Mercedes: There Is No Substitute

Saw the Mercedes v. Dipshit Protester video. The guy and the woman (OWS protesters and soon to be hood ornaments) walk in front of the car and stop, face the driver and begin "communicating" to him both verbally and with wild gesticulations. (It looks like the guy [Hood Ornament #1], not the woman [Hood Ornament #2], was the instigator). Then the guy begins to slam his fists down on the hood of the car. The driver gooses the accelerator of the Merc (0-60 in 5.8 seconds!) and takes both HOs 1 and 2 for a short jaunt which resulted in minor leg and ankle injuries. What you can't tell from the video is what the guy was screaming, the mood of the surrounding crowd, what the fear level of the driver was and whether he intended to hit the gas as hard as he did or the rush of adrenalin (also not shown but inferred by me) affected his motor skills, as rushes of adrenaline are known to do. If I sound less than empathetic to the injured it's because I have little or no sympathy for people who act stupidly. If you're part of a protesting crowd and you decide to block the path of a vehicle and then begin beating on that vehicle while yelling inflammatory epithets (my assumption) then you should assume that the driver of the vehicle might become scared shitless that your friends will join you and just might want to get the fuck out of there before that happens. Had it been me, someone would have had a semi-permanent Subaru logo impressed somewhere on their being.

Meet The New Boss

Just read an interesting, if not terribly well-written essay on The White Rose (German Nazi resistance) and comparisons between Hitler and FDR and, by extension, our current regime. (http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0703a.asp)

What struck me was that no matter how much the human race evolves, the methods of the oppressor remain the same. Largely because they are still successful. Amplified and continually re-modulated fear is the propagandists' best weapon. Fear of the rich, Jews, terrorists, racists, speculators, a dearth medical care...A frightened populace will gladly give up their freedoms for a little security. I think one of the reasons that people are blind to what's actually happening in America is that they don't see any of the traditional trappings totalitarianism. If 50,000 heavily armed and jack-booted thugs where parading down Pennsylvania Ave. it would be fairly obvious. But American Fascism or Socialism was never going to look like it's German, Italian or Soviet counterparts. It will be cloaked in a $3,000 suit and the promise of security and fairness and an endless supply of prescription drugs and the people will lap it up like mother's milk. By the time they wake up it will be too late.

Tolerance Is No Fun, But It Probably Won't Kill You

Former SNL scatterbrain Victoria Jackson's anti-gay comments regarding a male-to-male kiss on the TV show Glee prompted the usual intolerant attacks from the tolerance crowd. Great news for me because it gives me an excuse to explore a rather obvious (to me anyway) deficiency in American Society circa 2011: Most people in our society don't have a clue what tolerance means.
There's is this enduring perception that all you have to do to be tolerant is establish yourself to the left of center on the political ideology scale. At this point you can be as intolerant of those on the right as you please and oddly enough this will only serve to buttress your tolerance bona fides. Tolerance means to endure, to put up with. Within the definition is the implication that there is a certain amount of discomfort involved. If you're not feeling any discomfort, you aren't tolerant, you're sympathetic. I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care for Victoria Jackson, I'm not a Christian, a gay man caught the bouquet at my wedding and my wife and I later attended his wedding, which was officiated by a lesbian Rabbi. But I'm also a registered Libertarian who almost exclusively votes Republican for fiscal reasons. I don't have a problem with the gay kiss or with Victoria Jackson's comments. I do have a problem with our collective inability to call things by their right and proper names. Intolerance of intolerance does not equal tolerance. It might be righteous, but if that's the case then own it! Why hide? It's imperative to the evolution of a healthy society that it's citizens learn to cut through the layers of propaganda that are the sole product of all political movements. We, at the very least, have to learn to accept our actions and the motivations behind them without relying on Orwellian Newspeak to round off the rough edges. The noxious cloud of cognitive dissonance created by people's inability to be honest with themselves will tear down a society faster than an army of Victoria Jacksons.

GOP, The Doctor Will See You Now

Republican angst over The Tea Party and the possibility that it will Nader/Perot the 2012 election is metastasizing at a brisk clip. I understand the sentiment and agree with the logic of their position but they need to recognize (and accept) the fact that it's their own fault. The popularity of Ron Paul (and existence of The Tea Party) is the (rather obvious) result of the people in this country who crave conservative (mostly fiscal) values finally accepting the fact that this is a product that the GOP no longer offers. It can be distilled down to supply and demand. If the GOP wants The Tea Party to disappear they will have to swallow it. Ron Paul is a Dr. and The Tea Party is the medicine. Based on the condition of the patient it is going to be more like chemotherapy than cough syrup. Regardless, take it now and maybe you'll be tanned, rested and ready for 2012. A Chinese proverb says that wisdom begins when you start calling things by their real names. I don't know what to call The GOP these days but most of them don't deserve to be called Republicans. We need more Scott Walkers, more Chris Christies and fewer John McCains and Olympia Snows. If that doesn't happen you're going to get more Ron Pauls whether you want them or not. Open up and say, "ah".

