Month: May 2004

THERE’S the Rachel We All Know and Love!

She seems a bit perturbed that the French and the “Hate Bush” (yes, I know that’s somewhat redundant) crowd just looooooved Michael Moore’s latest film at Cannes.

I’ll take a couple, Rachel.

“…the Arab edition of Fear Factor“

Author and attorney (among other things) John Ross – no stranger to controversy – has an interesting piece up on the Abu Ghraib photos.

It’ll make you think, I guarantee you that.

Roderick Pritchett Acquitted!

(Via Spoons)

Roderick Pritchett (first covered here Sept. 18) has been acquitted of all charges according to this Chicago Tribune piece.

Mr. Pritchett’s story, in his own words, is here.

The courts will not save us, but sometimes they’re still honest.

WORDS WOMEN USE

FINE

This is the word women use to end an argument when they feel they are right and you need to shut up. Never use “fine” to describe how a woman looks – this will cause you to have one of those arguments.

FIVE MINUTES

This is half an hour. It is equivalent to the five minutes that your football game is going to last before you take out the trash, so it’s an even trade.

NOTHING

This means “something,” and you should be on your toes. “Nothing” is usually used to describe the feeling a woman has of wanting to turn you inside out, upside down, and backwards. “Nothing” usually signifies an argument that will last “Five Minutes” and end with “Fine.”

GO AHEAD (With Raised Eyebrow!)

This is a dare. One that will result in a woman getting upset over “Nothing” and will end with the word “Fine.”

GO AHEAD (Normal Eyebrows)

This means “I give up” or “do what you want because I don’t care” You will get a “Raised Eyebrow Go Ahead” in just a few minutes, followed by “Nothing” and “Fine” and she will talk to you in about “Five Minutes” when she cools off.

GO AHEAD! (Loudly)

At some point in the near future, you are going to be in some mighty big trouble.

LOUD SIGH

This is not actually a word, but is a nonverbal statement often misunderstood by men. A “Loud Sigh” means she thinks you are an idiot at that moment, and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you over “Nothing.”

SOFT SIGH

Again, not a word, but a nonverbal statement. “Soft Sighs” mean that she is content. Your best bet is to not move or breathe, and she will stay content.

THAT’S OKAY

This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman can make to a man. “That’s Okay” means that she wants to think long and hard before paying you back for whatever it is that you have done. “That’s Okay” is often used with the word “Fine” and in conjunction with a “Raised Eyebrow.”

PLEASE DO

This is not a statement, it is an offer. A woman is giving you the chance to come up with whatever excuse or reason you have for doing whatever it is that you have done. You have a fair chance with the truth, so be careful and you shouldn’t get a “That’s Okay.”

THANKS

A woman is thanking you. Do not faint! Just say you’re welcome.

THANKS A LOT

This is much different from “Thanks.” A woman will say, “Thanks A Lot” when she is really ticked off at you. It signifies that you have offended her in some callous way, and will be followed by the “Loud Sigh.” Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the “Loud Sigh,” as she will only tell you “Nothing.”

Send this to the men you know to warn them about future arguments they can avoid if they remember the terminology! (And send it to your women friends to give them a good laugh.)

A Decades-Long Slow-Motion Hate Crime

That’s how the War on Gunowners™ has been described. This piece entitled Intolerance of gun owners nation-wide problem puts it very well. Excerpt:

If you want to taste intolerance, let it be known you not only own guns, you like them. For instance, I can’t help but notice the worried looks and whispers of waiting passengers while helping a ticket agent check in my rifle or muzzleloader at the airport. In one case, my daughters overheard a woman tell her husband, “You’d think with children in his house he wouldn’t keep guns around.”

Amazing. I would have thought she would have been more impressed that my three daughters — then fairly young — had stood in line for 30 minutes without irritating the spit out of everyone within hearing.

(Hat tip, Say Uncle)

Tell Me Again How Democratic Those Democrats Are?

I’ve mentioned the local Lefty rag, the Tucson Weekly a couple of times before, but last week’s issue, which I just scanned through, had a letter to the editor I just couldn’t pass up:

[Op-ed columnist] Tom Danehy is right: President Bush is going to be re-elected, but not because Democrats don’t have it together (Danehy, April 22). They do have it together, but most Americans are too fucking stupid to recognize it.

President Bush will be re-elected because he is a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and the other 72 percent believe in divine creation or some such nonsense. President Bush does not believe in evolution but does believe in divine creation. This is why he will be re-elected.

Patrick Bishop

Yup. Most Americans are just too stupid to vote.

Democrat.

That’s a real problem in a democracy, ain’t it?

Here’s a Pretty Interesting Take on Things

Does a deeply divided U.S. have the guts needed to win in Iraq?

