Oh Maureen! Oh Matt!

So what do Maureen Dowd and Matt Damon have in common?

They are both so partisan (and possibly apathetic in the case of Dowd) that neither one of them can be bothered to fact-check anything that confirms their predetermined view of the world.

A blogger wrote and posted a series of fake Sarah Palin quotes as a parody a couple of weeks ago and ever since some of the quotes have been kicking around the rabidly excitable left-wing blogosphere, democratic mailing lists, and the empty heads of douche baggy actors.

That brings us back to Maureen and Matt, both of whom in a public forum repeated a quote about dinosaurs. Now, I suspect that Maureen, in her own acerbic way, made the mistake first and Matt just repeated it like a lemming but it's hard to say.

What I do know for certain is that for all of the problems with conservatives in America, they aren't quite as frothing, hysterical, fearful, petty, angry elitists as leftists are, for whatever that's worth.

The future of the America's political parties.

The Democratic party has long portrayed the Republicans as the party of old, greedy, out of touch, white men while they were the party that reflected America's diversity, youth, and vigor.

A more accurate assessment is that the Republican party is rapidly becoming, as Howard Dean noted, the white party. They are no longer the party of international restraint (sorry Dr. Paul, you are alone on that one) thanks in large part to Ronald Reagan, two George Bushes, and some Arab terrorists. They are no longer the party of constitutional government since abandoning those principles after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1968. They certainly aren't the small government loving, libertarian leaning conservatives that Reagan hoped to galvanize. They aren't even the pro-business party anymore with the McCain-Palin ticket. 

The Republican party is essentially Christian and white. Ron Paul and John McCain in the same party along with Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Patrick Buchanan, and Sarah Palin? There is no cohesive political vision that holds that group together except for Christianity.

What does that make the Democrats though? Well, they are effectively the party of blacks and Catholic, non-Cuban hispanics, baby-boomers, and explicit socialists. The Democrats having been losing control over white women as a reliable voting block since Reagan and the question of abortion ruptured the feminist movement; they've nearly completely lost white and hispanic evangelicals; Unions are rapidly diminishing in influence and power; Free-trade issues and low taxes became winning issues and were co-opted by Clinton in 1992. The Democrats where losing political viability, and quickly. 

Of course George W. Bush saved the day for the opposition party through his obscene incompetence and wild unpopularity. The Democrats had been given a new lease on life but how were they to remake themselves?

Their preferred method was to simply import voters by way of illegal immigration. That issue stalled (for now) and so they temporarily wandered in the dark with John Kerry's tired and vacuous run in 2004. Now in 2008 they have regrouped, reorganized, and recreated themselves by traveling back in time to 1968 with Barack Obama as the neo-Nixon figure.

Their 2008 platform reads like a history lesson on bad domestic ideas for the last seventy years. Tax the rich, massive regulations, huge government programs, etc. Barack Obama has capitalized on his racial-celebrity status to court the media, identity politics to build a base, rhetoric of change to court swing voters (his natural opponent was strangely enough Ron Paul - who actually had ideas), a wildly unpopular president with a wildly unpopular war to court the youth vote.

The Democrats don't have ideas and they don't want them, they want power, influence, but ultimately control which is the only thing leftists ever want. Republicans have abandoned their ideas for political expediency and have learned the cruel Randian lesson that if you sacrifice principle for practicality, you lose. Thus the future of American politics looks to be purely a demographic battle for dominance.

Deepak Chopra (?) takes a shot at Sarah Palin

So now, hero of the New Thought Movement, Deepak Chopra has written an article attacking Sarah Palin - a bit strange for a new age medical guru to be delving so harshly into partisan politics, or is it?

As it often the case when put under pressure, leftist show their true nature and that is all that has happened here. Deepak Chopra is a leftist first, and a new age guru second. Oddly, that doesn't make him unique among leftists.

Think of Wendy Doniger declaring that Sarah Palin is in fact, not a woman because she isn't a leftist, biology and facts notwithstanding. She is of the Gloria Steinem school of feminism that has nothing whatsoever to do with women and everything to do with leftist ideology. I prefer my feminism Camille Paglia style - with intellectual honesty.

That is how leftism works. They co-opt some group whether cultural, gender, race, nation, religion, etc. and use said group to push their ideas. They then discard that group when it is no longer useful but before they do that, they attack anyone that threatens their control of that group. That is what is happening now.

Sarah Palin is a vision of feminism that the left never wanted to let see the light of day and now that it has, they are enraged and terrified.

I've no intention of defending Sarah Palin's politics (although I did predict her as McCain's pick - if only I had bothered to blog about it) but she has certainly unnerved the left enough for them to unleash hell upon her. First the media assaults, overreach, and misrepresentation and now sheer insanity. Come on, sending Deepak Chopra, Matt Damon, and Roger Ebert to attack a charmingly folksy vice-presidential pick reeks of sheer terror like nothing else.

