… at least as long as it takes Obama to choose the church he will attend in Washington, D.C.
Or, as Teh Resistance points out, “Six Months to Pick Out a Dog, Two Weeks to Pass Socialized Medicine.”
Oh, NOW someone has figured out Obama doesn't know how to legislate
Last September when the economic crisis first hit, John McCain’s reaction was to cancel his preparations for the first debate with Obama scheduled for September 26, 2008, at the University of Mississippi, and go back to Washington to do his job as a U.S. senator and to try to fix the problem. Oh, and he did his best to inspirit the country with courage to face and overcome the problem by proclaiming that our country’s “fundamentals were strong.”
Obama’s first instinct was to denounce the economy, destroy the confidence of American workers and refuse to budge from Florida. He went into drama queen overdrive about how he could walk and chew gum at the same time, until McCain shamed him back to Washington.
I was utterly flabbergasted at the time that not one, NOT ONE single commentator or columnist at the time figured out that the reason Obama didn’t want to postpone the debate and come back to Washington to do his job at a time of crisis is that he had NO IDEA how to do his job as a U.S. Senator and was scared out of his wits that the spotlight would expose his ignorance and incompetence.
Well. Today Michael Barone didn’t exactly make the connection between Obama’s histrionics about his superiority over McCain for preferring to advance his own interests and shirk his duty during a crisis to cover his total ignorance of his job as a senator. But at least he HAS worked out that Obama never bothered to learn how to legislate, despite eight years as a state senator and two years as a U.S. senator:
We knew [on Inauguration Day] that Obama was good at aura, at generating enthusiasm for the prospect of hope and change….
But it turns out that Obama is not so good at argument. Inspiration is one thing, persuasion another. He created the impression on the campaign trail that he was familiar with major issues and readily ticked off his positions on them. But he has not proved so good at legislating.
One reason, perhaps, is that he has had little practice. He served as a legislator for a dozen years before becoming president, but was only rarely an active one. He spent one of his eight years as an Illinois state senator running unsuccessfully for Congress and two of them running successfully for U.S. senator. He spent two of his years in the U.S. Senate running for president. During all of his seven non-campaign years as a legislator, he was in the minority party.
In other words, he’s never done much work putting legislation together — especially legislation that channels vast flows of money and affects the workings of parts of the economy that deeply affect people’s lives. This lack of experience is starting to show. On the major legislation considered this year — the stimulus, cap and trade, health care — the Obama White House has done little or nothing to set down markers, to provide guidance, to establish boundaries and no-go areas.
Obama’s primary talents are appropriating the credit for other people’s accomplishments and getting other people to pay his way and do his homework. He can read from a teleprompter. He can sweet talk, sneer and bully. He can campaign. But he cannot legislate. And as for his ability to govern — I wonder — I just wonder — what executive skills he would suddenly lack if he were permanently parted from his Blackberry.
Gates' arrest tell-all documentary 'Asshole Like Me' to debut in the Douchebag Room at the Harvard Faculty Club
Iowahawk’s guest blogger Professor John Evans Evans-John of the Harvard School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies has a heart-wrenching column on the plight of his fellow minority member, Prof. Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested for … well, go read it and see if you aren’t outraged, too.
Margaret took me to see Merce Cunningham
My late life partner, Margaret Ardussi, was a genius artist in water-based paints and loved opera, ballet and modern dance. In the fall of 1984, shortly after I flew her from Seattle, where she was visiting her parents, to Silver Spring to be my life partner, the love of my life, the most beautiful woman in the world to me, she spied that Merce Cunningham was bringing his dance troupe to the Kennedy Center in D.C. and said that we had to go.
I loved that Margaret was so cultured and broadening my horizons. While we shared a loved of art and opera — in our first real conversation when I found out she loved opera, I thought, “Good, now I’ll have someone to go with to the opera” despite the fact that she lived in Iowa and I lived in Maryland– but I don’t really get modern dance and my view of ballet is jaundiced by how little the bassoon has to do in ballet music, which mostly involves counting 100+ measures and then out of the blue having to play a really exposed solo. (New readers: I play the bassoon.)
