Doubleplusungoodthink

It’s a matter of obvious fact that our President gives a rousing speech. Ironically, President Bush was probably a better off-the-cuff speaker, but Mr. Obama, as he reads those carefully chosen words in that confident baritone voice off of the TOTUS, does make one FEEL reassured. That’s why a lot of Republicans and centrists who are now feeling huge buyers’ remorse for voting for the most liberal member of the Senate pulled the lever for him.

He’s a wordsmith. So, what are we to make of the recent changes in the American lexicon?

The late George Carlin had a comedy piece (which I could not find on YouTube) about euphemisms. It was about how “shell shock,” that powerful, evocative, two-syllable phrase eventually became parsed out of all meaning into “post-traumatic stress disorder,” an eight-syllable phrase, with a hyphen no less, but without the punch of the original.

The “Global War on Terror” was a weaselly phrase to begin with. Terror is a method, not an enemy. Many of us wanted it to be the Global War on Islamic Extremism. Still, the words themselves were clear. Global, war, terror–ask an 8-year-old what those words mean, and he or she can give you a valid answer.

Now, apparently the new phrase is “Overseas Contingency Operation.” We’ve gone from five or six syllables to 11. Has it gained us any meaning? Overseas, that’s a clear word. I wonder what we call it if terror strikes us, or Canada, or Mexico, though. Contingency, though. What does that mean in this context? Unpredictable? May or may not happen? Ask an 8-year-old what an overseas contingency operation is, and you’ll get a blank look. Still, forget the 8-year-olds–do any grow-ups know what this phrase is supposed to mean, or has all the meaning been parsed out of it? I’ll go on record–I know what the individual words “overseas,” “contingency,” and “operation” mean, but I have no clue what those words put together into a phrase are supposed to signify.

Still, it could be worse. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano now eschews the word “terrorism” for man-caused disasters. So, we should be grateful we’re not having Overseas Contingency Operations Against Man-Caused Disasters (that’s OCOAMCD for all of you home gamers).

We also apparently don’t have “enemy combatants” anymore, either. I don’t believe I’ve read where a new term has been invented for those guys yet. I’m just hoping it’s not “friends we haven’t met yet.” Again, “enemy combatant” was pretty weaselly, since they could have just as easily been called “unlawful combatants,” using the terms of the Geneva Conventions, which would have made it obvious that they were deserving of none of the protections of those accords. Still, what was truly problematic about the phrase–if they’re on the battlefield, shooting at you, is it not obvious on its face that they are enemies and combatants?

Carlin was a liberal. So was Stanley Kubrick, who included this bit of dialogue in “Full Metal Jacket”:

Lt. Lockhart: [reading] … we have a new directive from M.A.F. on this. In the future, in place of “search and destroy,” substitute the phrase “sweep and clear.” Got it?
Private Joker: Got it. Very catchy.

Carlin and Kubrick knew what Rush Limbaugh says: “Words mean things.” That’s nothing new. George Orwell knew it decades ago when he wrote 1984. Newspeak wasn’t just a language, it was a way to influence people’s minds and instill the party line. A language that grew smaller in vocabulary every year, it was designed to make a person not think.

It’s not just Obama, since I’m apparently a Coughlinite and an a$$hole according to some of my six readers for dissenting from him. It’s Congress. If the left had a problem with the PATRIOT Act, what is someone like me to make of:

• The Employee Free Choice Act, which takes away the secret ballot from workers?
• The Freedom of Choice Act, which mandates abortion be the law of the land, regardless of what individual states’ voters may think of it?
• The Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record Sale Act, designed to take 2nd Amendment rights away from law-abiding citizens and named after a youth murdered in Chicago in 2007. That’s Chicago, folks, where it was already illegal for Mr. Holt’s killer to own a handgun. Imagine that–the law not stopping a criminal from doing as he pleases.
• The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, which in part funds a study on whether “volunteerism” should be made mandatory

I like words. I’m not as good a writer as I’d like to be, but I try to be clear. I also like to know what a person means when they say something. This new language seems designed to obfuscate and deflect, to invert meaning in much the same way that “freedom is slavery” and “war is peace.”

