ELO Laid Low

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by Smitty

ELO is the source of my favorite St00p3d Qustion: “In the name, is ‘Light’ an adjective or a noun? Is it ‘Electric Light’ Orchestra, or Electric ‘Light Orchestra’.”
Piece of Work in Progress reports the sad demise of a former band cellist.
My favorite ELO cut, though I guess the deceased didn’t play on it, is Last Train to London. I remember enjoying the music and being completely unable to parse “Lasrainoo-onon” in my youth. Wasn’t life so much simpler then?

Heaven rest Mike Edwards, or whatever is appropriate to mark the passage of a Buddhist.

‘Send the Body to John Holdren’

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If a domestic terrorist’s rhetoric had echoed the arguments of a Bush administration official, the media would be in a howling fury, so why no fury over the deranged kook who took over the Discovery Networks headquarters? Professor Glenn Reynolds explains:

Filthy. Parasites. Disgusting, overbreeding candidates for sterilization and extermination. Possessed of false morals and a “breeding culture.”
Hitler talking about the Jews? Nope. This is Discovery Channel hostage-taker James Lee talking about . . . human beings. . . .
Looking at the environmental literature, we find terms like those used above — the currently stylish description is “eliminationist rhetoric” — used widely, and plans for mass sterilization are fairly common.
And, as Mark Hemingway pointed out in these pages a few days ago, one need only look to the writings of President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren to find something similar. Seeing humanity as destructive, Holdren wrote in favor of forced abortion and putting sterilizing agents in the drinking water, and in particular of sterilizing people who cause “social deterioration.” . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: As Dan Riehl notes, Patterico gets ‘Lanched for playing dumb. I might resent that, were it not for the fact that “playing dumb” is my raison d’etre.

Seriously, though: The FBI has acknowledged eco-terrorism as a threat. James Lee’s twisted neo-Malthusian beliefs are shared by many “mainstream” environmentalists, including Ted Turner, who endorses China’s one-child policy. If Ted Turner is correct, if “too many people” are such a crucial threat, then wasn’t James Lee justified in his protests against Discovery/TLC, the network that celebrates the Duggar family?

Elena Donovan Mauer asks, “Did the Duggars Push the Discovery Channel Gunman Over the Edge?” I think that’s a serious question and, as a father of six myself, I’ve long been concerned by the anti-natalist rhetoric of environmentalism. It’s bad enough that it encourages useless kooks like Julia Buttefly Hill to waste their lives leading idiotic protests, but the movement also routinely produces criminal violence by Earth Liberation Front and others. 

James Lee was the tip of a very large Green iceberg of dangerous ideas.

UPDATE II: “Then lettuce be thankful his efforts wilted.”

Insta-PUNNED-it!

(Rimshot, please!)

A Belated ‘Roll Tide!’

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Yesterday, I was so excited by Jax State’s upset of Ole Miss that I forgot to blog Alabama’s 48-3 season-opening stomp of San Jose State. My buddy Tookie sent me the highlight video. At the 30-second mark, you’ll see ‘Bama’s backup QB throw 39 yards for a touchdown to Julio Jones, who makes a spectacular one-handed catch:

When Alabama scores 48 points without their Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram — including 111 yards and two TDs by redshirt freshman Eddie Lacy — that makes me think I need to start planning for a trip to Arizona for Jan. 10. But before we start thinking ahead, next up is my trip to Delaware.

Turning Into An Andrew McCarthy Fan

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by Smitty (h/t Big Journalism)

I followed Michael Walsh’s advice and read Andrew McCarthy’s review of the new book on Saul Alinsky.
McCarthy, who wrote Grand Jihad, sees through the sycophant author to the diabolical mind of Alinsky.
The last two sentences of the review, where another Alinsky acolyte, Obama, has attained the White House, are of note:

The fox has made it to the hen house. The old master would be proud.