So we went to see Merce Cunningham and his dance troupe at the Kennedy Center. He was 65 years old that year and not able to dance in the light and limber fashion of his troupe. Yet, he is the only one whose movements I remember. What I learned from watching Merce’s stately and deliberate motions was that what he was doing was dance because he intended it to be dance — and it WAS dance. He wore a white leotard and tights and was quite muscular but also had knobby feet, which suggested arthritis, and I did have the impression that it hurt him to move and age had made his body heavy and unable to defy gravity as he could when young.
But, still, it was Merce’s movements that gave me joy, Merce’s presence on the stage that taught and delighted me. What I learned was how much dance is in everyone when the choreographer has the intention and skill. If I had ever before judged dance and dancers by their perfection of body and execution, those criteria were replaced that night. Yet I hardly know how to describe the new criteria — perhaps a shift of my attention to the intention of the dancer and the dance and how all the parts fit together. That’s not much to go on, I know.
I am bringing this up because I just learned that Merce Cunningham died at the age of 90 on Sunday, July 26, at his home in Manhattan. He was preceded in death by his life partner, avant garde artist and composer, John Cage, who died in 1992. You can see “Septet” with Merce Cunningham from 1964 here.
Grassroots Demonstrations for Conservatives 101
Moe Lane presents his advice for conservatives on how to do grassroots demonstrations as, “How to ruin a professional agitation group’s day.” Regarding his suggestion to use cameras — I really love my Flip video camera and covet the new Flip UltraHD, which is very affordable, easy to use, records for 120 minutes and uses AA batteries. Now I just have to figure out how to turn my July 4 Tea Party recordings into videos for YouTube.
I am with Little Miss Attila in Villainous Company to challenge American Power — UPDATED
moar funny pictures
I have been vaguely aware this week that a woman who has something to do with sports was videoed through a hole in the wall while she was showering and the video was posted on the Internet and became big news. I read the post at Little Miss Attila and the mention at The Other McCain, but I really didn’t care enough to look into it until the story was linked today at Little Miss Attila and I followed the link to Donald Douglas at American Power. Prof. Douglas did not post the video, but it appears he IS responsible for exploding the story with a post linking it last Sunday at his blog and an e-mail with the link that he sent around to fellow bloggers, which I probably received and ignored.
Well, dear Attila has posted about it again with a link to Prof. Douglas, and now I see what the fuss was about.
Here’s the overview:
Last Sunday, 7/19/09, Prof. Douglas found a link to a video by a peeping Tom shot through a hole in a hotel wall of ESPN sports reporter (pause to search for her name) — Erin Andrews. Douglas wrote a post about it, including the link and a photo of the fully clothed Erin Andrews, who does appear as if she is attractive at all stages of dress and undress. I’m just guessing here, frankly, because she is blonde, and attraction-wise, it’s like blondes are invisible to me. I know they reflect light and everything, which technically makes them visible, and I can tell they are there and don’t bump into them, but, still, chemistry-wise — nadda.
But even if Andrews were brunette, I doubt I’d have have checked out the video because, (1), ick!, (2), the police can handle the peeping Tom aspect of it, and (3), I don’t see the point in making men wrong for being men — just look at a little gay porn and you’ll see they objectify EVERYONE, women are in no way singled out. (I said that almost 20 years ago in D.C. when I spoke on a panel on erotica for Women in Film and Video and I swear, all three men in the audience elbowed the woman next to them like they were saying, “See! I told you so!”)
Douglas ALSO sent the link of the nude Erin Andrews video around in an e-mail — and by the way, “nude Erin Andrews video” is a hit-producing Google key phrase, so my describing it that way just made every hit-savvy blogger sneer at me for joining in the blog whoring. Then dear Smitty linked it on Rule 5 Sunday without checking to see whether it was offensive, which I believe is due to his trusting the source that sent it to him — a mistake I expect he won’t repeat.
