Hard to say

No telling what this means, if anything of significance or merely a(nother) flash in the pan, but it is a reminder that -- no matter how attractive it may sound sometimes -- we really don't want to nuke Iran.

Sorry, Mom.

My mom and I disagree, passionately but most often politely, about almost everything in politics. Sometimes I come around to her way of thinking on some topic after a couple of decades, and this weekend she came around for the first time ever to my hawkish take on what we might call "the Arab problem". I am tired of their 'hurt feelings' and very, very, very tired of the consequences of their acting on blind hatred of Jews and of anyone, anywhere who doesn't hate Jews just as much as they do. Just because your leaders manipulate you doesn't mean you have to stay ignorant, certainly not in this modrun whirled -- as the students above amply demonstrate.

Ob.Sig:
--
"Up to a point, a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today; that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds."

Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

House of Mirrors

Sometime way back, it seems to me that I heard an explanation of the difference between psychosis and neurosis -- Neurotics blame every problem that arises on themselves, while psychotics blame all of their problems on everyone except themselves.

I think we know which brand of nutjob certain Persons of Heads of Rag are, but it's always pleasant to have a diagnosis so compellingly confirmed. Why, exactly, is it that they hate the Joos? What drives their self-destructive behavior?

It’s because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego.

Hm. As Denis Leary likes to say: "Life is hard. Get a helmet."

h/t the inimitable Tim Blair

Confusion

Wow, this is one big mess. First of all, google is getting to be worse than Micro$lothtard. I don't want my entire life linked around google/gmail/gwhatever muckety-muck. It's fine with me if all you companies buy each other and brand everything to absolute death and so forth, but stop screwing with my account IDs and so forth. Just stop it. Now.

Freaks.

Let's rev this baby back up

Give 'em an inch, and...

A British-listed mining company, the first to invest in bankrupt Zimbabwe since the political crisis began, was ordered off its valuable diamond claim yesterday.

... a.k.a., the usual.

Most hilarious comment: "I don't believe Zimbabwe would allow illegal seizure of claims without due process." I hope Andrew Cranswick's a comedian, because he sure has no business being the CEO of African Consolidated Resources plc. Must be a misprint.

Interpretation

I was looking here, and as usual had serious qualms not only about the validity (are we measuring what we intend to measure?) but the interpretations.

Most serious, however, are the validity concerns. I will be absolutely frank and say that if I were asked, "3. Generally speaking, in your opinion is the United States headed pretty much in the right direction these days or is it headed off on the wrong track?, I would say right track, without equivocation. In reality, in my heart of hearts, I have serious misgivings about the idiocies and vacant wank fodder swirling through the countrysides -- or universities, pseudoprofessional classes, and city-sides, to be more accurate. There's no rule that the Supreme Court must be "balanced" and that Sandra Day O'Connor should be replaced by a swing voter (not to be confused with swing dancers). There's no incontrovertible imperative that US tax dollars have to be handed over to a bunch of terrorists just because they won an election, and the fact that the guys before were pretty much terrorists too doesn't make it binding precedent for the next gang of sociopaths. "Pretty much" may be a nod and a wink from "really", but it's still a far cry from "hysterical commitment to violent annihilation of a neighboring country". People who believe in God are not lunatics, not even if they have faith in a loving God in the face of hatemongering nutbar humankind -- or even merely crippling incompetence, obliviousness, and profoundly self-centered insincerity -- all around us.

But I digress. Let's imagine for a moment that I answer the poll honestly, and 50 percent of the respondents agree exactly with my take on the subject, and also answer honestly. We have serious concerns about the shrieking asshattitude that's seemingly taken Very Seriously in Serious Institutions such as Papers of Record, Halls of Decision-Making, and Ivied Towers of Higher Learning, for instance, although the examples above are a trivial listing.

That response will be interpreted as a resounding rejection of everything Bush is doing, has done, or ever will do. Doubt me? Read the commentary at the link. It's all about what's negative versus favorable for Bush, despite the fact that only one question mentions the man, complete with "scare quotes" for anything that can be mocked for having a possibly slightly positive connotation. They congratulate themselves on bending over backward not to be partisan by saying

Our "wrong track" direction of the country numbers are much more favorable to the Bush administration viewpoint than those of other polling firms.

