Ha! The GOP Has Made An Ad Taken Right From The Althouse Blog (And It's Just As Awful As She Can Be)

Ann's a blonde - but the condescending message is the same

I've always thought it weird, that I've been blogging the entire current presidency, and never needed an "Obama The Boyfriend" tag:

Why do rich white "feminists" keep talking and behaving as though THIS WOMAN doesn't need help first - or the white's concerns (they don't have real problems) need more immediate attention?

But, then, I'm also not a white female narcissist (It's all about you, White Ladies!) looking down upon black lives "on the D/L."

White women have been of little help to blacks since slavery

I'm starting to figure it's just a cranky-old-white-German-ladies-who-will-let-blacks-die-in-front-of-them-while-joking-about-it thing. AKA:

How many of these "happy" concentration camp killers made it to America?

The Nazi strain running through American politics.

Funny, but I don't think this is what Miles Davis had in mind

This is a cold fucking country - filled with cold-hearted people, trying to steal "cool" from blacks, as they take our lives. And the worst thing about it?

Friends to blacks don't sit on the sidelines

White people who could stop it - including Ann - STILL think it's normal for them to either stand by, kill us, or watch us die,...

How It Is: Martin & Malcolm Were Equals In Humanity

“We’ve domesticated him,” making him “palatable to our own image, our own dreams,” rather than responding to his call to address the “structural issues behind poverty.”

King’s posthumous transformation from man to superhero is “dangerous,”...because such moral leaders are not “giants,” but regular people “who stumbled and wandered and worried as they strove to make a better world.”

Minister Malcolm prepared us internally for the access that Dr. King fought for externally.

Malcolm demanded respect as a man at a time when it was rare for a person of color to receive any type of esteem. He refused to be condescended to and would countenance no disrespect from the left or right.

Interestingly, near the end of their time on earth, Malcolm X was becoming more like King -- and King was becoming more like Malcolm. For instance, Dr. King was very disillusioned at the time of his death over the depth and depravity of racism in the country and the slow pace of the political process for all underprivileged. Just before his assassination, he was planning strategies to advocate for the poor that were more provocative than anything we had ever seen from him.

Near the end of his life, Malcolm X realized that a great deal of the oppressive economic conditions cut across racial boundaries. He realized that many of the poor were used as pawns of a racist system that abused their ignorance for political and economic gains.

Both men should be remembered for their contribution to the struggle.

America Is The Land Of Plenty (Plus Shit We Don't Need)

There are reasons Americans want to put a boot in the ass, of a Frenchman, as soon as we meet:

"The French care about what really matters in life – being French. They care more about doing everything with enormous style than about what they do. They are convinced of their corporate and individual superiority over all others in the world. Their charm is that they don't despise the rest of us: they pity us for not being French."

Thanks, Frogs, but no thanks - haven't you heard? 

 We Americans have got Mormons for that,…

 

The Great Right-Wing Do Good Hero (Does It Again)

Punctuality mattered to Romney. Christie’s lateness bugged him. Mitt also cared about fitness and was prone to poke fun at those who didn’t. (“Oh, there’s your date for tonight,” he would say to male members of his traveling crew when they spied a chunky lady on the street.) Romney marveled at Christie’s girth, his difficulties in making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. Watching a video of Christie without his suit jacket on, Romney cackled to his aides, “Guys! Look at that!”

I Want Cable In Every Room For No Extra Money Down

"I tried listening to that speech but he lost me the minute he started talking about banking transactions."

- Mitchell the Bat, on Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech

Damn that "fake" culture of victimhood! It keeps sneaking up on reality right at the moment it's denied the hardest:

"Despite large and persistent gaps between blacks and whites on virtually every indicator of economic well-being, about half of all whites say the average black person is about as well off financially or doing better than the average white person, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center. 

The survey found that 53% of whites say that, on average, blacks are 'about as well off' financially as whites (43%) or say blacks are doing better (10%). 

But when you ask black Americans the same question, about six-in-ten blacks (59%) say, on average, blacks are worse off financially than whites. 

Among blacks, about a third (36%) say the average black person is doing better or about as well off as the average white person. 

So how does perception square with reality? 

On the eve of 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s historic 'I Have a Dream' speech, decades of government data finds that blacks have consistently lagged far behind whites on most indicators of economic well-being. If anything, the gaps on some key measures have grown over the years."

I consider the condescension, and shame, that's ladled out with all that - no matter how hard I work - to be just gravy,...

 

What Do You Get Crossing Althouse & Donald Trump?

Don't look at the face! Three tweets from Trump's Twitter feed:

"The Huffington Post is such a loser--it will die just as AOL is dying, What a stupid deal AOL made to buy it!"