Oh well, I guess we’ve always been at war contingency operations with Eastasia. I’m off for some Victory Gin.

“This is how they won, you know. Superior numbers.”–Captain Mal Reynolds

You have to give the Democrats credit–THIS is how they won. Young people, and ACORN, and any number of lefties actually going out there with missionary zeal and telling people about how The One has a wonderful plan for their lives. The Right couldn’t match that: due to a flawed primary system, we ended up with a candidate very few of us could get worked up about. Republicans were excited about Giuliani and Thompson, but they both ran the saddest and most pathetic of campaigns. I gave every dime I could, and I held my nose and voted for John McCain Sarah Palin, but only because I KNEW what 4 years of Socialist rule would do to this country. The Republicans didn’t bother to try to warn the people, and the left did the above–send shiny, happy, positive, well-scrubbed youth out to spread the good news.

Is it all a bunch of Alinskyite hogwash? Sure. Are many of The One’s youthful supporters going to put down the bong and go and ring doorbells every weekend over something as dull as a trillion-dollar budget? Probably not. But some will, and as the video points out, it’s not so much to get support for the budget as it is to populate that database with people who can be counted on to support Mr. Obama. It’s a creepy cult of personality, and it has a specific goal–get Obama re-elected in 2012. I have to hand it to the Community Organizer–he’s probably the most successful community organizer the world has ever known.

These are the people who will be doing the census next year–leftists who love to populate their databases. Should be a fun year. What could possibly go wrong?

Please, please, please let one of these naifs come visit the Gulch. I’d love to plumb the depths of their knowledge about the Obama Plan. I suspect it won’t take long.

Wow, that’s a lot of logo in that video. Take a drink each time you see the O. See you at the Betty Ford Center.

Mr. Obama To Give Commencement Address At The University Of Notre Dame

Sign the petition against Mr. Obama giving the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame

I graduated from Notre Dame. In order to attend, I had to go $20,000 in debt with student loans. I had scholarships that were contingent upon me making As in all of my classes. I had to hand write thank-you notes to my benefactors every semester. I spent 10 years paying off my debt. I worked two jobs during the summer, and one job every day after class. I did all that because, despite being poor, I wanted a world-class Catholic education.

While I was there, Billy Joel was still banned from having concerts on campus because one of his songs has the line “You Catholic girls start much too late.”

Now, less than 20 years later, Notre Dame has invited a man who has voted for unlimited abortion on demand and infanticide, a man who by executive order just gave federal funding for the harvesting of human embryos for parts, and a man who has said he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act if it is placed on his desk to speak to the class of 2009.

This is obscene. I knew, from receiving the alumni magazine, that the liberal rot was going deep (after all, scant years ago they invited Islamic terror apologist Tariq Ramadan to be a professor), but I never thought Notre Dame would sell its soul for so small a price. I feel sick that I sacrificed so much to attend a school that has so lost its way.

I hope the price was enough for them, for they are NEVER receiving another dime from me. If they are willing to invite the most pro-abortion President in American history to send off the class of 2009, they have betrayed the mission for which Father Sorin set up Our Lady’s University. Father Malloy and Father Hesburgh would never have done such a thing.

On a somewhat lighter note, the TOTUS gives us his perspective on Mr. Obama’s invite.

Sunday Evening Fun

(Image created by Mike Moody)

Did you know that Jack Bauer’s Man Purse has a blog?

So does The Teleprompter of the United States.

In Which The Environmentalists Want Us To Freeze To Death In The Dark

Feinstein: Don’t Spoil Our Deserts With Solar Panels

I love it when lefties come out against green energy, maybe because I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. Smells like…Democrats.

Senator Feinstein doesn’t want solar panels in the California desert because some tortoises may be inconvenienced.

Puts me in the mind of a film I recently saw. My dad loves Omnimax films; he has ever since I took him to see ‘Everest’. So, I took him to see “Colorado: River At Risk,” even though I knew in my heart it was going to be manmade global warming propaganda.

