Speaking of dumbasses…

Anybody with any familiarity with nicotine addiction knows that it is a beast to kick. (See also Mark Twain’s quip about the ease of swearing it off.)

I have smoked for about 40 years, with the exception of the year when I was deeply in love and quit because my then-girlfriend hated it. I was motivated as I probably will never be again.

It took me about 15 minutes from the time she finally left after three years to resume the habit.

I spent about five years trying to fill the hole that she left, and that in all honesty had existed long before, before I imagined that I might stop the self-destructive cycle.

But in the end, no amount of public self-humiliation that results from relapsing is sufficient to kill the drive to fill that hole.

So it goes. Nicotine wins, I lose.

The kindness of strangers and virtual friends has been an awesome gift. My weakness is mine to own.

If you have someone in your life who has thrown sanity aside and made the choice to become a slave to tobacco, slap that cigarette out of their hand and call them out for the suicidal dumbass that they are choosing to be.

Dumbass indeed.

Warren Zevon parody: “My Second Term”

To the tune of “Vera Cruz”:

(original audio here)

I heard Eric Holder’s guns
I heard Malia crying
Late last night I heard the news
My second term was dying
My second term was dying

Someone called Jerimiah’s name
I swear it was my father’s voice
Saying goddamn America is such a pain
You must leave now, you have no choice

Take the honorariums and ride west
To your Tony Rezko nest
When the SEIU thugs withdraw
Let Mitt Romney take the rest

I heard Eric Holder’s guns
I heard Malia crying
Late last night I heard the news
My second term was dying
And the DNC is falling

(need Spanish translation for the next part)
On that day I swore
To the Oval Office I will return
Even though I got my clock cleaned
In the White House I shall die
On that day I swore

I heard Eric Holder’s guns
I heard them in the polls
My second term is dying

FORWARD II

FORWARD

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Twitter Thread

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 1 – The people that you hate worse than cancer b/c they call you on your Marxism are called “haters.” #UAWOW

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 2 – Liberally (no pun) apply “racist” label when addressing conservatives. Especially black conservatives.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 3 – When government screws up markets, argue that it proves that only government can save markets. Loudly.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 4 – Indies are like skittish colts–avoid quoting Marx directly. Go for Van Jones, or Tom Friedman.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 5 – If you are a womanses, talk about your vagina. A *lot*.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 6 – Disruption, not clarity, is the goal. Don’t get sucked into bourgeois “logic.”

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 7 – Lie. You’re a Leftist. Get with the program.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 8 – Truth is an abstract, patriarchal, absolutist, racist, bourgeois construct. Clarity is creepy.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 9 – The world owes you. And it’s gonna pay. But you’ll say it’s for The Oppressed. For power.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 10 – Your life is [messed] up because Republicans stole your bliss. #Imagine no Republicans.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 11 – Saul Alinksy. Pop quiz at tomorrow’s SEIU stealth Occupy tactics collective townhall.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 12 – Talk about the Constitution like you give two [expletives].

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 13 – Fairness: achievement is inherently suspect, failure is inherently noble. #EatTheRich #LosersRule

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 14 – Cops are oppressors, cop-killers are revolutionaries.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 15 – Avoid real economists, and numbers in general–except cervical cancer deaths that GOP will cause.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 16 – Citing crime stats by race is inherently a hate crime by its mere utterance. SCREAM RACIST! No, LOUDER!

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 17 – So-called Black Conservatives aren’t really black. Who better to make that judgment than white Lefties?

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 18 – Comedy and political demagoguery depend on specificity. If you go anecdotal, make [stuff] up. Get specific.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 18 – Attack. Don’t wait for facts on the ground to be known. Attack. Yo mama attack. Try to keep up.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 19 – Breeders are evil. Don’t be a breeder. You’ll obsess on your family and neglect The Struggle. #ecocrime

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 20 – We need more of the stuff that screwed us up in the first place. #DoubleDown: It’s not just Vegas now.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 21 – Al Sharpton is a Black Leader. Not sellouts like Sowell Williams Elder et al.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 22 – When white conservatives are fans of black conservatives, that’s racist. Never forget it.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 23 – Conflate illegal immigration with immigration generally, and blast conservatives as anti-immigrant.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 24 – Conservatives are stoopid. Like, screwing farm animals stoopid. Heh heh heh. (Now you try it.)