"Lightweight reporter Alex Pareene @pareene is known as a total joke in political circles. Hence, he writes for Loser Salon."

"Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser."

O.K., I agree with that last one, but isn't there something kinda distasteful about the wealthy and rich calling others,...Oh never mind:

Tomorrow - What do you get crossing Althouse & Al Sharpton,...

 

Why The Republicans (Showing Off) Received Their Well-Deserved - And Self-Inflicted - Head Wound,...Pt. I

I promised not to laugh - and I won't - but a few words, now that these new political showboaters have stopped their cackling:

This was not a conservative loss. I'm a conservative and I stayed home. Mitt Romney is not a conservative. And many, if not all, of his supporters cannot claim to be conservatives either, because conservatives don't change with the wind - which is exactly what Romney's supporters did - I guess appropriately, considering the candidate. Still, to their eternal shame, I've watched, what I thought to be, staunch right-wing folks, sell out their every conviction for the chance to beat Obama (even hearing one former online ally/friend declaring himself a "whore" for Romney) and - simply put - no conservative would ever do that.

Conservatives know what we're about. We understand the difference between right and wrong, reality and fantasy, authentic and fake - and we stick to it. No temporary reframing can alter that. Only facts on the ground matter. And this is politics. Michelle Malkin calling Juan Williams a misogynist because Williams said Ann Romney's tale tales at the RNC sounded "phony"? It won't fly. Fact - Michelle Malkin will say any damned thing. Here's another such fact:

Mitt Romney was an awful candidate.

Everyone else will tip-toe around it, but TMR says the level of condescension that exudes from that man can only be measured in light years. He's weird.

And the fact so many were willing to overlook his weirdness is scary. Some conservatives. If Mitt Romney's your evidence America needs a dose of Mormonism, you're out of your fucking minds. On no drugs of any kind, the man was talking about "the perfect height" of trees. (Fuck whatever was wrong with him, what's wrong with you?) How did we go from that, and "Anybody But Mitt," to slobbering, desperate, petting in the backseat? I can't shake my head enough.

Another fact - Glenn Reynolds, Hot Air, Pajamas Media, Robert Stacey McCain, Ann Althouse, etc., were wrong and, even with most of their support, Mia Love lost, too - in Utah. It's a voodoo song.

And is this a good time to talk about R.A.P. - the Republican Affirmative-Action Program? I mean, I've heard Mia Love's stump speech live - in a more intimate setting - and I've met Mia Love and her husband. But I'm still wondering how and why her stratospheric rise is occurring. I've heard no brilliant ideas come out of her, no words of wisdom, or even much insight. Her career rivals Obama's, but with one major difference:

With the exception of Colin and Condy, Republicans keep bringing up individual black people the rest can't stand.

It's late for me - I'll be back:

"We carried you here to take care of Thomas, or to learn a trade when you're bigger - ain't no need for you to be reading, boy."

- a slave owner, from the film, Frederick Douglas: An American Life

[Emphasis mine,...]

 

Can SNL's Lame Contempt Get Any Thicker?

I knew there was a reason why I stopped watching this program, as well as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and all the other supposedly "funny" programs that have more interest in telling me how to think (Hint: liberal!) than making me laugh. This is just tired, especially because - even though I've only seen it a handful of times - I know FOX & Friends (which is a goofy, squeaky clean morning show like all the others) is absolutely nothing like this. This is a comedy (?) version for people who wouldn't be caught dead actually watching it, because they're too scared to do so, for fear conservatism (like black skin a few decades ago) might rub off on them.

Saturday Night Live ought to be ashamed. It's not just a bad portrayal but it's not funny.

And, in comedy, that's the greatest sin of all.

It's Pretty Bad When You Make A Video And The Most Arresting Thing In It is Some Girl's Back Zit

This is making the rounds in light of the White House's revelation that Obama prays before bed, reads the bible, and says dinner prayers with his family. (Big whoop - NewAgers do all kinds of things.) Anyway, while Ben Folds is obviously a fine piano player, this is "meh" as a song and gets even less from us for the visuals. It's all contrived bullshit, and there's no "there" there, so - even coming from an atheistic point of view - we could care less. What we pick up, mostly, is an air of condescension we can't endorse:

We actually like America, and it's people, stupid or not - so we don't and won't look down on them.

WWJD?

Oh SNAP! (Liberals Are Criticizing Each Other!)

So this is cute:

Jon Stewart schools Rachel Maddow on her long history of obnoxious behavior, and, since he's not on the Right - and he's a comedian - she actually listens to him. Compare that to this following clip with Chris I-will-talk-over-anybody Matthews, who, once he suspects his guest has accepted a Right-wing argument, gets even more snarky and stupid than he was already:



See? No acceptance, or even thoughtfulness, there - or from the girls in the insert from The View. Just the usual insults, and condescension, because they're liberals and they know better.

