Strike out
Legend says that in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed to a spot in Wrigley field. Moments later, he hit a home run to that very place. But not everybody can be the Babe. The Los Angeles Times says that the ‘kiss in’ protest which was supposed to punish Chick-fil-A failed dismally, with “apparently far less than the huge show of support the chicken eatery received earlier this week.”
Huge crowds turned out Wednesday in a show of support for company President Dan Cathy, who ignited a national debate by publicly expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage. Critics have also said the company supports causes harmful to gays and lesbians.
The scene on Friday was much quieter at locations across the Southland.
It’s now possible to bury the notion a lot of myths. The first was that this was a fight between gays and straight people. Nobody went out to harass same-sex couples. And none but a few activists thought it was a particularly pleasant prospect to go into a restaurant and make a spectacle of themselves.
Activists often make the mistake of believing that their followers are as mindlessly fanatical as they are. The second myth now lying in the ground with the shambles of the Kiss-in campaign is the myth that just because a person is gay, he’ll follow stupid instructions. The big mistake of the leftist tacticians was not to underestimate their conservative opponents, but to underestimate the intelligence of their supporters.
By grandiosely announcing their revenge and failing abjectly at it, the activists have lost a lot of mojo. The first rule of intimidation is to intimidate. If you can’t, don’t try.
The Huffington Post notes that Clint Eastwood has endorsed Mitt Romney. “The Oscar-winning director and longtime movie star says he’s endorsing the Republican presidential candidate.”
In February, Eastwood told Fox News that he wasn’t supporting any politician at that time. Some saw the “halftime in America” ad he made for the Super Bowl as a nod toward President Barack Obama. Eastwood responded then by saying he was not “politically affiliated” with the president.
Doubtless Eastwood has his reasons for choosing Mitt. But one of them is almost certainly the calculation that Romney can win. Maybe he was still figuring the windage at ‘halftime in America’. Now he’s got the range. Eastwood will back Romney in November, as will a whole host of others, in part from an affinity for his Mitt’s program, but mostly because nothing succeeds like success.
The flip side of that slogan is that nothing bombs quite like failure. Alinsky always advised his followers to never pick a fight they couldn’t win. For a long time President Obama remembered that nugget of wisdom and made no enemies where he could make no friends. He was forced to “evolve” on gay marriage precisely because the polls showed the dangers of coming out like gangbusters the issue. But Rahm Emmanuel, by needlessly and gratuitously picking a fight with an obscure food chain did exactly what Alinsky advised against: he picked a fight that Obama himself didn’t want and which was a losing proposition.
But history is full of instances where defeat proves more fruitful than victory. The worst thing that could happen to Mitt Romney is if Barack Obama learns from this mistake. He may finally waken to the fact that the media can’t deliver the office to him in November. He has to actually earn his keep to deserve it. The problem is that he may have left it for too late.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama so far has not demonstrated any capability to learn from his errors. Except, I hear, after briefly eschewing TOTUS, he has put that estimable tool back into action, thus contributing to one of those jobs “created” by him.
There may be such a thing as a preference cascade. In which individuals make a hundred small judgements and decisions, until one day they have found that they have made a life changing progression from where they were to where they are.
The polling data on the upcoming election is of dubious value because of the faulty weighting that polling agencies put on their small sample sizes. Good polls ask many thousands, and ask a range of questions to gain a latitude and longitude on the population being surveyed.
So Eastwood, being a pop culture figure, has stuck his finger in the wind, and decided to back Mitt Romney. Good for him. I think quite a few million people have made a series of choices and value judgements and will find themselves in a similar place.
Obama, indeed, has waited too long to actually try to become the President, of all the people. He was given every chance, and made a lot of bad choices and enemies when he could have at least given lip service to compromise. My guess is that while both Obama and Hillary Clinton were students of Alinsky, Obama has more experience as a Community Organizer (punch back twice as hard) and pitching to the mob, than working the opposition to undermine their position.
“[Obama] has to actually earn his keep to deserve [re-election].”
And how would he go about doing that? Specifically? By pointing out how many jobs he’s been meaning to create, but hasn’t? How many ‘shovel-ready’ roads and bridges he’s intended to repair, but didn’t? How many rich guys he’s been meaning to tax, but can’t? Puhh-leeze…
There are no mistakes in Obambus’ world, only misunderstandings and conspiracies. Also chicken and waffles and lot of gay people.
These pictures linked from PJ Media need to go viral:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/08/03/chick-fil-a-kiss-in-hollywood-the-pictures/
I always heard that the “called shot” story was in Wrigley Field, during an All-Star Game.
The stupid thing about this is that practically no one conforms to the radical leftie’s idea of how to do things. I doubt many people know that In-N-Out is/was owned by very religious Christians; the burgers are good, so who cares? For whatever reasons there’s a sliver of activists in a few minority groups who apparently either only talk to friends, or who essentially psychologically bully those around them into acquiescence when they’re present, so that they believe that if they announce that Dan Cathy is the reincarnation of Hitler, they can get x million gays marching on his restaurants in protest over his “hateful” opinions. However, it turns out that the vast majority of people don’t care, and have this stubborn attitude that the man is entitled to his opinions. In addition, they want to go where they like the food.
Me, can’t stand Chick-Fil-A. I do like a double-double though. Who cares about their politics, if they can cook a burger properly?
“company President Dan Cathy, who ignited a national debate by publicly expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage”
I heard it in the MSM but it has been reported that his comment was in some obscure religious publication. If that is true, then those who were affronted by his beliefs had to go a long way to find it. It was not on Facebook.
I am not convinced that Romney has committed a faux pax by not reacting to the daily BS that is meant to distract. In this environment…personally, I think his prudence is advisable.
I think that one of the things that polls wont capture is how many people are actually embarrassed to admit they are willing to vote against a putative black man and why.
The polls will be much more honest in this sense.
“I doubt many people know that In-N-Out is/was owned by very religious Christians; the burgers are good, so who cares? ”
This may not be right. I always carefully vet every street vendor who sells me felafels. You cannot be careful enough!
“For whatever reasons there’s a sliver of activists in a few minority groups who apparently either only talk to friends, or who essentially psychologically bully those around them into acquiescence when they’re present, so that they believe that if they announce that Dan Cathy is the reincarnation of Hitler, they can get x million gays marching on his restaurants in protest over his “hateful” opinions.”
Lucky you . I have had friends bust my balls for my disinterest in gay marriage for nearly a decade. They just don’t get it. I don’t like them so much that being part of a fascist movement seems worth it to me.
Eastwood has worked hard for years not to be seen as the Republican Dirty Harry of politics. Clint Eastwood is not the new John Wayne. For example he told the story of WW-II in the Pacific from both sides. In a host of ways he ensured that he would be respected by Hollywood, as well as simply feared as a wealthy and powerful Producer. Therefor the reverberations of his endorsement will be significant. It could cost Obama money.
Obama has problems. He can’t say somebody else built his administration or his campaign. Even if he is an empty suit and front for string pullers *cough* Soros *cough*, he can’t admit it. But at the same time like any person running a large organization he can’t do the work himself. He depends on supporters and subordinates and unfortunately for him many of them are idiots.
This can happen to anyone and especially to any politician. All of us who have participated in a campaign know that you will spend time with people who if wealthy can charitably be termed eccentric and who if poor would best be considered unemployable. Republicans suffer because their best despise politics and would rather work. Democrats suffer because they are Democrats and their ranks are stuffed with an even greater percentage of the selfish ignorant dishonest and arrogant. Obama can’t divorce himself from Rahm Emanuel and Rahm kited a cheque for his old boss to pay.
Cathy said he was an advocate for traditional marrage. He never said anything anti-gay. Here are the exact words.
“Some have opposed the company’s support of the traditional family. “Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position.
“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.
“We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized.
”
The media is fooling with you. Here is the full article.
