Like a military operation

My 7 year old niece, in order to personally awaken me this morning to watch cartoons with her: arose at 6:00ish, blindly crept down the dark basement stairs, gingerly and blindly crawled across a toy strewn darkened basement floor towards my mattress, then gently shook me awake. Now she has taken command of the basement, and is issuing orders.

More like a travesty

"Thirty percent of elected officials do not know that 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence."

Rachel Lucas:

It would be funny because it’s so obviously true, except it’s just not funny. More like a travesty.

Blog Vacation

Happy Birthday, on Wednesday, to my Mom, Nancy. 73 years young! Something to celebrate.





The End Zone's reading level is analyzed:

The End Zone authorship's gender is analyzed. Result: 85% probability The End Zone is written by a male. How did they figure that out? Could it be ....... the photos??

Kate Winslett's curves inspired a new Jaguar design.

Sombrero girl is my cousin, Nancy Beth. She's a second grade teacher. Home schooling, anyone?

The tent girls are three hot country music chicks. One of them is my youngest niece. Two of them think I'm pretty cool.

The black dress and smile girl is Nancy Beth's sister, Brooke. Un muchacha de fuego!

Strap girl is Ultimate Fighting star Gina Carano. She's the daughter of former Dallas Cowboy Glen Carano.

Daisy Dukes girl is my oldest niece: Courtney Jean. Mickey's a babe magnet.

Flaming Christina Hendricks.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

`
`
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A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS

american-troops-in-afghanistan-through-the-eyes-of-a-french-omlt-infantryman

TCU's Amon Carter Stadium

Want to watch a football game the old time way: eat a corn dog, smell the popcorn, see some real grass stains on football pants, not have to protect your children from the home team's fans? Amon Carter Stadium is for you. The old stadium has never been prettier. The art deco addition atop the south end zone turns the stadium into a beautiful matron who has made herself up and donned stings of pearls. From Oct 16 and TCU 32 - BYU 7:



The best conception of the addition comes from this artist's rendering:



Two sections of seating jut out to the edge of and just above the original end zone seats. Amon Carter Stadium's original prominence occurred in the 1930s, when Sammy Baugh and Davey O'Brien quarterbacked powerful TCU teams - including the 1938 National Champions. The excellence of the current end zone addition is it's architectural lushness which comes straight out of the 1920s and 1930s. Nicely done.

Lots of modern stadiums have gigantic pictures of football heroes lined up the outside facade. TCU's football heroes hanging on the facade line-up is formidable:

Sammy Baugh
Davey O'Brien
Bob Lilly
LaDanian Tomlinson.

Those guys would match up with heroes from any school. They blow away, for instance, the football heroes hanging on the facade of my alma mater Baylor's stadium. TCU should add C-LB Ki Aldrich. In 1938, Life Magazine called him "probably the greatest LB in football history". In 1969, Sports Illustrated named him the Center on their All Time Team for the first 100 years of college football. Sports Illustrated named Sam Baugh the QB of that team. Aldrich may already be up there hanging with others. If not, he should be.

Overheard this afternoon, pregame, from the Margarita drinking coed next to me at Fuzzy's Tacos:

I'm, like, sooo happy to not be sad?

She began it as a statement and finished it as a question, leaving me wondering: is she sooo happy? Or, is she merely wondering aloud whether or not she is sooo happy? Her young man responded that he understood how she felt, and I realized the question part was designed as a query to him. The entire communication was: I am very happy to not be sad. Do you understand how I feel? Part of the overall communication was nonverbal. He did understand - certainly a prerequisite if he hopes to get lucky on this day. Later:

Her young man:

So, you were already not friends anymore before she and I dated, and so breaking off with your best friend had nothing to do with me?

Sooo Happy Girl:

Of course it didn't. We had already quit being friends.

Listen up, Sooo Happy Girl: NO ONE believes that - except, possibly, the exact young man you just tested your story out on - because, again as before, believing and understanding is a prerequisite for getting lucky. After he gets lucky, even he will forget that he ever believed your story.

Bill James projects

Chris Davis (age 22, making $400,000) to hit .302 with 40 home runs and 118 RBI in 2009.

Manny Ramirez (age 36, seeking close to $20 million) to hit .301 with 34 home runs and 113 RBI in 2009.

Mark Teixeira (age 28, seeking $20 million) to hit .299 with 36 home runs and 126 RBI in 2009.

The above info is quoted from a source whom I cannot remember.

Undercover, in Baton Rouge, disguised as an Alabama fan

Update: link fixed (below) to student's article.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A follow up to this post about LSU football atmosphere.

The student's article has good info which is not in the video.



My favorite part happens in the final 10 seconds, when a young man walks up and asserts, in a reasonable, matter-of-fact tone: "Once again: Tiger bait." It's his duty to say this, just as it's a dog's duty to bark at a stranger. He knows she will understand.

Her conclusion:

"Overall, the experience of tailgating as an Alabama fan showed LSU fans are some of the most aggressive in the SEC."

Here's what I like about the conclusion: "in the SEC". The world outside the SEC is not up to SEC standards and thus really doesn't matter. The SEC laughs at your inferior tailgating and fan hatred. Ha ha. You do not rise to the level of legitimate Tiger Bait. A self-respecting tiger ignores you and continues his nap, for he is hung over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Contrast even the nasty aspects of LSU atmosphere with the sterile NFL stadium festival of TV Commercials - as brilliantly documented by Bill Simmons in "Attention: Home-field advantage has left the building":

Throw in the dirty secret that it isn't really fun to attend an NFL game in the 21st century -- the routine of "kickoff, TV timeout, three plays, punt, TV timeout, five plays, field goal, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout, someone gets hurt on first down, prolonged TV timeout, three more plays, touchdown, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout" gets old after about 25 minutes
[...]
The bad news is that, with just a few exceptions, it's now more entertaining to invite your friends over, tailgate in your backyard and watch your favorite team on TV. You get the replays. You get HD. You have your own bathroom. You're saving money. You can stand up if you want. You don't have a commute. If you have the NFL package, you can flip around to other games during commercials. What's the downside? You got me. I had 10 times more fun watching the Pats-Jets game at a New York City bar last week than I would have had at the actual game. And the sad thing was, I knew that would be the case.

