Bait and Switch -- Women Letting Themselves Go

I know there are men who let themselves go, too, but there are certain women who seem to make the transition from Wow to Whale overnight. It's got to be a shock to a guy to marry this:

And then in only a couple years find himself walking down the street with this:

It's like if you bought a Ferrari, and one day you came out and found it had been replaced with a Dodge Vanagon, and then when you checked the contract -- yeah, that was the deal. You missed it. Ferrari to be replaced with Dodge Vanagon after two years. Sucks to be you.

If you're the kind of guy that gets turned on by young Bryce Dallas Howard, is there any chance at all that the Bryce Dallas Howard who looks like Roseanne Barr's sister will get your motor running? Probably it's all he can do to pretend not to be repulsed. I mean, we're supposed to love the inner person, but there's a limit. When the inner person is buried under several hundred pounds of newly-acquired fat, you shouldn't have to pretend that's just OK.

This isn't just baby weight. The mother of my five children is pretty much the same weight now that she was when I met her. She never put on this kind of weight when she was pregnant.

Bryce looks like she was just shoving anything within reach into her mouth. She might have accidentally eaten her midwife.

I can imagine her husband, "Honey, maybe you should slow down...."

"I'm eating for two!"

"But that's an awful lot of ice cream!"

"Eating. FOR. TWO. DAMNIT! MORE ICE CREAM! MORE! MORE! ROAR!"

Eventually they just had to toss the ice cream containers from a distance after a couple people lost limbs.

I've known more than a coupe husbands whose wives did this, and women of my acquaintance who did this between their late teens and late 20s. I see their wedding pictures or high school photos, or remember them personally as cute little hotties -- and I now kind of recognize the face on top of the blimp. It's not OK.

If anyone read this blog, I'd be expecting some serious hate mail.

Obama: Insanely Conservative

"Insanely conservative" is how one leftist poster (who seemed to have a lot of like-minded company) described Obama in a recent thread on a forum site I frequent thats primary topic is non-political and whose membership, I'd hazard to characterize, is comprised of people far less politically aware and sophisticated than that of the many political sites and blogs I read.

I sit and I think about that phrase as a descriptor for Obama, and I try to wrap my head around it. It seems to me that to hold a belief like that is only possible if you know absolutely nothing about what it means to be "conservative" or "liberal" (it hurts me to use liberal in this context and I must note that "progressive" is the more historically correct term for the ideological pedigree in question, but in the popular mind, Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal).

I can only assume from the context of the thread that Obama is "insanely conservative" because in many practical matters of governance they see him to be "Bush 2.0." Indeed, he failed to close Guantanamo, renewed the Patriot Act and used it with much vigor, practices rendition and greatly increased the use of drone strikes, and has presided over unprecedented domestic surveillance.

Unfortunately for these people, they are under quite a misapprehension if they think these are conservative policies. Bush was a Republican, true, but he was not particularly conservative. He had mostly big government, statist instincts. Obama's first opponent, John McCain, is notable for being among the most moderate of all Republicans, most willing to cross the aisle and work hand in hand with Democrats (per McCain-Feingold), but during the election it was he that was presented as some "insanely conservative" war-monger for wanting to continue Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Romney, likewise is a man of very modest, mainstream, moderate instincts. In any other era, a decent, middle-of-the-road sort of guy with good business instincts. Again, he was portrayed as some sort of radical conservative in the election. We badly needed someone with his sound business and managerial experience. Not a former community activist and lecturer who's never held a real job in his life.

There is nothing conservative about the Patriot Act. In fact, when you think of surveillance states in the real world, you're kidding yourself if the nations that come to mind aren't predominately leftist: Great Britain -- more video cameras per square mile in London than any city in the world, and you can get sent to jail for speaking an uncivil word about a protected minority. Even its so-called "conservative" parties are basically on board with leftist, globalist fads. The old Soviet Union (and the current Russia), China, North Korea. Cuba. These are places where you expect your words to be monitored and incorrect attitudes to be adjusted.

There's nothing conservative about foreign wars of choice. Taking out the Taliban was one thing, but in going in for the long haul, Bush was following much more in the footsteps of the liberal Presidents who led us into the bloodiest foreign wars of our history: Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.

Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Reagan were notable for keeping us out of bloody, ruinous conflicts. Nixon came in with Vietnam going full force after being initiated by Kennedy and escalated by Johnson. He's often vilified in conjunction with Vietnam, but the truth is, he deescalated and ended the war.

Violations of constitutional rights -- the Patriot Act, rendition, Guantanamo Bay -- are not the intellectual heritage of conservatism. They're the intellectual heritage of Wilsonian progressivism. I don't think any high school courses cover it at all today, but under Wilson's rule during WW I, there was widespread suspension of constitutional rights and suppression and even imprisonment of political dissenters. And of course FDR's incarceration of innocent Japanese-Americans is infamous.

Obama did indeed end the war in Iraq. Arguably "losing the peace" in doing so. But he loses any cred for being a peacemaker by the facts that casualties in Afghanistan multiplied under his leadership, he led us into undeclared war in Libya, and executed U.S. citizens without due process -- including a 16-year-old American boy.

So, when people call Obama "conservative" for his "Bush 2.0" behaviors, what they're really talking about is that Obama acts like Bush when Bush wasn't acting like a conservative. But how about in other areas? Can you really call a president "conservative" when they've presided over a radical re-imagining of our health insurance and health care systems? Is it "conservative" to blatantly ignore immigration law and grant blanket de facto amnesty to millions of illegals? Is it "conservative" to restrict drilling on federal lands, to oppose the Keystone pipeline, to saddle coal power plants with ruinous regulatory burdens (that's a promise he kept -- to destroy the coal industry and make energy more expensive), to preside over an EPA that dubs carbon dioxide, a fundamental atmospheric gas and a vital part of the plant life cycle (and by extension all life) a pollutant?

Is it conservative to support increasing the capital gains tax, even though it wouldn't result in more revenue, in the interest of "fairness?"

Finally, there's nothing "conservative" about the man that believes this:

"If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it Id be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasnt that radical. It didnt break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states cant do to you. Says what the Federal government cant do to you, but doesnt say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasnt shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that." 

Who Did You Think Would Be Paying For It?

From the L.A. Times

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

Then you were fucking idiots. God, really? Have we really raised a generation or more of adults so incapable of thinking through cause and effect that they really believe the government can pull rainbows and puppies out of its ass and hand them to everyone at no cost? I can't feel sympathy with these people. Only anger that they dragged me into it, too, with their willful stupidity.

Oh, in answer to my post title, I'm sure they thought that greedy corporations and the evil one percent would be paying for it. Again, I can't feel sympathy with anyone who buys into such obviously ridiculous propaganda.

You Can't Comment On History If You Don't Know History

In an article on West Virginia's move toward the Republican Party, the author writes:

What’s happening in West Virginia runs against the tide nationally, and even more, against the pull of its own history. (emphasis mine)

West Virginia exists as a state because it broke away from Virginia in 1863 and refused to join the confederacy. From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s era until the 2000 election, it was among the most reliably Democratic states, one of only six that Jimmy Carter carried in 1980, and 10 that Michael S. Dukakis won in 1988.

I wonder if the author even understands that to side with the union in the Civil War, to refuse to join the confederacy, was to reject the Democrats and side with the Republicans? In other words, West Virginia was birthed out of allegiance to Republican ideals. So instead of claiming that the change is "against the pull of its own history," one could as well contend that it is a reversion to the state's original and most fundamental allegiances. The nightmare of its misplaced loyalties since the New Deal era may be finally over.

My Kids Are Not Part Of "Team America"

There's another one of those interminable international education studies out. I can barely bother myself to read the details. U.S. leads or lags or falls in the middle of the pack in this indicator or that blah, blah, blah.

I can't really care. I shouldn't have to care. Fortunately, my family opted out of the public education system, so we're not really affected by Common Core and all of the people who run around in circles waving their arms that "something has to be done" everytime we don't stack up against the South Koreans in educational outcomes. Home schoolers used to be widely persecuted, but we've put a stop to most of that with consistent legal defense and the sheer weight of numbers.