I’m not sure Obama is a fox in the sense of Odysseus, and I’m not sure that Alinsky would feel ‘pride’ in any way commonly understood.
These two characters are fascinating. Obama and Alinsky, circumstantially, seem to have some fairy-tale vision. A Kingdom of God, without so much God. Yet their tactics seem void of creativity, capable only of achievement through destruction.
McCarthy’s review leaves one genuinely interested in Alinsky from a criminal psychology standpoint. Was there any ‘there’ there, or can an Alinsky (and an Obama) exist only parasitically, having something notionally functional like a Bush both to sustain them, and attack?
RTWT. It’s one of those pieces one is tempted to quote in full.

Bloggers Surprised GOP Under-reacting To Unproven Tea Party Commitment To Long-Term Agend– Oh . . . Shiny!

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by Smitty

Without the slightest disrespect to Dan Riehl and his point, the GOP isn’t ready to lead, one should ask the question: lead what?

First, I’m not here to pat myself on the back. On the Geller scale, I would fall well short of asserting I’m doing “enough” to support American renewal.

Second, let’s not go counting ourselves a representative sample. We hold a lot of truths self-evident in the dextrosphere. Conservativism is a largely common-sense, Constitutional affair, modulo occasional thumb-wrestling over the sort-order of fiscal vs. religious concerns. However, the country is still largely asleep at the switch over the dangers of Progressive statism. Things self-evident to friendly bloggers may not generalize, or be felt as intensely by the population at large. Yes, polls are trending this direction, which brings me to my next point.

Third, Politics is attrition warfare. We can state, with decreasing certainty, the following points:

  1. The election in two months will favor the GOP at all levels.
  2. The GOP will control the House of Representatives.
  3. The GOP will control the Senate.
  4. The GOP will hold an effective veto-override majority in Congress.
  5. The Tea Party will continue to influence the GOP along Federalist lines through the 2012 election.
  6. The Tea Party will succeed in flushing the GOP of Progressive, RINO tendencies, past 2012.

Given that analysis, let’s return to the complaint that the House GOP seems deer-in-the-headlights, when something a little more fiery and less card-held-close-to-the-chest would seem to be appropriate amongst those of us who fancy we Get It.
While it is crucial to continue on as we are, calling it as we see it, giving napalm showers to any knob needing such, let’s allow for some unknown unknowns. Specifically, the magnitude of conservative victory in November is still speculative, and the staying power of Tea Party determination.
When the closets are thrown open, and the Federal financial skeletons come tumbling out, and it turns out that the lying liars were deceptively understating the magnitude of the crisis, and we’re suddenly twice, thrice as screwed as we think we are now, does the Tea Party wet itself? Does it double down in determination to Fix This Noise?
The greatest unproven element here is patience. With the political wind, like any physical wind, you cannot sail straight into it. Movement upwind involves tacking and jibing to cross distance against the wind. We sometimes act as though the GOP should be a shaft-driven vessel, capable of going flank three straight upwind. Not the case. The same procedural inertia that substantially dampened the Democrat Party majorities in the 111th Congress will work the other direction, as well.
The crucial role of blogs will be to sustain the focus and intensity of the Tea Parties, even when the toughest Rand Pauls, Scott Browns, Joe Millers, Christine O’Donnells, Allen Wests, &c. are forced to eat tough votes for reasons that may not ever clearly be articulated.
I submit, without warranty, that Speaker Boehner in 2017, still backed by a strong Tea Party movement, will be cruising through Progressives with the subtlety of the USS Constitution wrecking an enemy.  But, if We The People lose heart, or become distracted, then all bets are off.

Rule 5 Sunday Part 1

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by Smitty

What can I say? I’m rather a sad little blogging junkie. As Wombat Rampant noted about Rule 5 the night before Restoring Honor, “You’ve got to give the people what they want.”

In other words, the opposite of the White House anti-Rule 5 disaster in the Oval Office. The Twitter hash was brutal. What I thought was my personal best:

But enough of that jacking about, on with the show. Continue reading Rule 5 Sunday Part 1 →