Oh, I also should explain that “Rule 5” refers to dear Stacy McCain’s Five Rules in his post on “How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year.” Rule 5 states that you can obtain lots of hits by posting photos of pretty girls; providing variety in the tone of your posts, especially by including humor, the occasional celebrity story and news of the weird; including in your posts key phrases regarding sex because they draw organic Google traffic, see above, “nude Erin Andrews video”; and mocking feminists, who, I have to agree, are totalitarian liberals and therefore eminently mockable.
So, both Joy McCann, aka Little Miss Attila, AND Cassandra at Villainous Company, checked out the video linked in Douglas’s 7/19/09 post and wrote posts condemning him. (Update: “Checked out” can mean either “investigated” or “viewed,” or both. Little Miss Attila clarifies in a new post that she did not watch the video and says that she doubts that Cassandra watched it.)
I still have NOT seen the video and I plan NEVER to see it.
Anyway, what finally pulled me into the controversy was following Attila’s link to Douglas’s unrepentent post today in which he explains the results of his Rule 5 “experiment” and proclaims it a success due to the volume of traffic it attracted to his blog, American Power. He also is voluble on the hypocrisy of other conservative bloggers who post provocative photos of celebrities in Rule 5 linkarounds, the most notable of which is, naturally, posted at the blog of the originator of Rule 5, The Other McCain.
Now, regarding my own Rule 5 behavior, I don’t care to post Rule 5 photos. I asked for and received special dispensation from The Other McCain to participate in Rule 5 Sunday with chaste photos, which I think I’ve only done once when Stacy or Smitty linked a photo I had of Ronald Reagan fully clothed. I don’t remember if I sent in (for Rule 5 Sunday) the photo I use of Angie Harmon in the post I wrote in praise of her awe-inspiring courage in speaking out in favor of conservative principles and against Obama: “Angie Harmon proves she has the biggest pair in Hollywood.”
I also don’t remember if I sent in the only picture I have of a nude on my blog to date, which is a photo of a portrait of Bea Arthur nude from the waist up, which is hanging in the Tate Gallery in London. I do know I mentioned it to Stacy several days ago, and he promptly mentioned it in a post. I do not have a photo of nude Carrie Prejean — oops! blog whoring key phrase alert! — the photo I posted of Carrie Prejean is one I took myself at the National Organization for Marriage press conference in D.C. and she is fully clothed. (And my take on the photos of Carrie Prejean nude and Carrie Prejean in a bikini is that she should be fully clothed all the time.)
Now, “nude Bea Arthur” was not a picture and key phrase that I expected to generate a lot of traffic. However, until my Web host changed my blog’s URL without my understanding how much that was going to screw up my standing in Google for the pictures indexed from my blog, I was getting just over half of my daily traffic just from the nude Bea Arthur portrait and my Bea Arthur eulogy post, “Symbolism was my life.” (Changing the URL broke that and I had to link it from a 404 page — I’m sure I’m still getting nude Bea Arthur traffic, but it isn’t coming in with the post’s link any more so I can’t tell.)
By the way, I had several reasons for including the nude Bea Arthur portrait and I am not going to reveal all of them. But I will say that I would NOT have included it if it were a photo of Miss Arthur because that would have been more erotica than art — because it was a portrait, with the validation of hanging in the Tate, it is art. And as art, it did capture me. But I also will admit that I was trying my own little Rule 5 experiment to see what would happen, especially since I was using a picture of a woman in mid-life who was renowned far more for her intelligence and biting wit than her beauty. That just tickled me.
Also about the time that I launched my Bea Arthur Rule 5 experiment, I noticed that large volumes of traffic do not necessarily translate into profitability for political opinion blogs. This was a watershed moment in blogging for me. I stopped writing expressly to get traffic. And I stopped trying to link lots of other blogs in order to get traffic. I decided that if blogging would not directly bring me money that I should write for the joy of expressing my opinion and interacting with the people who find me and enjoy my blog.
As I watched my nude Bea Arthur traffic in my Sitemeter, I noticed it primarily came from foreign countries. I doubt it brought me repeat visitors.
