Proof that Communism is dumb

The Israeli Water Guy has picture after picture of Maria Sharapova. He seems to have an interest in, if not obsession for La Femme Russe. Like Cromwell, "I meddle with no man's conscience,"* so that is not my business.

My interest in all this is how it proves the silliness of Marxism. When I was in elementary school there was a series of geography books through the grades. The one with a section on the Soviet Union had pictures of women laborers. None of them would be on a Paris runway, though they might have replaced a few NFL linebackers.

Nowadays, it seems like all the Russian women we see can't take a bad picture. What I deduce from this is communism produces ugly women or the Russians have better cameras under capitalism.

Or does communism produce bad cameras and capitalism, beautiful women?

*Unlike Cromwell, I don't slaughter the wrongly conscienced.

Note; If you share your man's interest, you have to scroll down and through old pages for the whole series of pics. He is not uninteresting in his other posts, though his neoconnish tendencies are apparent.

Message to you dreamers, wake up!

When I was a stripling, the adoration of "charisma" was starting to be a big thing. People would gush about how someone had it. Bobby Kennedy was thought to be a big charisma guy. Things he said would be taken as some holy writ not due to any inherent value, but because the cool guy said it.

One of his oft quoted statements, "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." is repeated Ad nauseam. It is not his actually, but no matter, if he had said, "The law of gravity is a mere construct," people would take it as an ex cathedra utterance and say we merely have to will it to fly.

The problem with the statement is that there are often good reasons why our dreams can't happen. Even worse, if we give into our dreams, it may even be disastrous. Serious reflection is not the strong suit of our national legislature and they might be on the way to one big screw up.

Some of the rent seekers who have achieved the title of congressmen and senators have not asked "why," or "why not." They appear to want to "Just do it." What is, "it" It is giving judges the right to reset mortgage rates.

It has in a sense happened before. One of the great charisma guys of the previous century, Adolph "I got Germany moving again" Hitler tried to avoid reality in his mortgage crisis.

According to Jude Wanniski, the fuhrer's policies had led to foreclosures on farm mortgages. Hitler "solved" the crisis by prohibiting foreclosure. As no one would want to invest in agriculture under such conditions, productivity declined. "By late 1935, Germany had been advanced 500 million marks wory of foodstuffs and raw materials which had yet to be redeemed in finished goods."*

Something had to give, and it did, Poland. The Lebensraum idea became inevitable.

Now, our august solons do not contemplate a blanket end to foreclosure, just relief for the folks who suckered themselves into the subprime mortgages. This will not lead to slogans like "Manitoba is historically a part of North Dakota," but it will make it harder to raise funds for mortgages going forward. Just a little more sand in the gears.

Jude Wanniski, The way the World Works (New York: Touchstone, 1979) p.147

Choose Obfuscation

Now Hilarycare is going to be mandatory if Mrs. Clinton is elected and can get it passed.

Hilary claims to be pro-choice.

Is there not a contradiction here.

I remember when the term pro-choice was first used. Choice was posited as the value rather than abortion as a right in and of itself because pro-abortion was not as easy to sell.

So much for the value of choice.

Then again, this is a country where English is spoken, but not understood.

No you can't and don't change on my account

When I was a kid I had a gofer gig on my way home from school. I would get coffee for the men who worked at a gas station and their friends who would gather at the mechanics' break and talk. Like a lot of Boston area Micks, the discussion would be political.

These men were high school grads at most. All of them voted Democrat. The arguments they had were on a higher level than anything I've heard from college grads, whether in person or on radio or TV in the last couple of decades. I suspect this is because the parochial school system of that day was superior to the winter camp that college has become now.

Most of the current campaign, whether Democrat or Republican has been the retailing of twaddle to the American people. The most embarrassing thing I've seen has been the Will.i.am silliness. Just keep chanting "change" and "yes we can" that will give it some meaning. Om me padme om. All the people who appeared in that are not sharp enough to realize they marked themselves as primitives.