Why the bias?

The media is biased. That's a concession that any reasonably aware and competent person would have to make. To what is it biased and why are entirely debatable questions and ones that I would like to address here.

Is the media a bland, homogenized, corporate entity that crushes independent thought in favor of profits? If you ask many on the left then the answer would seem to be yes.

Is the media a haven for social liberals who are hostile to conservative religion and values? Yes again, if you ask nearly any conservative.

So who's right? Well, they are both quite wrong and a bit right.

The media IS overrun with self-described liberals who are independently hostile to conservative cultural and political values. It's true. Then again, the corporate media entities are obscenely interrelated and unquestioningly profit seeking agents. Those facts alone do not explain the full nature of the media's bias.

The simple truth is that the media is primarily biased towards statism. Why though?

Simply because journalists aren't the heroic truth seekers that they have portrayed themselves as since the 1950's (before that, journalists were often portrayed as fools) in films like Deadline U.S.A. and All The Presidents Men. The media is just like every other business in the world and most journalists are stupid, lazy, and don't want to do any more work than is absolutely necessary to please their boss so they can cash their paycheck.

Many, if not most news articles and reports are not written by so-called journalists but are simply reprinted nearly verbatim from press releases. The stock footage behind the talking heads is generally prepared in advance by some source or public relations firm and hand-fed to major news outlets. Journalists publish this prepackaged work rather than research their own material simply because it's easy.

If you are pursuing a story about the economy then talking to economists and businessmen would make a lot of sense. The same goes for ethical issues about abortion, legal theory about states rights, or science issues. The problem is that academics, specialists, and businessmen don't have press releases ready for publication nor handy-dandy stock footage ready for air. Governments, on the other hand, do.

Government manipulates the media by capitalizing on its primary weakness: it's need for immediate, new, easy stories ready for print. Government agencies provide a plethora of "sources" for lazy journalists and those sources will almost always trend towards the statist.

Governments employ hundreds of thousands of people (beyond attention seeking politicians) and those people are the real source of media bias. Their careers thrive, regardless of their political affiliation, on big government. The more government does, the more work they have. Statism is good for their careers and as a result, they favor it in their media relations.

A journalist reporting a story on the environment will likely use the EPA as a source; the pentagon or state department for a foreign affairs story; the treasury department or federal reserve when writing about the economy. Rarely will they consult an ecologist, historian, or businessman. They don't pursue the truth but rather the easiest story and that is almost always means a pro-government statist tainted story.

Idealess Convention 2008

If you've watched any of the first two days of the Democratic convention then you could be excused from believing that what separates democrats from republicans is that republicans apparently hate the middle-class, are sending poor helpless soldiers into a meatgrinder, and are stealing your wealth in order to give it to Exxon.

I would like to ask? What exactly is the middle-class? I know how it's defined economically but I can't help but wonder what people the democratic politicians and pundits are talking about. 

The only thing that I can gleam is that the middle-class is suffering immensely and that they all live in the idyllic small towns, drive pick-up trucks, and work in blue-collar jobs. WTF?!? 

Soldiers are a lot of things but helpless and innocent, no matter how ill-conceived the war, isn't one of them. They are highly trained men with guns sent to kill not innocent kids plucked from a neighborhood park by a psychopath.

I'm no fan of my money being taken from me and redistributed, regardless of who it goes too. That being said, it sure as hell isn't going to Exxon rather it's going to the elderly, foreign countries, and the poor. I would almost rather it go to Exxon because at least then I get something in return.

The most curious speaker was Xavier Becerra (D- Los Angeles) who apparently represents migrant workers in Congress. I didn't know they had their own district.

It seems that the democrats have finally given up thinking entirely in favor of rote repetition of empty, vaguely marxist political platitudes. That's generally in line with Obama's candidacy but still a bit sad. No matter how bad the republicans are, the democrats will always be more vacuous.

Heroic dignity

In what is likely to be my last Olympics post I would like to talk about the athletes that lost. Some reacted bitterly, and some violently, some with justifiable shock, and others still with a quiet dignity.

Alicia Sacramone's fourth place vault finish due to inexplicable judging and her disastrous floor routine that almost certainly cost the American's the gold could have resulted in moaning, complaining, and excuses. She instead took responsibility for the mistakes she made and refused to complain in the face of legitimate injustice. It was a disappointing Olympics for a 20 year old girl with huge aspirations and she handled it with class and dignity.

Matt Emmons blundered away his chance for gold on his final shot for the second straight Olympics and how did he respond? With such restraint and dignity that it was singled out by Olympics chief Jacques Rogge as the most touching moment of the games.