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 25 – It’s all Bush’s fault. And Evangelicals. Since they ran Congress and shiz. Say it, and it will be true.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 26 – Repubics are stupid. And racist. And greedy. They hate women children gays puppies and fuzzy bunnies.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 27 – Sarah Palin is a dumb c___ nutroots bloggers would like to grudgef___. Joe Biden is, well, Joe Biden.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 28 – Blame conservatives for gridlock when they balk at your Fundamental Transformation of America.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 29 – SCOTUS slaps down Dem overreach? No worries: Executive Orders in the queue.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 30 – Bank Of .Gov is the same as Bank of Mom. B____ is holding back.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 31 – A theoretical study of how the world works means so much more than all the experience of the ages.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 32 – We are hip, we are droll, we are flip, we are something something. Unlike repubics with farm animals.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 33 – You did read a chapter of Sartre once. You feel SO much. Unlike knuckledragger flyover mouth-breathers.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 34 – Conservatives lie awake at night, scheming and thinking up ways to screw poor people. Many are Jews.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 35 – Change the subject. Personal attacks. Anecdotal nonsense. #TwoMinutesHate

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 36 – Take all your God-given intelligence, and submit it to your collective’s Purity Council’s will.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 37 – Left to their own devices, people will live their lives in ways you would not. That’s gotta stop.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 38 – History starts with you. Your musings, no matter how banal, are brilliant. Your progenitors are ‘tards.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 39 – Burn down a Starbucks; use your iPhone to upload a photo to Twitpic of you hurling a Molotov cocktail.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 40 – All conservatives are repressed homosexuals. Except for the gay cons, who are self-hating homosexuals.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 41 – Think of a normal adult and take away reason and accountability. And basic cultural literacy.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 42 – If you can’t dazzle ‘em with logical brilliance, bloviate about “investments” and “fairness.”

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 43 – Never diss Richard Petty. Trust me.

#LearnToSpeakLeftist™ – Lesson 44 – White House transcripts. A primer. Goodnight.

An Honest Discussion of Race

In 2009, Eric Holder opined thusly:

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.

Notwithstanding the Attorney General’s comments, the problem is not so much that we are cowards on the topic of race, but that the Left/MSM pounds down any discussion of race that does not fit their narrative of racial minorities in general, and blacks in particular, as a permanent victim class. And that self-fulfilling cowardice is nowhere more evident than in discussions of interracial crime.

In 2011, Dr. Walter E. Williams wrote:

Born in 1936, I’ve lived through some of our openly racist history, which has included racist insults, beatings and lynchings…I recall my cousins and my being chased out of Fishtown and Grays Ferry, two predominantly Irish Philadelphia neighborhoods, in the 1940s, not stopping until we reached a predominantly black North or South Philly neighborhood.

Today all that has changed. Most racist assaults are committed by blacks. What’s worse is there’re blacks, still alive, who lived through the times of lynching, Jim Crow laws and open racism who remain silent in the face of it.

In the same article, he went on to say:

In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern recently said that the paper’s reason for censorship was to “guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.”

These racist attacks can, at least in part, be attributed to the black elite, who have a vested interest in racial paranoia. And that includes a president who has spent years aligned with people who have promoted racial grievance and polarization and appointed an attorney general who’s accused us of being “a nation of cowards” on matters of race and has refused to prosecute black thugs who gathered at a Philadelphia voting site in blatant violation of federal voter intimidation laws. Tragically, black youngsters — who are seething with resentments, refusing to accept educational and other opportunities unknown to blacks yesteryear — will turn out to be the larger victims in the long run.

Black silence in the face of black racism has to be one of the biggest betrayals of the civil rights struggle that included black and white Americans.

Indeed.

So this is the end result of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream? White “liberal” cowardice making common cause with black race-hustling elites?

What a horrible waste.

If Trayvon Martin is “a martyr,” as Jesse Jackson put it, one might wonder whether he is a martyr to the lies we allow the Left/MSM to tell us about violent crime and race.

And the game continues.

Mr. Holder had a point. Just not the one he thought he made.

——-

See also:
Media Conceal True Nature of “Flash Mob” Racial Violence
Political Rope-A-Dope

In Re the Recent Obama/Santorum Rasmussen Poll

Rasmussen has a provocative poll out showing Santorum leading Obama:

In a potential Election 2012 matchup, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is at 45% while President Obama earns 44%. This is the first time in any poll that Santorum has led the president.

I posted these comments over on Facebook:

If I thought that poll represented something real that we could carry to November (basically the same margin of ACORN as exists with Romney versus Obama), I would spend the next couple of months giving a lot of money (for me) to the Santorum campaign, and working for him non-stop.

