The Moral Case for Capitalism

We are in a war, kittens. A war of ideas and philosophies that will ultimately determine whether freedom, a brief and marvelous experiment in the history of mankind, succeeds or is lost.

Capitalism vs socialism.

Individualism vs collectivism.

Self-determination vs group identity.

Let's win this thing!

Because let's face it, losing means we will be ruled by men like Biden, the intellect of the Democratic party.

You're better off than you were four years ago because he said so. And if it weren't so hot he'd 
explain it to you. Now shut up, you racist. And get back in line. You all belong to government now.

Chess Humor

For Tuerqas

"...let me do that again..."

Sometimes you have to look the donkey right in the face and call it an ass.

This is one of those times. There will be others.

For some completely inexplicable reason, the Party of All the Smart People managed to remove all language relating to God and remove language supporting an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and naming them our staunchest ally in the Middle East. Of course no one had any idea how this could have happened, what with the Democrats being the party that insists that we all pay for little babies to have a first class one way ticket back to God without even having to layover in a life. That's some God-loving right there. And the party that loves Jews? Of course they are! They love the Jewish vote, which is almost like loving Jews themselves. Now shut up, racist!

But then how to explain that in a document that must have been carefully, assiduously, painstakingly written to reflect the deepest shared values and ideals of the party, the Democratic party platform, they "forgot" God and Israel?

OOPSIE! Well, let's just fix that little detail right now, shall we? All those in favor say AYE. All those opposed say NO.

Another OOPSIE! The NO's have it. Well, this is embarrassing.  Let me do that again. 
And let me repeat, really slowly, AYE means yes and NO means no. Got it?
Just so you don't screw up again......WHAT? Again? Oh for f*&k's sake. One more time? 
Whatever.

Perhaps the reason language supporting Israel was left out was that it was orders from the White House. Ya think?

Florida, are you listening?

I blame YOU!

But then, so does Obama.

The First Term of Obama Has Been a Failure... of America

Just look at the status of things. High unemployment. A sluggish economy teetering on the verge of another recession. A credit downgrade for our country. What a horrifying, stupid mess you've made of the past four years, you fat moron slobs. 

When Obama took office, he handled everything with such brilliance that it was almost like he was a mystical being -- a regular faerie prince. When he saw what a horrible economy he inherited from you fool Americans, he sensibly spent hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money. And by his expert analysis, unemployment should have declined to just above 5% by now. So what happened? You globular, lazy, gun-clinging imbeciles didn't create the jobs you were supposed to!

H/T: IMAO, Townhall and The Last Refuge

Studies prove that everything you do while driving is dangerous

Apparently hurtling along in a steel cage at 65 (okay...in my case, 80) miles per hour among other hurtling steel cages inhabited by frank idiots, many of whom have never discovered the cutting edge technology of a turn signal yet are nonetheless weaving in and out of tiny holes accidentally left between these cages by other inattentive idiots is dangerous. Who knew?

This is always my best rebuttal.

No one. That's why we need studies. Duh!

NEW STUDY SHOWS DANGERS OF SINGING WHILE DRIVING

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Who doesn't like to belt out a tune every once in a while when they're behind the wheel?

Singing and driving is not only distracting, it may also make you a worse driver. That's according to a new Australian study. It finds that singing requires more mental activity, taking your attention off the road. 

Researchers tested the singing and driving abilities of 21 people by using a driving simulator.

The singing drivers were less likely to notice peripheral distractions and their speeds varied more . 

"As you might guess, driving performance changes when you're listening to music and singing. You actually tend to slow down," said Scott Bea with Cleveland Clinic. 

The study found the same distracting effect for those just listening to music, even if they didn't sing along.

Closely related to this finding from Australia is this study out of Britain.

Men's accident rates climb with women's hemlines

The London Telegraph said the study by car insurance company Sheilas' Wheels claims men get into more accidents in the summer because they are distracted by women's skimpy outfits. 

The study shows that 29 percent of men admitted being distracted by short skirts and low-cut tops in summer weather, leading to record numbers of accidents on the roads, the Telegraph said.

Cell phones were dangerous. So they took them.
Singing is dangerous. So shut UP!
Clothing is dangerous. So wear more.

Stupidity is dangerous, kittens. And stupidity at high speeds can be deadly.

I swear I'm going to put together a proposal to study whether having kids throwing ice cream at each other effects driving safety. Someone will give me money to find that out.

In the meantime, this is what inattention will get you, so look alive, people.

I'm sure this is code for more than just stupid people.

Maybe they were responding to a dog whistle.

There's a reason presidents only serve four years in a term.

To avoid the possibility of a "five-year plan."

Good Lord.

The basic difference between liberals who support a managed economy and conservatives who support the dynamism of the free market is that liberals believe that just a few men are smart enough to make decisions for the rest of us, men who we all know lied their way into power. To the liberal, everyone else is too stupid to be allowed the freedom to make choices that will affect all of us, because who elected them? The conservative knows that lying your way into power doesn't make you a genius. It makes you a liar. While we also know that everyone in the marketplace isn't a genius and many are liars, we're willing to let the chips fall where they may, knowing that the best answer to any particular problem will be found through the ingenuity and creativity of men seeking solutions that directly benefit them. Because in the freedom of the marketplace no idea can be forced on another. All men must choose to participate. This element of choice in every decision insures a more equitable distribution of power. The government removes choice because it has all the power.