Foreclosing Hitler's McMansion

Will Adolph be alright? link

14 within 48 hours; Instructive Bush coverage; Jon Stewart the coward

Megyn Kelly reported Joe the Plumber's Ohio State Records were checked by six different State of Ohio agencies in 18 separate instances - including 14 checks within 48 hours of the Presidential debate in which he starred in absentia.

At least some of the searchers have admitted searching out information "for the national media". This is implicit admission that these searchers valued political victory over morality, ethics, and duty.

Media, in their part of the sordid spectacle, aggressively went after a private citizen even as they avoided going after a candidate. Media abdicated neutrality and chose a side. Media were not Switzerland. They were France. They actively campaigned as La Resistance Pour Barack. Media were effective in this role, and they helped elect Barack. Had media done their duty and vetted Barack, Hillary would be President Elect today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of media, this is instructive: Bush unsnubbed.

One quibble: Jon Stewart did not merely play the "snub" angle during closing credits, but also prominently played up the "snub" angle during the opening comedy segment of his show.

No worries for Stewart. He doesn't do apologies. "It's comedy!" is his all-purpose excuse. Jon Stewart is a coward.

Stewart's staff researches gotcha questions for him to spring on his conservative guests. I have no problem with that. I have a problem with this: if guests flounder, Stewart pounces like a preening know it all; if guests riposte with intelligence and reason, Stewart does not tip his hat and acknowledge their superior reasoning. Instead, he retreats to jokeville. Cowardice. Stewart never acknowledges instances when his own reasoning - and that of his staff - is inferior.

This is typical of the left. They cannot acknowledge instances of their own inferior reasoning. Such would trash their self-conception as morally superior beings. Most of the left, when confronted by superior reasoning, quickly shift the field of play to a seemingly infinite supply of other gripes and strawmen. Stewart, however, has the perfect dodge: "I'm just a comic". He plays a morally superior being when he can, and a cynical comedian when he is trapped. Stewart is a coward who plays an intellectually brave person on TV. Lemmings cheer.

If you are unlike Jon Stewart, if your conversational purpose is to search for truth, then you can shift your opinion inside a conversation without feeling personally threatened or demeaned. Why would you? You self identify as an imperfect person who searches for truth. You are happy to find instances where your old thinking was misguided. Hooray! You can move forward in life unburdened by your former misguided reasoning. In conversations, you can be free and relaxed and open.

Conversely, if your conversational purpose is to celebrate your own virtue and superiority, you cannot ever admit error. You must move away from the superior logic - quickly! Divert the conversation to a different gripe or strawman. Repeat as necessary, ad infinitum. This is overwhelmingly what the left does in conversations.

Part of the changing and diverting of the subject comes from the left not really having thought through their assertions. They don't really know why they believe what they do. They just heard x and y were the correct things to believe, so they do. When they are challenged on x or y - even lightly - they have no reasoned response and they quickly divert the conversation away from x or y. I suspect they imagine - if only some better informed person from their tribe were around to explain things - x and y could be proven correct.

"America need be more modest" = horse manure

American exceptionalism is not about our geography or our people. American exceptionalism is about the founding values which have wrought an exceptional nation:

1. Our liberty is from God not the government.
2. Our sovereignty rests in our souls not the soil.
3. Our security is through strength not surrender.
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector.
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative.

It is not arrogant for our nation to act according to our founding values and principles.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is said, after Barack's election: Now America can act with some modesty. We can recognize we represent only 1/8 of the world's population, and act accordingly.

Choice of action ought not be a question of modesty vs. arrogance, but rather of principled action vs unprincipled action.

The 1/8 + modesty meme is actually about American values vs. Euro values. The Euros and the American Left are actually saying: How arrogant of America to have different values and then act upon them! How dare America disagree with us and then succeed? How dare America believe government is not the answer? Arrogant, sir! And the more you succeed, ipso facto the more arrogant you are.

The 1/8 + modesty meme is partly behind Europe's "America is a young nation" meme, with it's built-in insult that American success is a statistical aberration occurring inside a limited sample size - much like a rookie baseball player who produces a .450 batting average in only 50 at bats. No one believes the rookie will hit .450 over 500 at bats.

I reckon America has hit about .700 over 232 at bats. But, no matter. Euros still argue American values are wrongheaded and will not work. Euros argue American success is about 1) geographic good fortune, and 2) this lucky 232 years of history. Give it time. America will crumble. All will be revealed. Free markets will not hold up over time. Americans will suffer. America is a young nation.

I agree America 1) is lucky with our geography and 2) is experiencing a lucky period of history. I even agree America will someday crumble. However, the crumble won't be due to our founding values; won't be due to too little government; won't be due to free markets.

When your leftist citizen-neighbor - watching cable news in a lobby - suddenly goes red in the face and declares, with spite: "I hate American Exceptionalism", he or she is implicitly asserting American success is about a small sample size of good luck which cannot hold up indefinitely. If you and other Americans were smart enough and wise enough and open-minded enough and reality-based enough: you would see it. Your leftist citizen-neighbor gets so frustrated trying to explain this to the idiots who surround him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I fear 1/8 + modesty is a Barack meme, as embodied in "We must come together" and "We are going to fundamentally change this nation". Fundamentally change. This nation.

Fundamentally. Change.

This nation.

Fundamentally.

!?

It's not overreaction to say these statements + Barack's blank slateness are cause for concern. If Barack believes in the principles upon which our nation is founded, it seems reasonable that he would say: We must be true to America's founding values.

Barack is an unknown, and therefore he may turn out to hold America's founding values dear. I hope so. Most Americans hope so.* It is ridiculous and dangerous that we have to guess.



*Barack has created hope!

Pirates, by Michael Ramirez

double click to enlarge

Barack: True believer about AGW?

This much I know:

Barack is shockingly ignorant of history.
Barack is shockingly ignorant of economics.
Barack believes the global warming horse manure.
Barack and Axelrod ran an organized, nimble, and ruthlessly unethical Campaign.

