Sunday, September 14, 2008
Being A Man: Sunday Edition
Right-O!
It seems the Brits have noticed that the pussification of men has landed on their shores. Luckily, an writer that is fed-up with the wussiness surrounding him decided to do something about it. Enjoy.
Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.
Suddenly, women wanted to drive home their newfound equality by moulding men to be more like them.
This velvet revolution was reflected in a series of broader cultural changes. After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.
No doubt at the time, millions of misguided single women thought that having a man who could feel their pain and emote for Britain was a Good Thing.
Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn’t produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.
Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.
Here’s the situation as I see it: women thought it would be a good idea to create the perfect classification of men. The fashion industry (and gay men, most of whom work in the fashion industry) thought it was a great idea, so they promoted the hell out of it. All of a sudden, guys like me (and guys such as the ones that read Drumwaster.com) fell out of favor with the ladies. We weren’t “sensitive” enough. Guys like us did things like saying “no.” We did things that you would find on this list that I posted a few days ago.
In other words, guys that acted like guys were pushed out of the loop, and the little feminist guys that you read about in the article above (read the whole thing when you get a chance) all of a sudden turned into the flavor of the decade.
But what do you know? Now that women (and the media/fashion industry) got their spineless half-men, they learned that their little creations weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Maybe it was thousands of years of DNA and muscle-memory, but women are slowly coming to the realization that they want men who act like men and do the things that men do.
In closing, I urge all the guys who are reading this blog, and those who have been following my posts about guy stuff to re-read this list and be the exact opposite of the type of guy in the article above.
The Fall of American Media
Ahh… the stories I could tell...
Courtesy of Babalu Blog:
So I’m chatting and having a few beers with some friends last night and we turned on the TV for the 8:00 PM IKE update.
We see Geraldo get knocked on his butt by a wave. My friends laugh. They don’t like Geraldo anymore. He went over to the dark side, Fox, he also supports the troops, albeit dramatically.
Another segment comes on. I see the McCain’s mugging on The View. Behar, Goldberg and Walters. Why does he subject himself to this, I wonder. Barbara Walters interrogates him, tersely. He laughs. After five years of Viet Cong interrogations, Walter’s word boarding is kid stuff.
I’m not really paying attention to What Walters is asking because I’m focusing on the hostile body language. The disdain and disgust in her voice, the combativeness, the confrontational tone. She doesn’t look him in the eyes as she berates the man.
She’s embarrassing herself, I think, so unprofessional. The grand dame of American journalism, the female trailblazer. It has come to this?
Her distinctive speech echoes in my head, awakening a distaste. I dislike this woman. I try to remember why. And then it hits me.
Walters was younger then, at the top of her game. I remember her fawning over (f)idel. Flirty, softball question. She was putty in his hands.
The American war hero who has spent a lifetime serving his country and its citizens, she attacks with zeal and disdain.
The Cuban dictator who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands world-wide, she coddles and admiringly treats with the utmost respect after she traveled to his island prison to interview him on his turf.
Interesting.
When they say that liberals and anti-Americans run the media, it’s true. I’m just glad that no one is listening to them anymore. Don’t believe me? Check the ratings.
You are invited to do as you wish
But I will never donate so much as a drop of piss to the Red Cross again.
Not even if they were on fire.
I wasn’t always like this…
Back when I was in the military, I always donated big money through the CFC to the Red Cross ($1,000 per year, plus blood and plasma whenever they had a drive going through). That was quite a lot, and all I got was a lousy coffee cup.
But I felt I was helping an agency that helped those in need.
Any law against being wrong?
When I was stationed in the south San Francisco Bay area at NAS Moffett Field, the Powers-That-Be decided that the base needed to be shut down, its commands moved, and its assets dispersed. Lots of paperwork at paygrades higher than mine, and lots of packing and moving of boxes for those lower than my paygrade. (It was great - as an E-5, I was too senior to actually have to do the grunt work, too junior to have the overall responsibility, and experienced enough to stand watches without “adult supervision”. So I “stood” watches sitting down at a desk, answering the phone whenever it rang (not very often between 5pm and 5am), and sorting messages every few hours.)
But then it was our turn to close up shop and move. My then-fiancee and I had made arrangements for an apartment, but it was not going to be ready for several weeks after we arrived. My little Nissan broke down in southern Oregon, eating up what little travel time margins I had, and we arrived in Oak Harbor literally hours before I had to be back on the job.