Lolo Jones roared into the lead with two hurdles to go, assuring her of a gold medal only to clip the ninth hurdle breaking her rhythm just enough to deny her any medal at all. In few sports is the consequence for a small mistake larger than for a hurdler and yet she handled the massive disappointment with profound stoicism. She held her composure long enough to give numerous interviews, hug her rivals as they walked by and congratulate the winners with genuine respect. For what must felt like an eternity she was the epitome of good grace, never diminishing the glory of her rivals by surrendering to personal pain, knowing as she did that at 26 this was almost certainly her only Olympics.

Only later, standing alone in the dark did a cameraman finally catch glimpse of the immense pain and disappointment. Holding her head low, trying hard not to break down completely, it became obvious how much she hurt. Still, with the full weight of the disappointment resting on her and after all of her struggles, she refused to surrender her dignity and for that she will always be golden.

A gay diver? Shocking!

There seems to be a bit of hullabaloo about NBC not making a bit of hullabaloo about Matthew Mitcham's sexuality.

In a sense they do have a point. NBC commentators delved into the personal lives of numerous athletes during the games, with most of the stories being far more mundane than his. Sports is after all partly about human interest stories. We want to root for people that inspire us personally and his story was certainly a great one for many gay viewers.

Of course NBC also has a point but one that they didn't express. The Olympics are watched by a worldwide audience that is far less supportive of homosexuality than the U.S. population, especially the worldwide sports audience. Most of their decisions are made with similar considerations and if there were hundreds of millions of people that would have enjoyed that story then no doubt it would have been the talk of the mens diving competition. Still, business is business and supporting homosexual pride just wasn't quite cost effective enough.

What I find more curious is that anyone is surprised. I just assumed that he was gay and in fact I assumed that most (or at least more than the average) of male divers are gay just like I assume that many male figure skaters are gay. Am I making a stereotype? Obviously yes but am I wrong? I doubt it.

This quote also requires a response:

"His sexuality, specifically because he’s the ONLY ONE, and because gay men are painted as unathletic in our culture, makes it a big part of the story."

Really? In my experience gay men (and far more prevalent stereotype about lesbians is that they are quite common as female athletes) are regarded as fitness freaks, very competitive, and quite athletic. It isn't that gay men aren't perceived as athletic it's that heterosexual athletes in generally mainstream athletics don't like homosexuals. Basketball, football, baseball, hockey, soccer, even tennis and golf all are generally sports that are hostile to gay men and that is an entirely different problem. Certainly no one who watches figure skating cares one way or the other and probably not in diving either.

Had Matthew Mitcham been a gay basketball player or discus thrower or even a swimmer then it would almost certainly been far too big a story to suppress over ratings concerns.

???

Apparently a North Dakota teenage motorcyclist grabbed the attention of the local police by popping a wheelie on his bike and then speeding off at nearly 150 mph to escape police pursuit. Most interestingly though, a few minutes after successfully managing to evade the police he simply pulled over to the side of the road to answer his cellphone and was promptly arrested.

I don't really see how a wheelie is any business of the police but what I really don't understand is why the kid simply waited by the side of the road?

I would love to make a point how the police pursuit actually created a more dangerous environment than the wheelie ever could and that it's just another example of petty tyranny by the state but I just can't summon the will to because I just can't comprehend why this kid just stopped. Why?

Hippy Cancer

It is being reported that incense may increase the risk of certain types of cancer. Take it with a grain of salt as nearly everything causes cancer in high enough dosages. Still, any opportunity that I have to chuckle at incense-loving neo-hippies, who have longed used similar studies to justify everything from vegetarianism to outlawing smoking, gives me a small amount of satisfaction.

I don't really think that incense is dangerous but I also don't think cell-phones, red meat, and DDT are either. It always comes down to dosage... just ask a chemist.

Celebrity feud: McCain v. Madonna

So Madonna took a shot at John McCain? Shocking!

She compared him to Hitler? How fresh and original!

McCain's campaign predictably responded in the most humorless and ironic way imaginable. They actually took her seriously. McCain in his own petty, authoritarian way can't stand to be tweaked and rather than dismissing Madonna as an irrelevant old whore with a fake British accent, had his campaign actually responded with outrage. Outrage!

I'm sorry but are fucking kidding me? Madonna is a lot of things, a brilliant self-promoter to be sure, a clever business woman no doubt, but hardly still culturally relevant. She certainly garners media attention and sells tickets but her Hitler-McCain comparison smacks of stale desperation as does his reaction to it.

Madonna attacking a mainstream Republican is about as unexpected as Michael Moore or the DailyKos doing so and her particular attack was about as unique and clever as an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos.

McCain seems to have really embraced the Republican parties recent tyrannical tendencies including it's utter inability to shrug something off. A tyrant can't stand to be criticized no matter how minor or silly it is and while McCain is certainly no tyrant, it is more because of the limitations of his office than any restraint in his character.

