HT win friends and influence...

I know it's been a while since I last posted, here. I'd like to say it's because I've had more important things to do, but it's mostly that I've been too darned lazy to focus.

I've been spending a bit of time on one of those networking sites, swapping nonsense with people I used to know quite well and now... well, thirty years later, we still have a few things in common.

Some of us.

Mostly, we play games. It doesn't provide one with much reason to post on a blog.

Today, I have an excuse.

I had, shall we say, a bit of a discussion. It started off innocuously enough: a former colleague (who -- I hope -- will forgive me for going public on this) posted a link to the video of Helen Thomas' egregious remarks regarding Israel. Another person who had once worked with him left an ad hominem attack on the poster, on the source, and on Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck, labeling them as antisemitic. Heh.

My mother responded:

[name redacted] I've seen the video..have you? Glenn Beck was defending Israel's actions this week. Keep Jimmy Carter in mind when you blame the Right for Anti-Semitism.

The fellow tossed another ad hominem attack, including me muddah, labeling her a "right wingnutt" and declaring that "everybody knows the only antisemites are on the right..."

I responded:

Interesting. [Name redacted], here you have been presented with clear evidence of the left's -- and a powerful member of the Mainstream Media's -- severe anti-Semitic bias, and not only do you refuse to see it, but you throw about unfounded accusations.

How does the nice Jewish man and Israel supporter Jonah Goldberg get labeled Anti-Semitic? Or, for that matter, Glenn Beck, whose open support for Israel has been voiced repeatedly (and whose staff includes several orthodox Jews)? So far as I've seen, the only far -right-nutcase who has spoken anything close to anti-Semitic or anti-Israel has been Pat Buchanan, and even the rest of the far right nutcases tend to move away when he pipes up.

One of the clearest signs of anti-Semitism is to support the avowed mortal enemies of Jews and Israel.

Your attempt at deflection is lame, at best.

Next thing I know, this person has come to me... that is, he posted on my wall, rather than trying to carry on the conversation in view of the others, in the original thread. On my wall:

Frankly, I'm sick to death of ignorant people like you and [my friend]. I don't need anyone giving me lectures, least of all you, about what is or isn't anti-semitism. I suggest reading a good book or two, and not one suggested by a FOX News commentator. You and your ilk scare me.

Have a nice life, wallowing in your willfull ignorance.

Sigh. On my wall. I responded:

Such a sad commentary on your presumed tolerant left. Your snap judgment based on a single remark, and I know more about your views and purported education than you will ever know of mine.

He:

OOOO I'm so scared of you! Which is a good thing. And it isn't a snap judgement dear. Scott constantly throws these bombs out. And by the way, you know nothing about me sweet heart.

I:

Honey buns, the evidence tells me you're really good at knee-jerk, and that you think ad-hominem attacks are a good debate technique... puts you in the same group as so many other leftwits. That, and you called me "sweet heart" indicates you think you're superior to me by dint of my support of Scott's post, and you're a sexist pig.

All right. I tossed an ad hominem. But the evidence supported it, didn't it?

Anyway, back to the convo.

He:

You are good. Must be nice being you. Until you look in the mirror, that is. Please, you right wingers and your "bloody shirts" are full of bull shit. Always will be. Now be a good wingnutt and leave me alone.

I:

Umm. You posted on MY [networking] page. You walked into my house ant (sic) tossed about insults. How did you continue to work at [a place at which public relations will always be first and foremost, and rudeness will get you summarily dismissed] with those manners, little man?

(I'm not always the best typost...) ;-)

He:

LOL. Well YOU worked there too didn't you?

I had done so, long years ago. Very astute of him, no?

Anyway, back to the dialog. He:

And I don't recall posting on your page. I responded to something [that friend] did, not you. Although it seems I've uncovered another one of you rightist/libertarian types. Plus your mother! LOL

Oh, good gravy. "LOL" twice in as many posts. Such wit!

Sorry. The dialog. I:

You clicked on my name in the little box. That puts you squarely in my [networking site] house, posting a note to me. If you hadn't wanted to post privately, you might more easily have replied in [the friend]'s thread.