Baptist News
“To the PC Thought Prisoner, affirming the family is the same (by analogy) as opposing sodomy, and sodomites are regarded not as the practitioners of a disordered sexual appetite but (by analogy) as a separate race or ethnic group who suffer unjust persecution, such as slavery or Jim Crow laws. Hence, reasoning entirely by analogy, if a seller of chicken sandwiches and waffle-cut potato fries affirms the family (which, to sane men, is a comment as boilerplate and boring as being in favor of Mom and Apple Pie and the Flag) to the PC Thought Prisoner, that man is (by analogy) a slaver and a segregationist.”
John C. Wright-(Read it all):
http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/08/on-neobarbarism/
IIRC, 1.618 % of the population is abhorosexual. That is way less then the abhorosexuals claim. The main purpose of the GLBwhatever movement is to increase that percentage. More political power. The goal is to have a Coach Jerry on every block. They think that will reduce the tension between homos and hetros. They are wrong.
The push for same-sex marriage is not about “equal rights”. It is about acceptance of homosexual sexual preference as “normal”. It is not normal, If it were, the human race would have been extinct long ago!
OT. Less then 24 hours to go;
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/mars-curiosity-rover-landing-nasa-prepares-minutes-terror/story?id=16917187
Is this a mission too far? IF JPL pulls it off, watch the 0bumbler take the credit.
Scumbag.
Wretchard said “The big mistake of the leftist tacticians was not to underestimate their conservative opponents, but to underestimate the intelligence of their supporters.”
Notably, the guy in Tuscon who recorded himself on video harassing a Chick-fil-A employee and posted to youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPLNgkP9nzc) has been fired by his employer, a medical device manufacturer (http://t.co/d1c9HipC), for what he did. I think he under-estimated just a tad, as well. Ironically, his name is Adam Smith.
The true values of the majority of Americans were revealed this week. With such dubious election polls, I believe CFA presented a much clearer picture of public opinion. Thank you Mr. Cathy for reminding us of our freedoms of religion and speech.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84145057@N04/7707169970/
David@2
“Obama, indeed, has waited too long to actually try to become the President, of all the people.”
Obama NEVER intended to be President of all the people. He made that clear from the first week with his, “I won” statement. From Day One it was “Screw you, wingnuts. It’s PAYBACK TIME!”
Obama has NEVER once wavered from that attitude. He truly hates his political opposition and wouldn’t hesitate to use any weapon he can bring to bear against them. The passage of Obamacare is a worse stain on the American Congress than anything else I’ve ever seen, including the Senate failing to convict Clinton. The way it was passed was illegal, the bill itself was unconstitutional, the majority of people disapproved of it, and Obama and the corrupt Democrats rammed it through anyway and dared America to do something about it. It doesn’t get more blatantly antagonistic than that.
Make no mistake. Politics is war for the left, and for them everything is political. The right has no choice but to fight back with the left’s own weapons or be defeated in detail. If Obama is evicted in November America will be at least a decade just trying to get back to where we were in 2006 when the Dems took Congress.
Wretchard wrote: “By grandiosely announcing their revenge and failing abjectly at it, the activists have lost a lot of mojo.”
Were we only able to take advantage of their failure! If the Right’s effort in fighting the Culture War could be compared to the America Civil War, the Right would be fighting the Battle of Gettysburg somewhere in New Hampshire.
The Left is swabbing the deck of our sinking ship of state with us. I see Romney now has run as far and as fast from the “Battle of Chickacomma” as fast as he can. “When duty called, he did not hesitate/He ran like Hell.”
There’s no alternative to voting for the guy, but he disgusts me—he had his aide personally apologize to two reporters for the “Kiss my ass” comment. I’ll bet Romney picks Pawlenty to be his running mate, and if, somehow, miracle of miracles, that pair of deer-in-the-headlights are elected in November, they’ll a one-term wonder, and be seriously primaried from the Right in 2016.
As for the utterly boring, totally wearisome Gay business (I used to be an Aristophanes about homosexuality; but now it’s become so mind-numbingly tedious and so completely self-pitying, it’s excruciating to take any notice of it at all), a day or so ago, a “ben h” wrote, when building on a comment that, “It is morphing into an overt test of whether the cultural elite can have its way,” ben h himself observed:
“Well put. Gay marriage is an attempt to destroy an existing, weakened human institution by arbitrarily redefining it. Its an attack by the rich and powerful on the institutions of the bourgeoisie. Gay marriage exists only in the minds of its propagandist and people who believe the propaganda, not in real life.”
This is brilliant. Absolutely. Wrap it in social class warfare and throw it as a damned class struggle meme back into Bam’s face, and roll it up in old newspapers and deliver it early every morning on the Dems’ doorstep, where it can rot their heads.
What this idea does is to say: Marriage is not just a sexual contract, enabling a woman to keep the man around who fathered her children, so she’s not left to care for her helpless progeny AND hunt Mammoth and fend off saber-tooth kitties. It IS this Middle Class culture institution par-excellence.
For historical support of the “Marriage as Foundation of Western Culture” idea, go back to the Middle Ages. Show how the real economic growth and cultural development of Western Culture was completely a Middle Class thing, involving the free tradesmen and guild members in the cities slowly building up Europe—and obviously it was founded on marriage, as defined by the Church and embraced by those stolid Bürghers—that created our civilization.
The damned cultural elites, whether Ancient Greek, Imperial Roman, Medieval Warlords, or Renaissance grandees, just as with our elites today, flouted all the Middle Class values.
Nothing has changed, except that Communists of the Frankfurt School decided to use sex to break down Bourgeois society in order to further the Revolution. In other words, this isn’t your everyday elite flouting. There’s a point to it, just as there’s a point to Obama’s crazy economic policies.
And somewhere recently I saw an argument that much of our cultural disintegration has occurred because of “no-fault” divorce laws being widely adopted across the cultural spectrum; i.e., the Middle Class and the poor now have access to the elites’ flouting of marriage—and unlike the rich, they simply can’t afford such nonsense.
The Communists will be only too happy to “save us from ourselves”, I’m sure.
So, “Aux armes!” for Middle-Class values! Down with the elites!
Mac wrote at 17: “If Obama is evicted in November America will be at least a decade just trying to get back to where we were in 2006 when the Dems took Congress.”
Were the situation only as rosy as that.
An Préachán
USA Today’s story was fairly balanced but for one blatant, risible lie: it reported the pro Chick-fil-A turnout Wednesday was in the “hundreds”. Given the widespread reports of their 1600 stores being swamped, hundreds of thousands is a conservative estimate. But since the kiss-in was such a major flop, I guess we need to promote the impression that Wednesday was too.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-01/chik-fil-a-appreciation-day-gay-marriage/56668468/1
#2
Researchers only “weight” results of data when the completed surveys either over or under represent the population demographics. Also you don’t need to complete thousands of surveys to get a good results. Its 1066 to have a 95% confidence level and a 3% confidence interval with a population of 1,000,000. To be even more specific for the same confidence levels and intervals its between 341 completed surveys for a population of only 500 and no more than 1067 for populations basically above 1,000,000. The critical part of the above discussion is that the sample must be pulled randomly from the population to ensure that your results match your the population. If not then you need to apply weights to ensure that one demographic of the results is not over represented. Pulling sample ramdomly and completing them randomly is the most critical step in the process.
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
The reason why polling data (data collected outside polling stations as opposed to calling people on the phone) for the past two presidential elections continues to be of dubious quality has been much discussed in research circles. The most popular theory that I have seen is that democrats/liberals are over represented in the exit polls. This group wants to walk out of the polling station and proudly proclaim how they voted. My favorite theory is the pretty girl theory. Quite simply put pollers hire pretty college girls to gather the data and liberal/socialist/democrats men simply can’t resist a pretty girl asking them for their opinion. Hence the over representation.