Obama and DOMA: The Word Is Mightier Than The Deed

I don't tend to give the American People much credit for intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty or raw intelligence for that matter. So why am I surprised at peoples' boundless ability to heap praise on The President for mere articulated thoughts? Maybe I'm not as cynical (or smart) as I'd like to believe. Regardless, as long as there are people who confuse words with deeds the dissemblers will rule. The inconvenient truth is that Obama had two years and control of both houses of congress, with which he could have painted the entire landscape Blue. (Until Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's seat he had filibuster-proof control). He could have overridden DOMA by Presidential Fiat any time he'd wanted to. (But at least he "believes that we're all equal regardless of sexual orientation"). This is the kind of emotional thinking that makes me a little crazy. And it's kind of hard to accept any excuse (other than cowardice or political expedience) for not doing something that you ostensibly wanted to do even though nobody could stop you from doing it!
What about Gitmo? That was a "first 100 days" priority until he discovered that "there are some dangerous folks there". No shit? The smartest guy in the room didn't know that until he got his post-election security brief? I know Bush and Cheney were evil incarnate but did he really think that they were just rounding up anyone who didn't wear deoderant or sported a sheet? Obama is disappointing in ways that W never could have been. Bush was kind of an amiable, well-intentioned dunce watching the world fly by in a blur. He was incapable of understanding complex cultural and geo-political situations or of making any but the most rudimentary distinctions. And he thought GOD was talking to him. (If HE is talking to you, trust but verify is still a prudent policy). Obama, while not nearly as smart as advertised, appears to understand but he's too timid or too self-serving to make any of the pragmatic non-partisan decisions that we could benefit from now. Oddly, he even has difficulty with liberal home run issues like Gitmo. But he says the right things and he evokes and provokes the right emotions and he has a mesmerized audience willing to give him credit for that. In that sense he's just an Internet Era P.T. Barnum in a better suit.

PS I voted for Obama. It was my first for a Democratic candidate in a Presidential election. It was a desperation, last minute, in the voting booth decision based largely on my belief that John McCain would ramp up the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and we would end up with bookend Vietnams. I was also influenced by the fact that, even when graded on a curve and strictly among other politicians, John McCain is a disingenuous swine. Had I known about Obama what I know now I would have swallowed hard and gone with Dishonest John. The fact that I thought Obama may have been pragmatic illustrates how gullible I can be.

PSS It's possible that Obama's reluctance to push liberal policies through when he had unfettered control was due to fear of success. If you've spent your life as a professional gadfly it must be daunting to realize that some of your ideas might be put to the test, on the record. Much better to fight the good fight, lose and blame the other side for the results.

Snake Bites Plastic Rack, Dies

Silicone filled Israeli fashion model Orit Fox was bitten on one of her mammoth synthetic breasts by a snake during a photo shoot for Spanish TV. The cartoonishly buxom Fox is fine but the snake died of silicone poisoning. “We’re very concerned about the safety of members of the vampirism/mammary fetish community”, said Shiela Hool of the American Medical Advisory Bund. “We’ve begun an exploratory committee to look into crafting legislation that would require women with silicone implants to warn their partners prior to any sexual or pseudo-sexual, arousal specific activity that may involve biting”. So, there you go. Verify authenticity before you dig in. If western society wasn’t too absurd to satirize already, I think the fact that our cultural narcissism has spawned killer tits will do the trick.

Here's Hoping Wisconsinitis Goes Viral

Wisconsin is just the beginning, with any luck. We'll probably see the inverse in Sacramento. Private sector protests as (Jerry) Brown and his Merry Pranksters concoct new and wondrous ways to funnel money to public worker unions, who will in turn, funnel some of it back to Jerry and Friends. And I love these people who feel cheated by Governor Walker's "legislative gimmick" but cheered their own representatives as they ran away and hid in Illinois. They used their gimmick and Walker used his. The whining would be unseemly if it weren't coming from a group of people who have repeatedly proven that they are spoiled, chronic entitlement whores. And I don't care that it was Walker's goal all along to dismantle the Unions. Public worker unions have to, and ultimately will be, broken. I'm a little tired of being extorted by people who are supposed to be providing me a service. Especially when we're already paying a premium for that service and by just about any objective measure that service is sub-standard (California Teachers, anyone?). A system that pays government workers more than their private sector counterparts is not only unfair (a favorite liberal buzzword) it's unsustainable. They can't be paid at all until someone in the private sector produces and sells a product or service on the open market. The government takes some of that money from the "producer" and gives it to the government employee for providing a service that the government has mandated that the "producer" must use. It's a racket whose end is near, at least at current hyper-inflated benefit levels. Right or wrong, the people who subsidize the system must earn more than those receiving the benefits of that subsidy. That's basic math, which is neither liberal nor conservative.