Liberals flatter themselves that they can elect men and women to not only speak for them but to know for them, to anticipate and protect and respond for them in order to create a perfect world. Like a best friend. Only with ultimate power.

Conservatives don't buy any of that shit.

"Arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand in hand." --UPDATED! WITH AWARD (even though this must be getting old)

This was a memorable quote by M in the James Bond film, Casino Royale. I have often thought that it fits our president to a T. Apparently the inimitable Mr. Sowell feels the same way.

Obama's 'Confident Ignorance' At Root Of His Failure

After reading Barack Obama's book "Dreams from My Father," it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth — and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things. 

Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far-left fringe during his life. 

As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people. There is no hint of the slightest curiosity on his part about other visions of the world that might be weighed against the vision he had seized upon.

Remember when Bush was an idiot with absolutely NO intellectual curiosity? A fact irrefutably proven because he wouldn't entertain left-wing ideas.

As Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School has pointed out, Obama made no effort to take part in the marketplace of ideas with other faculty members when he was teaching a law course there. 

What would be the point, if he already knew the truth and knew that they were wrong?

This arrogance and lack of curiosity is a necessary trait in leftist thinking. Since Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital, nothing he predicted has happened and nothing he theorized has worked. To continue to believe in the idea of communism is to be so deep in the drowning pool that you are no longer a floater and are rotting on the bottom. But the siren song of communism and collectivism as a whole will always be with us, for communism recognizes something within us that is intrinsically human. It recognizes the emotional needs to connect with others and to find safety in that connection.  These are not needs that can ever be wished away. They are part of our humanity. The trouble lies in the impulse to enforce these needs through the power of the state.

And it has always been so.

The protection of our individual freedoms through the creation of a republic did not make these needs go away; they only demanded that for the first time in history they be met through persuasion and an exchange of value rather than coercion and force.

The left would have you believe that to desire freedom from others' coercive demands is heartless and uncaring. It is not. It is a recognition that obligations to our fellow men can only be moral if they are voluntary. This is true from both the perspective of the giver and the receiver. When relationships and obligations are voluntarily assumed between men, both sides know that the agreement can be dissolved instantly. This aspect of choice can not be removed from morality.

To know that the needed generosity or loyalty of another is entirely dependent on one's own behavior and not enforced through the authority of the state is a powerful motivator to correct the negative behavior that caused the dependency in the first place. To put it bluntly, if I'm a crack whore and I am starving, homeless and despairing, it would still be next to impossible for me to change into a valuable member of society on my own. Only the knowledge that help is available through radical personal change would be enough to force me to the conclusion that I must change.

Where there is no dependency, but only an advantage for both parties, choice is still an invaluable aspect of any arrangement because it diffuses the power gained through the partnership to both parties. When both can leave, both maintain power. Our Founding Fathers recognized this very necessary and moral aspect of human relationships and protected it in the First Amendment.

To live in a world where all association is voluntary requires a great deal of trust between men. It requires that you believe in yourself, that you believe in your fellow citizens, and that you believe in mankind.

Despite all their assertions of belief in the goodness of man, the left always betrays their contempt for mankind in the ancient impulse to use force to achieve their desires. If they believed in the goodness of man as they insist, they would never feel the need to use the power of government to achieve their goals. Force is the weapon of the fearful.

Obama and his kind are men driven by fear, arrogance, a lack of self-awareness and a fundamental contempt for their fellow travelers. There is no other conclusion. To believe that only a chosen few have the capacity to behave morally without force is to believe that other men are worthy of nothing so much as contempt.

And that's what I see in Obama's face when he speaks to us.  Contempt.

****************

RACHEL LUCAS LINKED ME! ME! Honestly, I tried to act calm and everything like it was no big deal...but DAMN! So here's my award! Yeah, me!

You can't expect me not to giggle gleefully.  I even thought perhaps
I shouldn't award myself another award, but then thought,
"Naaaah!"

THE BRAIN TRUST - UPDATED!

Because I'm an attention whore.  Gateway Pundit put this picture up on their National Empty Chair Day celebration! 

How about the Empty Chair Party?

BFD

NATIONAL EMPTY CHAIR DAY

"I know I didn't build that, but I sure as hell hope you didn't cook this."

Find more at Twitter, hashtags EmptyChairDay and PresidentEmptyChair, and at:

Legal Insurrection

Primordial Slack

Cripes Suzette

Michelle Malkin

Twitchy

Nice Deb
Gateway Pundit
A Train Wreck In Maxwell
iOwnTheWorld, Part One and Part Two
Doug Ross @ Journal

Get Over It

Sunday Morning Prophecy

In keeping with today's theme of Celestial Ponderings, a few prophetic visions of the DNC next week in Charlotte. Suzette, at Cripes Suzette, has kindly deigned to burn some tea leaves and read the images.  Good stuff.