Michael Barone is a good resource for all things political research and polling.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/author/michael-barone
Interesting email making the rounds at work shows Gene Wilder from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory scene where he has the “Cheshire Cat Grin” on his face while he what’s for you to answer the question he proposes to you “So. You stopped eating at “Chick-fil-A” because the owner of the company thinks that Homosexuality is wrong. Tell me, when are you going to stop buying gasoline because the owners of OPEC put Homosexuals to Death?” the sweet irony of America’s Liberal/Progressive and Homosexual cowards!
Obama has nothig left but the race card. But the race hustlers have been fairly quiet lately. I wonder what’s cooking. We’ve never had Marxist-Leninists running the White House. Maybe we’re not in Kansas anymore. Obama has found out he doesn’t need Congress. Why should he let an election get in his way? Something is afoot.
Clint Eastwood backing Romney is not a surprise.
20 plus years ago Eastwood ran for mayor of Carmel, CA. The reason was that he had opened a restaurant there and found out first hand how heavy was the burden imposed by government. And also the fact that government enabled rent-seeking behavior, such as the lawsuit brought against the restaurant by a handicappd person complaining that a prticular bathroom did not have handicapped access. It wasn’t that the restaurant did not have handicapped bathrooms; the lawsuit was brought on the basis that one bathroom did not.
He ran for mayor on the basis of dismantling government.
Joel Kotkin has a good post on the Obama Strategy; Buraq has already bet the house that his tribal coalition of gays, minorities, union and guvmint workers can out vote the rest of us smacked the upside of the head by his Progressive Fascism:
http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00599-tribal-election-barack-obama-turns-karl-rove-playbook
Good luck with that.
Take the 11 million people in this chart:
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/08/chart-of-the-day-americas-missing-11-million-workers/
and add the roughly 4 million self employed who haven’t paid themselves in a year and you’ve got minimum 15 million mighty pissed off people who probably ain’t too happy with the performance of our fearless Dear Leader.
And that’s just for starters; there are millions upon millions more than are technically still working but are now not making anywhere close to enough in this economy to pay the bills.
If things don’t get any worse than they are now BH0 will be re-elected! Things turn darker and BH0 will dump Biden for Hildabeast and is re-elected, major Terrorist attack or War breaks out with American involvement and it isn’t a quick massive win for the US, BH0 will do a LBJ.
“major Terrorist attack or War breaks out with American involvement and it isn’t a quick massive win for the US”
Quick massive win means nukes. The American Socialist movement has spent 60+ years brainwashing the American public to fear a nuclear war. So until that brainwashing is shaken off, it ain’t gonna happen. I can’t even get clubbers to open their eyes and see that airpower can replace boots on the ground in the 21st century. Show Iran that they can acquiesce to unannounced site searches or they can huddle amidst the wreckage of their civilization. In the dark, cold and hungry.
Haji can’t shoot.
“He may finally waken to the fact that the media can’t deliver the office to him in November. He has to actually earn his keep to deserve it.”
That is what I’m worried about. What are the chances that President Obama will, for political reasons, take a bold military action of some kind? Given his, shall we say, limited understanding of foreign policy and national security, I shudder to think what he might consider an appropriate military escalation.
Are they telling him what to do yet? Serious question.
stoicheion @26: I’m all for air power. I understand the MOP is ready to go…
The Chick-fil-A hubub has become a major setback for the Same-Sex Marriage Movement (SSMM). Why? Because it aired the dirty laundry of those advocating same-sex marriage, showing clearly their hatred and bigotry. This is going to hurt the efforts of SSMM to defeat Washington Referendum 74, which would repeal WA’s legalized Gay marriage law ( pushed through by the legislature – no popular vote). So I suspect that in WA, just as in 32 other state contests around the country, voters are going to loudly reject same-sex marriage.
Now the SSMM-crowd wasn’t counting on such a smashing defeat, but they were planning to lose, as they’ve been jabbering how the courts will be their salvation. And I believe there is a SCOTUS case forthcoming.
Liberal wingnuts have their panties in a bit of a twist with this election. A Romney win will certainly mean the SCOTUS justice replacement for Ginsburg will be conservative.
So the timing of the Chick-fil-a incident is excellent, energizing the conservative base. Conservatives may not get excited about Romney, but they are certainly getting disgusted with Obama. More importantly, independent voters just saw the ugly side of pink politics and will remember that Obama supports it.
And Rahm’s antics hurt Obama – folks still remember this guy in Obama’s camp.
“So I suspect that in WA, just as in 32 other state contests around the country, voters are going to loudly reject same-sex marriage.”
9th circuit. They are chock full of abhorosexual judges. Until the 9th circuit is cleaned out, they will continue to be champions for the Socialist agenda.
What needs to be settled is if the right to have sex can be restricted even more. Right now it is restricted by age and consent. Should gender be included?
In the past it has been. Those laws were overturned by homosexual judges seeing “sex” in the 14th amendment as a verb instead of a noun. That was wrong, of course. The “Sex’ in the 14th amendment is a synonym for gender. That makes homosexuality a choice NOT a civil right.
The gubermint has no place in the bedroom. When sodomites go public, THEN the gubermint has both a right and a duty to intervene.
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
stoicheion @26 and Sarah Rolph @ 28. I respectfully disagree. While very important to any operation, air power is a supporting force. Boots win.
Re gay marriage, our topic of the post, boring.
Our national campaign to assert minority rights over majority rights is reaching the Keystone Kops stage. Less than 2% of the ADULT population driving the national debate. That is less than the polling margin upon which so many are making political decisions. WT Hell.
ta
15 @ Starling: The great part about that guy in Tucson getting fired for being, shall we say, impolite to the Chick-Fil-A woman is that it shows actions can have consequences. Maybe next time the left wing knuckleheads will think twice before pulling, much less publicizing, such rudeness.
The usual corporate weasel word pap, which I am sure he was counting on, is “we do not agree with what X said but defend his right to his First Amendment views and are sorry if he offended anyone”. Good for this company for drawing a line.
Here is the link: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/vante-of-tucson-az-regrets-actions-of-former-cfo-1686870.htm
Those who’ve noted that gays are less than 2% of the population make the key point on the failure of the Kiss-In. Gays are massively over-represented in media, and many people think their numbers are far higher than they are. Further, they tend to concentrate these small numbers into a few major urban centers.
So when some suburban Chick-Fil-A only had two lesbians show up to the Kiss In, it’s not that thousands of other gays were at home watching Glee re-runs. It’s that those two lesbians probably are the only two gays in the entire area.
As activists, gays punch far above their demographic weight class. It’s become common lately to hear gays referred to as “the new blacks,” in that they are now the preferred victim group. This is true in its way, but gays are really the new Jews — far more influential than their numbers. The fact that many gays are Jews (especially in Hollywood and media) means gays are also the old Jews. I don’t care enough to check, but it would be interesting to see what percentage of “professional gays” and agitators are Jewish.
Two sides make up the whole civil coin. Rule of the majority, rights of the minority. The straights are in the majority and gays have rights as a minority. There is nothing condescending about this. One of key concepts is that everyone is eventually going to be in the minority, such as for example, when conservatives lose an election. Of course the shoe will often be on the other foot.
Everyone is sometimes in the majority, everyone is sometimes in a minority, depending on what aspect you count.
What is destablizing about the by-any-means-necessary brand of activism was the concept of a permanent majority, words which if they have any meaning at all, are equivalent to “one party rule”. That operates on the principle that they are the majority even when they are in the numerical minority.
It is this political malice, not gayness or any other -ness, that aroused the fear instincts that made Chick-fil-A so explosive. The excessive deference to sharia, the morbid fear of Islamophobia, the exaggerated elevation to the pedestal of gayness — this, and not religion or sexual orientation — was the problem. People understood, even if it was camouflaged from them, that it was about minority rule and a denial of majority rights.
What recent events have shown is who is in the majority. And the civil manner in which it was demonstrated, in contrast to the confrontational response of the Left, shows that the majority is willing to respect minority rights. Those two sides of the coin mean fairness, balance and slap in the face of the left.
“stoicheion @26 and Sarah Rolph @ 28. I respectfully disagree. While very important to any operation, air power is a supporting force. Boots win.”