Even as we're kicking them to the curb.

Again.

As we usually do.

Repeatedly.

Over and over.

On a daily basis.

Hey - whatever works, y'all. Keep it up, keep it up, keep it up.

How Do Our Conspiracy Theories Begin?

First we're told to read stuff like this:

Today's most prominent New Thought teachers deliver their sermons from the couches of television talk shows rather than pulpits; their books are more likely to be shelved under "Business" and "Self-Help" in bookstores than in "Religion." Stephen Covey's highly effective business executives are direct descendants of the constitutionally "healthy-minded" Victorians that William James marveled at one hundred years ago.

Wayne Dyer's "Power of Intention," the ordained Unity minister Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles," Deepak Chopra's many books on quantum healing and spiritual affluence, Gary Zukav's recondite explorations of quantum physics and practical exercises for "soul empowerment," Jerry and Esther Hicks' "Ask and It is Given" (the channeled wisdom of a spiritual entity named Abraham who reveals how you can become "vibrationally aligned" with your desires), not to mention the tapes, infomercials, and packed lectures by the motivational guru Tony Robbins and the first "New Thought" film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" about the invisible organization of energy-all offer variations on ideas that were first proclaimed by Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, the Dressers, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Mary Baker Eddy more than a century ago.

Clearly New Thought spawned an effective practical psychology-millions of Americans recite daily affirmations to encourage their positivity while they struggle up the career ladder and through the vagaries of toxic relationships. 12-Step programs have empowered countless addicts to reclaim their lives; support groups help the chronically ill maintain hope and according to some studies actually improve their longevity. And innumerable informal groups gather together to learn how to access Universal Spirit in order to "manifest" more good in their lives.

Only to have it followed by stuff like this:

It has been said, rightly I think, that human desire always looks beyond present enjoyments to an absent good. The minute we find ourselves contented by something, we set out afresh on work in the pursuit of happiness. What then is to be made of the recent claim from architects that something as seemingly fleeting and elusive as happiness can be ‘designed in’?

Happiness is the latest Big Idea amongst policymakers and social scientists.  And given architects now justify design almost entirely in terms of delivering social policy, it was probably only a matter of time before attentions turned to shaping our feelings.

The popularity of designing happiness indicates the extent designers have returned to previously discredited ideas of environmental determinism. In recent decades we’ve become used to neighbourhoods designed to control criminal and anti social behaviour, ideas recently extended to include shaping how communities feel – for example safe and secure. Health and well-being are also seen as fair game. The popularity of the “nudge” approach of behavioural psychologists is evident in the “choice architecture” planners require in neighbourhoods to encourage the right – healthy – choice of foods.  Seen in this light, it’s a small step to using design to “optimise” emotions and improve happiness.

What’s striking about the happiness movement is their desperately low opinion of the public, who seem to figure as little more than passive objects in need of designers to pep up their positive thinking or shape their “wise living”.  Despite the claim of following in the tradition of the Enlightenment, it’s clear today’s happy clappy architects reject Enlightenment values of autonomy.

In the 18th century, the active pursuit of happiness represented part of a human awakening. The notable thing about today’s happiness brigade is their degraded view of humanity, for example seeing human society as prisoners of its biology. The RSA, (who ironically promote a “21st century Enlightenment”), argue that our “hunter gatherer” brains haven’t always adapted to abundance in modern society, a problem, they say, that retards our decision making capacity, and makes us obese, or lonely.  The evolutionary biologist Bjorn Grinde thinks we’re ‘stone age creatures living in a jet age zoo’.

So where does this leave designers? Given the interest in designing environmental cues to shape the happiness of those in the zoo, it‘s little surprise that the collaborations designers seem most excited about just now are with neuroscientists.  Yet for all the claims that this puts design on a scientific footing (and architects are never happier than when “evidencing” their design), what shines through is a miserable combination of the mystical and the authoritarian.

Not only have some architects become hostile to medical science (one favours designing hospitals as ‘architectural placebo effects’) but in line with environmentalist fads, discredited ideas of “nature therapy” have become popular. From parks as “natural health services” to the therapeutic value accorded to views of nature out of hospital windows, ideas are flourishing which have their roots in that dark historical period when homeopathy and hydrotherapy were closely aligned with biological notions of superiority.

So that's how we make these connections. Are they connected? Of course, they are.

As The Los Angeles Times said:

We respect the right of some people to hold nonsensical views like that.