Geraghty says all Barack statements come with expiration dates ("Baraxpiration" dates?).* Let us hope true belief in AGW also comes with a Baraxpiration date. We need him to be enough of a cynical bastard to ditch his campaign pretensions in the cause of saving the economy (via not damaging it to accommodate bad science, bad math skills, and Al Gore/Hollywood/liberal fantasy).

If Barack shockingly ditches his cynicism in favor of true belief about AGW? Result: disaster. Man-made. Barack-made.

NYT:

Speaking by video [on Tuesday, Nov 18] to a climate conference in Los Angeles, Mr. Obama repeated his campaign vow to reduce climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and invest $150 billion in new energy-saving technologies.
...
Some industry leaders and members of Congress have suggested that Mr. Obama’s climate proposal would impose too great a cost on an already-stressed economy — having the same effects as a tax on coal, oil and natural gas — and should await the end of the current downturn. A bill similar to Mr. Obama’s plan failed to clear the Senate earlier this year, largely because of concerns about its impact on the economy.

Mr. Obama rejected that view, saying that his plan would reduce oil imports, create jobs in energy conservation and renewable sources of energy, and reverse the warming of the atmosphere.

A.J. Strata:

[T]he data over the last decade have proven ALL of the IPCC climate models [about AGW] and predictions wrong. Science demands accuracy in its theories. When they are wrong there is no salvaging them or twisting them, they get thrown out. Science is showing there is no CO2 based, man-made CO2 and that is hard data.

It's more likely we are heading into three decades of global cooling. There's nothing we can do about it, either way. Humanity's best possible efforts represent less than three ten-thousandths the effect of the sun upon global warming and cooling. Arctic studies of ice cores show the sun affects Earth temperatures in 1500 year cycles which have perfectly repeated themselves over the past 7500 years of Earth's existence. To believe man -- whose impact is, at best, less than three ten-thousandths of the warming/cooling impact of the Sun -- can affect 1500 year cycles of solar warming and cooling effect upon the Earth ... is foolishness. At the very least: it is not a hypothesis which ought drive our national policy; it is not a hypothesis which ought cause us to retard our GDP, reduce our national wealth, and thus increase human misery in our nation and also in other nations. Decreasing American production would actually be immoral - as opposed to the pretend immorality alleged against those who refuse to pretend-save the Earth.

Shrinkwrapped:

Even if you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, a theory based on computer models that has a significant dearth of actual data to support it, there is little reason to believe it is a disaster of planet threatening proportions. The Earth has had long periods of time with much higher temperature sand much higher levels of CO2 and has not only survived but has thrived.
[...]
AGW has always been about belief. People who can not add two and two blithely inform us that by devoting some billions of dollars to alternative energy sources we will almost overnight be able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions without a significant hit to the economy; in fact, our economy will thrive with all the new green energy jobs that will b e created. This ignores all sorts of problems, not least of scale, and is a sure fire prescription to causing immense damage to our infrastructure.
[...]
To the true believer, no facts can have an impact. To the true believer, no price is too high to pay to save the planet. If Barack Obama goes ahead with these plans, it suggest that while we may not know much of what he believes, on AGW he is a true believer. This is not comforting since, unfortunately, the only way to "save the planet" is to shut down the economy. Even as the Europeans are turning their backs on Kyoto as impractical and too much of a burden for their economies at a time of global recession, Barack Obama signals his intent to assault our economy in unimaginable ways.

Maxed Out Mama:

Economically speaking, this is total lunacy. But [Obama] believes. Nor does he need Congress to act, since the EPA is already dealing with petitions to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. He simply does what he said he would do before the election, which is to regulate CO2 as a HAP. Even farms would have to go through permitting, as would large stores, etc.
[...]
As you read through that [report], it's important to understand that "demand response" programs involve turning off power to users. [...] When they start turning off your lights all the time, you're not going to be so pleased.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Regarding Baraxpiration dates(The End Zone TM!), Scott at Powerline:

In "Opportunism knocks, part 3" and other posts we wrote at length about the September 2007 vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment supporting the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Clinton voted in favor of it. Obama refrained from taking a position or voting on it. Once Clinton voted in favor of it, however, Obama castigated her for the vote. He described it as "saber rattling."

The morning after Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination in June, he appeared before AIPAC and enthusiastically supported the position he had previously castigated throughout the campaign. It is a story that shows the peculiar cynicism and deep calculation with which Obama conducted a purportedly idealistic campaign, and it is of course a story that the mainstream media somehow missed.

AIPAC is the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and is a huge supporter of Israel. It's not possible for Barack's timing and actions to have been more cynical.

Gerald Green could save the Dallas Mavericks' season

Green is 6'8", agile, fast, and can jump through the roof. He has the physical ability to guard Kobe, McGrady, Ginobli, Monta Ellis, Dwayne Wade. He has the physical ability to guard Deron Williams, allowing Kidd to slide over on, for instance, Kyle Korver. Green has the physical ability to guard Chris Paul and to bother Steve Nash.

With Green, it's all about his maturity as an adult. Encouraging signs are attested to by voices I trust. Green is supposedly a hard worker who loves the game. I am encouraged. His play is energetic and unselfish. He can shoot it, handle it, and pass it. He elevates on his jump shot like a playground player from the 1970's - like World B. Free, for instance - thus his nice jump shot is unblockable.

The Mavs have nothing to lose. They ought give Green 28+ minutes a game and see if he develops in time for the playoffs. He's their best hope to fill a gaping hole with true athleticism and all around talent. If Gerald Green truly loves the game, he could be a big find - much as Brandon Bass was last season.

If not, Green could be Larry Hughes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Mavs best line-up pairs Kidd with Jason Terry.

Question: Why can't the Mavs pair Kidd and Terry all the time and succeed?
Answer: Defense.

Neither Kidd nor Terry can guard the big athletes much of the league plays at the guard spots. Both Kidd and Terry need the defensive protection of guarding the opposition's weakest guard. Neither can step up and guard the opposition's best guard.

