The Political Mind

George Lakoff, author of the subject book is a noted linguist, professor at Berkley and a very far left atheist world view. One often hears from the left how "simplistic" the "right" is. Try this on for size:

In this book, I analyze the unconscious values behind what I call "progressive" thought: empathy, responsibility (for oneself and others) and an ethic of excellence (making ones self and the world better). I point out how these political values are tied, metaphorically, to a nuturant conception of the family.

Sounds like some good folks doesn't it? And what evil is it that they are up against?:

You need a strict father because kids are born bad, in the sense that they do what they want to do, and don't know right from wrong.

Imagine that? Kids that need training in order to become productive adults! Pretty evil and strange concept isn't it?

In a strict father family, it is assumed that the father merits his authority, and indeed, throughout conservatism, heirarchies of power and wealth are justified on "merit". Why should CEOs make so much more money than other employees? They deserve it.

Competition is crucial. It builds discipline. Without competition, without the desire to win, no one would have the incentive to be disciplined, and morality would suffer, as well as prosperity. Not everyone can win in a competition, only the most disciplined people, who are also the most morally worthy. Winning is thus a sign of being deserving, of being a good person. It is important to be number one! Strict father families often promote competitive sports and take them very seriously.

Naturally, a lot of these bad Strict Father folks are bad because they believe in an all powerful and all moral God that they can somehow reach through religion -- that is of course another wrong concept. Progressives understand that people are born good, discipline isn't necessary for "excellence" (see, excellence is one of their fundamental values, but there is no need for discipline). Competition is bad, and there isn't any such thing as "merit".

Luckily, George has read a few brain books just as I have, and he has come to a marvelous conclusion.

Yet those Democrats who believe in Enlightenment reason don't thing of themselves as whimpy at all. They see themselves as upholding the Enlightenment democratic ideal as committed to facts, truth, and logic, and to informing those ignorant of the facts. They see facts as nonpartisan and the basis for bipartisan agreement."

Republicans operate under no such constraints and have a better sense of how brains and minds work.

See, the intelligent and excellent Democrats are somehow lacking in an "natural understanding" of how the human brain works -- Democrats are all facts and logic, while Republicans are always appealing to the "emotional side"! Simple! Those darned touch feely Republicans with their "framing the issues", while those intellectual giant Democrats just stick completely to the facts!!

Why do Democratic candidates come out with a list of detailed programs, while Republicans don't?

I'd say that is pretty clear, right? I mean in '94 the Republicans had that long but I guess not "detailed" Contract With America, where in both '06 and '08 the Democrats had a very detailed program of "Change", and in '08 they even included "Hope" and the highly specific "Yes we can!". One doesn't get much more detailed and factual than that, the difference is clear!

Nobody makes a dime in this country without being empowered by our government. There are no self made men or women. It's a myth!

The role of a progressive government is to maximize our freedom--and protection and empowerment do just that. Protection is there to gaurentee freedom from harm, from want and from fear. Empowerment is there to maximize freedom to achieve your goals.

"Freedom from harm, want and fear"! Sort of heaven on earth. Folks have been known to want an awful lot! Since for George, there is no God above, the Government takes that place -- the Government is all powerful, it gives and takes as it sees fit -- Corporations and "the rich" pay whatever it takes for "progressives" and those that they see as deserving to get that "freedom from harm, want and fear." Those that are not fit,  pay the freight!

We can see that George clearly has his head locked on straight, consider how he proves his point on the brain science. People are "risk averse" -- they don't want to lock in a loss, they tend to "throw good money after bad". Republicans, being evil, naturally take advantage of this:

This tendency shows up in Iraq policy, where Bush and the Republicans refuse to cut their losses and get out now, instead clinging to the unlikely hope that if we stay longer things will get better, though staying longer would involve greater losses. The framing is, "We can't lose and we shouldn't cut and run -- attributing to liberal's cowardice rather than a rational choice to cut our losses."

See, this book was written in 2008 when the Surge was already clearly a success. By the general election, the Iraq war wasn't even a major issue and all the candidates were on the same strategy including BO. This makes no difference to Lakoff. A liberal is "intelligent enough" to "courageously run away" at any point -- even when victory is firmly in grasp. "Commitment" is one of those "strict father ideas" that is simply not present in the liberal "nurturant view" -- to spouses, children, soldiers, friends and allies, one can always count on a progressive to "do what they want to do today". Things like "discipline" or "commitment" are for those stodgy "strict Father types". In a world in which you are free from "harm, want and fear", the only thing that makes sense is to do whatever you want on a day by day basis!