So basically this poll represents a potential for an exercise in massive confirmation bias if I’m not careful and honest with myself.

Rasmussen has the most cred and the best methodology around, hands down, but this poll is an outlier. There is nothing out there (that I’m aware of anyway) that even roughly correlates to these kind of numbers for Santorum.

Why now, and why this poll? No idea. But it’s not a conservative groundswell. Or else why would Santorum still be doing so poorly in the primary.

I Want To Believe. I want to seize on this poll with all the deluded, insane enthusiasm and conviction of an L Ron Paul acolyte “educating” the “brainwashed” RINOs like me that Ron Paul can win the White House. (I am not comparing Paul and Santorum, I am pointing out the delusional mindset that it would take to go this route.)

The single basic fact of political existence that seems to somehow escape many conservatives is that this is now a 50/50, Blue/Red, Liberal/Conservative, Taker/Payer nation. That’s why we have, and will continue to have, a Romney as the front runner.

Reagan Democrats are a fond memory of a bygone era. (I cringe mightily when Santorum uses that term.) The non-Romneys do well in open primaries, not because they are conservative, but because Romney is within the margin of ACORN and nobody else is, or is likely to be. Nothing of any consequence (organizationally, money-wise, etc.) points to a future where Mitt is not the nominee, notwithstanding his stadium-sized defects.

And as y’all will get sick to death of me saying by the time November rolls around, we should concentrate on getting Republicans with a spine into the Senate (and House). Romney will only set the tone if Congress plays nice; but I want a Congress that keeps the President in his Constitutionally assigned place, and doesn’t play nice. I don’t want grand plans to make the trains run on time.

Your Flaming Dumbass Headline of the Week

The Chicago Tribune presents us with yet another example of why the Obama-snorkeling so-called “Mainstream Media” is dying the death it so richly deserves:

Gingrich points to ‘radical’ Alinsky in criticizing Obama

Observers defend Chicago native known as father of community organizing

Obviously Gingrich is the radical here, for unfairly referring to Alinsky as a radical. Am I getting this right?

You can almost see the “air quotes” in the headline. Like, duh! Repubics are stoopid LOL!

This is also yet another reason why I have neglected this blog of late.

Oh sure, I could use up what time and energy I have left at the end of a work day by pulling this apart, linking to source material that would demonstrate, not just assert, how radical Saul Alinsky was.

But I won’t.

I’m sure many “observers” can be found by hack bird cage liner rags gone digital that would dispute that Trotsky was a radical. “Some say” that Che was their fantasy friend-with-benefits. And, of course, we can always produce a hitherto unseen photo of Mitt’s dad and Saul “We Are Legion” Alinsky yucking it up in the 60s, which conveniently provides that counter-narrative to the Paranoid Right’s characterization of Saul of Chicago, “radical” in the eyes of the Paranoid Right.

I don’t have the mental, philosophical, or narrative energy anymore to try to explain to people how I concluded, a long time ago, based on abundant material and empirical evidence, that Alinsky, author of Rules For Radicals, was in fact what the title of the book seemed to imply: “radical.”

When the Chicago Tribune (and they’re not the only ones jumping on this Meme Wagon of the Week by any stretch) sounds like Pravda, it’s no longer funny.

We are in for a long campaign wherein the “radical” Mr. President Obama sir please and thank you (don’t want to piss Debbie Wasserman Schultz off, gotta be careful) tells us over and over how radical and hate-filled we are, and how reasonable and dulcet-toned and goodhearted they are. But I didn’t think they’d lead off with putting “radical” in quotes when talking about the author of Rules for Radicals.

Ye who enter here, abandon all hope. It’s no longer a matter of refuting their lies one by one, it’s a matter of convincing the low-info middle indies, steeped in knee-jerk Leftism as their public education and cultural birthright, that…

Every single word the Left utters from here on out will be an utter lie.

Every.

Single.

Word.

Ponder This Ron Paul Quote

“So if we have an American citizen [Bradley Manning], and he’s willing to take it, uh, take the consequences and practice civil disobedience, say ‘This is what our government’s doing!’ Should he be locked up and in prison? Or should we, you know, see him as a political hero? Maybe he is a true patriot who reveals what’s going on in government.”

Stop calling Ron Paul a conservative. It is a lie.

Why I Love Twitter

I tweet: “Property rights are a prerequisite to human rights. The latter cannot exist without the former.”

Guy with 24 followers responds: “What a load of crap.”

Awesome.

(graphic by @mlwebb)