I did work at [that place], for five years. Glad to say I don't remember working with you.

And, I've never been "covered", politically. You didn't need to pull back the curtain --unless you're talking about one around your own little mental shelter.

He:

Well then, dear, take a flying leap. And any reply to this will be considered stalking. Sweet heart. I mean that kindly, considering how butt ugly I'm sure you still are. Have a great day!

Now, long years ago I came to grips with the fact that I aint the purtiest pearl at the prom, but that's just plain irrelevant, isn't it? I ask you, did I just have a battle of wits with an unarmed man, or, as I described on my networking page, an a$$-kicking contest with a no-legged man? Has this person really spent his entire opportunity to debate an issue lashing out without a single reasoned argument?

Is this as commonplace among those on the political extremes as it seems (it seems I see more of it coming, these days, from the left, but that just may be that I'm avoiding listening to the real nutters on the right, and the nutters on the left won't allow me to ignore them).

And, moreover, does posting this here and sharing the bloggy post on my [networking site] page qualify as stalking? Hmmm. If I had boots, I might be quaking in them. ::snort, snort, guffaw::

A true patriot, Obama

I am convinced, after hearing President Obama's speech before the General Assembly of United Nations, after his actions to insult all our free and loyal allies, after his kiss-up to Russia in the midst of its late season of aggression toward its free neighbors, etc., that the POTUS is a patriot, indeed.

Barack Obama, like many of those whose lives are built around leftism and academia (but I repeat myself), truly loves his country. He just can't stand the people who live in it.

Your tax dollars subsidizing Hollywood

Technically, it's a tax cut - no stimulus, no actual help hiring the unemployed -- it's just a gift from the Democrats to the propaganda machine that keeps promoting them against national interests. That is to say, Congress is readying itself to give a quarter of a billion dollars in tax subsidies to one of the richest, most successful industries in the country.

With that "stimulus" or "bailout" in mind, I'm thinking that, since we're all taxpayers, we now become part-owners of the studios, so we should be able to go into the nearest cinema, sit down and watch a show without paying for anything but what we pick up at the concession stand. Maybe not every week, but shouldn't we be able to catch at least one free blockbuster per taxpayer, this year? After all, you've paid for it already.

Of course, the problem with this plan is that we first have to find a flick they've produced which we want to see. So far, those pickings are pretty slim.


Update: Well, that didn't take long. It looks as though this particular little gift has been removed from the Generational Theft Act already. Dang, and I was so hoping to see a crappy blockbuster show this year....

Democrats: the party for the workers

They're for the workers in the same way the weasel is for the hens. Give us all your eggs.

House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

I like that. Everybody who is already saving for retirement -- you know, the ones who take the future seriously -- will be penalized in favor of supporting everybody else. Nice. Naturally, I'll be first in line to stop looking for real employment and draw from somebody else's paycheck.

Thanking you in advance for my early retirement.

HT: lgf

A novel way to treat Old Glory

Gateway Pundit has the latest from the University of Maine, where a student art display has spread out across the floor in such a way as to make it difficult for people passing through the hallway to avoid walking on our nation's flag.

This sort of behavior towards the Stars and Stripes is such a bold, daring, and innovative form of art! I can't think why nobody has ever done anything like it before.

Sheesh. That sort of stuff is why I dropped out of studying art and became a history major (for as long as that lasted.) At least I wasn't living in the past, just studying it.

Threats don't scare me...

Okay, threats do scare me, especially when they're couched as promises from members of the government or those who would be.

The Clintama campaigns promise mandatory health care, having plans for the the government to make sure I'm properly cared for, just like all those lucky people in Fwance and England and Canada and other lands with socialized medicine and long, long waiting lists for treatment for little things like pneumonia and emergency organ transplant and such.

I think the one thing that always gets my goat about all this stuff they're pushing is the promise that it will drive costs down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, wasn't that what they were saying Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) would do? Join an HMO, it will check you early and often (just like voting in Chicago), and catch diseases like cancer, hypertension, and such long before they became costly and debilitating blah blah blah.

Before the advent of the HMO (back in the dark ages, when disco ruled the day), my average office call to the local quack was about ten dollars. Now the clinic down the way asks for more than that, just as a "small deductible." Allstate only knows how much the actual bill has become! Between the corporate bureaucracies and the government red tape, a brand-name adhesive bandage strip, which I can buy in the store in boxes of 36 for $2.50, cost my best friend's insurer $68 per each at the hospital. I don't remember how much the other parts and labor cost. I'm pretty sure it was more than I make in a month, these days.

If I sprain my ankle, as I did last week, I can put ice on it (or put it in slush), elevate it, wrap it in an elastic bandage and take a couple of over-the-counter pain tablets, as, again, I did last week, costing me... uh... the bandage was one I'd had from a few years ago, the ice (slush) was provided by mommy nature in a puddle by the curb, and the painkillers were from Sam's Club, thousands for under ten bucks... you figure it out. My math is still sucky.

All I can say is, it was way, way cheaper than going to the urgent care facility. I'm walking just fine, too (not counting the occasional swear-word when I bump the bruises against something, again).

And it's pretty much what I'd have done thirty years ago, before the early years of the Health Maintenance Organizations. But then, the HMO began to insist that they peek at our every paper cut, listen to our every sniffle, and indirectly bill us and our employers for everything they did or didn't find. Meanwhile, the HMO stockholders started expressing concern that they weren't getting any real dividends. More bean counters were hired. Costs climbed. Prices climbed. It got expensive for all of us. So the HMO began to say "pre-existing condition" as though it were a mantra, any time somebody tried to upset them by filing a claim. And, then, people started suing the HMO for pain and suffering. The HMO started jacking up prices even more, and denying more claims. More lawsuits, more insistence on paying for piddly stuff and then for non-members, via new taxes, and voilá! Cries were made for more government controls, because the HMO was trying to recoup its losses via raising prices, and jacking up prices due to rising costs for operation just isn't cricket.

And, now, when it's obvious that the HMO bureaucratic system is really pretty crappy at "maintaining the health" of its members, Clintama want the government to take over the same failing system and run it the same messed-up way, only with the force of law behind it, too.

My family knows I have health issues. They know I can't afford medical insurance, let alone regular treatment. They also know that I've done my homework to the best of my abilities, and do what I can to keep myself from falling apart. I avoid "triggers," for mental and physical problems, tot he best of my abilities, and cope with the little daily inconveniences of being crazy, clumsy, and allergic to life in general. If something big happens to my body, I suppose I'll mortgage -- or just plain sell -- my house (if it's really big, I won't need the house any more anyway) to pay costs. I don't expect my family to bail me out (I'm eternally grateful when they do, but if they didn't, it wouldn't hurt my feelings). Why would I therefore want the government to do what I don't ask my own family to do?

And so the question must follow: why should the uninvited government, then, be butting in?

Where is the foaming left, with their old chant of "keep your laws off my body," now? They're campaigning to invade my body's privacy, instead.

IL Congresswoman thinks she should rule foreign countries

IL Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky thinks we need to pass laws concerning what people in foreign countries do with their own lawfully purchased property: Schakowsky co-sponsors bill to end U.S. horse slaughter abroad:

Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky is one primary supporters of proposed federal legislation to ban the transport, sale, purchase or donation of horses to be slaughtered for human consumption.

Fair enough, but, once something has crossed into another country, should not its own laws take precedence?

But Schakowsky and Whitfield say their legislation is necessary because domestic horses are being transported eventually to be slaughtered beyond the US border.

And, legislation in Washington, D.C. is going to stop them from this precisely how?

Does she think she can stop a foreign farmer from playing middle-man between US horse salesman and foreign slaughterhouse? It isn't too hard to fudge papers to indicate some convenient line like "Yeah, I bought them to be pets for the kids, but they were all too mean after all that travel, so I had them sent to somebody else." Problem solved, as far as the traders and knackers are concerned. "Now I'm in the market for some horses that aren't going to be bad for my kids. I'll keep buying and selling until I get it exactly right... six generations hence."

How to stop that with a little piece of well-meaning busy-bodyism from D.C.?

I'm not a big fan of slaughtering horses for meals -- I like horsies. I'd have a hard time swallowing a bite of Misty of Chincoteague rump roast. I have a friend who can't understand how I can happily nosh on dark chocolate or peel a lemon and eat it the way most folks eat oranges. Tastes differ. Cultures differ.

I'm pretty sure Schakowski is one of those Democrats who constantly stand against "imposing our morality" on others... where does that come in, legislating across borders and into lands where some perfectly decent people think this one meat is tasty enough to have for supper? It isn't exactly Soylent Green, after all.

Updated with linky goodness...

Kos Kid has tool to galvanize the base

Galvanize the Republican base, that is. This, according to lgf*:

There are any number of reasons to consider a candidate, and I’ve come to realize that one of mine is that I want a candidate with the capacity and the inclination to do the whole vengeance thing.

It’s not the only criteria, nor the leading one, Hillary is not my first choice, but it is something that attracts me politically to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

While I hope that a full blown Nixon dirty tricks program would not occur under her administration, I have increasingly come to believe that Republicans have to be taught that payback is a bitch.

I want a son of a bitch who scares Republicans, and I think that Hillary is most likely to do this, because she is the one with the most cause to.

So, is there anybody else who thinks this person is a Republican plant, set up there to motivate the fence-sitters to get out and vote conservative? He wants a Democratic Party version of Tricky Dick Nixon, so that half the country will be punished for having not come around to the Religion of the Left. Yeah, that ought to encourage rational people to stay at home and let Hillary get the reins of power...



*I'd check out the site myself, directly, but I just ate dinner & DKos is a bad idea under the circumstances. I'll take Charles Johnson's word for this.

Keep yer filthy green paws off my beer fridge!

I don't have much in this life. In fact, by American standards, I qualify as dirt poor -- I don't own a car, I don't have cable or satellite tv, I don't have a phone of my own, I don't even own a working computer, any more (thx, Mom, for the use of yours!). My house is crumbling around my ears (thx, kittehs!) and I'm ungainfully unemployed (thx, IL gummint, thx to my crazy ancestors who handed down the crazy gene, and thx also to uneven sidewalks in Chicago!).

But still, I have one thing to which I can still cling: I have a lovely 1950s or early '60s Coldspot refrigerator with pink-and-coppertone interior, out there in my non-car-holding garage. In the summer, I clean that puppy up, plug it in, and fill it with my favorite beverages, so they'll be handy for all of us folks who play in the dirt in my back yard.

But now, some eco-wackos are saying that it's a bad thing, and they want to take that luxury away from me and others like me. They think that beer fridges are causing the icecap in the arctic circle to shrink, and Canada to thaw. Well, I say, Canada needs a longer growing season! Pass me those six-packs -- I'm gonna head right back out to scrub my machine out, and I'm gonna plug it in just a little early, this time. Anyone up for a really cold one?

"Papa, what's chutzpah?"

I heard the word "chutzpah" for the first time when I was in grade school, and asked what it meant. At the time, I didn't quite understand the "orphan plea" explanation, so it was later explained:

A bully beat up another person so badly that he had to go to the hospital. While the person was being treated for his injuries, the doctors discovered the poor battered soul had cancer in its early stages. The person was treated and cured.

The bully took credit for saving the person's life by forcing him into the hospital in the first place. That's chutzpah.

Hmmm. Sounds familar. Harry Reid takes credit for Rush Limbaugh's successful fund-raiser....

How to repel a man, if you're sophisticated

Numerous bloggers (I link only a handful) over the weekend have picked up on this bit of silliness, in the London Times, by Kate Mulvey: What modern women want: a beta male. They've all noticed the same thing I did -- the poor girl seems to think that, because she is educated and financially successful, she should be considered a prize catch by all the rational men of the world, but, somehow, twoo wuv always eludes her by the second date.

She seems to think it's all the fault of those men who want a purty young thang to hang on their arms, rather than the fact that she's self-absorbed and professionally obsessed.

Katey-pie, when you learn to grow up and get over yourself, maybe an alpha male will learn to respect you, and you might be able to develop a worthwhile relationship with a good man. Or, you can settle for being a spoiled, lonely little girl in an old lady's body, for the rest of your life.

After all, science has proven* that the universe has no center; therefore you cannot be it.


*okay, "proven" is probably too strong a word... but then, I never pretended to understand the math part of astrophysics. so sue me. ;-)

Elizabeth Edwards: disabled unqualified to work

Folks who have even mild disabilities barring them from military service would naturally be barred from all other work. At least, that would be the natural extension of logic, were we to take Elizabeth Edwards at her word:

My classmates went to Vietnam, he did not. He was 4F. He had a medical disability, the same medical disability that probably should have stopped him from spending a lifetime in a radio announcer’s chair; but it is true, isn’t it? If he has an inoperable position that allows him not to serve, presumably it should not allow him to sit for long periods of time the way he does.

I gather that Mrs. Edwards had never heard of doughnut cushions, or of ergonomic chairs, or of sitting funny? Try taking any of these options through boot camp, let alone into battle!

(Quit snickering, people, or drop and give me twenty.)


More to the point, Edwards (inadvertently, I hope) implies that people who are physically incapable of soldiering therefore have no right to any job, even the cushy ones where you just sit sideways and talk into a microphone.

For the record, Snopes clarifies that Limbaugh was not initially 4-F, but 1-Y (he could only be called up in case of national emergency).

My father was 4-F, for the genetic back problem which plagues two of his offspring today, and for being blind as a fruitbat without thick spectacles -- and those only eased, but didn't correct, the problem. There was no way in all the netherworld that Pop could have served in the field, or even, for that matter, survived basic training. He managed, nonetheless, to stand, several hours every day, to teach college students the basics of physics, mathematics, astronomy, and several other subjects as the need arose on campus. And, he managed to keep a pretty good eye on his teen-aged daughters, through those thick lenses. He's still contributing to society today, in his mid-to-late-70s.

Now, I know most people who are launching in on Mrs. Silky Pony are challenging her husband to put up his military service records, or both of them shut up. But his records don't matter any more than do those of Limbaugh. None of these three has a real dog in that fight.

The real issue is, does she have the right to a job in her future -- as First Lady or any position other than one involving no walking or talking -- if she keeps putting her foot in her mouth and chewing so vigorously?

HT: McQ at QandO

Once school begins, stupidity rules

Yeah, those Boulder-ites and their equally leftwitty neighbors are at it again. It seems that Halloween parties at one elementary school in Broomfield, CO are right out, so kids won't be wearing their costumes to class, for the holiday. But it's not for traditional religious reasons, this time -- oh, no! It's the religion of the left, again. It's for the protection of the wee tots, and by the most obvious egalitarian method -- they don't want anybody to feel left out, so they're going to make everybody feel left out:

“In my class of 26, if I’ve got one kid in the room that doesn’t celebrate Halloween ... if I have to send one kid home because they feel weird or they feel ostracized, I have failed at my job,” said fourth-grade teacher Jim Tingley.

Hey, teach, I hate to break it to you, but every kid feels weird and ostracized at one time or another. It's one of those things which ultimately forces kids to become independent. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but, isn't the point behind education to make a kid less dependent upon others (that is, to prepare him for adulthood and the real world)?

Why do you send a kid home because he doesn't feel as though he fits in, anyway? Doesn't that just encourage more whining and complaint? It would make more sense to give him an opportunity to find another way to spend his time in the classroom while the rest are showing off costumes and playing games. If, because his religion (or lack of it) prevents him from celebrating with the rest of the kids, let him go to the library, or some other space in school, to work on something he will enjoy. Or, is your school too large, and therefore too small-minded to make accommodations for individuals?