Lakoff has it all figured out in a way that I'm not even sure the most fundamentalist Christian thinks they do -- they at least have to count on some room for the actions of a soverign and all mighty God that is not in their control. Lakoff has no such "higher power". As he says as he talks about how it would all be if we could just get everything turned the liberal way.

A New Enlightenment would not be a utopia. It would be understood that conservatives are not going to go away, nor are biconceptual "partial conservatives".

There you have it, even the liberals have their version of Satan -- it is us nasty old conservatives. It is nice of George to say that "we wouldn't go away", but the left has ALWAYS been very good at figuring ways to get rid of the opposition -- gas chambers in Germany, concentration camps and mass starvation under Stalin in the USSR, mass killings and other "cleansing operations" in China under Mao and in Cambodia under Pol Pot.

When the door to paradise is blocked only by the unwillingness of conservatives to "go away", the temptation of even the most "nurturant" to take that step into utopia becomes very strong.

Jobs Over Time

http://tipstrategies.com/archive/geography-of-jobs/#map-highlights

Interesting to look at actual data. Seems like things were working pretty darned well until 2008. I wonder, did anyone run on "Change" in 2006? How did they come out?

Remember when the Republicans took over Congress in '94? One would have thought that the world had come to an end to listen to the media -- why it was almost as bad as Reagan winning '80.

For those that aren't complete slaves to the MSM, it is interesting to go out and look at what actually happens to the economy after the "horror" of Republican takeovers and the "welcome change" of the Democrat version.

Democrats Represent Richest Districts

In major flip, House Dems now represent richest regions - USATODAY.com

A fool and his money are soon parted!

BO Fails To Win Economic Prize

MarketWatch First Take: Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics - MarketWatch

This is simply too true to actually be funny.

The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.

From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap-and-trade bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the undead health-care "reform" act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.

The Warmest Year On Record

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | What happened to global warming?

2008? 2009? Nope ... according to that bastion of conservative global warming deniers, the BBC -- 1998. Good article -- it actually sounds like SCIENCE -- not "settled science" which is an oxymoron. Does it say that Global Warming is over? No, it just says we may have 20-30 years of global cooling or maybe more. Even if we do, it MIGHT be that those years won't cool as much as they otherwise would have and that even greater warming may start at the end of that.

The point is that the global warming models did not predict cooling -- not since '98, and certainly not 20-30 more years. In science, prediction and repetition of the predictions are what takes one at least in the direction of "settled science" -- while NEVER getting there!

However, when your models predict WARMING, and you get "a pause", any sort of "science" says it is time for a new model!

BO Leads to Decay

Decline Is a Choice

BO finds the US to be a very flawed nation, so we are in retreat militarily, economically, in space, and in world stature. BO thinks that is great -- no nation "can" be dominant according to him. He must have missed the Reagan years!!

So what does it mean to be an international loser? Poorer, sadder, and most likely eventually beaten in ways that are hard for us to even imagine now. Who will defend this flawed and defeated husk of a ones great nation destroyed by the stench of BO?

Certainly not the God which we have chosen to disdain.

Of symbolic but also more concrete importance is the status of the dollar. The social democratic vision necessarily involves huge increases in domestic expenditures, most immediately for expanded health care. The plans currently under consideration will cost in the range of $1 trillion. And once the budget gimmicks are discounted (such as promises of $500 billion cuts in Medicare which will never eventuate), that means hundreds of billions of dollars added to the monstrous budgetary deficits that the Congressional Budget Office projects conservatively at $7 trillion over the next decade.

The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the World Bank.

There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but they have their price--a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.

But, of course, if one's foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend.

And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.

So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

Not Knowing What Truth Is

RealClearPolitics - Young Hamlet's Agony

"I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of
Afghanistan as 'the right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom,"
wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was
elected. "This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration,
but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."

Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan
was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never
seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George
Bush over Iraq -- while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the
soft-on-defense stereotype.

Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the "Iraq War bad, Afghan
War good" posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White
House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more
pretense.

The reason that Democrats felt certain that "Bush lied" relative to Iraq is because that is what they had been doing all along, and expect everyone to do. When Billy C cynically called for a "regiem change" policy in Iraq, he never meant to really do anything, just that he could launch some cruise missles and planes whenever he needed to "do something presidential". Being a Democrat means that is "just fine", and it is just fine with the MSM as well (as long as you are a Democrat).

So now we know that yet again, BO just said a bunch of stuff to be elected, but he has no stomach for actually winning the war in Afghanistan either. His real motto is "cut and run", just like the typical Democrat. He only said some other stuff to look good during the campaign. 

Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes.
His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for
victory, he'll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a
foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless
counterterrorism success.

Against Emanuel and Biden stand David Petraeus, the world's foremost
expert on counterinsurgency (he saved Iraq with it), and Stanley
McChrystal, the world's foremost expert on counterterrorism. Whose
recommendation on how to fight would you rely on?

Less than two months ago -- Aug. 17 in front of an audience of
veterans -- the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of
necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of
the audience applause?

I think we know the answer to that.

BO and Right to Choose

Obama: Health Care Plan Would Give Seniors Right To Choose How They Are Killed | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

If this doesn't make you smile you don't have a sense of humor.

SNL BO

Commentary: Will 'SNL' skit sink hopes for Obama? - CNN.com



CNN thought that it needed to FACT CHECK a SNL skit. Isn't that precious? I'm gratified to see that SNL was at least able to see it's way clear to FINALLY poke a little fun at his worshipfulness, but the idea of the MSM navel gazing on "how could they" is nearly too much to take.

Recall any media navel gazing while Bush was savaged in every way possible? Nope.

Wave of the Future?

Op-Ed Contributor - Why Arrest Roman Polanski Now? - NYTimes.com

"Progressivism" always requires "progress", so when there has been a major piece of "progress" in an area, one needs to look out for the next move. We seem to have defacto allowed gay marriage at this point, so while there will still be some "victories" to be had in that area, it is time for the progressives to start staking out the next goal in the "progress" of sexual "freedom".

My suspicion as long been that it will be in the area of sexual exploitation of children. Like homosexuality it has a long history of acceptance, with the Greeks and the Romans being prime examples. It also has a long history in literature and art "Lolita" and "American Beauty" come to immediate mind -- I'm sure the list is VERY long. How many rock songs have something about "little girl"? Most pedophiles, like homosexuals would say "they are born that way" -- and I'm sure they are at least somewhat right. Humans are born with all manner of desires that need to be trained away, transferred to something acceptable, dealt with "day by day with the help of a higher power" (like AA) or simply managed in the old fashioned will power way. While progressives have believe in the deity of man, and thus seek to remove all fetters, the obvious truth is that the only angels that humans resemble serve a master in a very dark yet fiery place.

What age will be pushed as "consensual"? Something in the 12 or thirteen age wouldn't be a bad guess.

Why are we supposed to care so deeply about Roman Polanski? Would the MSM and Hollywood view be the same if he were a Priest? How about an ex-Republican politician that had fled the country?  How long do you have to think to come up with that answer?

Remember, the linked article isn't in some strange Bohemian rag -- it is the NYT, "The paper of record". The mainstream left is working hard to let everyone see that "see, sex with a 13 year old girl is REALLY not so bad -- she turned out fine!". What do YOU think their purposes for such a position are?

Wisconsin Tourism Federation (WTF)

WTF? Bloggers cause Wisconsin Tourism Federation to change name | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

Well, OK ... sometimes some lettering combinations pick up new meanings over time.

When Is The Stimulus a Failure?

So the Democrats and the MSM declared the Surge a "failure" before a single extra soldier had been sent to Iraq. That was considered "fine".

BO predicted that we needed to spend $800 Billion to keep unemployment from going over 8%. Can you imagine the outcry if the Surge HADN'T actually worked??

Is it clear yet that this clown as absolutiely no idea what he is doing? HEEEELLLLOOOO !!!! is there anyone paying any attention, or are people such complete media sheep that they will just go with whatever they are told to think??

What CAN BO Do?

Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency - Times Online

I think we all know that, he can talk / campaign. When the electorate is stupid enough to vote for "Hope and Change" I guess that works, but we have seen a lot of the limits to rhetoric this year.

There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.

Sorta sums it up -- pretty, but empty suit!

Mr Obama was greeted — as usual — like a rock star by the IOC delegates in Copenhagen — then humiliated by them. Perception is reality. A narrow defeat for Chicago would have been acceptable — but the sheer scale of the defeat was a bombshell, and is a major blow for Mr Obama at a time when questions are being asked about his style of governance.

Yup, the folks really like -- a loser, especially when the loser is the former greatest nation on earth. The PEOPLE overseas "really like him" -- the leadership realizes that he is an empty suit, and while the enemies no doubt love him, the allies are starting to get extremely worried. With good reason.

See Bush was NOT an empty suit. The media and the Democrats certainly tried to make him that, but any leader that could drive the Surge with 60% disapproval ratings of the action to success is a LEADER! Note that BO thought it was really bad that Bush hadn't gotten Bin Ladin -- now BO has taken over and is fast on his way to losing the whole deal in Afghanistan, and **HE** said it was a WAR OF NECESSITY!! Does that mean he should step down for a president that can get the job done?

So unemployment is up (a lot), the economy has not turned around, even with the biggest media cheering section we have ever had in the US, Afghanistan is falling apart and BO came in DEAD LAST in the Olympic sweepstakes. It was even a self-inflicted wound! He didn't need to associate himself with the effort.

If Bush's first year had been anything like this, the MSM would have been hard on the impeachment mantra by now -- of course the "Impeach Bush" bumper stickers were already out from the left. Naturally, those are the "civil folks".

Ends And Means

RealClearPolitics - Obama's French Lesson

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran's nuclear program -- whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

I work as a software systems architect, confusing ends with means is a constant danger often fallen into. Software is "infinitely pliable", it gives you the illusion that nearly anything can be accomplished, it is but "a small matter of programming". Sadly it is far from so.

Normal world leaders have long left behind such illusions about nations, politics, human nature, economies and the history of mankind. They have typically drunk deeply from the vast storehouse of human thought and experience that tells us that since when each of us looks in the mirror, at least beyond some hopefully young age, we see a flawed and mortal human. Those of us that will gain some small measure of "success" in this world choose to use that not as an excuse, but as just one more fact of life to be dealt with and improved upon in the best ways that we know possible.

By the time men get to the point of leading nations, they have usually led businesses, states, movements, political parties, cities, or some other form of real world training. To lead in the real world on even a relatively small scale is to learn the universality of human imperfection and the limitations of the real world very directly. That knowledge comes with the realization that too often, those that have never taken the mantle of leadership are still living with those same illusions thought to be left behind as the price of maturity.

We daily see that BO is not a leader. He doesn't understand the most basic aspects of leadership, and would nearly certainly have failed at any number of smaller leadership tasks had he ever have had those tasks. We would be in FAR better shape had he even served as a mayor in a small town in Alaska. There he would have discovered that there are always rivals, some folks that seem to be your friends are not once you take on leadership, getting agreement among even those who generally think like you is extremely difficult.

Most of all, there are often simply no means at all to reach what ever ends it is that we thought desirable. One wonders if BO ever put any toys or lawn furniture together? It seems almost impossible to imagine the stupidity of someone taking on tasks like running GM with the level of condescension and disdain he has displayed for people that clearly know far more than he has even imagined could be known!

It is hard to underestimate the ego of a man who would write two auto biographies before the age of 50. One because he thought being president of Harvard Law Revue was so cool, and the other after he had won a Senate seat after running essentially unopposed. (The Chicago political machine managed to take down a very strong Republican candidate named Jack Ryan by managing to open private documents from a divorce that asserted that he had tried to take his former wife to a sex club. His former wife was Gerry Ryan, "7 of 9" on Star Trek, that would have been better referred to as "11 of 10". That Ryan was able to utter any intelligible sentences other than "can we go to bed now" is a testament to his sexual restraint)

Charles whole column is eminently worthy of reading. The end is unfortunately way too true:

Bismarck is said to have said: "There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America." Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.

Infant Mortality

Ann Coulter : A Statistical Analysis of Maritime Unemployment Rates, 1946-1948. Just Kidding, More Liberal Lies About National Healthcare! - Townhall.com

Ann does a great job of destroying the liberal shibboleth that "America has a poor infant mortality rate". Essentially it boils down to these basic facts:

• Most countries don't count premature births below a certain weight, or in many cases even babies that live less than a day as "births" -- they call them "miscarriages".
  
• Most infant problems are lifestyle problems, not medical problems -- smoking, drinking and drugging mothers. Teen mothers. The US leads in all these categories, THANKS LIBERALS!
• Blacks have bad infant mortality rates and nobody really knows why.
  

The fact that it is the US that keeps pushing the envelope on saving premature babies earlier and earlier in fact ADDS to what the liberals refer to as our "infant mortality problem". By working harder to keep these tiny babies alive and counting them as "infant deaths", we end up looking worse in global statistics.

Imagine how quickly our infant morality rates would "improve" if ONLY we got "universal healthcare". Any baby that dies less than a day after birth is a "miscarriage". Why bother to try to save premature "babies"? It seems kind of weird that a nation that allows them to be partially birthed and have their brains sucked out to kill them in partial birth abortion would spend all that money trying to save them -- let them die and count them as miscarriages! Brilliant -- saves money, gives us better statistics, AND makes us more "morally consistent".