Yesterday I'll Have Another, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness on his way to a possible Triple Crown, was withdrawn from the Belmont due to tendonitis.
What gave away the story of the 2012 Triple Crown season, however, were
the somber faces that greeted the chestnut colt upon his arrival at the
barn — that and the fact the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner
wasn't supposed to be returning to that particular shedrow until after
the 144th edition of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
The breathtaking journey of I'll Have Another over the past five weeks
ended with a punch to the gut Friday when trainer Doug O'Neill and owner
J. Paul Reddam announced the colt was out of the Belmont Stakes and
would be retired following the discovery of the beginning of tendinitis
in his left front leg.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/06/08/2217316/ill-have-another-withdrawn-from.html#storylink=cpy
Now today's Belmont will be just another horse race. Maybe next year.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/06/08/2217316/ill-have-another-withdrawn-from.html#storylink=cpy
"Heh, guys, what if we could figure out a way to have the core of what we believe soundly rejected by the voters of a swing state just five months before the national election? Just might be the boost we need."
From Power Line, a great video spoofing Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker, two aged but no less immature junior high school cool girls deigning to invite desperate wannabe a**kissers to have dinner at their house...with a soon-to-be pathetic loser, Obama. Bring out your smirks.
I have already posted today, because I'm so far out of the loop that I didn't know today was dedicated to the Day of Blogger Silence to bring attention to the issue of free speech and the fascist tactics of men like Brett Kimberlin.
The left is going apoplectic after the resounding defeat of Barrett and his UNIONS FIRST message in Wisconsin. Apparently it is inconceivable to them that the voters rejected their openly opportunistic, even corrupt position that taxpayers should meekly be on the hook for whatever the unions want. Basically the message from the left was, "Pay up, bitches." And the taxpayers inexplicably said, "No."
How could this be? How could those stupid worker bees taxpayers just wake up like that?
Simple. Money. Lots of it. So much of it that it murdered democracy or something.
Even more nefarious, the implications are that it was OUTSIDE Koch brothers' money.
To the left, winning or losing is never about the issues, because they are always the good guys and therefore always on the good side. For anyone to disagree with them, it has to be a matter of stupidity or gullibility. Period.
So here's the equation:
Left spends money: getting out the message
Right spends money: brainwashing the stupid
There. That's all there is to it.
This handy little equation can be applied to the 2008 campaign as well. Remember, kittens, how much money Obama raised to get out the message? Yeah...twice as much as McCain. But that was perfectly fine because it just meant that the left had all that sweet sweet money to inform the voters and the right had significantly less money with which to fool them.
Of course, even when it comes to money, the left might be lying. I know...but stranger things have happened.
As in happy. The City Council has passed a ban on McDonald's Happy Meals. Their reasoning? It's the toys. Yes, kittens. The toys are making children fat. Spoons make me fat...but whatever.
I'm pretty sure you could have given my daughter a PONY when she was little and she would NOT have eaten liver and onions. Just sayin'...Besides, how do the little capitalist pigs get the money to buy those Happy Meals which control their mushy little minds anyway?
And what about how they get there for their toy fix 4 or 5 times a week? If they were jogging, they wouldn't be fat. So they must be driving themselves. HEH! If it can be shown that millions of fat five year olds are able to get valid photo IDs to drive to McDonald's to buy french fries, a Coke and Chicken McNuggets because the toys are just so darn tempting, how do we explain that it is impossible for adults to obtain an ID to vote?
On Wednesday morning in Wisconsin, Governor Walker was STILL Governor Walker. But for pouty babies, reality wasn't setting in. Did anyone think it would? Pouty babies need to grow up. Until then, they need a HUGE timeout.
I'm all choked up. Really, I am, dear. Here... I hope this helps.
Aman walks into a bar. He has an orange for a head. The bartender pours him a drink and says: “So—you want to tell me about it?” “Well, I was walking on the beach,” says the man with an orange
for a head. “I found an old lamp in the sand and took it home. When I
polished the lamp, a genie came out and offered me three wishes in
return for setting him free. Thinking it was some sort of trick, I
offhandedly wished for a million dollars. Instantly, the doorbell rang. A
man had arrived to tell me I’d won a mail-order sweepstakes for exactly
a million dollars. So I returned to the genie and wished I could have
sex with every Playmate of the Month for last year. The doorbell rang
again—and all 12 pinup girls came prancing in, at my service. I went
back to the genie a third time,” says the man with an orange for a head,
“and I think this may have been where I made my mistake.” “What did you do?” says the bartender.
“I wished to have an orange for a head.”
Like Klavan, I think this joke is inspired. This is a joke that makes you wince at the same time that you bust out
laughing. It is a joke that illuminates the dark underbelly of
human nature, the stupidity, the painful determination in some people to
choose badly. No. Matter. What.
It is exactly the kind of joke that appeals to me because, while it is a take-off on the old genie and three wishes story, the punchline is not the usual trick delivered through a misinterpretation of the final wish (i.e., his legs fall off or his head gets really small...). The man in THIS joke just screws up all by himself. Intentionally. For no damn reason. And that is why it is so crazy funny. As Mr. Klavan explains, it perfectly illustrates the innate and seemingly self-destructive tendency in all of us toward self-sabotage.
Wishing for an orange head when everything is wonderful and anything is possible is funny because it shows us something we don't really want to see or acknowledge in ourselves. We are all tragically stupid and often, perhaps frequently, make choices and decisions that are just bone-headed.