Spoken as a true blue 20th century fossil.Air power in the 20th century wasn’t mature enough to win on it’s own. Today it is.
That depends on the targets, of course. It also depends on how winning is defined. I’m using the classic definition of forcing to bow the enemy to your will. That means the selected target must have infrastructure that it values more then what the air power users want. In Iran, the support for their nuclear program is vulnerable. Destroy the power grid and transportation system and see what happens.
Boots on the ground means casualties. Many casualties. An Air campaign will produce at worst a handful of casualties. The USA is absurdly casualty sensitive. That is why some see Iraq as a defeat, even though casualties were less then D-day. That is for the entire 8 years.
Boots on the ground are only necessary when the political goal is occupation.
I tried writing to the Jim Henson Company about a Google logo that was made by Muppet animators. I felt it contained obvious innuendos and political messages. They didn’t write back.
The entire run of Olympic logos seems to be doing the same thing. Yesterday they had a right sided shlong-head playing ping-pong against Anderson Cooper. Today they have Sarah Palin bent over on a poll.
I am not the sick one for seeing these things, nor am I offended in the slightest. It’s just that they’ve been doing this for years, and businesses should know there are legal issues to subliminal advertizing (more so in Britain and in other places).
@35. Getting into the Air Power ™ Solves All discussion is way OT. And is lengthy. From Douhy and Mitchell to todays Air Force ™ we hear the same thing. NOT.
To keep it short and in deference to the topic of the post, War is economic. It is about the We’s getting/keeping/defending what we have from the They’s. The only thing that changes is the defining paradigm of We and They. Total obliteration of the They space leaves nothing for the We’s, creates refugees and long-to-be-held grudges and no use of the place for the We.
Air Power needs a target, preferably stationary. No one has actually tried to defeat a drone, but can easily be done once airspace is not 100% controlled by We.
I am a Naval Person. Even our internal Aviators buy the air power do-da. Mostly because only rated aviators can command carriers. (get ready for a fire storm after this next statement) yet the Navy is about logistics, getting Beans, bullets and black oil to the troops, and keeping them from the theys.
Sorry, I began to forget my own rule about brevity when off topic.
Let’s agree to disagree and agree that hammering the Theys ain’t bad.
ta
One more. “Air power wasn’t mature enough” “Socialism just hasn’t been implemented correctly” You pick.
Aircraft performance reached maturity in the late 50′s early 60′s, design now is about sensor and computing payload, auto functionality and stealth. Speed, range, payload (weight carrying) are now well established aerodynamic engineering formula.
The only argument left for devotees is that we need to try harder.
s @ 35: Air power in the 20th century wasn’t mature enough to win on it’s own. Today it is.
Oh I disagree with this.
Airpower in the 20th century *was* plenty mature enough to win most wars.
And still is.
Though of course the later 20th century and now 21st century PGM are even better.
Hey, 1950s technology, B-52s with iron bombs, conventional explosives, could destroy Pakistan from one end to the other if we were willing to kill civilians by the millions. Heck, B-17s could have taken out Afghanistan, given convenient basing.
Of course you mean that it took PGM to give leverage of air power against sophisticated military targets or against civilian targets delicately (!) enough to avoid civilian casualties, “collateral damage”. Well screw collateral damage, war is war, or it isn’t. Anyway, of course you’re right, we have plenty of PGM now with more and better every day, and even Obambus the Reluctant enjoys using them to potshot the occasional jihadi in ways that would be exceedingly difficult on foot.
Going for deep groan-ocity here:
clearly the “kiss a chicken” campaign filleted the “kiss in” campaign simply by winging it. The happy switch hitters laid an egg.
peterike @ 33 said:
“Those who’ve noted that gays are less than 2% of the population make the key point on the failure of the Kiss-In. … As activists, gays punch far above their demographic weight class.”
It’s my understanding that homosexuals represent 5% of the population. For reasons beyond my understanding, very creative people tend to have a higher tendency to be homosexual, e.g. many successful/famous writers, musicians and artists were homosexual. People have argued that Paul the Apostle was a closet homosexual, i.e. “Thorn in the Flesh”. This strange connection of personal success with homosexuality maybe the main reason why homosexuals have had more influence than their population percentages would indicate. Also homosexuals have tended to concentrate in cities that tolerated them. Berlin has always had a large homosexual community. San Francisco is the most famous example. Before the AIDS epidemic, it was rumored that San Francisco was 40% homosexual. Before the AIDS epidemic became a problem, the concentration of homosexuals in San Francisco was seen as beneficial, e.g. less city services for children were required, both homosexual partners tended to work and homosexuals tended to actively encourage music and the arts. Of course, any economic benefit that the homosexuals earlier provided to San Francisco was wiped away after the AIDS epidemic. This actually raises the thorny question of whether there are fundamental reasons why it’s a bad idea for the homosexual population density to rise above a certain level because it tends to encourage diseases that do not normally propagate. The ancient religious prohibitions against homosexuality maybe related to this concern about disease.
There is absolutely nothing positive about this CFA flap. Nothing. Just another battle in the culture war. When are we all going to stop letting ourselves be manipulated? Left vs. Right in America has become like a bad marriage, where neither side wants to actually work out their differences, but instead prefers to play “gotcha” on the other one, as if one party will simply wake up some day and realize how wrong they were all along. Yeah, good luck with that.
Ultimately, are we just as divided this morning as were were last night? Yep. Are people on both ends of the ideological spectrum benefiting from our divisions? You betcha. This is why Leo Linbeck scares the crap out of the establishment – he is quietly bringing together people that the elites have tried their best to keep divided.
I’m not saying that people should stop fighting for what they believe in, but neither buying a sandwich, nor showing up to harass those buying the sandwiches is “sticking it to the man.” Building relationships with people in your community that you might disagree with, now THAT might actually do some good.
There was a crowd at my Chick Fil A today. About fifty news people and 2 guys showed up. The guys went inside and kissed each other and had their pix taken and did interviews. Then the 2 guys got in their car and went to another Chick Fil A. The news guys got in their cars, trucks and helicopters and followed.
Nobody bought anything. It was a good day to be a chicken.
Wretchard, I love your writing and have a tremendous amount of respect for your analysis, but you allowed one glaring misrepresentation pass without comment. Let me repeat one sentence from the LA Times: “Huge crowds turned out Wednesday in a show of support for company President Dan Cathy, who ignited a national debate by publicly expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage.”
This is simply wrong. And it reframes the issue in a deceptive way.
Dan Cathy did not ignite a national debate, the media did. And there was very little debate in the media. In the media Dan Cathy was a hate-filled reprobate. My local paper, the Virginian Pilot did almost the same thing when their reporter wrote that Dan Cathy created a “public backlash” against his remarks opposing gay marriage. The truth is that Cathy was quoted in an obscure Baptist publication. As far as I can tell it was the media that went to homosexual organizations agitating for same-sex marriage to get their quotes denouncing Mr. Cathy. It was the media that decided that the conventional Christian belief that marriage is between a man and a woman is so outrageous that to utter it in public is grounds for endless newspaper articles and editorials.
The media once had the ability to shape “reality” – at least the way people see events that they don’t personally observe – without any checks. Today that’s no longer possible. One example is the Chick-fil-
A war.
But compare and contrast: Christianity and …. oh, let’s say Islam. The media tells us that Islam is the “religion of peace.” That practitioners of Islam are just like you and me and any utterance to the contrary is hate speech. So what is the Muslim position on same sex marriage? Do you even have to ask when the Muslim position on homosexuality is death? The only argument is whether death should be by having a wall dropped on them, by being thrown off of a high building or the ever-popular hanging. Have a leading Muslim cleric denounce homosexuality and if it shows up in the media at all, the media doesn’t bother to get quotes from homosexual activists denouncing traditional Muslim faith … and practice.
It’s not as if Islam is hiding its faith or if the followers of the Prophet are shy about committing violent acts to enforce their belief.