All I can say is, bring your headphones and listen to music while you watch the film, which is beautiful if you ignore the propaganda. Film is narrated by Robert Redford, but he actually speaks very little. Most of it is about anthropologist Wade Davis (author of “Serpent and the Rainbow,” which became a pretty cool horror flick in the 80s) and his hot, privileged daughter whitewater rafting down the Colorado with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (!) and his hot, privileged daughter. (When Bobby Kennedy Jr. got into the raft, I turned to dad and said “Hey, look, another Kennedy who’s good in the water!” My elderly dad, another evil right-winger, LOLled.)

Anyway, much railing against the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams and the wicked ways of Las Vegas ensued. At the end of the film, the hot, privileged daughters told us how to save the earth through low-flow toilets, expensive irrigation methods, planting cactus in our front yards, and proper car-washing techniques.

Here’s the thing, though. Bobby Kennedy Jr. railed against putting a wind farm out in the Atlantic Ocean because it would destroy the view from his family’s multi-million dollar compound.

So let’s work our way through various energy methods and see which ones the watemelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) approve of:

• Foreign oil? Nope
• Domestic oil? Oh, hell to the no
• Natural gas? No
• Coal? Please
• Nuclear? Argggh, scary atoms!
• Wind? Turbines ruin the Kennedys’ view and kill birds, so no
• Solar? Inconveniences tortoises in the desert, so no
• Hydropower? No, dams are evil
• Wood-burning? You know that kills trees, poor innocent trees, right?

And so we get to the point. Liberals don’t care about saving the earth. Just as they long to enforce a climate stasis on the earth that the planet has NEVER known, so too are they opposed to ANY form of energy use…by the United States. If they truly cared about the environment, they’d put pressure on the greatest polluters in the world–China, India, and Russia–rather than constantly tying the hands of Americans. Literally NO form of energy is agreeable to them. We can’t put solar panels where the sun shines most, and we can’t put wind turbines where the wind blows most. They’d be happier if we froze to death in the dark–would solve over-population and keep the view nice for privileged liberals.

Another point: California is going down the tubes financially while it sits on at least $50 BILLION of oil that it refuses to drill. My give-a-damn is broken for California until it chooses to solve its own problems. If you’re broke while the second most valuable commodity in the world after gold literally wells up through the ground in Los Angeles, that’s your problem.

What Did You Do Today To Prepare?

I haven’t posted an update in a few weeks, so here goes:

• Continued working out an hour a day, every day
• For the past two weekends, hiked 8-mile-long trails
• Re-packed the “go” bag after the most recent backpacking trip
• Renewed my fishing license and trout permit

I feel bad about my monetary preparedness. I have no credit card debt. After eight more payments, the car will be paid for. I have a savings account, a small emergency fund, and some silver. I’m not falling behind, but I’m not getting ahead, either. I _really_ wanted to buy some silver on this pay check, especially after hearing that the Fed has decided to monetize the debt to the tune of 1 trillion dollars, which, despite what Jim Cramer said today, is pretty alarming news. However, I had my 6-month car insurance to pay, and I didn’t want to dip into the ready cash. Maybe next paycheck–with luck silver prices may have dipped again by then. It just feels like time is running out and the incompetents in charge are making things worse and worse. I must do better on improving my financial cushion–the crippling tax increases are coming.

One thing that may help that is my garden. Started work on my community garden plots today. They’re organic, and I only use heirloom seeds (I wonder what the First Lady would think if she knew an evil right-winger like myself had been organically gardening for years, while she and her workforce of grade school students just started). Heirloom seeds are open-pollinated, which means you can save the seeds and re-plant in later seasons. You can’t do that with hybrid seeds. I recommend Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

I’ll double-dig the beds and get the peas in tomorrow. Need to get the tomatoes and peppers started under the grow light. What’s in the garden this year? Glad you asked:

• Cosmic purple carrots
• White carrots
• Laxton’s Progress peas
• Henderson’s “Crimson Cushion” red tomatoes
• Thai yellow egg eggplants
• Echinacea
• Chinese red noodle beans
• Black Beauty zucchini
• Mini bell peppers
• Devil’s ears lettuce
• Rattlesnake pole beans

And the Democrats can feel free to keep their intrusive mitts out of my food production facility.