Reflecting on all this, I've come to the conclusion that the only purpose to elections is that unlike some other countries we don't change governments violently. We select candidates with little rhyme or reason and then vote and go on.

The current campaign has caused an addition to the Short Dictionary of Politics.

Change: 1. Old, To transform or convert. 2. New, Politically, whatever you want it to mean.

Now more on elections and how they are sold by the candidates. If you saw Mrs. Clinton's Christmas message (see below in case you missed it), where she promised everything except a Merlot Maintenance Program for those of us who don't need methadone (and she might have hooked me with that) you can see the justice of our dictionaries definition of her party.



Democratic Party: American cargo cult masquerading as a political association.

Mrs. Clinton has inspired us to steal from H.L. Mencken, "Every Election is a Sort of Advance Auction Sale of Stolen Goods" and we distill it thus

Election: Auction in advance of stolen goods.

H.L. wrote this in either the twenties or thirties of the last century. Plus ca change and you finish it.

You think that's funny

Mangan and Sailer are posting about stuffwhitepeoplelike and it is funny. they ask for suggestions and I sent in grey haired guys with pony tales, not to mention bald grey haired guys with pony tails.

Thinking to impress my son with how cool the old man is, I told him about it. Believe me, you can't outdo your kid about the net. He told me about failblog which is another chronicle of stupidity. My favorite in the era of supposed peak oil, a guy holding up a sign saying "who needs oil, I take the bus" which runs on whatever I guess.

Not so beautiful but useless.

Jane Fonda started a flap by showing the country she possesses a sophisticated vocabulary. A local talk show made up of a woman reporter, Margery Eagan, and a liberal guy, Jim Braude, talked around it all day. Braude was not upset and Eagan was.

She finally asked him, did he talk like that around his kids and then callers had him on the run from other positions.

I'm old before my time, but I do not find the coarsening of language a happy occurrence. It is not good that most of the women in this country would be turned down by the navy because their language would curdle the blood of old salts. O tempora, O mores.

We are all Miss Teen South Carolina now!

The camcorder was just coming into vogue when my wife and I were houseparents in a girls' dorm. I was grateful to have been a college student before that invention and even more fortunate to have been able to destroy the still photos (I think I got them all). I had no idea that youtube would come someday and now, more than literally, nothing is sacred.

Anyway, we round on poor Miss Teen SC when all she was trying to do was win a beauty contest. Let's hear from some smart, hip politically involved folks.




Lest you think it is limited to supporters,



I am making the voice of humility corollary to Adam Smith's "There is a lot of ruin in a nation."

"There is a lot of stupid in a political class."

Of course, there is Dana Perino,




C'mon lads, you were never interested in Miss SC for her mind to begin with. Just look at her. What she does well, she really does well. Dana was probably a cute perky teenager once too.

Stick a fork in him, He's dog food.

a Madison Avenue fable from Ben Wattenberg.

Seeking to produce a new dog food, a big corporation set market researchers, food chemists and advertising agencies to work. The experts came up with a new product they were proud of. The dog food sold well, for a while. Then it slumped. Puzzled, the corporate executives commissioned a public opinion firm to see what was wrong.

Soon, the answer came back: "The dogs don't like it."

This is a fair enough analysis of the Mitt Romney campaign.

I've been hard on the Mitt. I did not vote for him. Take Ron Paul out of the mix and he was, however, the least unsavory of the lot.

Policy wise, he was as bad as the rest. If you were looking for someone to just keep the trains running on time, He was your man.

One disagreement about the coverage of the man was that he was plastic. I'm not completely sure what people mean by this. Sure, when he was "jivin" on MLK day he looked like he was trying too hard. So what. That he could not overcome his natural reserve hardly means he was "plastic." Just the opposite. The plasticity of Hilary Clinton wherein she can mimic a black woman and then go teary eyed is the standard.

Plastic, whitebread, racist terms for not being a complete public jerk.