The media are the homosexual community’s cheerleaders. This is an indisputable fact. Since Muslims are much, much, much more unforgiving of homosexuals than Christians, what is the reason for the double standard? Is it simply another example of political correctness? Is it just anti-Christian bigotry? Is it a way of showing contempt for the broad middle of the country that does not share the Liberal views of the newsroom? Is it cowardice, knowing that Christians demonstrate by buying a chicken sandwich but Muslims demonstrate cutting your throat? Is it the belief that 1.5 billion followers of Islam don’t mean anything?
It’s probably a combination of all of these. And it’s not going to change while there is a separate archipelago we can refer to as the media. Thankfully, the islands in that archipelago are slowly sliding beneath the waves as technology is making them irrelevant. Faster please.
What is destabilizing about the by-any-means-necessary brand of activism was the concept of a permanent majority…
People with legitimate same sex attraction may be a tiny percentage of the population but the portion of the body politic willing, if not eager, to normalize homosexuality is far greater, including an absolute majority in academia and the media. I followed a news item to the Miami Herald and saw that they have a regular section called “Gays in South Florida” right alongside the usual What To Do This Weekend section. 10 minutes watching the Olympics served up a promo for a new prime-time homosexual show called the “The New Normal.”
I think what we are experiencing is the fruit of the 60′s “If it feels good, do it”, which was iteslf a longer time coming manifestation of the underlying secular philosophy of the French Revolution (“Power to the People”).
First heard in the drawing rooms of Paris in the 1790s and every bit as familiar in today’s faculty lounge is “Every person has the natural right to explore and express their own identity.” Institutions that dampen this right of expression by touting outmoded morals are repressive, an obstacle to human progress, and thus can be dealt with by-any-means-necessary.
The Left is high-minded, active, and belligerent when needed because it has taken responsibility for the destiny of man. Science, reason and education alone are the only way possible to define the right natural order and to teach the flyover part of society how to live in harmony with the true way.
For most of us gay marriage is an issue that could be decided by evaluating its effect on society. For the Left it is something very different. Success on this issue brings them one step closer to marrying the state with society, and they make the rules. History all but guarantees that if gay marriage becomes the law of the land that the remaining heretics are going to lose their property and their freedom.
I don’t think that Cathy said anything intended to be inflammatory. He apparently spoke in some obscure interview to some little known publication. But such is political correctness that offense can be found anywhere. The word “niggardly” for example, became the occasion for someone to claim distress. James Holmes is yet another example. He was at first identified as a Tea Party member when he was not. There are boogeymen everywhere, and people are paid to actually look for them, even to the extent of dumpster diving.
It is the characteristic of totalitarian ideologies to brook no opposition, however slight, however imaginary. They need enemies everywhere.
That is the giveaway clue. As I wrote elsewhere, the left takes otherwise reasonable causes, like environmentalism or civil rights and infuses a kind of Leninist DNA into it, mutating them. What emerges is nothing like the original.
Consider Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. These are your natural black leaders, right? Nope. You have to look hard to find con men like these.
The same mutation has happened to environmentalism. At it’s hardest (i.e. most leftist) core what is called Green hates the human race, and some have openly called for humanity’s destruction or at least diminution. The leftist “gay” movement is not different. It is not about gays any more than Jesse Jackson is about equal rights. It’s about straight hatred, and the codeword for that is “Christianism”, like the great enemy of leftist feminism is “patriarchy”. These words actually don’t mean anything apart from “that which I hate”.
I think the Chick-fil-A incident may have awakened in homosexuals the suspicion that they are no better served by their activists than the black community is served by Al Sharpton. Blacks, women, gays and cripples are just props to gain power for a few. And as has often been pointed out, if and when the hardcore left gains power, blacks and gays and feminists will suddenly discover that the new paradise has no room for them.
If you want to find the least free places on earth look for your nearest left dominated country. Or to an Islamic fundamentalist country. But you’ll never hear gays attack Islamism, just Christianism. That’s because the word is empty of meaning. Christianism is just a slogan, a label, like the Loch Ness Monster or Freddy Kruger. The real monsters are leading them.
And I think that a lot gays suddenly began to wonder, “hey, maybe I’m being taken for a ride.” Well it’s time they asked.
As much as we try to not make this out of control flap about homosexuality per se, it obviously is for many people.
For what it is worth I read something by Rabbi Boteach (yes a celebrity rabbi ok) about this. He talked about a gay Jew who has some concerns. His answer was as I recall “we have 613 commandments. You are not keeping two of them. That leaves you 611 to work on which should keep you busy enough”.
His answer boils down to the existential fact that none of us are perfect. We can answer to g-d on our own. The one thing we know is that we all will some day. More important is how do we live better in relation with each other and maybe that is how we will be judged, or judge ourselves, at the end. Perhaps the great chick-fil-a incident of 2012 has made some inroads into that.
The two commandments for those who care, are the prohibition against homosexual sex and the positive obligtion to procreate. I am not saying something condescending here. Nobody can keep perfect halacha and if you did you would be missing the point.
@ 31. michael hoskins, et al Defining terms could clarify differences betwixt the various POVs.
Limited Air Power – seen at Korea, Viet Nam, etc., etc., can not overwhelmingly win anything. Because its designed not to “win” but “restrict”.
Full Air Power – seen at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc., can totally whip the resistance from any group of antagonists. The issue, of course, is do we have the guts to use what’s available? Most of the time our political so-called “leaders” lack the courage to win.
And speaking of our political so-called “leaders”, there’s a new definition for insanity. “Re-elect me and expect an entirely different result”!
Far as we want to spin out line off the reel, for gay Americans it is still charybdis or scylla. Which side is gonna hurt you less? Those are your choices.
We can all agree on strong economy, and good chicken with biscuits and sweet tea on a hot Georgia low country morning. The rest is commentary.
@44. Moneyrunner: I am reminded of the line in Kingdom of Heaven: “Mohammed says ‘Submit.’ Jesus says ‘Choose’.” Whether a Caliphate or a tin pot Middle Eastern despot, it seems to me that Muslim societies typically have less distinction between church …er, mosque… and state (with a few modern exceptions). From Caesar until now, the Christian Church seems to be the ultimate bete noir for statists of all stripes. You would think that would give pause to these LGBT activists if it were truly freedom that they cared about. I’m with Richard: they are being used as cannon fodder. They are clearly too ignorant and unthinking to understand that a government strong enough to take away Christians’ rights can take away theirs too.
If you google “percentage of gay Americans.” you will get a number of hits, the Atlantic Monthly published an article stating that most Americans polled thought the percentage was 25%, the reality was likely less than 2%. Link provided below. Someone pointed out that as an interest group, gays hit above their weight class in how well they have popularized their profile. Some news report estimated a turn out on Wednesday as about 640,000, which accords well with the poor turn out for the “kiss in.” What I heard most was the outrage at Rahm Emmanuel and the other mayors for deciding whose values mean more vs. the Constitution – I suspect this flap has caused ears and minds to listen up and hear “danger, danger, danger.” Rabbi Hillel’s famous statement, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/americans-have-no-idea-how-few-gay-people-there-are/257753/
Its not really about homosexuality. It never really was. Its the culture war, and even that description really blurs the actual dynamic. There are those who want for society to “start from zero,” wipe away everything and replace it by that devised by the Best and Brightest. They are the Utopians and Totalitarians; one morphs into the other.
But you can’t really start from zero until the culture you wish to reset to zero has been totally reduced to zero. That is what it truly is about. Make every aspect of the current culture something to be ashamed of, something to be rid of. If the core transmission of values is the nuclear family, do what you can to destroy the nuclear family. If the main ethnic group of the culture is X make sure to denigrate them as a group at every opportunity. Take the main religious practices of the culture and forbid them or hold them up to arbitrary restrictions by means of the government, judicial, executive, or legislative. And hold up everything which grates against the cultural norms as being cool, wonderful, and totally beyond criticism.