But it's is even more telling than that. We seem -- in the most perverse way possible -- to make these horrid choices most often when things are going well for us. History shows us over and over that societies crumble just when they've got it pretty good. Why is this? I think it is because this tendency toward perverse stupidity is given free rein in prosperity. When things are dire and life is hard, you don't have the luxury to be perverse. Stupid decisions quickly end in death. People tend to pay attention to that and make really good choices in such environments. But a little prosperity allows us to entertain all sorts of stupid ideas and make all sorts of stupid decisions without immediate negative consequences. When we do this as individuals, it is unfortunate. When we get together and do it as a society, it is truly disastrous. And we do it a lot.
Consider that study after study shows that faith, self-reliance, and
chastity make human beings happier and healthier. Yet not only do we
abandon these behaviors individually out of personal folly and weakness;
we dismantle them as a society by intention and design, preaching and
modeling lifestyles to our young that are almost guaranteed to make them
sad and sick and dependent. Consider that the earth, as if beneficent,
has poured millions of years’ worth of energy into the fossils of its
dead creatures, presenting us with the Promethean gift of fuels that
elevate us beyond the imaginations of our ancestors. Our response? We
nurture a superstitious dread of oil and coal and promulgate
pseudoscientific disaster scenarios meant to teach panic and to quench
the very fire of our freedom. Or consider, finally, that we were born
into the freest, strongest, and wealthiest nation that mankind has ever
known—and elected as our president a man who promised to “fundamentally
transform” it.
As Mr. Klavan points out, this is where we wished for an orange for a head.
Probably futile to point out to the despondent young man that we've never HAD a democracy in America. What we have is a republic. And there is a difference.
Over at Rachel Lucas, the idea was put forward of a Milton Friedman Monday, a Whittle Wednesday, and -- might I suggest -- a Sowell Saturday. Here's my entry for Whittle Wednesday. Seems entirely appropriate for today, considering that the nasty mean sucky conservatives won in Wisconsin last night and that SUCKS! HAHA!
Actually, today's the day we get to say to libs, "Sucks to be you."
It's a good feeling. I'm reveling in it.
But we conservatives do suck. Being an adult always sucks. It means you must deal with reality on its terms, not on your wishes. It means that nobody owes you a thing and that's the way it should be. It means that no matter HOW much you want to free Tibet, that bumper sticker ain't gonna do it. It means that voting doesn't change reality. It means that your intentions aren't worth crap when they run into real world results.
Last night the unions threw everything they had but the kitchen sink at Walker.
And lost.
Big.
The delicious, stupendous, awesome, outrageous, we-are-dancing-on-their-graves kind oflost. Yes...that kind of lost. We're talking BIG.
They lost because they are wrong. Their policies are wrong. The ideas that create those policies are wrong. And we are finally reaching the point in America where everyone can see it. For years we had so much that we really could (and DID) have our cake and eat it, too. Now we are rapidly running out of cake. Some of us are saying, "Hey, look...the cake is almost gone. We should stop stuffing our faces like pigs and figure out what to do."
Others are still stuffing their faces and petulantly demanding that someone just make another cake. Someone ELSE, of course. They are busy eating.
For most of the post-World War II era, Cost argues, our debates over
taxing and spending have taken place in an atmosphere of surplus. The
operative question has been how best to divide a growing pie, which has
enabled politicians in both parties to practice a kind of
ideologically-flexible profligacy. Republicans from Dwight Eisenhower to
George W. Bush have increased spending, Democrats from John F. Kennedy
to Bill Clinton have found ways to cut taxes, and the great American
growth machine has largely kept the toughest choices off the table.
It's as if this country has just gone through an extended, fairy-tale childhood and adolescence, lasting from the end of WWII to the turn of this century, and now it's time to grow up. The reality of adulthood is pressing in.
But
not anymore. Between our slowing growth and our unsustainable spending
commitments, “the days when lawmakers could give to some Americans
without shortchanging others are over; the politics of deciding who
loses what, and when and how, is upon us.” In this era, debates will be
increasingly zero-sum, bipartisan compromise will be increasingly
difficult, and “the rules and norms of our politics that several
generations have taken for granted” will fade away into irrelevance.
The conversation is turning from those who benefit to those who lose. We've reached the point where we all must say, "Who's going to pay for this?"
But the unions and Democrats are screaming, "We don't care! Just get more money because we'd better not run out of cake!"
The assurance we've heard for decades from Democrats that their vision was solely one of benevolence and altruism to "spread the wealth around" is finally being exposed for its naked opportunism. When you reach the inevitable point in all socialist schemes where, as Maggie Thatcher said, "You run out of other people's money," you see socialism for what it is. A political power game to steal another person's wealth for one's own benefit.
It's pretty simple really. And it is always ugly. Let's just hope the ugliness stays within the bounds of the political process as we struggle through the next few years. Despite the assertions of the author of the article, the Scott Walker recall attempt with its EPIC FAIL is a bellwether in American politics. It clearly showed that the silent majority in this country is awake and ready for the fight.
I know I am. In fact, I'm feeling really good about life this morning.
What gave away the story of the 2012 Triple Crown season, however, were the somber faces that greeted the chestnut colt upon his arrival at the barn — that and the fact the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner wasn't supposed to be returning to that particular shedrow until after the 144th edition of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