Devin Harris could protect Terry. Thus Devin and Terry could be paired together during crunch time. Those days are gone. Kidd and Terry can only be paired against certain teams and certain matchups.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gerald Green is the Mavs best hope of salvaging the season. They may as well play that hope out to it's fullest extent and see what happens. If Green doesn't pan out, the Mavs are not going to pan out.

Not a spoof: Al Franken is challenging this ballot

in Minnesota.


h/t

"Fair" is subjective

Economics professor Mark J. Perry:

In "The Armchair Economist," economist Steven E. Landsburg posed the following:

"Suppose that Jack and Jill draw equal amounts of water from a community well. Jack's income is $10,000, of which he is taxed 10%, or $1,000, to support the well. Jill's income is $100,000, of which she is taxed 5%, or $5,000, to support the well. In which direction is the policy unfair?"

An honest person will admit that this question has no indisputably right answer. Prof. Landsburg then asked

"If I can't tell what's fair in a world of two people and one well, how can I tell what's fair in a country with 250 million people and tens of thousands of government services?"

HT: Don Boudreaux

The words "fair" and "fairness" are two of the most dangerous words in the English language, for the following reasons:

1. People using those words (e.g. "fair trade," "fair wages") almost always follow with some proposal for government intervention, government regulation, or government force of some kind to correct some perceived "unfairness" and impose their notion of "fairness."

And to paraphrase Thomas Sowell:

2. In most cases, it is hopeless to try to have a rational discussion with those who use the words "fair" and "fairness."

3. "Fair" and "fairness" are two words that can mean virtually anything to anybody.

4. "Fair" and "fairness" are two of the most emotionally powerful words, but at the same time are words that are undefined (see #3).

Dance

NYT: Iraqi policemen danced with a United States Army soldier in Baghdad on Sunday, the day Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact [with the United States].
Photo Credit: Karim Kadim/Associated Press

How Obama Got Elected

As these interviews went along, they just got better. Near the end, they ask "Where do you get your news?" Some answers: "NPR and PBS." "Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert." "New York Times." "BBC."

Design

Fireworks over Floyd-Casey

Big 12 400 Meter Hurdles champion Robert Griffin celebrates Baylor 41 - Texas A&M 21:

"We wanted to come out here and dominate," Baylor standout freshman quarterback Robert Griffin said, "and we did."
[...]
The Bears rushed for 269 yards, their most ever in a Big 12 game.
[...]
Baylor's defense limited A&M to 64 rushing yards and forced five turnovers, including four interceptions by Johnson.
[...]
By the end of the third quarter, Baylor led, 41-7, and was in cruise control.

For as long as Robert Griffin has been drawing breath, Baylor has never "dominated" Texas A&M - nor, before this season, even dreamed it could be done. The game drew 43,000 fans for two teams with losing records. Many of those were Aggies, but, still, Baylor has a little something going when they can draw (28,000 or so?) fans for a consistently sad sack program.

Could Griffin go into the NFL and become what Vince Young should've become? Griffin will benefit from a traditional throwing motion and 4 years of experience in Baylor coach Art Briles' advanced passing offense. If Griffin cannot QB in the NFL, I predict he will succeed as either a WR or SS. I fantasize about him at CB, but that is unlikely. Still, I'd like to see it.

Hills on fire (but not in Waco)

Darleen Click:

31 years ago, August 29, 1967, I was 13 years old, living in Granada Hills and spending the night with my best friend, Patty. We were watching the last episode of The Fugitive and when we went out to her back yard we saw the hills above on fire. (She lived just north of Rinaldi, I lived just south of it). I, along with her whole family watched as a bright red glow behind the hills become a wall of flames that crested the hills and started marching down towards us.

That night, the winds shifted just before we had to evacuate, pushing the flames back into the path they had just burned and the fire fighters were able to get control of it.

The big difference between 1967 and 2008? Well, those hills I watched burn as a 13 year old are now covered in homes.

More Palin Pics

from erstwhile Whitehouse photographer Shealah Craighead, hired by the RNC to follow the VP during the campaign. Craighead:

"Who you see behind the scenes is who you get out front, which is one thing I admired about her."

"Seeing her with her family...being a mom, going over flashcards with Piper - that doesn't change with her."

Notice, in photo #2, Piper is talking to Pres. Bush and will not give up the cell phone. The world exists for Piper's amusement. It's never occurred to her things might be any other way.

Palin Pool Pics

All the way from Anchorage to Miami, the midair Governor had one thing in mind: Loungechair!

"It crosses a line, a bright line."

David Brooks

Not so long ago, corporate giants with names like PanAm, ITT and Montgomery Ward roamed the earth. They faded and were replaced by new companies with names like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines and Target. The U.S. became famous for this pattern of decay and new growth. Over time, American government built a bigger safety net so workers could survive the vicissitudes of this creative destruction — with unemployment insurance and soon, one hopes, health care security. But the government has generally not interfered in the dynamic process itself, which is the source of the country’s prosperity.

But this, apparently, is about to change. Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be. …

Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line.

Best segment of Peter Robinson interviewing Thomas Sowell at NRO's Uncommon Knowledge. link

Sex in the Olympic Village

Link, because: who could resist a tryst with an athlete like Leryn Franco of Paraguay?

Megyn blushes(!) through heavy make-up; rebounds to propose foursome

which we ALL know will end up a twosome...



Dang John Mayer. Does he have to monopolize every woman in America?

ACORN employs biggest spokestool in history

A couple of months ago, part of Barack's national service for young persons idea would've encouraged work for ACORN as part of national service. Thus national service would've been, among other things, a scam to enable Barack's re-election and to enable Dems to gain additional political power. I hope the negative publicity has caused Barack to drop the ACORN proposition. He might revive the same national service = re-elect me scam under a new organization which will perform the same function and carry out the same scam. Watch for it; Repubs in Congress will not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No spokesperson could be more devious, more untruthful, or more obnoxious than ACORN spokesperson Scott Levenson. Being more unscrupulous is not possible. The very presence of this paid ACORN spokesperson represents ipso facto proof of ACORN's corruption. Levenson performs like a mafia lawyer. Everything which comes out of his mouth amounts to a lie.