Does it sound familiar? Welcome to Politically Correct America. It isn’t just mere stupidity, there is method and motive behind it, even if most of its human tools only have two to three functioning brain cells and are just mere tools like individual yeast cells in a loaf of bread that is yet to be cooked.
As I have said before, the only good social engineer is a dead social engineer. God forbid that a time may come when we will be forced to make them all good.
commnentre wcasd
Rights, positive or negative, existence and the notion of any of these things being “inalienable” are but things to be de-constructed by post-modern philosophers.
Where meaning has been lost to the arguments of the post-modern left, the only thing remaining is Will. Will to power, will to be imposed, will to destruction. Will to watch the world burn rather than be proved wrong. We’ve seen this played out before (the end of the Third Reich).
I don’t know why some people are homosexual. I don’t care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. We all still, to some degree, have the discretion to discriminate as to who we spend our time with.
In the end, Barack Obama and his associates are just mortal men. They will pass from the scene, in time. The continuing struggle is whether meaning is to become so subjective as to be defined minute to minute, or whether we continue to assert that the existence of reality is an objective thing, that exists beyond the mere thoughts and imagination of any one individual. The future is an unknown and undiscovered country, that much is certain. If it is a wild and unknowable wilderness of deconstructed meaning, then it will be a place where sane and rational men and women cannot exist, much like the end of the Third Reich, or the madness of Stalin’s Russia.
The alternative is then stark. A future where we live as rational human beings that can exist in a way of our own soverign choosing, or a wilderness of unreason, where many of us may end up in the Gulag for wrong thinking.
And sometimes a chicken sandwich is just a chicken sandwich.
OT…
It would make Charles happy…
ZeroHedge has a post up on Thorium.
The commentariat over there is as ignorant as can be.
Not one of the many is aware that both America and the USSR entirely gave up on Thorium metal-salt breeder reactors — because the materials problems were insurmountable.
Further, that the thermal breeder design is a recipe for back-pack nukes by way of U-233 — the actual burning isotope that gets the business done in a Thorium cycle nuclear plant. Thorium, per se, produces no power at all.
Elsewhere in that posting U238 is conflated with U235 — and a gag-fest of of stupidities are posted — to the shame of humanity.
If you know as little as those posters do — don’t post — and reveal to the planet just what a rube you are.
/ rant
I am glad Clint Eastwood is endorsing Mitt. In doing so, he is making it easier for those who either sitting on the fence, or quietly supporting him to come out in the open. At least I am I hoping, anyway.
56. blert
Not one of the many is aware that both America and the USSR entirely gave up on Thorium metal-salt breeder reactors — because the materials problems were insurmountable
…………..
You may know better than I do why the USSR gave up on thorium reactors, but I can tell you plainly that the US had a working thorium lftr design running for four years from 1966-70. The US shut their reactor down for a number of reasons. The most important of which was that the thorium reactors were not dual use. Unlike the light water reactors, the thorium reactors could not be used to make a bomb–because thorium can’t be weaponized. As well, the US at the time thought it would be best to develop the breeder reactors–a program that ultimately shut down in about 1982. Finally, there was already an installed base of advocates for the light water reactors barking at government officials to stay the course with light water reactors. Curiously, the man who held the original patents on light water reactors, Alvin Weinberg–also built the prototype for the thorium reactors. He was a passionate advocate of the thorium reactors. So passionate that he was fired from his job as head of Oak Ridge Laboratories. He went to his grave advocating thorium reactors. He wasn’t the only one. The father of the H bomb Edward Teller wrote his last paper before he died at age 91 in 2005. It was on thorium lftr reactors. He was an advocate.
Alas, there’s nothing hush hush about this stuff. Russia has a design team working on another strategy for thorium reactors in Reston Virginia. (Perhaps your point reflects their frustration.) China read the stuff online about thorium lftr designs and Dr. Jiang Mianheng, son of China’s former leader Jiang Zemin in 2010 visited Oak Ridge Labratories. After returning to china–he announced that China was going to spend 1 billion dollars over 10 years to develop thorium reactors.
Australia, Great Britain, Norway and India all have thorium research in various stages of development. Some of it is just talk as far as I can tell but other seem more substantial. We’ll see.
What makes me sick about twinkle toes Rahm is that he picked a fight with this company because of statements made by the founder who was sharing his beliefs. He wasn’t expressing his company’s policy – they neither discriminate customers or employees.
Now compare that to the very same day Rahm partnering with Louis Farrakahn to help police streets in Chicago. What do you suppose his views are towards same sex marriage? The hypocrisy of the left kills me. They will outright partner with groups who in the end would throw them off of rooftops just to squelch our Judeo Christian culture.
So Blert and Charles, my miniscule grasp of Nuke-lear Nollidge is that an atom of Thorium 232 can occasionally absorb a thermal neutron, then decay through a complex series of steps to an atom of Uranium 233, which is a fissile fuel when gathered to critical density. I’m just mulling through this – one crazed animator trying to overcome a lifetime of math-aversion. Corrections would be much appreciated.
Since the 232-isotope comprises more than 99 percent of naturally-occuring Thorium, the refined metal is supposed to be much easier to refine to a fissile purity than Uranium… the fissile isotope U-235 comprises only about 0.72 percent of all “primordial” Uranium, and is fiendishly difficult to separate mechanically from the NON-fissile Uranium.
On the other hand, the exertions necessary to prime the purified Thorium to a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction – i.e., one which YIELDS more energy and desirable products (U-233) than it costs to keep going – isn’t such an easy thing.
Jeez-o-PEEZ it’s complicated stuff to try to follow. The advantage of using Thorium seems to be that it’s fission products produce far fewer nasty daughter radionuclides. Using a Thorium salt kept hot enough to remain a molten liquid which can be circulated allows for the U-233 to be continuously harvested. (I bet it’s not EASY, just POSSIBLE.)
A possible solution for maintaining the reaction proposed by one-time CERN director Carlo Rubbia was the use of a nuclear accelerator (seemingly a mature and well-understood if expensive technology) to pump neutrons into the Thorium.
Hmmmm. I have to rest. My brain is getting stretch marks.
p.s.
I remember reading about Rubbia 20 years ago (when my 80 mile commute daily took me past Fermilab) that his staff at CERN did a statistical analysis of his global fund-chasing, and reckoned that for the years of his service to CERN he had averaged something like 12 miles per hour, including all his time sleeping and sitting at his desk. (That figure might be off, but it’s still funny.)
p.p.s.
Thanks for posting about this topic – it makes my head throb FAR LESS than the sustained dumassedness of the news for the last few days. At least the particles in fission reactions don’t go about telling absurd lies about each other, deliberately devalue the coins in your piggy bank, then try to have un-holy sex with beasts of the field.
#59 The hypocrisy of the left kills me. They will outright partner with groups who in the end would throw them off of rooftops just to squelch our Judeo Christian culture.
There is no hypocrisy there, only deceit. They know from experience that their wonderful utopia cannot exist so long as the present culture exists. Therefore the primary battle is to destroy that culture and wipe it from existence and memory. And in that battle they will gladly pick up any ally of convenience, thinking that they can dispose of them when the time suits them.
But stupid is as stupid does. It is forgotten that the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah was fueled in great part by communists, who thought that the religious zealots could be used as tools and dispensed with whenever they ceased to be useful.
But who discarded who in the end?
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
#60. Mad Fiddler
…then try to have un-holy sex with beasts of the field.
Why, Mad Fiddler, did you have to inject talk of sex with Nancy Pelosi into this thread? The mental image is truly revolting.
re: backpack nukes. well, it’s not like any of the current efforts have stopped, even slowed proliferation. And given that petrol has almost twice the (explosive) energy as our best high-explosive gram-for-gram (a benefit of getting half your reaction mass out of the air), we can certainly become inured to the potential exposure to a few more neutrons irrespective of the sackcloth and ashes types – “repent (nuclear technology) or all will be lost.” A bomb made out of an average fuel browser contents atomized into an FAE would level multiple NYC city blocks (aka the damage from a backpack nuke).
Curious how the materials problems in (uranium-based) liquid metal and liquid salt based reactors have been surmounted. Granted, if an alternative to a Uranium fuel chain ever stands up, the existing nukes are dead (all their costs – and profits are in Uranium fuel processing) – which means even the existing nuclear energy industry tends to (perhaps must) lobby against Thorium.
A pity the U.S. – Soviet competition had to be measured in tons of plutonium – else those materials problems would be well behind us – to say nothing of all the (Uranium) molten metal systems (not all that different than the molten salts) that were built and deployed. Granted, the U.S. never really understood how certain the Russians were / are that they’d survive multiple nuclear exchanges – nor their willingness to fit bio warheads on last-strike weapons – irrespective of treaties.
What we have had is 50 years of progress in materials and composite fabrication (while nuclear power stagnated) – so it’s entirely possible that (given 100 startups in the domain – funded at $50M-$500M, largely unregulated save “live close to what you’re building”) we’ll have 5 successes that entirely change the energy landscape – which the market might even finance directly because there’s no alternative in sight other than nuclear that can compete with the marginal cost of production of energy from fossil fuels – $2 a barrel of oil delivered to the supertanker, and less than a penny a coal KWH delivered to the customer premise. And minus any competition we’ll continue to see a 1 gw (coal) plan turned on every two weeks somewhere around the globe. Which is no more and no less than the production rate (and complexity of) a 747 (and cost – given equivalent and sane regulation).
From an election point of view Romney should avoid anything and I mean anything that distracts from talking about the economy. Obama and his supporters would like nothing better than to change the subject to the social issues, this one especially. There are too many fruits in the salad bowl and the election is going to be too close. Romney doesn’t need to lose any vote because Aunt Rose likes her poofter nephew, at least as long as she doesn’t give a lot of thought to what he actually does in the boudoir. Trying to convince her that legalizing homosexual marriage would have a deleterious effect on real marriage or healthy families is a bridge too far given the overwhelming MSM endorsement of gay marriage.
It is not always easy to make the intellectual case that condemns the sin but not the sinner. Why get into it when there are easier and more compelling arguments against giving Obama 4 more years?
Hoskins #31:
“While very important to any operation, air power is a supporting force. Boots win.”
Are you aware that the dates of 6 Aug and 9 Aug approach soon?
An invasion of Japan was required following the air attacks. And it consisted not of an amphibious assault under fire – the “Norm” for Pacific operations – but a ship driving up to a dock and unloading the first troops of the U.S. occupation force mere minutes after the document was signed on the USS Missouri.
And as for Chick Fil A and the failed kiss in, the big problem with any movement is the activists. When Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was first attacked in the early 1990′s, homosexual activitists called for not only gays to be allowed to serve in the military but also that they receive quotas for the service academys.
By presenting a highly radical viewpoint and having that viewpoint the ONLY one that gets through the press – if it bleeds it leads – activists make the radical viewpoint the “normal” one – with disasterous results all the way around.
Right now, gays are almost always depicted in movies and TV as beautiful, reasonable, intelligent, funny people. The reality is closer to John Wayne Gacy, Andrew Cunanan, and Jeffry Dalhmer, to name only a few gay mass murderers. They punch above their weight in many ways.
that we have had is 50 years of progress in materials and composite fabrication (while nuclear power stagnated) – so it’s entirely possible that (given 100 startups in the domain – funded at $50M-$500M, largely unregulated save “live close to what you’re building”) we’ll have 5 successes that entirely change the energy landscape
………..
Bill Gates has been saying for a couple years that’s what’s needed most in the world is a non polluting source of electrical power that’s at most 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of coal fired electrical generating plants(but preferably even cheaper). Gates says the source of this power will come from nuclear plants. He’s invested in a company called Terrapower–that he expects to have a prototype in 10 years. There may be 5 4th generation nuclear power plant start-ups. However, he says there needs to be about 10 more start-ups in the field so as to ensure the success of the endeavor.
Going backward and forward in time–part of the excitement of the 1950′s and 60 in the USA was that in the not too distant future a man would land on the moon and a new source of nuclear power (likely fusion) would emerge that would provide unlimited cheap power. A man did land on the moon but the cheap unlimited power kept receding into the future. In 1970, fusion power would happen in 1990. In 1990 fusion power would happen 2010. Today, scientists have found the god particle but fusion power is still 20 years off.
The amazing thing is that that history is not true. Scientists of the greatest generation did find unlimited cheap safe nuclear power in liquid fluoride thorium (LFTR)reactors back in the late 60′s at the same time as the Apollo program. But the LFTR program was abandoned without fanfare for reasons stated above. For more information and links to documentation on this subject see my ebook here.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the whole CFA saga is its treatment in the media. On Fox it is about freedom of speech and the creepiness of government officials preventing a restaurant from opening based on its president’s “politically incorrect” personal opinions. On CNN etc, it is about gay-bashing full stop. NYT doesn’t refer to the freedom of speech aspect at all. However, the story is not as simple as that. The ACLU supported CFA, (as they should but not necessarily a gimme)and even newly-gay-wed uberliberal Barney Frank said he didn’t believe government officials should ban businesses based on their owner’s opinions. “If you don’t like the guy’s philosophy, you are free to eat elsewhere. That’s all”–or something to that effect. How sensible! I never thought I would think these words, but Bravo, Mr. Frank. Curiouser and curiouser.
c @ 66: But the LFTR program was abandoned without fanfare for reasons stated above.
It was also abandoned because coal and oil were plentiful and cheap, and steady progress was being made on conventional powerplants. The all-in systems cost of fission was proving *much* higher than expected – we *still* don’t have a place to put the waste! We needed the dual-use reactors, and once we had them, we stopped. And fusion was out there as the real answer.
The CFA has brought out the worst in some self-appointed morality agents in the city of Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8G4jI3VI8U
This one guy makes a spectacle of downdressing an old man who, as if a caricature of a martyr, is leaning saintly against a tree, reading a bible in the open sunlight. The backdrop to this absolutely disgusting drama is CFA. CFA is now the medium. Twitter is old hat.
Seriously gotta give credit to the internets ability to recursively indoctrinate that nutcase with tumblr and twitter aspersions from sanity, each of them rippling across his brain until he conjurs up this ferocious malevolent christian man in front of him.
Seriously, wtf, America?
64. Joe Hill – I agree. And so far Romney has managed to stay out of the fray and simply keep punching the Bozama The Clown bag.
I read what the Chick-fil-a president actually said, and I am reminded once again how the media, even though it is transparently corrupt, still holds tremendous sway over stupid people.
And let’s face it, there are a lot of stupid people in this country and they are amply represented in Congress (Pelosi, Reid, Waters, Boxer, etc.). And the vote of a stupid person counts the same as a normal person’s vote.
I keep wondering when the age of the Main-Stream Media will end, when their power will wane, when it will all be relegated to the status of the National Enquirer. But it hasn’t happened. And I’m beginning to believe that the MSM continues because stupid people like it.
I’ve wondered if there isn’t a way to apply our legal system to the MSM – sue them when they are caught factually misrepresenting an issue?
Obama in 2012? Seriously? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4nvhAZ0vr0
dla. WRT the Enquirer. You’ll note that, of all the MSM, they were the only ones to catch Edwards and his mistress and the payments. IOW, the MSM would have us believe that nothing, not the slightest wisp, came to the rest of the MSM, but only to the Enquirer.
The NYT, however, did have the resources to fake up a story about McCain having an affair with a lobbyist.
You may recall that, some time back, Wretchard made an analogy of manufacturers not being legally able to dump their detritus on the public and wondering if the same could be done with the MSM.
47. Spindok
As much as we try to not make this out of control flap about homosexuality per se, it obviously is for many people.
For what it is worth I read something by Rabbi Boteach (yes a celebrity rabbi ok) about this. He talked about a gay Jew who has some concerns. His answer was as I recall “we have 613 commandments. You are not keeping two of them. That leaves you 611 to work on which should keep you busy enough”.