But, after Eastwood's magnificent performance at the RNC, the one thing we can all know for sure....

Where's Waldo?

Everyone can read that picture.

Tonight....WE ARE DUMB!

Actually, that's optimistic. As Ron White says, "Stupid is forever."

This young girl did a parody video using Justin Bieber's song, Boyfriend, a while ago. She's very good. Here she is using Fun's song, We Are Young.

H/T: Harvey at IMAO.

"Thou Shalt Not Covet"

With the rains of Charlotte washing away the impermanence of Obama's greatness, I think this Sunday morning should have a sermon. Gagdad Bob, from One Cosmos, is by far the best writer on the internet on Matters Of Deep Thought and Divine Insight.

Today's reflection is:

The Satanic Fecundity of Envy

Yes, it's a hoot to watch MSNBC's coverage of the RNC, but it does raise some important questions, because these methodical fact-chuckers are obviously not trying to be ridiculous. 

Specifically, the shocking gulf between the MSM and Realville demonstrates that our political divide has gone way past the point of who is right and who is wrong, or whose explanations and policies are more likely to succeed. 

Rather, one of us is flat crazy, and I don't mean this in any trivial, polemical, or merely insultaining way. No, there is only one reality, and someone's not in it. That being the case, one side is castigating the other for failing to inhabit their "false reality," or what Voegelin calls a "phantasmagoria of deformed existence." 

Theoretically this shouldn't be all that difficult to sort out, but we all know that reason is generally not only the slave of the passions, but that passion is what lends rationalization the kind of triumphant sanctimony we see in, for example, doctrinaire atheists, global warming fanatics, and New York Times columnists -- or the mediarabble-wackademia complex. 

But genuine reason is calm and centered, like truth itself. It has only to stare down a bad idea to make it wither or turn tail. Unless the idea is a sociopath, in which case it will simply stare back like a hungry reptile.

I never comment on Bob's writing. It's just too good to add or subtract anything. Just go there and read the whole thing. 

And, for today, be grateful. Because it will make you great-ful.

Matthew 7:24 - UPDATED! And now...for the weather.

UPDATED UPDATE!!!

I put the update at the top like the moron that I am. Now it's at the bottom, as it should be.

******************Here's the original post.**************

Obama sculpted out of sand. Boy, that has a lasting quality about it, don't you think? After the flogging Eastwood gave him as an empty chair, I would stay away from shifting, insubstantial images, if I were him.

Sixteen foot sand sculpture of The Big O at the DNC.

Embrace the stupid.

I can't get this scene out of my head. Anybody have a bucket of water?

HERE'S THE UPDATE!!!  Kurt at A Train Wreck in Maxwell checked on the local weather and lo! and behold! God has seen fit to wash away Obama's visage.

Divine!

Rains wash away Mount Obama in Charlotte, N.C.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A torrential downpour that struck Charlotte Saturday afternoon damaged the Mount Rushmore-style sand sculpture bust of President Obama — an ominous beginning to what many fear is a plagued convention. 

Read more, just for the fun of it.

I am reminded of this poem by Shelley:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(I was going to give myself another award in recognition of Kurt's link, but thought better of it considering the subject matter of this particular post.)

In The Line Of Fire

Clint Eastwood's performance Thursday night at the RNC has certainly put him in the line of fire. I am also certain he knew it would.

As an audience, we are conditioned to expect that speakers in a political environment will deliver a political speech. We expect a certain pitch, a certain cadence. We expect a certain focus. We expect them to be cheerleaders for the main event and to deliver a speech to the base.

Clint did not do what was expected. He did what he wanted to do. He acted. The result was brilliant. Clint Eastwood went out on stage and played a role. Nobody in the incredibly intelligent and sophisticated media "got" it - an actor, acting. But Mark Steyn did.

PLAY CLINTY FOR ME

Like William F. Gavin, I hugely enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s turn last night, but I’m not sure I agree that it was “unintentionally hilarious” and that “he forgot his lines, lost his way.” Clint is a brilliant actor, and a superb director of other actors (and I don’t just mean a quarter-century ago: In the last five years, he’s directed eight films). He’s also, as Mr. Gavin observed, a terrific jazz improviser at the piano — and, in film and music documentaries, an extremely articulate interviewee. So I wouldn’t assume that the general tenor of his performance wasn’t exactly as he intended. The hair was a clue: No Hollywood icon goes out on stage like that unless he means to.

Clint playing the part of the "Everyman". The American voter.

Clint went out on stage and, playing a part, MOCKED our president. He could not, as himself, have done that without appearing petty and impolite. He is not a commentator or a stand up comedian. He is an ACTOR. So he chose to play the part of a wise, frustrated voter speaking to the average American in a manner that was natural and unaffected.

That's the real beauty of great acting - the affectation of acting appears completely natural and unaffected.

And NOBODY got that. (Okay, nobody in the media or on the left got that.)

Clint acted so brilliantly that everyone thought it was real. That he truly was some crazy old man up there on stage who had lost his way and was awkwardly trying to think of what to say while talking to an empty chair.

GOT YA!

"Go f*&k yourself."

Liberals are so stupid. They NEVER get when you're making fun of them. Never.