‘Pajama Boy’ as Rorshach Inkblot

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The latest weird sequel to the ObamaCare ad controversy is the claim that conservatives mocking “Pajama Boy” are anti-Semites.

Such a claim involves a lot intellectual gymnastics which might be better described as the psychological projections of a profoundly disturbed personality named Jay Michaelson:

Parenthetically, the model himself is one Ethan Krupp, an Organizing for America staffer who is, in fact, Jewish. But whether Krupp himself is circumcised or not, Pajama Boy is semiotically Jewish, even stereotypically so.
In fact, Pajama Boy stands at a centuries-old nexus of anti-Semitism and misogyny.

Yeah. Right.

Jay Michaelson tells us very little about conservatives who made fun of a silly ad, but tells us an awful lot about the strange ideas that swirl around inside Jay Michaelson’s deranged mind.

“Some things you have to read to believe.”

 

Facts the ‘Experts’ Never Mention

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Philip Klein calls our attention to an overlooked statistic:

Massachusetts, whose health care reform program was used as a template for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, had the highest per capita health spending in the U.S. in 2009. . . . [T]he state spent $9,278 per person on health care in 2009, which was 36 percent higher than the national average of $6,815, and 11.2 percent more than the next-highest state, New York, which spent $8,341.

Was the relatively high cost of health care in Massachusetts a cause or an effect of the push for socialized medicine? The political impetus for ObamaCare came from highly urbanized, Democrat-dominated states where the cost of health care was already high.

If the result of this national policy is to spread the misery (i.e., causing a rise in health-care costs in more rural Republican-dominated states) why should liberals care? This simply deprives the GOP states of an economic advantage they previously enjoyed.

You could do some other correlations:

State …………….. Vote 2012 …. TFR 2010
Rhode Island ……… Obama 62.7% …………. 1.63
Vermont ……………. Obama 62.8% …………. 1.66
Massachusetts ……. Obama 60.7% …………. 1.67
New Hampshire ….. Obama 52.0% …………. 1.67
Maine ……………….. Obama 56.3% …………. 1.70

Utah ………………….. Romney 72.8% ………. 2.45
Alaska ……………….. Romney 54.8% ………. 2.35
South Dakota ……… Romney 58.3% ……….. 2.27
Idaho ………………… Romney 64.5% ………. 2.24
Texas ………………… Romney 57.2% ………. 2.16

TRF is total fertility rate — the average number of lifetime births per woman, based on annual birth rates — and you see that the top five states as measured by TFR all went for Romney, while the five lowest-fertility states all went for Obama. The average rate of the high fertility states (2.29) is 38% higher than the low-fertility states (1.67 average), which tells you that the political differences reflect profound differences in culture and lifestyle. Nationalizing policies favored by the low-fertility states can therefore be seen as an attempt to abolish these differences, to force the high-fertility states to abandon their culture and lifestyle.

 

Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

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As if Instapundit’s weird enthusiasm for “robosexuality” weren’t disturbing enough, now there’s this prediction from two MIT geeks:

 Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. . . . [T]here’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.

Why should this bother you? Well, there’s the insulting self-congratulatory smugness of it. Here are two guys with degrees from Harvard and MIT telling us that “special skills or the right education” are the keys to success. Translation: “Yea for us!”

And as for you hopeless dimwits “with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer”? Tough luck. Should have gone to Harvard.

Robots will now replace whatever “ordinary” functions were previously performed by people without Harvard diplomas. We know this to be true because two Harvard graduates predicted it.

 

Russia: 15 Killed in Suicide Bombing

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A female bomber at a train station:

More than a dozen people were killed Sunday when a blast ripped through a railway station in the southern Russian city of Volgograd in what authorities say was an attack carried out by a suicide female bomber.
If confirmed, the presumed attack will prove to have been the second in the city in the space of just a little over two months and will provoke deep anxiety as Russia readies to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi early next year.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said 15 people were killed and more than 30 people injured in the blast at 12:45 p.m. (0845 GMT) near the metal detectors at the front entrance to Volgograd-1 train station.
The remains of a suspected suicide bomber were discovered at the scene of the blast and will undergo DNA testing, Markin said.
“A suicide bomber approaching a metal detector saw a policeman near it and, after growing nervous, set off an explosive device,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Almost half of the victims are in a critical condition and doctors are fighting to save their lives, Volgograd region governor Sergei Bozhenov said.
Among the injured is a nine-year-old girl whose mother shielded her with her own body at the time of the blast, city mayor Irina Guseva told reporters. The woman died at the scene and the girl is in a critical state.