Nobody can keep perfect halacha and if you did you would be missing the point.
Or better yet, why don’t we work on the respective “thorns of our flesh” that have the most negative impact on those other than ourselves.
That would seem to work for homosexuals, or pedophile priests, or men whose thorn is “other women” while supposedly in a committed marital relationship.
If the Apostile Paul was homosexual and struggled successfully all his life against that thorn, it shows the true value any of our lives can offer our brothers and sisters by struggling effectively against what ever thorns we all have that can hurt others.
In this age of license over responsibility, it seems to me some of us ought to consider following a God different from the gods they now embrace.
Discipline over druthers, perhaps?
OT
119. Kirk Parker
“…it’s pretty simple–you need to get your sarcasm detector recalibrated.
Thanks, Kirk, everytime I come here I get something re-calibrated!
Wretchard #46:
“It is the characteristic of totalitarian ideologies to brook no opposition, however slight, however imaginary. They need enemies everywhere.
That is the giveaway clue.”
Thank you, Wretchard, for saying in a very few words what I have been hammering at with many words for years here.
The center/right bogeyman is necessary for the left and their totalitarian narrative. They do not define themselves so much by what they wish to do, rather by what they would disallow the bogeyman. In their own minds it gives them an imagined moral imperative that they cannot derive by other means.
The Left’s march through the institutions was a long time in the making. They have the MSM, Pew, Ford, Carbegie and thet other think tanks, academia, Hollywood, Broadway, the networls, cable news etc. We conservatives have Fox, talk radio, a few magazines, and a decent internet franchise. We are not going to regain all the lost territory overnight or destroy all of what cannot be rehabilitated. MSM newspapers are collapsing and falling back on a subscription model and paywalls which will effective reduce their readership to the nuts and sluts crowd that is not amenable to reasoned discourse anyway.
On the cable news and network news side of things the Left has too many outlets fighting for too few eyeballs and will suffer either the financial collapse of a few of those outlets or there will be a change in their editorial priorities. i.e. kiss CNN goodbye (btw I find them far more biased and objectionable then MSNBC which is at least honest about its slant)
Some time after the election it will be the time to address the CFA imbroglio and the whole “values” issue. The Left and the LGBT community need to be able to square gay marriage, Chicago Values, and things like the Folsom Street Leather Festival in San Francisco and how that aspect of gay life squares with the kinds of communities Americans want to raise their kids in. I have no doubt personally that gay marriage is a bad thing for society or that homosexuality is anything short of a disgusting and unhealthy and harmful perversion. At the same time I am enough of a libertarian to say as long as you are discrete I am not going to poke my head in your bedroom do whatever floats your boat – just do not come to me looking for special rights and immunities (gay marriage) unless you can bring along a good case on how those are going to benefit the 97% of us who are not sodomites. We hand out marital benefits because we need folks to have and to raise kids. If all you can bring out of the bedroom is an inflamed hemorrhoid then you are just one more rent seeking societal deadbeat. But maybe I am overlooking something. The burden is on you to show me I am wrong because you are the one asking for a special benefit.
stoicheion:
…[Y]ou may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.
75 “I am enough of a libertarian to say as long as you are discrete I am not going to poke my head in your bedroom”
What about discretion in public? Google has been using gay sex imagery in nearly all of their Olympic logos. Today it’s a starfish. (Don’t bother complaining, I’m sure they don’t care.)
Baobo@77 – That is a free speech issue. I cannot tel NBC not to use gay imagery unless I want NBC telling me I can’t condemn homosexuality.
Civil Marriage is NOT a civil right. It is conferred set of legal privileges that government extends to promote legitimate governments goals. If it were a civil right you would not need a license to enjoy the privileges and it could not be restricted to two people who are not close relatives. That not close relatives part is a giveaway that the legitimate end government is promoting with the civil institution of marriage is procreation – the making of new little Americans so there will be somebody around to take care of us old americans in our old age and to ensure the continuance of the republic.
No marriage to close relatives is governments way of saying we want more kids but not more FLKs because FLKs would be a burden not a benefit. FLK (funny looking kid) is actually a clinical term in case you are wondering and I don’t think I need to go into the dangers of incest. So you cannot marry your brother or the family horse or the toaster or the Serena sisters at the same time except in your dreams
Since homosexual unions are by there very nature necessarily sterile and civil marriage is not an inherent civil right there is almost no case to be made for extending civil marriage to homosexual unions. And if there were a case why would the same rules or privileges apply anyway? What possible legitimate objection could government have to little Stewy marrying his dear old widowed dad as long as they were both adults and able to give informed consent? Yeah there is a yuck factor but that applies to all sorts of stuff that is legal and unconnected to sex starting with chewing tobacco and going on to bacon flavored milkshakes.
Now it could be that the the Supreme Court will disagree with me and decide that civil marriage IS a civil right but until they do I will not willing believe 5 of those 9 nimrods will try to make that argument with a straight face.
Blert@56, you are correct in your evaluation of the zerohedge article, but far too kind. That article shows more than mere ignorance. The falsehoods have to be deliberate.
However, one nit to pick – material corrosion was not the reason for abandoning liquid salt breeder reactors. Hastalloy N was used in the 5 year MSRE experiment without corrosion problems. Thermal neutron embrittlement would be an issue in longer lived fluid salt power reactors, so other alloys should be explored should serious interest arise in development of such reactors. You may note that the US abandoned research in all breeders, not just those utilizing fluid salts.
Aside from that minor nit, your central point is correct — and overdue, IMO.
Charles, the MSRE at Oak Ridge, which provides the foundation for your argument, was a successful experimental program. It achieved its goals and came to an end. It was, however, NOT primarily about thorium/U233. Rather, the very last experiment at the end of the program was to drain the salt containing U235 and replace it with salt containing U233. No thorium was involved. As it happened, a careless operator failed to fully drain the U235 salt before loading the U233 salt, complicating the analysis. Not seen as a big deal at the time.
The bottom line is that efforts in the 50s and 60s showed that the three common fissile isotopes (U233, U235, and Pu239) will all work just fine in in both reactors and bombs. Unfortunately for one of the arguments for thorium, the US successfully tested a U233 nuke in 1954. More, a nuke with U233 can be made smaller and lighter than a nuke with U235, which is an advantage when you want to mount the nuke on a missile. (FWIW, Pu239 is superior to both in this regard.)
67. SB
“If you don’t like the guy’s philosophy, you are free to eat elsewhere. That’s all”–or something to that effect. How sensible! I never thought I would think these words, but Bravo, Mr. Frank. Curiouser and curiouser.
NO matter what anyone says about Barney Frank, no one says he’s stupid. From what I hear, he is not running next time. Probably he and his newly wed husband have figured out why BHO is pulling the Muslim Brotherhood into the Oval Office. Once that ensconchment is complete, Mr. Frank ought to consider relocating to a true “gay friendly” country.
After the culture is destroyed, many who helped bring it down will find ducking the falling debris difficult as they become expendable.
Just like in the “new Soviet Union” way back when.
- I’m late on this — not many Chick-fil-A shops here in NJ… but it seems from a local rag that the “kiss-in” at a NYC-adjacent Chick failed to attract a single genuine homosexual person… rather, two middle aged women, “both married to men”, were found to perform the ritual same-sex kiss and pronounce the ritual anathema on the teenage employees before the apparently numerous assembled MSM persons “covering” the event…. funny….
71. Richard Aubrey – You may recall that, some time back, Wretchard made an analogy of manufacturers not being legally able to dump their detritus on the public and wondering if the same could be done with the MSM.
Interesting. Are you suggesting that the EPA, which regulates environmental pollution, should requlate “stupidity in the air waves”? Novel idea.
I wonder how many PPM of made-up news circuses like the Chick-fil-a flap will the EPA consider safe? I wonder how they will calibrate their equipment and train their operators? How much should industry be fined for violations?