Category Archives: Popular Culture

A Message To Millennials

Kurt Schlichter expresses his gratitude:

I have been told that being hard on you Millennials will turn you against conservatism, that I should offer you a positive, hopeful message that avoids the touchy problem of your manifest stupidity.

No. There’s no sugar-coating it – your votes for Democrats have ensured that you are the first generation in American history that will fail to exceed what their parents attained. Embracing liberalism was a stupid thing to do, done for the stupidest of reasons, and I will now let you subsidize my affluent lifestyle without a shred of guilt.

I’m a 48 year old trial lawyer living on the coast in California – I should have “Hope and Change” tattooed on my glutes. I’d have an excuse to be lib-curious, but you Millennials? Why do you support an ideology that pillages you to pay-off Democrat constituencies? Your time in the indoctrination factories of academia trained you in a form of “critical thinking” that is neither. Somehow, you came to embrace the bizarre notion that conservatives are psychotic Jesus freaks who want to Footloosisze America into a land of mandatory Sunday school and no dancing.

But liberals, in contrast, are nice. Obama is cool. You chose petty fascism with a smile. Not a lot of thought went into it. Facts, evidence – these were mere distractions from the feelings-based validation that came from rejecting us wicked conservatives.

What did you get? The chance to be forced to buy health insurance you don’t want at inflated rates so my rates can be lower. You get to pay more out of your monthly barista take – liberalism ensured that the tanked job market foreclosed a real career – so that I get to pay less out of my lawyer checks. Thanks, suckers.

RTWT.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hey, remember back in 2008, when Barack was going to make government cool again?

Idiots.

Fall Colors

Lileks:

The weather’s been warm, or what passes for warmth in our state of ever-diminishing expectations. Fifty, fifty-two; cloudless sky; mellow sun. Most of the trees are now participating, although a few just go from green to dull green, like adults invited to a costume party who prefer to put on an old pair of glasses and consider that sufficient. Sunday winds separated the hardy from the weak, stripping some trees with the frenzy of starved piranhas.

Pictures, too.

Barack Obama’s Narrative Delusions

Thoughts from Andrew Klavan:

Within the narrative cloud created by these journalists, Obama remains safe in his illusions while the rest of us suffer the consequences. He believes that playing the president and being the president are much the same thing. It is as if Bruce Willis believed he could save a skyscraper full of people by jumping off the roof clutching a fire hose.

For those of us who face the world head on? We don’t need Mulder and Scully to tell us: the truth is out there. Obama has lost the gains of the Iraq war and sacrificed the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan to no purpose. He has alienated our allies in Germany, France and, God help us, Saudi Arabia, while playing the fool for our enemies in Iran and Russia. He has ruthlessly curtailed free speech by abusing the powers of the IRS against his political opponents, spying on and persecuting journalists, and encouraging the imprisonment of a video maker to suit his political ends. He has brutally hobbled our economy with anti-business regulations written by the very legislators who brought on the recession in the first place. And now, through lies and corrupt political machinations, he has saddled us with a chaotic and overbearing health care law that, even when operational, will never be worth its weight in debt and curtailed liberties.

But other than that, it’s great.

[Update a while later]

A phalanx of lies:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been opposed to government health care because, as I’ve said in at least two books, it fundamentally redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state into one closer to that of junkie and pusher. But that’s a philosophical position. Others prefer constitutional arguments: The federal government does not have the authority to do what it’s doing. Dear old John Roberts, chief justice of the United States, twisted himself into a pretzel to argue that, in fact, the government does. But he might as well have saved himself the trouble and just used Nancy Pelosi’s line: Asked by a journalist where in the Constitution it granted the feds the power to do this, she gave him the full Leslie Nielsen and said, “You’re not serious?” She has the measure of her people. Most Americans couldn’t care less about philosophical arguments or constitutional fine print: For them, all Obamacare has to do is work. That is why the last month has been so damaging to Big Government’s brand: In entirely non-ideological, technocratic, utilitarian terms, Obamacare is a bust.

I think, and hope, it was a regulatory policy bridge too far.

Shootout In East Lansing

Man, Gardiner is getting absolutely no protection. I’m losing track of number of sacks.

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, they just showed the stat. Twelve allowed in season to date. Four in today’s first quarter. Over twenty yards negative yardage. Fortunately, Spartans can’t move the ball much either, except for one big running play.

[Update late in the third quarter]

I think Michigan has about minus seventy yards on the ground.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, Michigan’s down sixteen. Hard to see them coming back unless either they or the Spartans suddenly become a different team.

Zombies Versus Animals

Don’t worry, wildlife would kick undead ass:

…zombies are essentially walking carrion, and Mother Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s really worth a read:

North America’s large mammal predators would be more than a match for zombies. We have two bear species, brown (or grizzly) and black bears. Male brown bears can weigh in at 1,000 pounds. They are not afraid of humans. They can deliver a bite of 1200 pounds per square inch and have long, sharp claws designed to rip open logs and flip boulders in search of insects and other small critters to eat. They would easily tear apart rotting zombie flesh. Black bears are much smaller and typically run from humans, but even a black bear, when approached or cornered, would make short work of a zombie. Both bear species have an incredible sense of smell and both love to eat carrion, so even if zombies didn’t approach them, the bears eventually would learn that these walking bags of flesh make good eating.

Like black bears, gray wolves are very shy of humans and typically run away at the first sight of us. Nor are they strangers to scavenging. They’d soon take advantage of the easy pickings presented by lumbering zombies. Coyotes are far less shy than wolves and can happily live alongside humans, including in the heart of our cities. These intelligent canids would quickly learn that they could take down zombies one by one, especially the eastern populations of coyote, which are larger and bolder due to past interbreeding with wolves and domestic dogs.

Though I’d point out that it they think black bears are shy around humans, they’ve never run across one in Alaska. They’re very aggressive up there — Alaskans seem to fear them more than grizzlies, which will generally leave you alone if you don’t surprise them. I suspect it’s because they’re much less used to humans, with the low population density. It’s almost like they’re a different species from the lower forty nine. Alaska would be a particularly gruesome place to be walking dead. The moose alone would make quick work of them.

Teaching History

It isn’t happening:

Questioner: What was the Holocaust?
American College Student: Um…I’m on the spot.

Questioner: Which country was Adolf Hitler the leader of?
American College Student: I think it’s Amsterdam?

Questioner: What was Auschwitz?
American College Student: I don’t know.

Questioner: What were the Nuremburg Trials?
American College Student: I don’t know.

Questioner: How many Jews were killed?
American College Student: Hundreds of thousands.

We’re doomed.