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Journal Journal: Democrats playing the race card? Surely as the sun riseth 25

George Will:

"Liberalism has a kind of Tourette Syndrome these days," Will said. "It's constantly saying the words racism and racist. There's an old saying, 'If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.' This is pounding the table. There's a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn't had a new idea since the 1960s, except Obamacare, and the country doesn't like it."
"Foreign policy is a shambles from Russia to Iran to Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he added. "And, the recovery is unprecedentedly bad. So, what do you do? You say anyone who criticizes us is a racist. It's become a joke among young people. You go to a campus where this kind of political correctness reigns and some young person says, 'It looks like it's going to rain.' And, the person next to him looks and says, 'You're a racist.' It's so inappropriate. The constant invocation of this that it is becoming a national mirth."

What does Will mean?:

Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose major role is the get House members re-elected, told CNN's "State of the Union" that not all of his Republican colleagues are racist.
"Not all of them, of course not," he said. "But to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism."

If Israel isn't dropping specific names/instances, then I don't take him seriously and think he's less than forthright.
In defense of Israel, this is the sort of squishy rhetoric that brought you the ruin of ObamaCare, so at least he's consistent with his party.

And of course the usual sycophants will claim that the URLs go to Unapproved Sites or something. Before you bore me: get a life.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Interested in seeing Colbert in a !Report mode 24

I've always liked Colbert. Taking myself too seriously has never been among my otherwise multitudinous shortcomings. Otherwise I couldn't deal with some of the jokers around here at all. Thus, I've always enjoyed Colbert's skewering of his mindless conservative strawman. The strawman certainly isn't real, so what's the harm?
More to the point, Colbert has actual talent. His interviews display a mind that plays chess three moves ahead of the victim, throwing out delightful inversions all over the place.
I think he'll surprise a lot of people on Letterman. I may even try to TiVo an episode, and even watch a couple of minutes.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Benghazi 14

Mighty nice of Boehner:

The administration has not told the American people the truth about Benghazi.
We've been going through all of these hearings, having to hold people in contempt, because they've made it impossible to get to the documents.
They have not been forthcoming. They owe the American people the truth.
And when it comes to Benghazi, we've got four Americans who are dead, and their families deserve the truth about what happened. And the administration refuses to tell them the truth.

Well, I sure am glad that I didn't waste any time on a fool's errand reading Pravda on the Hudson (NYT) or "Dingy Harry's Tale of the Fairy" on the topic of Benghazi.
Not that I doubt that Boehner, himself, doesn't know more than HE is telling, too. If he REALLY had his panties abunch, he might have brought HR36 to a vote.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Facts are not evidence, to some 25

Hank Aaron equated Republicans who oppose President Barack Obama's policies to the KKK.
Aaron implied that conservatives are racists who now wear "neckties and starched shirts" instead of hoods.
In an interview with USA Today's Bob Nightengale on Tuesday, "Hammerin' Hank" lamented that the country has not progressed far enough on race relations, saying that though the nation has a black president, "President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated."

Correlation is not causation, however; the evil Republicans could have been after Hank with the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and forced him to say that.
Also, a vast swath of public figures elected and otherwise who make idiotic statements does not a conspiracy make.
Let's just not go there.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Propaganda 'Truth': Opposition to Obama is Racist 62

Emphasis mine:

A few weeks ago, the liberal comedian Bill Maher and conservative strategist and pundit Bill Kristol had a brief spat on Maher's HBO show, putatively over what instigated the tea party but ultimately over the psychic wound that has divided red America and blue America in the Obama years. The rise of the tea party, explained Maher in a let's-get-real moment, closing his eyes for a second the way one does when saying something everybody knows but nobody wants to say, "was about a black president." Both Maher and Kristol carry themselves with a weary cynicism that allows them to jovially spar with ideological rivals, but all of a sudden they both grew earnest and angry. Kristol interjected, shouting, "That's bullshit! That is total bullshit!" After momentarily sputtering, Kristol recovered his calm, but his rare indignation remained, and there was no trace of the smirk he usually wears to distance himself slightly from his talking points. He almost pleaded to Maher, "Even you don't believe that!"
"I totally believe that," Maher responded, which is no doubt true, because every Obama supporter believes deep down, or sometimes right on the surface, that the furious opposition marshaled against the first black president is a reaction to his race. Likewise, every Obama opponent believes with equal fervor that this is not only false but a smear concocted willfully to silence them.