Just not a whole hell of a lot:

Save Me (I'm Only Kidding: Save Yourselves) II

Seriously: Are These Two Women Talking?

I had to do a kind of audio double take when I heard this guy speak: did they dub the woman's voice for him? When I realized they hadn't, it reminded me of what's happening to men now - how they're feminized to the point where their voices don't even sound like men anymore. Disgusted, I just stopped listening after that.

I don't know what's happening to Americans anymore. I recently had a gagging fit while listening to a woman speak over the phone. She had this condescending way of talking, that made her sound like she was holding in air after each sentence and, with the phones receiver at my ear, it became so sickening to listen to that I almost couldn't keep my food down. I wondered, "doesn't she hear herself? Does she think that makes her sound attractive? Or superior?" I really couldn't tell. Needless to say, I made sure it wasn't a long phone call.

My take on all this: Americans are becoming more European by the day. Every time I went to Europe, I marveled at the outrageously bizarre facial structures I encountered, and the equally bizarre behavior. Men who wore sweaters around their necks like old women wearing shawls. Tons of gorgeous model types dating ogres who had tons of gorgeous "old money". Blatant racism. I was glad to know we were nothing like them - until now. Now, all the weakness, sickness, and depravity, I saw over there is here - in full force. We seem to be as irrational, and into cheating on each other (and - they go hand-in-hand - lying to each other) as much as the French. We've lost our sense of direction, and ourselves, like the Germans. Our country is in decline, like England. Why, if it wasn't for good ol' boys with shotguns in the back of their pick-ups, I'd think we might as well hang it up.

DJing a party in Europe one time, I witnessed the funniest thing: once I put on an Arab track, all the white women jumped up to do that weird belly dancing shit while the men just sat there, kind of demoralized by the spectacle of the phenomena. That's what I see becoming of male American liberals if they insist on going down this road we're on.

First, protected by the safe guards of this country, they're going to let women run shit. But then, once they and the liberal women destroy those safe guards all together, men who aren't feminized (Arabs, Chinese, etc.) are going to take over - and (you know) the women are going to leave the liberal American men sitting there, demoralized, because they weren't man enough to stick up for themselves. (If by chance they decide to, they'll be killed, because the rule of law as we know it won't be there.) And the liberal women, being pretty heartless and calculating (like those gorgeous European model types with the rich trolls) will laugh at them and go with whoever's strongest, whether we're talking power or money or some such. Shit, liberals are such collective pussies, I doubt even that scenario will play out because those liberal men will be defeated, and made into slaves, before any challenge is even possible. Really.

Nah, I'm just fucking with you: those American patriots with the pick-up trucks won't let that happen. As usual, they'll step up and die, protecting your punk asses - and the country - before things get that far. They always do. That's the reason why liberal men are able to sound like a bunch of mincing women today:

Because real American men have always existed, and are always more-than-ready to do whatever needs to be done, come what may.

Why, believe it or not, you're enjoying the pleasure of reading one right now.

Both Of Our Approaches Are Right - Except With Mine I'm Capable Of Crushing You Just Because

Marching Into Oblivion (Finding Nothing There)

"Liberals and, shamefully, liberal oriented media — most of them — made the mistake they keep making about Sarah Palin: because she didn’t go to Princeton she’s incapable of seeing or cutting to the heart of the matter so shrewdly. They had a chance to respond as [Joe Conason] did: put her on the spot by asking her exactly what she’d do about existing insurance company 'death panels.' Instead, they didn’t believe she was sophisticated enough (like them) to make the point she was making.

And then the facts began to leak out, as even the media began to read the bill and its implications and backtrack on its deeply flawed literal-to-the point of stupidity 'fact checks'– and people got legitimately outraged at being treated like Sarah Palin: too dumb to understand. When in fact they — the liberals and the media — were the ones whose knee jerk reactions were ignorant.

Of course the overreaction by genuinely ignorant right-wingers ('I don’t want the government to mess with my Medicare') and the thuggish, lynch mob behavior at town halls (boasting of shouting others’ down and other mob tactics, Hitler mustaches etc., rather than making rational arguments and respecting other citizens) including the terrorist tactic of bringing guns to town hall meetings, showed that the right could squander an advantage in legitimate debate by making an ugly spectacle of itself.

Nonetheless, when the history of the whole misbegotten health care reform effort is written, Sarah Palin has to be given credit for stopping it on a dime — and the snotty liberals who underestimated her should be held responsible."

-- Ron Rosenbaum, making a distinction between "Dumb and Dumber" - and finding the condescension of his fellow libs makes them the reeelly stupid ones - since exposing who's asleep-at-the-wheel is the job of Pajamas Media.