Then I had a couple of Instalanches to posts in my campaign to fire David Letterman. These occurred right after I installed the plug-in that appears after each post, which suggests to readers that if they liked the post, they could “Buy me a coffee.” Well, several of the Instalanche visitors DID buy me a coffee, which I really appreciated and which taught me an important lesson: the traffic MOST worth attracting is targeted to your product and/or service. Prof. Reynolds’ readers are mostly conservative or libertarian, so traffic from Instapundit is targeted to enjoy what I have to offer.
It’s really the only kind of traffic that’s worth generating. That’s because I don’t just write for joy — I am a professional writer and I write for money.
That means I must do the work of building traffic targeted to my niche. THOSE are the readers who will keep coming back. THOSE are the readers who will express their appreciation of my work by buying me a coffee. THOSE are the readers who will buy my books when they are published. THOSE are the readers who will pay to hear me speak when I get to that point in my career. THOSE are the BEST readers to have!
So, I join Little Miss Attila and Cassandra at Villainous Company in scolding Donald Douglas for posting a link to the naughty video that was an atrocious violation in every way of a woman who was minding her own business. It is his Perez Hilton moment, and I would not mind seeing the same people who went after Perez Hilton take up their torches and pitchforks again in pursuit of Donald Douglas. It would only be fair and just. In fact, since Douglas is a social conservative vehemently opposed to homosexual equality on the grounds that it will destroy the social fabric but he is not opposed to violating innocent women and destroying their lives for profit on the grounds that it got him traffic and fame and higher status, I think what he did is several orders of magnitude more vile than Perez Hilton’s pithy characterizations of Carrie Prejean, which had the redeeming feature of being right on the money.
But I also object to Donald Douglas’s exploitation of the peeping Tom video because it is a poor business model to attract traffic that is NOT targeted to the purpose of your blog. And frankly, I think it will be the realization that not all traffic is created equal, and that Rule 5 traffic of the nude photo variety has little or no value in building targeted, repeat readership that will part with money in exchange for your product, will be what reduces episodes of this behavior when the revelation sinks in that the crime doesn’t pay.
P.S.
Prof. Douglas also attacked Little Miss Attila for insufficient condemnation of Michael Jackson on the grounds that he believes Jackson was a child molester. When Jackson died on June 25, I also believed he was a child molester, and said so. However, shortly afterwards, Ian Halperin, a British tabloid reporter who had investigated Jackson and the child molestation story angle very thoroughly wrote that Jackson was gay, but not a child molester. I believe him and linked his story. I also think it is a judgment on the black community that a man of Jackson’s wealth and power could not bring himself to be true to himself and openly gay.
Update, 7/28/09: Thanks to Little Miss Attila I found that today Dan Riehl has taken Donald Douglas and Stacy McCain to school. Frankly, I wish he had taken Donald twice and left Stacy alone since it was Donald who had the intention to profit from a crime by destroying a woman’s life. This is galaxies apart from Stacy’s Rule 5. I don’t even want to scold Stacy. But I would like Donald Douglas to do time in prison. And I see the moral relativism of social conservatives at its worst when no one is calling for Donald Douglas’s head the way they were calling for Perez Hilton’s.
However, the silver lining I see in this is that Donald Douglas has revealed he has no conscience at all, so all his moral pronouncements against gay marriage and homosexual equality are exposed as springing from his totalitarian social conservatism, which has no connection with morals, but rather is founded in greed and lust for power. So at least we’ve cleared that up.
Personal note to Donald Douglas: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style homogenized 20th century writing. That is not a good thing. It ruined more writers than it helped. Those of us raised to diagram sentences and read Victorian literature with pleasure are able to read complex sentences with no trouble. Just so you know.
The unsinkable Sarah Palin is now free to fight on HER terms
Today is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s last day in office as governor. In the 2008 presidential race, she was the most qualified of the four candidates on the Republican and Democratic tickets to be president, as a self-made woman with executive office experience and profound expertise on one of the most pressing issues facing our nation — energy and energy independence. Gov. Palin also has an extremely intelligent grasp of the policies a government must enact for its people to prosper on their own terms and for a nation to be safe in a dangerous world.