This bombing is almost certainly the work of Islamic extremists associated with the Chechen separatist movement.

Keep The Resistance Alive

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by Smitty

Instapundit points to Fox’s article: “Popularity of ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ plates in Virginia suggests Tea Party still strong“:

“It is a symbol of frustration … a symbol of disgust with the government,” David Dwyer, a former Hampton Roads Tea Party chairman, told the newspaper.

The sales figures for the “Don’t Tread on Me” plates indicate more than just Tea Party members are buying them, which Dwyer suggests is an indication the movement’s mantra of less-government and no new taxes resonates with many Americans.

Here’s mine:
But in Insty’s comments,

Oxbay
And yet a majority of Virginia voters elected a corrupt slimeball.

Hey, man: that’s MY greasy, cretinous, incompetent boob of an Illinois-style bag of corruption you’re talking about there. Show some more disrespect.

cgage
Paying an extra $10 to get the plates gives more money to the gummint. Kinda defeats the purpose, no?

Yes, but people look at license plates. The Northern Virginia traffic sucks so bad, you’ve got time to study plates, crank on sudoku, chat up your father on the hands-free (my personal fave). So getting the ‘reform’ message out there is worth the sawbuck.

But back to Oxbay’s point, Ken Cuccinelli was a casualty in the war between the reform-oriented base of the GOP, and the Progressive elite of the GOP, which chiefly exists as a shock absorber for all reform-oriented thinking.

Reform is not a sprint. Anybody who thinks that 2014, together with 2016, even if they prove to be Republican wave elections, is going to un-frack our un-representative federal government, is naïve. It’s not about replacing one set of goons with another.

The reform we need is a renewed sense of self-government, so that ideas such as ObamaCare are laughed down outright, instead of plodding forward to the tune of Black Sabbath.

Bonus heh  (h/t:IMAO).

FMJRA 2.0: 2013 Finale

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— compiled by Wombat-socho

Special Snowflake Syndrome

So, Justine Finally Landed …

Rule 5 Sunday: Transfer Station Blue

Where We’re Heading

Phil Robertson 1, Political Correctness 0

Crime Is a People Problem

A Positive Aspect Of The “Duck Dynasty” Kerfuffle: Identifying The Fools

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.23.13

@Alexs1776 Brings The #Boom

‘Discrimination,’ Arguing by Exceptions, and the Obvious Insanity of Androgyny

#SouthSudan: Please, Pray for Peace

#SouthSudan 3 U.S. Troops Wounded as Rebels Fire on Transport Plane UPDATE: Four U.S. Casualties; Rebels Claim Overthrow of Oil Region Capital

Bill Whittle Meets Black Sabbath

In Which @AceOfSpadesHQ Expresses an Unexpected Distaste for Blood

FMJRA 2.0: Painkiller

Obama to #SouthSudan: Good Luck

Fred Reed Encounters Maureen Dowd; Demolition Ensues

#SouthSudan: It’s Civil War Now

The Sudden #SouthSudan Crisis

Today’s Ray Of Hope: Baal Going On Enforced Diet, Film At 11

@NYPolJunkie Knows Her Some Snark

In The Mailbox, 12.24.13

Reagan and the ‘Welfare Queen’

The World’s Worst Pro Se Litigant Says ‘Defendant Walker Has Gone Rogue’

#SouthSudan: Words Aren’t Enough

Re: @X3n0ph0n and the Burden of Proof

The Anthropogenic Global Offgassing Change Climate

Probably Should Take The Day Off

Obviously a Satire

Egypt Is Ahead of Us

‘But … They Were in Love’

Value Judgments

Two Words You Probably Never Want to Think About: ‘Botched Vasectomy’

You Stay Classy, MSNBC!