John Fund details Barack's ties to ACORN in WSJ. It will be revenge against the mafia lawyer if you read John Fund's article!

Speaking of offensive mafia tactics, look at this incredible ACORN ad which played just before the election:



I have not words.

Kenneth Timmerman on whistleblowing ACORN employees:

New testimony obtained by a consumer advocate group from former employees of ACORN paints a startling picture of the apparent misuse of taxpayer dollars to further the group’s left-wing political agenda.

Four former employees of ACORN and of ACORN Housing Corp. have supplied sworn affidavits to the Consumer Rights League that provide eyewitness accounts of how the two organizations have commingled funds and resources, in apparent violation of federal law.
[...]
ACORN has failed to maintain the proper distinction between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive political activities.

“ACORN and its offshoots take in millions of dollars in government grants under the guise of ‘consumer advocacy’ to line their own pockets,” said Jim Terry, CRL’s chief public advocate.

Barack's Campaign paid ACORN $850,000 for GOTV efforts, and to this day denies it. They first claimed they did not pay ACORN. When that was disproved, they next claimed they paid ACORN for "staging" of events. It's now proven the money was for GOTV, yet Barack spokespersons continue to publicly lie about it. Their lies amount to consciousness of guilt.

Kenneth Timmerman details instances of Barack Campaign fraud in the Dem Caucuses.

Sunrise in Montana, calf on ridge line

directly in brightest sunlight, according to the photographer. Squint to see.


This sky is amazing.

from this blog of sunrises at a Montana ranch.

McCain Girl goes to school

link

Aha! There is no political center of informed voters holding some left positions and some right positions.

I said this exact thing on election night. What drives me crazy about D.C. Repubs is they keep moving left so as to attract a perceived demographic of knowledgeable "moderate" voters, when, in fact, such a demographic of knowledgeable moderates does not exist!!! McCain is one of the biggest offenders. Such knowledgeable voters as truly do split the difference between left and right are such a small group as to be inconsequential. In the vast majority of instances, voters either believe in small government, believe in large government, or do not understand overarching governing theory. The middle is populated by wonderful Americans who simply do not dig politics and thus are not informed. God bless em. They are the sanest persons in America. What they overwhelmingly are NOT are knowledgeable voters who have staked out ground which is analogous to a cafeteria menu of some left positions and some right positions. It is a bitter joke that Repubs - egged on by media, self doubt, lack of principle, and lack of rigorous intellectual understanding - eschew small government principles in favor of pandering to a fantasy demographic which does not exist! A. Bitter. Joke.

The main thing this article teaches me is that middle voters respond significantly to social influences and excitement amongst friends and family. A candidate must build and excite his base; his base will excite and influence voters in the middle. A candidate surely can influence such middle voters as are listening - yet many or most middle voters are not listening to the candidate. They are more socially influenced - possibly by friends whose opinions they respect - than candidate influenced.

James G. Gimpel at NRO:

[T]here is no coherent [political] center. There are no fixed, well-considered policy positions in the center to which voters there adhere.

The research suggests that those who at various times occupy this center, often described as moderates or independents, are not very knowledgeable about or interested in politics. They do not follow campaign coverage closely, are inconsistent in their policy views, and are often not able to identify what positions are liberal or conservative.

What characterizes the centrist voter is not some peculiar set of policy positions, but rather ignorance of policy issues in general, coupled with vague impressions of the “goodness” or “badness” of the times. So-called centrist or moderate voters can’t even be counted on to vote.

Consequently, they make a lousy starting point from which to frame a campaign platform. A campaign doesn’t move toward them, but instead attempts to inspire them to come in the candidate’s direction. The incoherent center moves to the left or to the right, inspired by the candidate’s enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of his supporters. It is foolish for the candidate to move to the center, because the center is never a fixed position to move toward.

Moving centrists toward one’s candidacy is not a process that hinges on taking the right policy stands, either. Instead, it involves the enthusiasm and social contagion that builds around exciting candidates. We know from several volumes of political-science research that less-informed voters commonly substitute someone else’s judgment for their own. That someone else is often a spouse, workmate, or neighbor knowledgeable and enthusiastic about one of the candidates. Support for a candidate spreads through social influence processes.

It is therefore no accident that Sarah Palin’s nomination gave John McCain the only lead that he had during the fall campaign. She was Senator McCain's only hope for closing the enthusiasm gap, but then economic crisis stalled the gains. Polls will show that Barack Obama had social contagion working in his favor to pull the incoherent center in a leftward direction.

A candidate with Sarah Palin’s views is not the only way to generate enthusiasm and move the incoherent center. But the path to victory is to find a candidate who will pull the center in their direction, not to modify policy stances in hopes of making inattentive and ambivalent voters pay heed.

Sunrise in Montana, moon low

from this blog of sunrises at a Montana ranch.

Dental floss of feminine fitness

or something like that. Ya gotta love America.

More on Marcus Luttrell

Watching, for a second time, video of Marcus Luttrell speaking to the NRA in May of this year, I remembered something which struck me as I read "Lone Survivor", Luttrell's account of an Afghanistan mission gone wrong.

Luttrell was multiply injured and sprained and broken, was shot, hit with shrapnel, was only partially mobile, was being held by good tribal guys who were negotiating to possibly give him up to bad Afghan tribal guys who would've either murdered him or ransomed him - but either way it wasn't going to be good (Luttrell actually was bargained to bad guys who tortured him for 24 hours). He was lying in a bed in a tiny hut in a remote mountain village. It was nighttime, and Luttrell had just come awake to find half a dozen bad tribal guys in the hut and staring at him and discussing amongst themselves. Luttrell searched his surroundings, espied a bar or a plank in the rafters above him, and formed a plan to use the bar to shove all 6 bad guys against the wall of the hut, from which position he was confident he could dispose of all six with his bare hands.

Now, Marcus Luttrell is 6'5", and the bad guys were comparatively small and slight in stature. If Marcus Luttrell believed he could shove all six against the wall and kill them with his bare hands, I trust him enough to believe he could do it. He is a trained killer, and had many times more hand to hand combat training and experience than all six of the bad guys combined.