By "favorable" they mean fewer respondents claim the country's on the wrong track. Polls from the other side of course do the same thing.

So, politically astute respondents will not respond honestly to that question, or most others. They will, if things are going really well all around them and as far as they can see or imagine in the great wide world, say "wrong track" if they hate Chimpretzler McHitlerburton, and vice versa as I have indicated above.

Methodologically speaking, in a self-aware world, any potential for validity in broadly generalized impression questions is terminally gutted where interpretation demonstrates bias in data use.

Back

Well, why not? Too many passwords and too much discombobulation. We'll see if some continuity can be created.

Prudence and Frugality

Now that I have a good job (knock on wood) with an excellent salary, and my mortgage paid off, I seem to have more money concerns than ever. Stuff that hangs over my head and I never seem to get done. Consolidating a jumble of accounts scattered everywhere. Figuring out the stock market. Getting my insurance straight. Fixing up the house. Getting payments that the payee lost put back on the record somehow when the bank can't dig up the check from six years ago.

And just plain worrying about the future.

This stuff never seems to get any easier. Maybe it's just me.

Durbin the Aider and Comforter

Senator Durbin:

I am writing to express my outrage and disgust with respect to your comments on the Senate floor about our military.

I have been to S-21, personally. If you do not know what I am talking about, you certainly do not have any business comparing our military to Pol Pot's regime. I have pictures I cannot bear to review. I have seen instruments of torture. They do not consist of a few hours or even days of discomfort. They maim, disfigure, and terrorize for life -- although only 7 people survived Tuol Sleng. If you think that is even remotely comparable to, much less the equivalent of, wet trousers or no air-conditioning, then you have a serious disconnect from all proportion and any reasonable capacity to evaluate inhuman indecency.

I have read the reports of our military's behavior. To compare the well-considered tough decisions of our men and women in service and in leadership positions, and even their mistakes and errors in judgment, to the amoral behavior of sadists like the people who implemented terror in Cambodia is an ignorant and wicked distortion, and the fact that you have made it from a position of authority -- ignoring the benefits, aid, and comfort you bring thereby to people who already think chopping off random civilians' heads is just fine and dandy -- truly sickens me.

Whoever runs against you in your next campaign will receive my donation dollars.

Sincerely,

ObPileOn

Me, not the link, which goes to (one of) the original speculator(s) as to the peanuttiness of last year's Dim Dem candidate for the Presidency.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

"My point wasn’t that Kerry’s performance at Yale proved that he was intellectually inferior to Bush. My point was that there was absolutely no reason to believe that Kerry was an intellectual giant. Intellectual giants leave footprints indicating as much. Bill Clinton, for instance, didn’t receive four D’s during his freshman year at Georgetown and this was in spite of coming from Nowhere, Arkansas, where[as] Kerry had attended a series of the country’s (and Switzerland’s) finest prep schools."

(my emphasis)

You know, there is something about this that is just so despicable that I can hardly stand it. It's not the grades, obviously, although to be perfectly frank, as someone who never had any trouble in any school or any class on any subject if I may be so immodest -- despite, like Prez #42, growing up in the benighted South -- I will admit to feeling some contempt for four frickin' Ds in a year (semester?). But the constant deception and dismissal of skeptics while skating and embellishing a reputation he knows he doesn't deserve ... and if he didn't personally & publicly pontificate on his own mental prowess compared to M. George, he certainly did with interviewers in private and never discounted the "nuanced" assertions of others ... it's almost pathological.

As much as I never liked anything about TeRAYza, she never seemed to lack brains -- lack of sense, yes, but not fundamental brainpower. I wonder if she's content with the bargain she's ended up with, now. I'd hate to be a servant in that house.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a rich and powerful person who wants a boytoy around, but a pretentious, inept, and mildly cursed Lurch of a boytoy? Not exactly the deal of the day.

Zowie!

James writes the best stuff:

"But if an infidel touches the book with the wrong hand and people react like a two-year-old whose peas are touching the mashed potatoes, well, I understand why this matters, but when measured against the sins of headchoppery and carbombs, it pales to an evanescent translucence."