But we had to live in a hotel using money I did not have. I had spent much money (1st and last month’s rent, utility deposits, etc.) even before we left, and the car breaking down in Oregon (Beaverton? little town that had a Wal-Mart, but the police station was closed on weekends and holidays) ate up all of my traveling cash. There wasn’t a Navy Lodge, the BEQ wouldn’t have anyplace for my fiancee, and payday was still a week away.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Randi Rhodes: Palin Sleeps With Teenage Boys
From brain dead leftist, (redundancy alert!) Randi Rhodes:
Stay classy Randi, stay classy.
How Dumb Is This?
I’ll answer my own question, very:
“Just ask the machinists in Pennsylvania who build Harley-Davidsons,” Obama said of McCain’s record. “Because John McCain didn’t just oppose the requirement that the government buy American-made motorcycles, he called Buy American provisions ‘disgraceful.’ Just ask the workers across this country who have seen their jobs outsourced. The very companies that shipped their jobs overseas have been rewarded with billions of dollars in tax breaks that John McCain supports and plans to continue.
“So, when American workers hear John McCain talking about putting ‘Country First,’” Obama said, “it’s fair to ask—which country?”
Even Jake Tapper gets it:
Um ... isn’t that pretty much the dictionary definition of questioning someone’s patriotism?
Yeah, let’s put patriotism on the table.
Issues Democrats win on. Values on the other hand belong to the GOP.
I guess this is Obama “taking the gloves off” for the fourth time, and considering that the times he has done that previously haven’t worked out so well for him perhaps he should leave the gloves on.
LAPD Officer Spree Desha, 35, dies in Metrolink train
Damn it...
This gives me that choking feeling in my throat:
The Los Angeles Police Department officer who died in the Chatsworth train collision was identified by the LAPD as Spree Desha, a seven-year veteran who worked in the Office of Operations. She was off-duty at the time of the crash. Desha, 35, has previously worked in the North Hollywood division. When her body was removed from the wreckage about 10:20 pm, dozen of officers from the LAPD and other agencies saluted her flag-draped body and observed a long moment of silence.
At the same briefing where the officer’s name was released, Sheriff Lee Baca said that sheriff’s deputy John Ebert was seriously injured on the train and is hospitalized in intensive care in Simi Valley.
“This is a human tragedy that is beyond words. A horrific night this evening,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at the 11 pm briefing. He said that the number of confirmed deaths remains at ten and the number of injured is 135. The number of fatalities is expected to grow as recovery efforts continue, Villaraigosa said, but he cautioned that the firefighters on scene remain in rescue mode. “I couldn’t be prouder of the first responders tonight,” Villaraigosa said.
The above entry was courtesy of Kevin Roderick from LA Observed.
One of our deputies was on the train and is currently in a hospital in Simi Valley in critical condition. Please say a prayer for him and his family.
For more info about the train crash, click here.
Which Bush Doctrine do you mean, Chuck?
Quick show of hands: how many of you know what the “Bush Doctrine” is?
Are you sure you’ve guessed the right “doctrine” of the four policy decisions that have been referred to as “The Bush Doctrine”?
That’s right, I said “four”.
As Charles Krauthammer responded in the NYT (buried deep, of course):
Charlie Gibson’s Gaffe
By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 12, 2008; Page A17“At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of ‘anticipatory self-defense.’ “
-- New York Times, Sept. 12
Informed her? Rubbish.
The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.
There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration—and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.
He said to Palin, “Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine.”
She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, “In what respect, Charlie?”
Sensing his “gotcha” moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine “is that we have the right to anticipatory self-defense.”
Wrong.
I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto treaty, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine. (ed. - that’s one.)
Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” This “with us or against us” policy regarding terror—first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan—became the essence of the Bush Doctrine. (ed. - That’s two.)
Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine. (ed. - That’s three, and is also the one most liberals refer to as “the Bush Doctrine”.)
It’s not. It’s the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush’s second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly is dependent on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in the world is the survival of freedom in all the world.” (ed. - And that’s four...)
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy’s pledge in his inaugural address that the United States “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson’s 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume—unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise—and that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the “with us or against us” no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed “doctrines” in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.
Such is not the case with the Bush Doctrine.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Massive Fail
You know that Obama Campaign commercial that mocked Senator McCain for not being able to use a computer?
How’s that working out for you guys?
The reason he doesn’t send email is that he can’t use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. . . . McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.
I’ll ask this again, is anyone running this campaign?
Thoughts On The Gibson Interview
Okay I can understand why the MSM cannot be bothered with reading the right-leaning blogs, but for the love of Karl Rove you’d think they would at least read TalkLeft:
Forget war with Russia. The real news from Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin is this stretch, where she is clearly clueless about what the Bush Doctrine is…“In what respect, Charlie?”
This performance is the kind of thing that could have a serious impact on the race, unless everyone politely agrees to ignore it.
This is seriously nuts. Palin asked Gibson to define what HE meant by it. (NOTE: Stellaa points out that Gibson tried the same game with Obama and Media Matters ripped Gibson for it then. Guess Sargent is ok with it when it is done to a Republican.) Indeed, her eventual answer to the question is extremely sensible (unlike Bush and McCain’s actual policies) and smart politics. She did not accept the premise of Gibson’s question and then gave a sensible answer to the question. This type of stuff is what is killing the Left blogs right now. They look like fools when they act this way...
The thing is Jeralynn and her co-bloggers at TalkLeft are actually reasonable and tend to actually think. The vast majority of the so-called “Netroots” go on pure emotion (the whole if it feels good, then go ahead and do it mentality), they don’t think much, if at all. Those kinds of reflex actions just turn average people off, if not piss them off outright.
I remember going through the comment threads over at Kevin Drum’s site during the whole Rather-gate scandal of 2004 and actually feeling sorry for Kevin. Jeralynn seems to have a better handle on her commenters at least.
Nope, No Angle That I Can See
Nope, no bias from Newsweek here:
A new study finds that children of privileged families fare worse when the mother works outside the home.
Of course it depends on what the criteria of “privileged” is.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Memo To The Obama Campaign
This is not how you walk back a massive gaffe.
For future reference just let it die a natural death. Bringing it up again only serves to remind people you said it in the first place.
Back in ‘04 I kept saying this over and over again with regards to the Kerry Campaign, and now I think the Obama Campaign has finally reached the necessary milestone and has proven themselves worthy of it: is anyone running this campaign?
What If McCain Lives?
Stepping into the fetid swamp that is the DailyKos, so I don’t have to, John Hawkins returns with a bad case of of bed-head as well as the following missive from a Kos diarist:
“What if, God forbid, McCain lives? All this discussion about Palin really ignores one fact: the vice-president is just a spare tire. As vice-president John Nancy Garner put it, the job isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”—Daily Kos diarist, Harl Delos
Stay classy guys, stay classy.
What A Shock
The rest of the world want The One to be elected president, or else.
My response to the rest of the world?
Shut up.
Thatisall.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Gaffe Machine (UPDATED)
Did Senator Obama mean to call Gov. Sarah Palin a pig?
Doesn’t matter in all honesty if he did or didn’t (general consensus, at least over at Evil Glenn’s site is that he did, for whatever that’s worth) because in politics perception is reality.
Now the question is, what does the McCain/Palin camp do about it? My advice is nothing at all. Let him keep this up, McCain and perhaps Palin herself are so inside Obama’s head at this moment he is quite literally the gift that keeps on giving.
Although, I do have to admit this idea isn’t half bad:
Gov. Palin tomorrow:
(Steps up to the microphone.)
(Starts to speak, then stops and reaches down and picks up something small.)
(She is now applying lipstick in front of this huge crowd that is laughing and cheering.)
(After a few minutes, the cheering dies down and she begins to speak.)
“Oink.”
(The crowd roars anew...)
Turning the screw on Obama for the gaffe appeals to my evil conservative heart.
Randi Rhodes: McCain Well Treated At The Hanoi Hilton
Noted left-wing airhead (redundancy alert!), Randi Rhodes spews forth:
Of course he (McCain) became very friendly with the Vietnamese. They called him the Prince. He was well treated actually.
I can see how being bayoneted, having one’s teeth broken off at the gum line, being clubbed repeatedly with the butt of a rifle, and having broken bones that weren’t set properly could qualify as being “treated well” in the world of Randi Rhodes, but hey I am sure that the balls in the rec-room were inflated properly, else that would have been actual torture.
A reminder of the excellent treatment that Senator McCain received at the hands of his Vietnamese captors:
(I’m sure those crutches are merely props.)