An important point about the U.S. Constitution is that it is anti-utopian. Yes, there's language in the preamble about forming "a more perfect union," but the means chosen to go about that are the opposite of the Utopian instinct.

We're a nation of individuals. We were the first major nation to recognize that the individual is the most important political unit, and maybe the only major nation to actually function on that basis for an extended period of time.

These educational studies are collectivist wet dreams. They identify a problem with us, collectively, and then proceed to the conclusion that it's OK to manipulate, force and coerce us, collectively, to resolve the problem.

But, regardless of how the U.S. stacks up against other nations educationaly, every single child in the U.S. is an individual. They are not competitors in the World Education Cup Games. How we do collectively is completely irrelevant, because each child's education is the responsibility of himself and his parents. Children and families have no obligation to "pitch in" and help the national average. Education may not be a priority for them -- especially others peoples' educations, or comparative results, and our nation used to recognize the right of people to be uninterested.

Just because the U.S. lags tiny, rich Singapore isn't a reason for some person in Washington to think he can start dictating how kids in Lincoln, NE ought to be educated. It's none of his business. The American system is designed that way. There wasn't even a cabinet-level department of education until the Carter administration in 1979, because education, like most other of our day-to-day governmental responsibilities, was recognized to be a local function for most of U.S. history.

So, don't tell me how the South Koreans are doing compared to us and what we need to do about it as a nation. You worry about your kids and I'll worry about mine. Move to South Korea if it's really important for you to be on the "winning" education team. I'm not on your team. There is no team.

Obama's Lies Come To My Employer

I know it's been made clear through thousands of examples that Obama was lying when he said "If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance."

I just thought I'd add my own experience with my employer. Thousands of people from my company will not be able to keep the insurance they like:

Someone who works for my company submitted this comment on our health care blog:

Submitted by XXXXXXX. on Mon, 10/21/2013 - 14:23
Preparing for the Affordable Care Act does not make sense to me for dropping the 90/10 plan. What is the real reason?

 The company replied:

Submitted by (Corporate Response) on Tue, 10/22/2013 - 08:54
Thank you for your comment.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be taxing companies that provide high-cost plans. This tax, referred to as the “Cadillac tax,”  is a 40% excise tax on the value of group health benefits that exceeds a threshold amount. The 90/10 Plan meets the definition of a high-cost plan per the ACA and a strategic decision was made to discontinue the plan in 2014 to avoid the tax as well as to continue providing affordable medical plan options to associates over the long-term.

In other words, under the affordable care act, the government doesn't want your insurance to be too good. Tough luck suckers.

The Photo That Lost Every War Since?

Fox has a fascinating article:

Behind the picture: 'Three Dead Americans,' Buna Beach, 1943

The teaser to the article from other pages is "The photo that won World War II," but I think the editor who wrote that teaser got it all wrong. It's quite possible that this photo, the first of its kind, the herald of a new era of visceral visual journalism, was the photo that caused the U.S. to stall in every war since:

What is ultimately so notable about Strock’s picture — beyond its sheer technical excellence, and its quiet power — is that when it was published in LIFE magazine in September 1943, it was the first time that any photograph depicting dead American troops had appeared in any American publication during World War II.

...

For months after Strock made his now-iconic picture, LIFE’s editors pushed the American government’s military censors to allow the magazine to publish that one photograph. The concern, among some at LIFE and certainly many in the government, was that Americans were growing complacent about a war that was far from over and in which an Allied victory was far from certain.

Once citizens started seeing these sorts of photos, videos and 'gritty' journalism, sure, maybe they weren't "complacent" but what they became, in later wars, was something entirely difference than "supportive." Was that the purpose all along? It's grown worse with every war, so that now, through images, wars like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars become intolerable to the public even though the list of U.S. dead and wounded over the entire course of the war is less than numerous single battles of the World War II era.

Could World War II's U.S. war effort have survived live broadcasts of Normandy and Iwo Jima to name just two of many? I kind of doubt it.

I'd ask, on the other hand, could the Holocaust occurred as well, with so much modern, instant media? But, sadly, we've already proven that "yes," modern age holocausts can occur in the Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and many other places.

It's kind of troubling to think that the information age hasn't crippled the monsters at all, just the will of the people who would fight the monsters.