavior and, in some instances, even become active participants. Third, both result in extreme harm—lynching, in its most basic form, resulted in dead bodies; however, a lynching need not be defined so narrowly. In the case of segregation, for example, we had living children with “lynched” spirits.
Is gender-based taunting acceptable? No. Is it tantamount to lynching? Not by a long shot.
The author’s zealotry in promoting this false analogy does nothing to solve the problem, and I think in fact it tends to exacerbate it.
It is difficult enough to grow up male, but boys these days have to grow up without any clear model of what it means to be a man. Sure, when I was 11 years old, there were some boys who were not quite on track. I have no idea in most cases whether they turned out to be homosexual or if they were simply on a different developmental path. Luckily for them, they weren’t forced to decide at the ripe age of 11.
What cultural insanity has made it necessary for kids to grapple with their sexual orientation before puberty?
The answer seems rather obvious. There is an over-emphasis on sex and an irrational belief that people are largely defined by sexual orientation. This is not something that the heterosexual majority came up with, but rather part of the political agenda of homosexuals. It serves to promote the doubtful proposition that all people are either immutably heterosexual or homosexual from conception. There is no choice, only a realization. Sexual “preference” is a misnomer.
The tragedy of child suicide cannot be blamed so easily on taunts from peers and a failure to enforce more political correctness at school. In fact, gay seems to be the new cool at school. I have watched my own daughter’s classmates cheerfully declare themselves homosexual without fear of any backlash (and without sufficient evidence). It has become an easy alternative to the rough and competitive environment of young men, and the perfect excuse for shyness or rejection.
Perhaps we have become too accepting of homosexuality as the underlying reason behind any differences. Maybe the boys who wanted to take home economics instead of shop really just had different interests and skills rather than a gene that would determine their fate forever. Maybe labeling them early as having this immutable trait consigns them to a lifestyle that they don’t desire or understand. It is more than an 11-year-old should have to deal with.
We might avoid some suicides if we could give boys a chance to grow up without assuming that homosexuality is behind every bump on the road to manhood.
Vomitus gratia artis
Or is it Ars gratia vomitus? Art comes in many offensive forms these days, and there is certainly an audience that delights in being offended. I suspect that audiences drawn to offensive art usually retain some deniability, presuming that the offensive stuff is really directed at others – those too close-minded to patronize this art or maybe just the guy in the next seat.
But the offensiveness is hard to shake off when the performer vomits in your lap.
Not metaphorically, mind you, but with all the stink and bile of half-digested bouillabaisse and cheesecake.
Unless you’re Susan Sarandon, in which case you will profess to enjoy the experience – nay, find it aesthetically profound:
A transsexual cabaret performer named Rose Wood engaged in projectile vomiting on stage and hit Sarandon with it.
Standing nearby were Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber.
According to Wood it was not intended as an affront to the actress and she didn’t take it that way.
“Apparently [Sarandon] got a big kick out of it. She squealed with surprise and loved it when several handsome gentlemen wiped it off of her. She had a ball! I saw her assistant downstairs afterward, and he was moved by it! She was in great spirits,” Wood told the New York Press.
Wood explains that vomiting on people is fitting is this establishment.
Yes, there is something terribly fitting about it, and it tells us all we really need to know about both the performer and the audience. It’s enough to make you puke.
Beldar Is Back
And he’s not pulling any punches. Picking up on Mark Steyn’s recent column (comparing our government’s obsession with protecting us from frying pans and hot tubs with its abdication on real safety concerns like Iranian nukes), Beldar addresses the remilitarization of the Rhineland:
Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland — in outright defiance of the Versailles and Locarno Treaties — was when the West had its last, best clear chance to stop Hitler and the Nazis, with the likely toppling of Hitler’s government as a consequence, at a trivial military expense. All that was necessary was that France and Great Britain (chiefly the former, as the relevant neighbor) just barely flex their vastly superior military muscles — which, given Nazi treaty violations, they had an indisputable legal right to do. Indeed, the Germans were instructed to reverse course and retreat at even a display of military purpose and intent to oppose them on the part of the French. Instead, because France and Britain acquiesced in the treaty violations, Hitler promptly accelerated the conversion of his illegally reconstituted military into the fierce machine that brought us the Blitzkreig and subsequent Nazi occupation or domination of Europe.
* * *
And so here we are in 2010, in the predicament Steyn has pinpointed. Iran will get its bomb before the reins of leadership in America can possibly be passed back to someone who could summon up the nation’s will to stop that process, and by then the costs of restoring Iran to a non-nuclear status will have grown unfathomably greater.
Which provides the prime example of the unseriousness that pervades our nation, about which I posted in a lighter vein a couple of months ago.
Lost Honor II
Maintaining a blog is not always easy. Sometimes it’s just too difficult to find the time to come up with new quality posts.
While I was out of town on business recently, some enterprising outfit apparently noticed the lack of activity at Arts & Ammo and offered to help. They offer “quality papers” for sale. I always thought such things were mostly aimed at the student market, and maybe that’s true, but I suddenly became the recipient of their email promotions. Something about the title of my last post “Lost Honor” must have triggered it.
What is a quality paper? Let’s look at an example. One of the first examples to come up on their website (always lead with the best) begins like this:
The hijackers of the flight united 93 did not prevent the pessengers from making calls. When the passanger came to know abput the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagone, the understand what actually was going on. They realised that if they will do nothing than they will also die. So the . . .
Yessir, that kind of writing will get you a solid B+ in many institutions of higher learning these days. What professor would notice the subtle variations in spelling and syntax? After all, anyone who buys that paper and passes it off as his own apparently doesn’t notice, so the professor is not likely to be suspect it isn’t the student’s original work.
Readers of this site are, of course, more discriminating. I’m sad to say I found nothing quite up to the editorial standards that prevail here and was forced to write this snide post all by myself. I would give you the link to the quality paper’s site, but that would give them a promo they don’t deserve. If my spam filters fail, maybe their comments will show up below.
Lost Honor, indeed.
Lost Honor
Scott Lee Cohen, the Democratic Party’s candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois, had a rough week. Right after winning the primary, stories surfaced about his missed child support payments, steroid use, and attacking a prostitute with a knife.
The Chicago Sun-Times says:
Facing intense and mounting pressure to step aside, embattled Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen is seeking an “honorable way” out, a Cohen campaign source said Friday night.
It appears that the “honorable way” was misplaced long ago, so I suspect Cohen will be looking for quite a while.
Perpetual Surprise
Whether unemployment goes up or down, whether the statistic is for the U.S. or overseas, whether it repeats a pattern or reverses direction, there is one unifying factor in the headlines. A modest sampling:
“New Unemployment Claims Rise Unexpectedly to 627,000” – FoxNews (AP), June 25, 2009
“German Unemployment Unexpectedly Declined in October” – Bloomberg, Oct. 29, 2009
“New unemployment claims fall unexpectedly for fifth straight week” – NY Daily News, Dec. 3, 2009
“U.S. unemployment unexpectedly drops in November” – KGW.com, Dec. 4, 2009
“U.K. Unemployment Unexpectedly Falls for First Time Since February 2008” – Daily FX, Dec. 16, 2009.
“Unemployment claims rise unexpectedly” – CNNMoney, Dec. 17, 2009
“Treasury prices fall as unemployment claims fall unexpectedly” – AP, Dec. 31, 2009
“Unemployment Claims Fall Unexpectedly” – Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1, 2010
“New jobless claims rise unexpectedly” – MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2010
“Initial unemployment claims rose unexpectedly last week” – AP, Feb. 4, 2010
And today we learn from the AP: “First-time jobless claims rise unexpectedly.” Yes, that’s a shocker.
But at least we can certain about the weather in 2050.
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About
Defending Western Culture and traditions through a rational discussion of the arts (emphasis on durable music) with unavoidable references to politics, religion, law, ranching, and the quest for a good martini.
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Worth Every Cent
Professor Carol now offers a complete self-study course covering 300 years of music.
This romp through music history (and many other historical topics) combines 13 hours of DVD video with a 3-disc listening set from Naxos and a 236-page course book.
From the birth of opera to the Leipzig coffeehouses frequented by Bach and Schumann, from the Orthodox cathedrals of Moscow to Tin Pan Alley, from scientific discoveries to bloody revolutions, spooky dramas and shoe styles, Carol chronicles it all with her unique commentary.