The Obligatory Barack Obama Special Olympics Post

Wow. It’s a good thing we elected a smart, urbane sophisticate like Barack Obama to be President, rather than this Alaskan hillbilly to be Vice President, right?

This one hits close to home. My brother is mentally retarded. Still, he knows some things–he knows that he has to balance his checkbook, that he can’t spend money he doesn’t have. He works for a living. And he can bowl a hell of a lot better than 129. The President really has very little call to be condescending toward Special Olympians.

Still, there’s no point in getting too upset about this. It’s not the first crass, tone deaf, and stupid thing Mr. Obama has said, and it certainly won’t be the last. After all, he’s tired. He’s been working so hard hiring people for the Treasury Department making his Final Four picks and appearing on comedy programs. It tires a person out–which is why he’s going to Camp David for the weekend.

Instead, make something good come out of it. Donate to the Special Olympics.

Popcorn Said F*** You

I don’t approve of suicide, but I also don’t approve of a system that drives a man to it who committed the apparently terrible crime of moonshining. The man was an artist with his liquor. God forbid that a person keep a centuries-old tradition alive.

I do give him credit for having one of the world’s truly great headstones.

And I hope the phrase “Popcorn Said F*** You” becomes as common a rallying cry as “Who Is John Galt?” at the rapidly spreading tea party protests.

Rest in peace, Mr. Sutton.

In Which Mr. Obama Compels Me To Initiate Force Against The Innocent

A couple of days ago, Mr. Obama, by executive order, dramatically increased government funding for embryonic stem cell research. What that means is that your and my tax dollars are now going to be used to open up new “lines” of embryos to be created, grown, destroyed, and then harvested for cells for others.

Before this executive order there had not been a ban on embryonic stem cell research. Private concerns could do as much as they’d like. President Bush provided federal funding for embryonic stem cell research on a few lines of embryos already created and destroyed. And, indeed, there had already been federal funding for forms of stem cell research with no ethical issues attached to them and with proven results–adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells, etc.

Part of my philosophy as an Objectivist is to never initiate force against another. I’m not a pacifist, not by a long shot, but I will never willingly be the aggressor. By this executive order, Mr. Obama is forcing me at the government’s gunpoint to become the aggressor against the most defenseless of human life, to pony up money for these lives to be used for spare parts.

He’s doing it for three reasons:

1. Government subsidizes failure. Just as the wasteful, polluting ethanol industry would go broke if it had to actually compete in the marketplace rather than be propped up with subsidies and mandates, so too with embryonic stem cell research. If it were the miracle cure so many say, businesses would be pumping billions into it. I’d still find it immoral, but I wouldn’t be compelled by force to participate in it. Embryonic stem cell research couldn’t get enough private donors, so now it is being subsidized and mandated by the government.

2. Mr. Obama has an abiding contempt for the most defenseless among us. He has swung far past the “pro-choice” area that many people of good will reside in to supporting the most ghoulish and extreme procedures, including partial-birth abortion. He voted against the Infants Born Alive Protection Act, which stated that if a baby survived an abortion, it should receive medical care. Mr. Obama voted that such babies be denied treatment and left to die. Soon enough, he will pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which again would compel people to take part in the initiation of force against the innocent. When that happens, Catholic and other religious hospitals will either resort to civil disobedience or shut down. Whatever path they choose, I will support them with my whole being.

3. Progressives always start with idealism and move toward eugenics. Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells–all great progressives, all in favor of using “science” to advance the human race through eugenics. Given the history of the previous century, pardon me if I don’t jump for joy when we, by executive order, remove inalienable constitutional protections from some human life in order to harvest them for parts.

It’s all quite depressing, and sickening, and disheartening. Change! we can believe in, indeed.

I Can Say, Without Hyperbole, That This YouTube Clip Is The Sole Reason The Internet Was Invented

Well, maybe just a little hyperbole, but it’s still the most awesome thing I’ve seen in a while:

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn