Category Archives: Family

Update III: Lettermen/Palin: Dull Meets Dumb

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Family, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, John McCain, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Sarah Palin

I defended the woman effectively in “Sensational Sarah,” “Who’s Stupid? Not Sarah,” and “The Left’s Gallery of Cretins.” I did so mainly because her detractors were so much more odious and pretentious, and because I saw in Sarah Palin something, a spark. That glimmer has fizzled. Her philosophical ignorance was unaided by the trashy family dramas, played out in public; the interviews (and no, Bristol is NOT “a bright young woman,” despite what Mother says), the shrill inflection she has developed, the propensity to talk without stop in senseless, rambling, run-off sentences.

And now, in her “uprising” against Dave Lettermen—a veritable storm in a C-cup—Palin comes off as a cross between a less intelligent Gloria Steinem and that ding dong Carrie Prejean (who too refers to herself adoringly as a “bright, intelligent young woman”; I don’t think so). That “young woman” sobriquet is enough to trigger a conniption.

Update I (June 13): Palin has good instincts and a sinewy intelligence. She is, however, too ambitious for her own good, and has shown herself to be, unlike Ron Paul, “an easily co-opted politician, [who’ll abandon] her conservative core beliefs and restrain her political persona for a ticket and candidate that [had] neither: This [was] likely the reason for the mangled, mixed massages, absent from the governor’s Alaskan record.

Palin [also] slammed a cause she had, at one time, saluted: that of the Alaskan Independence Party. That she was once affiliated with said party speaks to her visceral feeling for freedom. That she has since denounced the IP, and seems to have imbibed no political philosophy to speak of since the McCain escapade, also speaks volumes.

However, don’t write her off yet. Where her expertise lie is in energy. She knows what she’s talking about. In a better world, Palin would know her weaknesses and cultivate her strengths. This would mean assuming control of the energy portfolio in a Ron Paul administration, just before he dismantles it.

Given her own boundless energy, Plain could also take charge of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, prior to Paul’s scattering of the critters and cretins who infest the place. As the real Diana, the goddess of the hunt, a Palin subservient to a Paul would allow men to kill and hunt wild life that encroaches on—and endanger—communities (like bears, etc).

Alas, Palin will not attach herself to Paul, because she possesses few enduring, important passions and principles, other than for retards: young women and disabled children.

When Palin runs again, she will cling to the most powerful ticket, or she will be That Ticket. She will then overreach, well beyond her ken. And she will absorb and emit the requisite statism.

Update II (June 14): A couple of Palin faithful have made little of the substance of my disappointment in the woman. Let me reiterate the point people are so willing to forget (frightening that). Put it this way: Do any of her fans remember the policies promoted by the man Palin supported blindly? Anyone recall the kind of mammoth government expansion “McMussolini” advocated? You need a refresher! This woman did not confine herself to yammering about a tiny Department for Retards. Perpetual war, anyone?
I gave Palin a great deal of support. I loved the way the sissy media televised images of her speaking against the backdrop of a man feeding turkeys into the grinder—the food liberals gladly eat, but never hunt or gut. But Palin showed zero conviction; she failed to defend her natural, unperturbed pose with an honest worker in the background. She apologized for who she is—a girl who has hunted, skinned, and then cooked what she kills, and who sees nothing wrong in that great, gory, picture-perfect prop (the slaughter of turkeys).
Palin allowed herself to be “handled.” And now, she’s jumping on some bandwagon that is bringing to her side feminists of the left-liberal and “conservative” ilk—the usual cows. Puke.

Update III: There is on BAB a Sarah Palin archive. To check it out, click Sarah Palin under Categories.

Pictures In The Gallery

Family, Ilana Mercer

There are new images in the Gallery. (Click to the right.) One is of my beautiful mother in 2007, aged 68. The other captures recent good times with best friend, Tom DiLorenzo. What can be better than sharing New York cheesecake and a strong brew, on a warm but not hot sunny day, with two of the right kind of radicals. (The other radical is the not-so good photographer, Sean.)

Update II: Barack Against The Boys

Barack Obama, Family, Feminism, Gender

The following is an excerpt from “Barack Against The Boys,” my new, WND.com column:

“…Barack’s latest Brownian motion promises to unleash on struggling American businesses armies of strong-arming (and buff-armed, no doubt) Girls Gone Wild, eager for their pound of flesh.

“Another of Obama’s economic prescriptions for a deepening depression was to sign a pay equity act, during which he carped that women still earn just ’78 cents for every dollar men earn—women of color even less.'”

“Such false assertions rely on comparisons of ‘the average wage of all women working fulltime with the average wage of all men working full time.’ Scholarly reams have been written disputing this phony calculus, as it omits vital variables: How long the woman has been in the work force, her age, experience and education; or whether her career has been put on hold to marry and mother.”

“Just as women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory, so too are they more inclined to enter lower-paying professions: education instead of engineering, for example.”

“Nonetheless, allow me to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage with a decisive argument:

If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market.

The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women. …”

Read the entire column, “Barack Against The Boys,” on WND.com.

Update I (March 13):Unemployment: Men Getting Whacked Way More Than Women”:

Such is the word from University of Michigan Professor Mark J.
In the last 12 months, more than 8 of every 10 pink slips have gone to men, he writes.

According to Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem, the lousy economy has idled 1.9 million men, more than four times the number of women let go, 430,000.

The firings have been so gender-lopsided that the male unemployment rate is more than a percentage point higher than that of women.

Previously, women were slightly less likely to have a job.

Perry found suggestions of a cause from a May issue of BusinessWeek. It blamed male dominance in construction work and factory floors, two sectors hardest hit by the credit crunch.

Wall Street also is heavily male and square in the sites of the job-destroying credit crunch.

Update II (March 14): I’m glad Professor Haym B. posted his thoughts in the Comments Section, hereunder. There is a certain comfort in the elegance of immutable logic. At least to this bookish broad.

Updated: Looking To Children To Lead

Conservatism, Education, Family, Intellectualism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture, Private Property, Republicans

Speaking of spooky children, the hallmark of a progressive or left-liberal is a philosophical adulation of The Child. The Child is said to possess uncanny prescience; a primordial, pristine, un-spoilt wisdom. The same awe is accorded to the Nobel Savage, and to the natural world.

This explains why Republicans often have a “wunderkind” in the wings to parade and look up to. These days, it’s the barely-out-of short pants CPAC star, Jonathan Krohn, who’s precocious and off-putting. Krohn is an author no less. The treatise is “Define Conservatism.” From the mouth of the babe himself, the book sounds childish and simplistic in tone and in metaphor. Just what Boobus loves.

Understandably, left-liberals have been slobbering over Krohn as well. To their credit, they’ve not produced a prototype of their own yet.

It’s a repulsive specter. It’s not new. I commented on it in a three-pronged column, in 2002. The column is “The Importance Of Boundaries.” The sub-heading is “Crossover Kids”:

“Permissive liberals and people who need Braille to understand a well-aimed barb will fume at the words of author Florence King: ‘…children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?’ But true-blue cultural conservatism puts a premium on the proper boundaries between children and adults. Such boundaries are essential to the moral hygiene of a society. It is from the progressive, libertine parent that we would expect a child of such narcissism and precocity that he or she thinks of adults as his peers, and takes to preaching to his elders.”

“But no, some of the most hubris-stricken kids are emerging as commentators from so-called conservative quarters. The real cultural conservative knows that even in the unlikely case that the child is the new H.L. Mencken, and is smarter than all the adults around him, respect necessitates that he bide his time. Even the intellectually gifted take years to synthesize intellectual material and make it their own. This process is a culmination of insight, life experience, humility, and authentic intelligence.”

The cultural conservative adult who lets a kid be a pal and peer is a liberal. He cannot claim to be a cultural conservative. He must, moreover, own up to being mired in self-contradiction. Writing on the topic of Western Civilization, historian Alan Charles Kors reminds us that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth—being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be ‘less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.'”

Update (Feb. 28): I just can’t win, can I? The reader hereunder vows to seek out the kid’s coloring-in book in the library. Lost is my meta-argument against the process of looking to a kid for answers, however endowed in IQ he might be.

Seeking sagacity in a child’s words is perverted, unconservative.
The whole point of this post is that you NOT be piqued by a child; that you not be proud of such precocity. Look to real philosopher Kings for eternal truths. Take the time to rediscover The Federalist or Anti-Federalist papers. So long as you have not read the the words of real sages, you have no business looking for kicks in the kibitzing of kids.
Of course, you have every right to, but little reason to.

THEY MUST BE HOMESCHOOLED. Blogger John was alluding to this delightful clip (I’m posting it hereunder), making the rounds on YouTube. Two precious, fiscally conservative cuties hear that they owe $800 billion. The little boy is especially eager to tease out the details, and is outraged when he gets the goods. Unlike creepy, adult-emulating Krohn, these babes act their age, and are absolutely natural. There is nothing put-on or fake about their conduct. These are kids getting some bad news about a stolen piggy bank.

I would agree that children are naturally acquisitive and, like all normal people before entering the public school, guard what is rightfully theirs.

But there’s more to it. What you have here is an example of decent parenting. In fact, this clip very clearly exemplifies the boundary argument made in this post. The adult is teaching the children a lesson about private property and its theft.

I would further argue that the parent eliciting the little people’s outrage by telling them of the $800 billion they are about to be robbed of—he is the good guy in all this. He probably home schools the two tots. This is clearly a man who, while not indoctrinating his kids, does instill in them right from wrong.

Pay attention to the disparaging comments the filming father gets from YouTubers. Addled by psychobabble, posters protest the emotional harm done to the children; the sentiment shared on the chatboard is that upsetting children is wrong.

Well, the clip has been removed. My guess is that the dad who posted it thought Obama’s New New Deal outrageous, and his kids’ outburst appropriate. The cretins watching it disapproved and disagreed with dad. Maybe father feared Big Brother would removed his kids. … Not that it has happened before.