What cracks me up is how confident Luttrell was that he would kill the six guys. He wrote in his book how he lay in the bed and assessed the situation, and it's clear he never doubted for a moment that his injured and somewhat incapacitated self could and would overcome six guys. That part was a given. He decided against the attack b/c he was too weak to outrun the rest of the tribal guys who would've tracked him down as he tried to escape out of the mountains. But overcoming six guys was not going to be a problem.

This reminds of another Navy Seal story, from the very beginning of Desert Storm in 1991. Hours before the invasion, a Navy Seal crept up the side of an Iraqi ship, burst through a window and into the pilot house, and came face to face with three startled Iraqis. Disabling this ship was important for the protection of American forces which were about to invade, so the Seal's mission was important. The Seal had a knife he could use to slash and kill the three guys. But he looked at them and said: Nah, I don't want to kill these guys. I can take em. So he began hand to hand combat and subdued them, b/c he felt there was zero risk they would overcome him and interfere with his mission. Which, to me, is a funny story.

Extended audio of Marcus Luttrell telling the story of the mission. It's long, and it's good.

Sunrise in Montana through clouds

from this blog of sunrises at a Montana ranch.

Class in America

Sgt. Mom:

Really, what do these new aristos expect of the masses, the proletariat, the common citizenry? More and more I have the feeling that we are seen as a kind of herd animal, to be periodically sheared like sheep, relieved of whatever fleece or funds that the new aristos feel they could make better use of, to do as we are told, to not really consider our property, our children, or our earnings as our own. If the aristos decide that they require such things to be given up… well, then, fall in line the loyal peasantry. And don’t forget to smile.

We are being put back in our place, after a two-hundred plus year experiment of being responsible and independent citizens....

Ace:

I can't help but notice a lot of the "Republicans' most enamored of Obama, and most disgusted by Palin, are upper-class twits. Either by birth or by adoption of their culture.

I'm betting [nicole] wallace and [steve] schmidt are, too.

A lot of this is pure class/cultural disgust at those boisterous,
declasse blue collar types.

Hey, Palin got shit done in Alaska. But blue collar morons are good
at fixin' shit, aren't they? As David Brooks noted, Obama can easily
cite Neibhur in conversation. (However you spell his name.) That's
the important thing, you know.

The lower classes DO. The upper classes ARE.

It was one thing when George W. Bush, a patrician plainly comfortable with the blue collar sector of the country, ran for office. Sure, he adopted a lot of the tastes and assumptions of the blue collar working-stiff class (and apparently he was pretty genuine about that), but we could all rest easy knowing, by blood, he was a good solid upper-upper class Connecticut aristocrat.

Sarah Palin? Not only was she born blue collar, but, unlike Scranton Joe Biden (Obama love 'im), she disgustingly has refused to evolve past the bitter, clingy station she was born to.

For God's sake, she was a Governor. She could have gained entry to the soft (as in arriviste) upper class at any time she set her mind to it.

And yet she refused.

The hell, man? It's like she just doesn't want to become better than she is.

Paglia:

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology....

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones....

Veterans Day

Salute.



Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell - no professional speaker he - gives a genuine and raw and moving address to the NRA in May 2008. One thing about Marcus Luttrell: he makes some assertions which, coming from any other human, would seem almost sure to be lies. In Marcus Luttrell's case: every single bit of it actually happened. It's documented. link

Some of what our guys are doing now, from Navy Times:

The element of surprise would prove critical.

As night fell Oct. 14, three Chinook helicopters flew into the mountains and inserted roughly 24 to 30 special operators — most of them Navy SEALs — about three miles from the kidnappers’ hideout to minimize the chance of being seen or heard.

As midnight came and went, the operators climbed slowly toward the objective for 4½ hours. At that altitude, the special operations officer said, “You can’t exactly exert yourself too much or you’ll be spent.” The commandos ascended 2,000 feet before pausing roughly 275 yards from the target.

There they established an objective rally point — typically, the site where a spec ops force stows unnecessary gear and puts security teams out while those making the final approach to the target transform into “pure assault mode,” said a source familiar with such missions.

From the ORP, an assault force of seven operators — all or almost all SEALs, according to the special operations officer — crept toward the objective.

Swift and sure
One of the commandos tossed a pebble against the hut’s tin door — a traditional way visitors announce their arrival in rural Afghanistan.

The rattle of the stone against the door failed to rouse the guards. “They were both zipped up inside their sleeping bags, sleeping,” one behind the hostage on the floor of the darkened hut and the other outside, the engineer said. But their prisoner was awake and suddenly alert.

“I heard the latch rattling and somebody came in,” he said. “The first guy came in with a LED light, and I just presumed that somebody was coming to visit. I didn’t think of it anymore until the second guy came in and I saw the silhouette of the first fellow. Then I knew it was U.S. mil that was coming in. I don’t know how many guys actually came into the room, but it was soon filled up, and it was soon obvious that I was being rescued.

“I don’t know what I said in English, but whatever I said I said it rather loudly evidently, because they said ‘Quiet!’ ”

The hostage’s aim was to quickly let the operators know who he was, but he understood their unease at the level of volume. “Sound carries so far, and they’d worked so hard to come down quietly across the mountain, and here I am shouting,” he said.

Nevertheless, “They knew who was who,” the engineer said. the SEALs quickly demonstrated that, aiming their silencer-equipped weapons to shoot and kill the kidnapper in the room before he could fire a round. The engineer said he heard the sounds of the operators shooting and killing a guard posted outside.

The SEALs turned to the now former hostage and told him they were there to take him back.

“I was in favor of that, 100 percent,” he said. “I was very surprised, very amazed and very happy.”

It was about 3 a.m. The operators and the newly liberated hostage began walking to the pick-up zone.

“Because of not having much exercise, I was doing OK, but I wasn’t doing good by their standards,” the engineer said.

“They saw a place that was wide enough to come down in with a helicopter and drop a cable down for me,” the engineer said.