If Gov. Palin had been sworn into office as president on Jan. 20, 2009, our nation would NOT have quadrupled the deficit and nationalized entire industries, businesses would have faith in the future, unemployment would be below eight percent, the stock market would be over 9,000 and we would be pulling out of the recession. Instead, the oath of office was taken by a sociopath whose only full-time job in his adult life was as a copy editor in his 20’s and who is hellbent on destroying America as a democratic republic powered by capitalism.
I will be relentless in pointing out that Sarah Palin would be a better president RIGHT NOW than Barack Obama can ever hope to be. The mountain of evidence you have to ignore to buy the propaganda that she is not ready RIGHT NOW and certainly better than Barack Obama RIGHT NOW is so huge that the columnists and bloggers who ignore it and buy into the Obama propaganda that she has to do ANYTHING to be a better president than he is have completely shredded their credibility and shone an extremely unflattering spotlight on their judgment and perspicacity.
Several telling polls have been in the news this week. A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Gov. Palin at -13 in her approval rating among Americans (40 percent approve minus the 53 percent who disapprove). Another by Rasmussen shows that Obama’s approval rating among all likely voters hit -11 today (7/26/09) — only 29 percent strongly approve of Obama, while 40 percent strongly disapprove (29 – 40 = -11). Allahpundit at Hot Air points out that Zogby found Obama’s approval rating fell to 48 percent this week, while Rasmussen measured it at 49 percent. Rasmussen also released a poll on July 20 showing that, if the vote were held now, a 2012 match-up between Obama and Mitt Romney would be a tie, 45-45, while a match between Obama and Sarah Palin would be won by Obama, 48 to 42 percent, assuming Obama’s not in jail before then, which is not a safe assumption.
OK, first, with the entire mainstream media establishment AND the Democratic Party AND feminists AND the left blogosphere — and way too many backstabbing conservatives whose elitist sense of entitlement means the world no longer makes sense to them when an upstart like Gov. Palin with a state university degree can beat the Ivy League and plutocratic aristocracy — ALL working night and day to destroy Gov. Palin, a -13 percent negative rating is the BEST they could do?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Now that Gov. Palin is unchained from the post where any and every loon could and did throw garbage at her in the form of phony ethics complaints and lies and attacks on her children, she can fight back. She is free to earn money by speaking and writing. She is free to raise money. She is free to travel to support the candidates and causes she believes in. She is free to get to know people in the lower 48 states and for us to get to know her. I agree with Mary Matalin — I think Sarah Palin is a genius for resigning and totally changing the game to her terms. That’s how you win. THAT’S WHAT WINNERS DO!
As for Mitt Romney polling better than Gov. Palin when matched against Barack Obama, I see Gov. Palin as the come-from-behind, dark horse victor in 2012. I think Romney is getting support because he is a handsome and successful man. But he signed socialized medicine into law for Massachusetts. That is a poison pill that fiscal conservatives will not swallow. Plus, sooner or later Romney will start speaking in public again, and people will remember why they zzzzzzzzzzz. Oops! Sorry — I dozed off for a moment just thinking about it.
What about Mike Huckabee? To be honest, I’ve never really had Mike Huckabee on my radar and don’t know much about him. But if the match-up between the Republican candidate and Obama in 2012 is a David-and-Goliath battle, what Goliaths has Huckabee defeated? Any? I think it’s none. However, Gov. Palin HAS brought down Goliaths. It takes a special kind of genius and skill to that. Sarah Palin has both. The others do not. Plus, Huckabee is likable, but not charismatic. Gov. Palin has charisma.
Regarding Obama’s poll numbers, he is sinking as the truth about him and his fell plans for America (and Israel) are starting to dawn on a stunned and duped electorate. Even with all of the lies told in his favor, AND all the cover-ups committed on his behalf 24/7/365 by the mainstream media, the left blogosphere, feminists and the Democratic Party — all of that COMBINED is not enough to keep Obama’s approval ratings up.