Blame @Instapundit for This

A Bad Christmas for Neal Rauhauser

Three Gay Men Laugh About Oral Sex With Anderson Cooper’s Mother

Last Night, I Hit Rand Simberg’s Tip Jar for $10, Because … Science!


Top linkers this week

  1. EBL 34 (including 24 BSC)
  2. Rick’s Rants 33
  3. Dead Citizens Rights Society 26
  4. Regular Right Guy 10
  5. A View From The Beach 7

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links for the first FMJRA of the New Year is noon on Saturday, January 4.


Shop Amazon – New Year New You

Are You Ready for BBW Barbie?

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They should call her “Belinda,” because all girls named “Belinda” are fat. There — that’s the only joke I have for this story:

A controversy is brewing over a request to remake Barbie in way contrary to the iconic image so many girls knew growing up.
Plus-Size-Modeling.com is suggesting Mattel create a plus-size Barbie. While some say more realistic curves would be a better role model for girls, others say an overly large Barbie would be an unhealthy example.
Plus Size Modeling conducted a poll on its Facebook page on Dec. 18 asking, “Should toy companies start making Plus Sized Barbie dolls?” In just under two weeks, a picture of the poll has received over 40,000 likes, 5,000 comments and 2,700 shares.
“Sure, but Barbie doesn’t need a double chin,” one comment said. “You can be ‘plus size’ w/o the double chin. They could make a ‘thick’ Barbie.”
“Portraying Barbie as a realistic woman with real curves is a very good idea and would send the right message to young girls about self-esteem,” another comment said. “Making a morbidly obese Barbie is BAD!!”
Then there’s this opinion:
“Okay I honestly don’t think how a Barbie looks affects a child’s self-esteem. When I was little I didn’t wanna look like Barbie. Lol. I didn’t think about my looks at all I just wanted to play…”

I dunno. If “Plus-Size Barbie” is a success, why not “DTF Middle-Aged Cougar Barbie”? “Crack Whore Street Walker Barbie”?

(Hat-tip: Modern Comments on Twitter.)

 

Another Fake Hate Crime? Arrest Discredits Tennessee Anti-Gay Case

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Paris, Tennessee, is a town of 10,000 people about two hours west of Nashville, but it made national headlines last month:

Joe Williams, Tennessee Health Food Store
Owner, Beaten In Alleged Anti-Gay Hate Crime

Williams said three men beat him unconscious and wrote a “three-letter homophobic slur” on his forehead in the Nov. 20 attack:

The victim, identified by Fox 17 as 32-year-old Joe Williams, told the Paris Post-Intelligencer that a man had come into the shop earlier that day and asked him about his sexuality, before responding that he could not shop there if he was gay. He also said that he was called derogatory names during the beating, which took place as he was in the process of closing up the business for the night.
“I just fear for my life,” Williams told Fox 17. “I’m to the point now where I’m worried to even go outside … I live my life as a gay man and wasn’t ashamed of it and I just feel that I was targeted for that for that reason.”
The suspects also set Healthy Thyme on fire, causing about $5,500 in damages,according to WPSD.

Whether or not Paris, Tennessee, is such a hotbed of homophobic hatred as to cause Williams to fear for his life, however, it now appears that this alleged hate crime never happened:

A man who told police he had been robbed and beaten at a Paris health food store a few days before Thanksgiving was arrested after he allegedly withheld information about the incident and has now been charged with filing a false report.
Joe Williams, 32, of 803 E. Wood St. was arrested [Dec. 20] after turning himself in at the Henry County jail.
Williams originally told officers he had been beaten and robbed Nov. 20 at Healthy Thyme, which is at the same address as Williams’ home. . . .
Officers later found inconsistencies in Williams’ story. Paris Police Sgt. Ricky Watson said Williams failed to bring up certain facts known to investigators on three different occasions.
“He was given three opportunities to disclose that information, and he chose not to,” Watson said.
That leaves investigators trying to determine how much of Williams’ story might have been true.
“We’ve not been able to verify or dispel any of the statements made about the actual robbery or fire,” Watson said. “We’re looking into Mister Williams, and we’re looking into whether it did or did not happen.”

The apparent fakery by Williams probably won’t be reported in bold headlines by some outlets that reported the story originally.