Forcing all the other students to abandon a greatly-enjoyed activity because one kid doesn't find the same pleasure in it seems a bit -- well, more than a bit, it's extremely -- counter-productive. All the other kids will know that the reason they can't have the party is because of a kid like Jubal or Mohan or whatever is the name of the one who can't celebrate. Doesn't that make the "different kid" even more of a pariah? So, where do the other kids' energies go -- into opening their minds and learning about why that Rusli boy or Liliana girl doesn't celebrate Halloween, or into torturing the kid for depriving them of their costume party?

But then, I don't suppose any of the supposed grown-ups who run this school ever read Lord of the Flies.


HT: m' brugly other

Michelle Malkin: Kevin Spacey hearts Hugo Chavez

I used to really like Kevin Spacey. Most of the work he's done in front of the cameras demonstrates an incredible talent at acting.

Unfortunately, Spacey doesn't seem to have a whole lot of common decency, if he's buddying up to South America's dictator du jour.

Is there no way in the world to get through to these Hollywood folks that despotism -- no matter whether it's left or right -- is much, much worse than what we have in Washington, any given year? Why are they so bound and determined to make great pals of the worst people in modern history? What, precisely, makes so many fine artists so profoundly morally stupid? Is it something in the ocean breezes?

Durbin has a DREAM: America's nightmare

I hadn't been paying much attention to the latest shenanigans of IL's senior Senator, mostly because almost everything coming out of his mouth is an embarrassment to the state. Unfortunately, this little gem of a project he has going can't be ignored, no matter how little attention the MSM wants to pay to it.

Each day, the idea of another IL constitutional convention -- and the potential amendment setting up term limits and killing gerrymandering -- sounds better and better to me.

HT: Ace

Iranian leader visits NYC

There is already quite a bit of noise going on, about Ahmadinejad's proposed visit to the UN, his speech at Columbia U, and his proposed tour (now canceled -- and yet, he still threatens to visit there without permission from the city) of Ground Zero.

Personally, I would encourage the city to allow him a visit to the site of the destroyed WTC. Not only should they allow him to visit, they should require that, out of respect for all the victims of terrorism, he stay a while at the site -- at least 444 days.

Not Spock's Brain

I just got back from reading Jules Crittenden's takedown of another leftwit television "pundit". Sometimes, when I read the sorts of things that Keith Olberman has said, I'm grateful I don't have cable or satellite tv. Actually, more often than not, I feel that way.

After all, when I take a good, close look at the print version of what is said by the "best that tv has to offer," I half-expect them to ask a line from a classic Star Trek episode: "Brain and brain! What is brain?"

Edwards nuttier than bridge mix

What scares me is that so many people still take this man seriously as a political contender. John Edwards came out today and spoke in favor of mandatory health care.

That's not to say he thinks simply that it should be required that it be available to everybody, but that shirking your national duty to have an annual pelvic exam, mammogram, and whatever other poking and prodding and do-good treatment your barely-passed-his-med-school "expert" says you need to do, could get you "corrective actions" of an institutional sort.

So, suppose I were to continue to follow the advice of the first doctor to treat me for my "mood disorder." I'd have taken happy pills until I hanged myself. "Just give it a little more time," got me a blackout and an apparent attempt to drown myself in the icy waters of a tributary to the Chicago River in January (it was a long time ago, granted, but cutting out the antidepressants and working with non-chemical, alternative options has probably saved my life all these years). Needless to say, I now avoid certain types of doctors until I've done a lot of homework. Guess Edwards will have me locked up, huh?

My mother was given birth control pills in her younger years. She now has to take mega-doses of thyroid meds and blood pressure meds and anti-nausea pills (because the thyroid and bp meds "may cause dizziness," which nobody figured out before Mom got desperately sick with dizziness at the beginning of this past summer).

My sister-in-law used government doctors to deal with her upper chest pains. "GERD," they said. You should take those little purple antacids, and try to find a career less stressful than ambulance driving. Otherwise, you'll just have to live with acid reflux.