So — Palin for president in 2012! She CAN win!
H/T Conservatives4Palin.com and Vidsweet for the video.
We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Mary Jo
Just so all you young whippersnappers know, it’s been 40 years this month since Sen. Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge on Chappaquidick Island in Masschusetts late at night after a party and left a young staffer, Mary Jo Kopechne, behind in the car to drown. The analysis of his motives was epitomized by this joke:
“Teddy, I think I’m pregnant. What are we going to do?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Mary Jo.”
So it seems that story was vivid in Iowahawk’s mind this week as he contemplated the healthcare reform bill now before Congress, Sen. Kennedy’s support of that bill and how others who placed their lives in his hands have fared.
So now we're the LGBTQS community
While most conservatives have a stereotype of gays and lesbians as being among the minorities that try to achieve power through their status as victims, this overlooks the reality that being second-class citizens who often are ostracized from their own families — which does NOT happen to racial, religious and ethnic minorities, because, come on, did Rev. Al Sharpton ever agonize for one second about how his family would treat him if they found out he is black? — is such an all-encompassing exclusion that it pushes gays and lesbians not only to be entrepreneurs but also to create for themselves various communities of inclusion, including spiritual and religious communities.
Well, well, well — the spirit of inclusion at gay and lesbian churches and synagogues is now attracting — who’da thunk it? — straight people.
I had a sneaking suspicion that once we went from LGBT to include LGBTQ that we really were about to come full circle and become the LGBTQS community:
LGBT: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual
LGBTQ: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, questioning
LGBTQS: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, questioning, straight.
H/T: The Drudge Report: “Straight People Seek Out Gay Churches.”
P.S.
A commenter on the post at the Drudge Report led me to GodHatesShrimp.com, which led me to a fascinating page at ReligiousTolerance.org that goes into detail about the meanings of the Greek words commonly translated in the New Testament as attacking homosexuality and suggests that St. Paul’s real target was sex slavery.
No Joss Whedon, no Sarah Michelle Gellar, no Scooby Gang for the new 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' movie — yes, THAT is the formula for disaster!
moar funny pictures
I learned from Moe Lane today about the announcements in May and June of plans for a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie without Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, who wrote the screenplay of the original 1992 movie and wrote and produced the series of the same name, which ran from 1997 to 2003. The rights to Buffy belong to the hack director of the original “Buffy” movie, Fran Rubel Kuzui, who is generally credited with making the movie into a mediocrity by tampering with Whedon’s script.
Whedonesque has the round-up of links to reactions to this announcement. Entertainment Weekly captures the reaction of fans of the Buffyverse with this survey:
“How do you feel about a big screen ‘Buffy’ that doesn’t involve Joss Whedon?”
- When and where is the riot occurring? (65 percent — including my vote — I’m sure you’re surprised)
- They can make it, but it will never exist to me (35 percent)
- Great, can’t wait to see it! (3 percent — who ARE these people?)
I think Metta captures the outrage of Buffy fans best at her blog, TV, Books and Film:
Problem #1: The only reason the Buffy franchise is so successful is because of the insanely rabid fans. There aren’t very many casual Buffy-watchers. People either never watched enough to get hooked, or they are completely nuts about it. Those are the only two options. By rebooting the franchise, and ignoring the characters that the fanbase cares about, the feature film may appeal to a new generation, but it will completely alienate the existing fans. And without the existing fans on board, I doubt the movie will do very well.
Problem #2: Joss Whedon has not even been approached about being involved. So, this pretty much guarantees that the movie will suck. You can’t do Buffy without Joss in complete control. They took control away from Joss for the 1992 movie, and look what happened. Plus, now, the rapid fans of the TV show aren’t just going to ignore the movie, they will actively work to undermine it. Speaking as a rabid fan, I promise you, this will happen. Check out the article and accompanying poll at EW.com. If there are riots, I will totally go.
I’ll see you there, Metta. I’ll see you there.