Egypt and Libya Are Different, But Mubarak And Qaddafi Are The Same

I don't think there's a dime's worth of difference between Qadaffi and Mubarak. It's strictly situational. Qadaffi has control of the people with the guns, Mubarak didn't. Call me a cynic, but I'm a firm believer in the Bismarckian philosophy of Realpolitik. Dictators do not fear peaceful protesters, regardless of their number. They do not care what "The World" thinks about them or whether or not Barack Obama is merely "concerned" or has graduated to "very disappointed" in their actions. They do not care about U.N. sanctions or troops that wear powder blue helmets. They do not make ethical or moral decisions. They are not regular people who, for lack of sensitivity training have turned bad. They're wiring is fried. They are narcissistic sociopaths for whom human suffering, aside from their own, has no meaning. They understand human behavior only on a primal level. (Life without a conscience must be incredibly liberating). Force, or the threat of force is the only motivator that has any meaning. The Egyptian Revolution is still in the early innings. But there wouldn't even be a game if the Army had sided with Mubarak. A nice, quick massacre would have been followed by a few weeks of extensive clean-up and American tourists would have been posing by the Pyramids again by Labor Day. I think Libya will end up being what Egypt could have been if the Egyptian Military hadn't had other plans.

The Nissan Leaf: Polar Bears Get Too Much Credit

What was your initial reaction the first time you saw that Nissan Leaf/Polar Bear Hug commercial. Unless you are among the few remaining discerning consumers of popular culture, you were emotionally moved and felt a vague compulsion to buy a government-subsidized car that you could plug into a wall socket. I thought it was a brilliant manipulation of a poplar myth, used to sell a product whose widespread use will have the polar, if you will, opposite effect of that which is defined by it’s seller. If you have not seen this ad, it features a presumably grateful bear who embarks on a Marketing 101 version of Die Groot Trek to hug a Nissan Leaf owner. The message is: Thank you. Your selfless choice to eschew the use of fossil fuels will now guarantee the expansion of the Arctic Ice Cap and I can finally get back to killing baby seals and the odd slow-footed Eskimo. What the bear and the guy with the electric go-cart don’t know is that 68% of our electricity is created by burning fossil/hydrocarbon fuels (coal and natural gas) and another 20% is generated by nuclear fuel.

I will grant you that if 10 million people started driving electric cars there would be a corresponding decrease in the use of gasoline. But there would have to be a corresponding increase in the mining and burning of coal and the drilling and use of natural gas. We might even need more nukes. These are all things that environmentalists find to be unpalatable. So the question is: What would the realized net gain be from a country of people driving electric cars? I don’t know but I’m guessing that the carbon footprint would be about the same. The only discernible differences would probably be people silently whizzing around at 30 miles per hour and a major run on extension cords.

My main concern is that people don’t even take the time to think about these things. Intellectual curiosity has been dying a slow death in this country for decades. The mainstream media have contributed by devolving into conduits of nearly undiluted propaganda and a lazy and fat populace have become passive consumers of their product. It’s the rare individual that asks himself, “If this, then what”? We live in a society where the best commercial wins and the message of that commercial becomes the new truth. And that doesn’t seem to bother too many of us. Polar Bears are really kind of naive, but so are we.

I Had A Dream

I was walking into my house and had just stepped into the foyer and began to close the door when an intruder burst through and knocked me into the wall. He smelled like three days worth of dried sweat and the caked residue of a mustard-ketchup-onion-potato concoction. Like he’d bathed in a giant vat of In-N-Out Burger Animal Fries earlier in the week. I went for a roundhouse kick to his head. As my flip-flopped foot approached the target, a gleaming pair of steel-toed Doc Marten’s replaced the flops. My first kick landed square with a squishy whump and a crunching of bone. Viscous matter and pieces of shattered teeth splattered the wall behind his head. I kept kicking. He was yelling “ouch, ouch”, with an oddly girlish voice tinged with surprise, pain and fear. I slowly woke to the sound of my wife’s voice saying, “Ouch, you’re kicking me”. I apologized, of course, and then tried to go back to sleep. But I couldn’t. I’m not a religious man per se, and I know very little about the metaphysical or paranormal world. But as I began to drift off it occurred to me that maybe in a previous incarnation, or on a different plane of existence, my sainted wife had been less than angelic. Maybe she rolled bums for their Sterno or gaslighted orphans into giving up their milk money. And maybe because of these misdeeds in this earlier “life” she had to take it in shorts in this one. Or, “in the jammies”, in this case. Semi-convinced that I had done no wrong I finally began falling to sleep when my wife said, “You kicked me in the toes”. I said, “You had it coming, I think”.