Until she passed the mother of all gallstones. Ooops!


Just what is it about these leftwits that makes them think the big, bureaucratic government half a continent away knows more about what I need for my personal, small-scale well-being than I do? What makes them so smug they think they can tell the educated, free population -- some of whom were, granted, only educated to the standards set by the leftwits themselves --
how to run their private lives?

Whatever happened to "right to privacy" and "keep your hands off my [body parts]"? Do these only come into play when we're talking about their moralities, and not for anybody else? Only gays and abortion proponents will now have any right to privacy, in Edwards' New World Order. The rest of us, if we object, will be "treated" for our mental problems before they deal with our physical weaknesses.

This kind of attitude, I think, is giving me coprolalia. I have to go before it becomes coprographia.

Oh, fer cryin' out loud! Schools ban playing tag

An elementary school in Colorado Springs has banned the playing of any running games which involve chasing each other, after some kids complained that they were "chased against their will" or "harassed".

I'm sorry, but, when I was a kid, if I didn't want to be chased in a game of tag, I found some other game to play so that the tagsters wouldn't bother me (for me, it was usually something quiet, nerdy, and sedate, like drawing with the sidewalk chalk). Is it really so hard to teach kids today to do the same thing? I mean, I may have been a bright kid and all, but I hardly think it would take an exceptional mind to figure that one out!

First they took away dodgeball, and I didn't speak up, because I was always the first one hit out. Then they took away tag, and I didn't cry out because I'm a klutz and can't run. Then they took away recess, and there was nobody left to play with, and I became a stupid, dull-as-dishrags couch potato who died early from a severe disinterest in life....

Pageturners, politics, and pretentious pinhead publishing wonks

Over at the Corner at NRO, Jonah Goldberg brings up an interesting question as a challenge to a statement made by Pat Schroeder: who reads more -- liberals or conservatives? He answers it, at the end of his post... and I won't spoil the surprise. Just go and read.

And then, Consider This, Señora: I know of a conservative man who reads an average of eight books per month, of all varieties, from advanced mathematics to history to trashy fiction (which he usually tosses down in disgust somewhere about midpoint, when he realizes that David Brin really was at his best in The Practice Effect, and has gone downhill from there, or that the characters in that "great beach read" he was handed by a neighbor will never develop a third dimension, no matter that the book has nearly two thousand pages for the opportunity to arise. Under such circumstances, he's learned to stick mostly to non-fiction.

His wife would probably reach the mean for conservatives, but then, she spends more time in the process of creating works of art than she does reading. They are both very well-traveled, yet of middle income.

Their daughter, who usually stands in the "moderate-to-somewhat-conservative" section of the political pool, is a book glutton. She just finished reading Stephen Hunter's implausible yet thrilling Pale Horse Coming and Audie Murphy's To Hell and Back (simultaneously, for the heck of it, and because she'd heard that Audie makes an important appearance in the silly novel), meanwhile nibbling on a few pages of the collected works of Lord Byron and refreshing her Latin with an old textbook's series of exercises and a battered Langensheidt's (not that it is really helping. She just wanted to see if she still has the right to wear the t-shirt on which is printed an image of a toga-wearing John-Travolta-knock-off and the words, "LATINAM DISCO"). That's just since last Friday night. (It helps that she doesn't sleep much in the summer.)

And, now, on to some Janet Evanovich, Elizabeth Peters, and a little Hopalong Cassidy online.

The family, as a whole, would probably blow the curve -- but then, half the kids are liberal, so the curve is pretty much irrelevant. Their kids read piles of books, too. This is a family which will continue to keep print media in business for many generations, I think.

There is a chance that Schroeder has made the number one classic mistake (other than never get involved in a land war in Asia) of assuming that, because conservatives don't always buy as many books as liberals, they don't read as much -- forgetting that conservatives don't waste their own cash when there's a perfectly good library in the neighborhood....

To heck with the arrogance of a political hack trying to make her way in the print world. Tell her to shut up and publish. We'll take care of the rest of the business.