Obama-Biden 2008

The news of the day is why Joe Biden? What does it say about Barack Obama?

Some on the right have speculated that it suggests a lack of confidence but I'm not quite buying it.

I find Joe Biden to be a troubling pick but one that will almost assuredly help Sen. Obama. It isn't that Sen. Biden has any particular baggage that I know of, he doesn't. Nothing more than an almost quaint habit of being a blowhard. Nor is it that he's politically more offensive than Obama as he certainly isn't that. Rather, it's that he is the perfect media pick for Sen. Obama to distract from his obvious short-comings.

Sen. Obama had an immediate appeal for three distinct reasons: he was running against Hillary Clinton; he presents a large, grand vision of "change;" He's dignified - don't underestimate this one after sixteen years of shameless Clintonism and W. Bush incompetence. 

What he lacks though, is personal charisma, political achievement, or really any qualifications for the job of the Presidency. When standing across from Hillary or in front of ten-thousand people, Barack Obama is appealing, even to some conservatives. He elegantly contrasts with the seedy, petty, nasty partisanship of the post-Kennedy era that defines the lives of most of the media and electorate. However, that image of him only holds when viewed from a distance and that is what Joe Biden does for Barack Obama.

When viewed up close, Obama is an old school hyper-liberal. He is way of the left of America on issues like gay marriage and abortion, supports the kind of massive socialist programs that Bill Clinton had supposedly excised from the democratic party, and is as partisan as anyone. Obama is largely politically indistinguishable from the divisive Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy and has even less political experience or achievement than George W. Bush did when he ran for president. He is considered, by many, to be personally aloof, arrogant, and testy when pressured.

Joe Biden will be sold to America as a Cheneyesque figure that brings needed experience into an Obama White House, alleviating Obama's one real weakness. That isn't true. In truth, Biden will be a bait and switch of sorts. He will do much of the retail politicking that Obama isn't good at, some of the attacking that Obama wants to avoid, but mostly he will keep America at arms length from Obama. Biden is very media friendly. He is quotable, charismatic, energetic, well-reasoned, detailed, and occasionally clumsy - all things that allow Barack Obama to avoid any serious scrutiny.

Whenever anyone tries to investigate Obama's vacuous  yet grandiose vision of fluffy change, they will be met instead with the meat and potatoes of Joe Biden. Biden will shake your hand, look you in the eye, and point to Obama on a podium or a magazine cover and assure you that he is ready. America will be charmed by, distracted by, and reassured by Joe Biden and they will elect Barack Obama. Something that seemed much less likely when the focus was on Obama himself which is exactly why he hasn't been able to pull away from John McCain.

Sen. Biden is a magic trick, a bit of distraction from the real candidate, but a tactically outstanding choice for Vice President. Kudos to you Sen. Obama for your shrewdness but shame on you for proving that you are no different from the Clinton, Bush, or Karl Rove. Your just what I thought you were.

Crystal Mangum's next shameless fifteen minutes

Don't remember Crystal Gail Mangum?

She was the stripper who falsely accused three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her and is now the quixotic beneficiary of a book deal, rather than a jail sentence.

This probably has a lot to say about our culture of celebrity, indifference to justice, embrace of victimization, irrationality, and racial egalitarian fantasy but I just don't think I can stomach it at the moment.

PETA's virtual animal park?

It is being reported (who knows if it's true or not) that PETA has acquired a big-time donor willing to help them purchase one of the Seaworld parks which, after rehabbing and freeing the animals, they would turn into a virtual animal park. This, is one of the worst and funniest ideas I have ever heard.

Animal rights folk, like most leftist, have a lot of big dumb ideas. Remember Air America? Who on this earth would travel miles to go to a virtual animal park? Do they understand how these big parks make their money? It isn't with entrance fees but rather by charging eight dollars for a glass of lemonade to people who are... wait for it, watching animals do tricks.

I hope that they find some way, although I know truly that this will never happen, to buy one of the three Seaworld parks just so I can experience a bit of schadenfreude at their expense.

This seems reasonable

In the on-going statist efforts to legislate and criminalize any conduct deemed disorderly or undesirable comes this gem concerning an overdue library book in Wisconsin:

"[Heidi Dalibor], 20, was arrested earlier this month in connection with a pair of books overdue for several months."

Really? If this absurd display of authoritarian control doesn't shock you, then how about this one:

"Eleven-year-old Katie and three-year-old Sabrina Lewis have been selling spare melons, radishes, and of course, zucchini from their family garden at a roadside stand on Saturday mornings. Recently, the cops showed to bust them."

Bureaucracy and statism out of control yet again.

A bit of Beethoven

My primary recommendation of the week is for solo piano enthusiasts:

Beethoven's 15 variations with fugue on a theme from Prometheus.

There are many good versions so find a good one and enjoy.