1 When America lags behind Canada, you know something's wrong:

Some western nations walked out of Ahmadinejad’s speech: Canada was first; Austria stuck around; America left somewhere in between.

I wonder how Steyn felt about Canada taking the lead.

Although he affects a president-of-the-world manner, I don’t think Barack Obama cares much about foreign affairs one way or the other.

Nope. chicagO is much more important! What a sense of priOrities.

1 I'm surprised because I tend to think that there isn't that much of a difference between Us and Them. I generally can't tell from someone's behavior which side they're on.

It'd be interesting to see if red state parks are cleaner than blue state ones.

The comparison of the Washington Mall photos isn't quite fair because the inauguratiOn photo was taken in winter. The lack of green makes the Mall look worse.  Still, the point remains. I'd expect a protest fueled by negative feelings* to leave more rubbish than a celebratory inauguration, yet the reverse happened!

*Yes, I know the protestors were motivated out of love for America. But when one's mad about America turning into Omerica, one might litter without a second thought. Or not!

2 Why should I trust photos posted at American Thinker?  (What a misnomer. True thinkers don't have their doubleplus ungOOd thoughts.) Oh, excuuuuse us, Gateway Pundit. The 9/12 photos were probably photoshopped: rubbish was removed and extra people were added. 99.99% of Omericans want Dr. gOvernment.

That 0.01% that bothered to show up probably drove away in Gaia-tormenting SUVs while the millions that came to the enthrOnement came in Priuses (Barack bless 'em) and peOple's transportation. The pictures don't tell the whole story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, there could be nine thousand other words we won't deign to say.

And let's suppose that the peOple really did make a mess. Is that really such a bad thing? Think of all the people employed to clean up that mess! All the jobs created by his ascensiOn! Break a window for Barack!

3 Amritas -

I'm not sure that a comparison of "red" and "blue" national parks would do it, either.

Blue areas tend to be more urban than red areas; and urban areas tend to be a lot nastier trash wise.  I'm not sure how much of that can realistically be laid at the feet of political belief systems, because I think the sheer number of people in one area tends to cause more of the ugliness than the fact that urban areas tend to be blue.

Another factor I think might play into the issue is self identity.  I try to keep my house looking nice (or rather, I'm fixing my house up) because I want to be proud of where I live.  If you don't have any vested pride in something, why bother to take care of it?

4 Toldja that the 9/12 photos were fakes!

Some conservative blogs have been circulating photos allegedly taken during the rally. But at least one fact-checking site says the photos are fakes ...

Politifact, a nonpartisan journalistic fact-checking organization, checked in on Monday with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the DC Fire and Emergency Department. Piringer “unofficially” estimated that between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up. He added that the photo circulating conservative sites was almost certainly not from this year.

The caption for the photo at the top speaks of "photos" being "fakes". Many will not read the actual article which only discusses one fake photo. One commenter noticed this act of legerdemot:

To imply that *all* of the 9/12 photos are fakes based on this one photo, which I have only seen here, being called out as fake is a blatant propaganda move. Not journalism.

But it is jOurnalism, whose goal is to spread the revOlutiOnary truth!

Lenin lives!

"It is one of our basic tasks to contrapose our own truth to bourgeois 'truth', and win its recognition.

The transition from bourgeois society to the policy of the proletariat is a very difficult one, all the more so for the bourgeoisie incessantly slandering us through its entire apparatus of propaganda and agitation. It bends every effort to play down an even more important mission of the dictatorship of the proletariat, its educational mission ..."

Teach us mOre, o MSM!

5 airforcewife:

I suggested parks because comparing blue cities with red towns makes no sense for the reasons you stated:

Blue areas tend to be more urban than red areas; and urban areas tend to be a lot nastier trash wise.  I'm not sure how much of that can realistically be laid at the feet of political belief systems, because I think the sheer number of people in one area tends to cause more of the ugliness than the fact that urban areas tend to be blue.

I presume there is no difference in human density among the visitors to blue and red parks. There is, however, a complicating factor I overlooked: visitors to parks can come from other areas. If a park's visitors are overwhelmingly non-local, the condition of the park tells us nothing about local behavior. Moreover, most visitors to a red park could be blue, and vice versa.

In any case, my guess is that there is no difference between blue and red parks in terms of cleanliness. Do parks in, say, California have a bad reputation?

I try to keep my house looking nice (or rather, I'm fixing my house up) because I want to be proud of where I live.  If you don't have any vested pride in something, why bother to take care of it?

Leftists feel this pride too. Look at how nice the houses of the elite are. But how proud do the tenants of public housing feel? As Rick Moran wrote,

On the other hand, liberals don't see public property as their concern, but rather that of the government. When everyone owns the land, no one is responsible for it in their calculation.

Yet we must all pay for public property. And we must pay more as the public sector grOws.

6 I forgot to mention that you can always trust "a nonpartisan journalistic fact-checking organization".

In nOwOmOwa (from Polish for 'Newspeak'), words like nonpartisan and neutral really mean prOgressive. Which as we all know really means back to the glorious socialism of the past. Now that's progress - in a wOrld where blue means 'Red'.

Ever notice how you hear about the center-left, but never the center-right? How the gOOd guys are always moderates while you are extremists? We control language. We control people's perceptions of reality. Even conservatives often think within the confines of our framework.

Sarah understands what we're doing:

... nowadays the left-wing position is actually considered the default ...

I reject so many of these so-called non-partisan positions ...

So in normal discussions with Democrats, I am always operating from a disadvantage, because "conventional wisdom" or "normal people" usually grant these premises. I'm always frustrated because I don't accept the underlying foundation of their arguments, which makes it hard to have a discussion because to them, this is the normal default position ...

I believe that the Republican Party will never be a success if it keeps granting Democrat premises. It can't keep trying to find right-wing solutions to things that many right-wingers don't accept as the default. McCain let Obama frame the debates ...

Nobody I know wanted to vote for Democrat Lite, but that's what we were getting served.

Get ready for a second serving in 2012! victOry is inevitable!

1 Translation: Thomas Friedman is a good guy! A true friend of the people ... the People's Republic of China:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to [blah blah blah ... lotsa good green stuff] ...

Say 你好 ni hao (hello) to our new role model! If we Great Leaders weren't unselfishly dedicated to saving you from capitalism, we'd let the PRC's "reasonably enlightened group of people" rule you. Our cities, true-blue zones like New York City, will be the next Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and the rest of America can be "impoverished" like the rest of the PRC. And under "The Firm Hand of the Benign Strongman", the number of patents filed by Omericans will be reduced by 99.7%. (90,000 American patents were filed in the US in 2002, but only 297 PRC patents were filed in the US in 2003.) Innovation requires freedom. Great Leaders don't require innovation. They just need lots of followers. So let's add 300 million more. Annex America. Learn 普通话 Putonghua, I mean Mandarin, the exciting 语言 yuyan (language) of the future that nearly half of the PRC's population aren't fluent in! Welcome to Friedman's flat 世界 shijie (world) where all will be equally poor except for an elite of smart people like us!

2

Just saw the following on a manufacturing blog:

**

A coal mine accident early on Tuesday killed 13 people and 66 others were missing in central China's Henan Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the state work safety watchdog.

China's mines are the deadliest in the world, due to lax safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy. More than 3,000 people died in coal mine accidents in 2008 alone.

 **

Part of China's problem with mine safety is due to the fact that they're at an earlier stage of economic development than we are. Part of it, though, is that China's government doesn't have to be excessively concerned with casualties among those Obama likes to call "working families."

I wonder whether Friedman would prefer to be a coal miner in China or in the United States.