I can only plead my life, having served with Americans of all stripes: I'm not racist. I don't think you can find substantial actual racism much of anywhere (though somebody is always willing to carry a Confederate Battle Flag for a few bucks, I'm sure.)
No, the race card has just been a convenient foil, no more. A bin into which all legitimate criticism can be swept. In a way, one must confess it's been a handy device.

User Journal

Journal Journal: An old, ex-liberal, on the state of the Left 27

Roger Simon is a great American:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=174&load=9597
Interestingly, Simon assumes the "born that way" position on sexuality (I guess his son is gay).
As noted elsewhere, I think that's a rationalization. Then again, we'll see if either of my sons falls prey to this modern deception. I doubt I'd love them less, but I'll likely take it as a personal failure.
User Journal

Journal Journal: SC2 on the MBP 4

When StarCraft II came out I bought it. Unfortunately I didn't play for too long. My machine could barely run it. As I progressed through the campaign it became increasingly laggy as the scenarios became more complex. There were also some fundamental changes to gameplay that I didn't care for. I never liked the missions where I didn't build a base but instead followed a path, picking up a few units here and there. There were these along with missions that were very time oriented and you have to constantly hurry. So I stopped playing.
 
I was sitting last night, just relaxing, and thought - that Macbook pro I just got is pretty beefy. I wonder what good games are around for Mac. I was looking at some lists, realized when I saw SC2 on one that I already owned it - and installed it on my machine. I've been watching a lot of SC2 matches on youtube. I'm a HuskyStarcraft fan. That's gotten me to thinking about playing some on battlenet. I know I'll never be that good - but especially after watching his Bronze League Heroes casts, I think I could still have fun. It seems I have a better chance of getting matched up with people closer to me in ability than I did with the old original StarCraft.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Systemd, Plymouth, KDM, weirdness

Very recently my Fedora machine stopped booting to the graphic login. It would be humming along, I'd see my little "f" appear, then I'd drop back to a text list of boot up events and it would just sit there. I could hop over to another tty and log in and then startx and log into KDE.
 
I've been busy so I didn't have time to try and figure it out. Today I finally could do a little research. I found stuff like this and this. There was a lot of other stuff too - but what I couldn't find is a single explanation of just what is going on that I could understand. I hate changing stuff in my system without knowing why I'm doing it or exactly what it is I'm doing.
 
In this case a quick "mv /var/log/journal /var/log/journal.org" did resolve my issue immediately. On reboot everything performed normally. But why? And this has been going on for a long, long time. That first link is a bug report that was opened just shy of a year ago. Not sure why it just hit me within the last few weeks. I'll keep digging when I have time to see if I can ever find an explanation of just what is going on.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Steyn on Eich 83

Mozilla's chairwoman Mitchell Baker issued the usual tortured justification:

"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech," Baker said. "And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."

I heard a lot of this stuff during my free-speech battles in Canada. The country's chief censor, the late Jennifer Lynch, QC, was willing to concede that free speech was certainly a right, but it was merely one in a whole range of competing rights - such as "equality" and "diversity" - that needed to be "balanced". What the "balancing" boils down to is that you get fired if you are an apostate from the new progressive groupthink. Underneath the agonized prose, Mitchell Baker is a bare-knuckled thug.

And thus the sins of the past are recycled with new labels. Bravo.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Sweet, sweet Vichy GOP

"Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman," said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.
No member of the House GOP leadership has publicly hailed the fix, which was tucked, at Republicans' request, into legislation preventing a cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.
It is unclear how many members of the House rank and file knew of it because the legislation was passed by a highly unusual voice vote without debate.

Feel the awesome subversion of representative democracy that is the Amorphous Care Act.

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