Excerpts:

Here’s my soapbox, and I’m on it.

First off, let me say I was against us going into Iraq. No, I wasn’t concerned about the lack of a blessing from the United Nations, which couldn’t hit a bull in the rump with a banjo.

Nor did I care about evidence proving the presence of WMDs. Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon designed by international meddlers such as ourselves.

My fear was, and is, that this country doesn’t have the guts and historical awareness to prevail in a region where numerous civilizations, some of them utterly ruthless, have lost their shirts.

—

And any idiot could’ve predicted the way we’d react when the real body count mounted, as it did in earnest two months ago. News agencies tripped over themselves to present the photos of our war dead, while greater numbers of people were being murdered on the streets of our own fine nation.

And look how we barfed over the images of the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, while we seem perfectly at peace with the common phenomenon of prisoners raping each other in our own country.

—

Former Abu Ghraib prisoner Dhia al-Shweiri said he preferred the electric shocks and beatings he suffered in the prison when it was under Saddam’s control to the humiliation he suffered when the American guards made him strip (once) – and lean against a wall (for 15 minutes).

“They were trying to humiliate us, break our pride. . . . They wanted us to feel as though we are women, the way women feel.” (So that’s the way they treat women?)

There it is. It’s better to be shocked, beaten and shot between the eyes than to feel like a woman.

—

We’re in the midst of a titanic cultural and religious war with a borderless enemy, and we’re unarmed on both counts.

Read the Whole Thing.

An Example of the Proper Application of the ClueBat™

Today’s Bleat contains a severe drubbing of one Hunter S. Thompson starting about halfway down. Well worth the read.

Human Nature Doesn’t Change

Steven Den Beste (I seem to be making a habit of commenting on his stuff) has a piece up entitled “Truth is Stranger than Fiction“ about a specific form of backlash against the bureacratic red tape that is part and parcel of the EU. Read Steven’s (short) piece, if you have not, because it is not exactly excerptable.

Finished? Good.

Steven asks two specific questions that I’d like to answer:

Can Europe avoid this nightmare? Do there exist people there who recognize the peril and who still are willing to work to prevent it?

IMHO, the answer to the first question is “no.” And the reason has to do with the answer to the second question. Certainly there are people in Europe who recognize the peril and are still willing to work to prevent it. But they are far too few to affect the flood. One of the pieces Steven quotes says this:

[A]t the heart of (Kafka’s) obsessive and horrifying narratives is an unfathomable bureaucracy, one that has emerged through a combination of inertia, default, and the institution of political power, perpetuating itself by feeding upon the rights of the people it was ostensibly designed to serve.

I submit that Kafka’s vision is merely the behavior of human nature with respect to “popular government” writ to its logical extreme: The maximization of the regulatory power of government with the minimalization of individual responsibility and accountability.

The only thing that actually prevents a completely Kafka-esque bureacracy is also human nature – the desire in a few to be the ones with their hands on the reins, even if, as the song goes, the reins are chains on their hands and they’re riding upon a train.

The purpose of our (apparently aberrant) Constitutional Republic was to build a government that could not “perpetuate itself by feeding upon the rights of the people it was ostensibly designed to serve.” By all appearances, that government too has “through a combination of inertia, default, and the institution of political power” finally headed down Kafka’s path. We’re just not as advanced along it as Europe.

But there are people here who clamor for it.

It’s human nature.

UPDATE: This piece describes, I believe accurately, the human nature behind Robert Conquest’s Second Law:

Any organization not explicitly rightwing over time drifts leftward.

It’s a good companion to this one. And it’s why, though there are people “who recognize the peril and who still are willing to work to prevent it,” there are almost never enough of us to circumvent Conquest’s law until we’ve all descended back into bondage. It also explains Tytler’s cycle.

UPDATE 5/16 9:55PM: A commenter, Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye wrote:

While I do agree with you about the consistency of human nature, I can’t say that I agree with John Ray’s analysis. The Left has no special monopoly on elitism or authoritarianism/totalitarianism. Those on the Right would be just as happy to impose their ideas forcibly on others—they just have different ideas.

Part of the same human nature you’re talking about ensures it’s a pretty rare individual that doesn’t want to impose his views on others.

I responded, but it piqued something, so I hunted through my archives for a piece I wrote back when we were (only half-jokingly) promoting the Reynolds/Lucas 2008 candidacy – back when I wasn’t quite as pessimistic as I am now about government. It’s entitled History Calls – Will We Answer? (The answer is, apparently, “No” for the same reason I gave above – there aren’t enough of us.)

Anyway, it’s still a good piece, and it’s another good companion to this one, probably better than the John Ray piece linked above. In it, I quote something I found on the web long ago that answers Dave’s contention better than I did in the comments:

It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business. – R.U. Sirius