But, the special operations officer said, bringing a Chinook to a hover at 8,000 feet at night in blackout conditions was “not an easy task” and was a testament to the aircrew’s skill.

the rescued hostage soon was safely back at the task force’s main base, where the task force gave him a thorough medical evaluation before turning him over to the U.S. Embassy.

Sunrise in Montana, cattle and yellow grass

from this blog of sunrises at a Montana ranch.

Scenes from a wedding II

Lately been to several weddings which were perfect and wonderful. This was one of them: ceremony beside a lake, perfect weather, beautiful bride and bridesmaids, fantabulous food - as you will find wherever you go in Louisiana. These people know how to eat.

One notable: you know you are in a red state when the altar is 45 feet from a WWII torpedo. A blue state bride would not allow a ceremony with a torpedo aimed squarely at the bridal party!

Photos from Lowe-McFarlane American Legion Post No. 14:

The torpedo in question.

Our view as the sun went down.

This is a photo of a Memorial Day ceremony. My cousin's wedding altar was to the right and just beyond the red and blue benches in this photo. I don't recall the benches. Maybe they were either removed, or obscured with flowers. Guests were seated beyond where the red and blue benches are in this photo, and closer to the water, with the altar between guests and the water.

A string ensemble set up on the bricks.



I believe the torpedo is a Mark 14:

Weight 3,280 lb
Length 20 ft 6 inches
Diameter 21 in
Effective range 4,500 yards at 46 knots
9,000 yards at 31 knots

Heh

Chris Matthews, amidst slamming Sarah Palin for being an ignoramus (under the disguise of asking a question), slips and calls Africa a country.

Sarah Palin local Alaska interview

Link

Sarah Palin reasons through each issue:
1) while asking herself "What is the right thing to do?", and
2) while being committed to having nothing to hide.

"Professional" politicians, at core, usually think this:
The electorate is stupid; we must lie to them for their own good.

Media consistently ask questions which are founded on false premises. It's difficult and wearying to constantly shoot down the stream of kamikaze false premise questions flying at you. The alternative is to play along with the false premise questions, i.e. to give couched and inauthentic answers which the devious media and the "stupid electorate" will accept.

Sarah Palin has, so far, refused to go down this path. Such is more difficult, yet also more respectful of the electorate. The benefit is Sarah can be relaxed and quick and easy in her answers. She only has to remember the truth. The risk is she will slip: she will respond to false premise questions in ways which can be spun as scandals.

Remembering postures and lies is Hillary Clinton's problem. It's hella-difficult for Hillary to fully recall her postures and lies. When responding in conversation, Hillary hesitates just enough for viewers to intuit that she is not open and genuine.

Sarah Palin doesn't hesitate. She bursts forth.

Maybe she doesn't have time to hesitate - chica has things to do! Trig needs changing; Piper's hamminess needs corralling; that natural gas pipeline needs shepherding.






Speaking of shepherding - please, Sarah - for the sake of all that is holy: please trim the bangs!

Sunrise in Montana, cattle on ridge

from this blog of sunrises at a Montana ranch.

Scene from a wedding

Hotel portico.

Vachel has bellman loading luggage onto a cart.

Aunt Jane: "Oh, let me get my luggage too! Hold the cart!"

AJ heads for parking lot. I go with her, grab up some of her luggage.

Cousin David emerges with three kids in tow, headed to Strawns. Maybe Jane and co. want to go eat with David and co? But, wait! Cellphone call(!) from Jane's granddaughter; and she sits in her truck for a couple of long minutes speaking with granddaughter, whilst: I hold her luggage, David and co. wait on meal decision, and Vachel and the bellman wait with a loaded luggage cart. She is, so far as I can tell, fully oblivious that 7 people are waiting on her in the here and now in Shreveport, LA.

Vachel and the bellman make a break for it. They are the only brains in the whole crowd.

Phone call ends. "[Granddaughter] is doing fine!"

Conservatism

by Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI):

1. Our liberty is from God not the government.
2. Our sovereignty rests in our souls not the soil.
3. Our security is through strength not surrender.
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector.
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative.

Read it all.

Renewal in the grass

from The Anchoress

More Shelby Steele: Obama Racial Redemption; Bargainers and Challengers; White Self-Defense

Shelby Steele, from Jan 2008:

BILL MOYERS: The subtitle of your book, why we are excited about Obama. Are you excited about Obama?

SHELBY STEELE: Yes. Yeah. Actually, I am. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Are you rooting for him?

SHELBY STEELE: I can't say that. You know, our politics are probably different. But I'm proud of him. And I'm happy to see him out there. He's already made an important contribution to American politics.

BILL MOYERS: But you go on to say why he can't win. Now, that would seem to suggest you don't think he can become President.

SHELBY STEELE: My gut feeling is that he's going to have a difficulty-- a difficult time doing that. The reason I think that we don't yet know him. We don't yet quite know. What his deep abiding convictions are. And he seems to have, you know, almost in a sense kept them concealed. And a part of the I think infatuation with Obama is because he's something of an invisible man. He's a kind of a projection screen. And you sort of see more your — the better side of yourself when you look at Obama than you see actually Barack Obama.

BILL MOYERS: You say in here that his supporters want him not to do something, but to be something.

SHELBY STEELE: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: To represent something. What do you think they want him to be?

SHELBY STEELE: I think to be very blunt about it, in a lot of that support is a desire for convergence of a black skin with the United States Presidency, with power on that level — the idea is that to have a black in that office leading a largely white country would be redemptive for America.

BILL MOYERS: Redemptive?

SHELBY STEELE: Redemptive. Would take us a long way. Would indicate that we truly have moved away from that shameful racist past that we had.

BILL MOYERS: That's perfectly logical isn't it?

SHELBY STEELE: Yes, it is.

BILL MOYERS: And desirable. You seem to--

SHELBY STEELE: I want it.

[...]

SHELBY STEELE: They have to. I think that the black community in general has been very conflicted about Barack Obama. Precisely because he's been so successful among whites. And that makes black people nervous.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. You say in here, white people like Barack Obama a little too much for the comfort of many blacks.

SHELBY STEELE: Yes. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

SHELBY STEELE: Well, the black American identity, certainly black American politics are grounded in what I call challenging. It's basically, they look at white America and say we're going to presume that you're a racist until you prove otherwise. The whole concept is you keep whites on the hook. You keep the leverage. You keep the pressure. Here's a guy who's what I call a bargainer who's giving whites the benefit of the doubt.

BILL MOYERS: Give me a simple definition of what you call a bargainer. And a simple definition of what you call a challenger.

SHELBY STEELE: A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to rub the shame of American history in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Whites then respond with enormous gratitude. And bargainers are usually extremely popular people. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier back in the Sixties and so forth. Because they give whites this benefit of the doubt. That you can be with these people and not feel that you're going to be charged with racism at any instant. And so they tend to be very successful, very popular.

Challengers on the other hand say, I presume that you, this institution, this society, is racist until it proves otherwise by giving me some concrete form of racial preference.

BILL MOYERS: Affirmative action.

SHELBY STEELE: Affirmative action. Diversity programs. Opportunities of one kind or another. And so, there is a much more concrete bargaining on the case of challengers. And you go into any American institution today and they're all used to dealing with challengers. They all have a whole system of things that they can give to challengers, who then will offer absolution.

BILL MOYERS: And what are the--

SHELBY STEELE: Then we'll say this institution is vetted now. It's not racist anymore.

BILL MOYERS: One of the worst things that can happen to you in this country is to be charged with being racially biased.

SHELBY STEELE: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Racial stigma.

SHELBY STEELE: You never get over it. On your obituary, it'll be the first line. And there's almost no redemption. The good side of that is it makes the point of how intense this society is in its desire to overcome racism and its past.

BILL MOYERS: Yes.

SHELBY STEELE: So it's a good thing on the other hand. On the other hand, the bad side of it is that it has become a form of cruelty. And all you're doing is terrifying whites. I wrote in the last book, WHITE GUILT. Whites live under now, we've underestimated the power of this. Whites live under now this threat of being stigmatized as race. Our institutions live under this threat of being stigmatized as racist and they're almost panicked over it. What makes me sad there is then whites look at what happened to Don Imus. And now, they're never going to tell me what they really feel.

Whites know never tell blacks what you really think and what you really feel because you risk being seen as a racist. And the result of that is that to a degree, we as blacks live in a bubble. Nobody tells us the truth. Nobody tells us what they would do if they were in our situation. Nobody really helps us. They use us. They buy their own innocence with us. But they never tell us the truth. And we need to be told the truth very often.

You know, America is a great society, a great country. Has all sorts-- the values have gotten us to this place where we are the world's greatest society in many ways. Well, those values, yes, we had a history of terrible racism. But those same values will work for blacks. They will help us join the mainstream, become a part of it. But whites can't say that because then they seem to be judgmental. They're seen as racist. And so, no one says it to us.

Teacher verbally abused 10 year old girl who favored McCain

and whose father is serving overseas in U.S. Military. Child abuse.

And this is how a school superintendent should respond. Bravo.

Speaking of American public education: this is good idea. Finally, some common sense.

Racism = rust and mosqitoes; life goes on

John McWhorter:

The question is whether the total eclipse of racism is either possible or necessary. It is neither....

The new frontier, however, is apparently people's individual psychologies: Not only must we not legislate racism or socially condone it, but no one is to even privately feel it.

The problem is we can't entirely reach people's feelings. The social proscription has changed a lot of minds, especially of younger people who never knew the old days. But an America where nobody harbors racist sentiment? The very notion goes against everything we know about human hardwiring: Distrust of the other is inherent to our cognition.
[...]
Do we mean overcoming bias so thoroughly that a test looking for what's "out there" would not still reveal it? It's a utopian pipe dream.

Now, if this racism of the scattered and subliminal varieties were the obstacle to achievement that Jim Crow and open bigotry were, then we would have a problem. But yesterday, we saw that this "out there" brand of racism cannot keep a black man out of the White House.

Might it not be time to allow that our obsession with how unschooled and usually aging folk feel in their hearts about black people has become a fetish? Sure, there are racists. There are also rust and mosquitoes, and there always will be. Life goes on.

Some persons perceive something to gain from hyping racism. They may gain power, or wealth, or satisfaction of victimhood, or status, or other things. These persons, no matter what, will not let white people off the hook. An example, from Shelby Steele:

[Jesse Jackson] could have taken up the mantle of the early Martin Luther King (he famously smeared himself with the great man's blood after King was shot), and argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead -- and tragically -- he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites "on the hook" the most sacred article of the post-'60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently -- that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality -- took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites.

White people, for our part, will not stop acting like damn fools.

Hunger will always be with us. We will never stop trying to lessen hunger.
Disease will always be with us. We will never stop trying to lessen disease.
Racism will always be with us. We will never stop trying to lessen racism.

It's just: a little perspective, please.

Everyone: stop acting like damn fools. The time has come.

More Shelby Steele:

Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.

This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life--absorbed as new history--so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems. Then, if we decide to go to war, it can be with enough ferocity to win.

LSU Tiger Stadium Atmosphere

A good article, about game atmosphere, by a good young sportswriter: Chad Conine.

The Tigers play #1 ranked Alabama today in Nick Saban's return to Baton Rouge. The stadium will be electric.

LSU fans do this cheer many times (maybe 50 times) during games: "Geaux, Tigers! Geaux, Tigers! Geaux, Tigers! LSU!" Video. A four yard gain pretty much breaks out the band and the cheer; or any completed pass; or any solid defensive play.

Sometimes, in place of the "LSU", fans in a section will chant "Kick their ass!" My then 11 year old nephew, sitting with me in a section of "Kick their ass" cheers, and so as to not say a bad word, once assured me he was cheering: "Kick their A!"

Note the stadium noise and atmosphere in this video. It's pregame. Kickoff is still 20 minutes away. Cheerleader dives begin at 2:30 mark.



More atmosphere. Pregame. At the 2:30 mark, the scoreboard video shows the Tigers coming out of their locker room and down the tunnel for their entrance.

LSU crowd response to Oct. 2007 announcement of USC defeat.