September 30, 2009

RAPE-RAPE

Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

Really.  What else does the article go on to say?

His victim, Samantha Gailey, told a grand jury that the director had plied her with champagne and drugs and taken nude pictures of her in a hot tub during a fashion shoot. Polanski then had sexual intercourse with her despite her resistance and requests to be taken home, she said.

Whew.  I'm glad I now understand the difference between rape and rape-rape.

So which one did Cameron Diaz mean that Bush would legalize?  Real rape or the "I'm famous so I can do whatever I want" rape?

Hollywood is completely nuts.

Awesome quote by John Nolte:

If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?

Posted by: Sarah at 02:49 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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September 29, 2009

NO BANG FOR THE BUCK

I reiterate that I think Bjorn Lomborg's argument that crises need to be prioritized is one of the best arguments against stopping global warming.  You can grant the premise just for argument's sake but still insist that we shouldn't spend a dollar to get a nickel's worth of good.

Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $40 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose cost findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press next year.

Unfortunately, no government program has ever been held to the bang-for-your-buck test.

But surely this has to be persuasive, right?  How could it not be?  I find it persuasive in every instance.  Take health care: I don't care if they can promise that everyone will have total coverage and no one will ever be sick again.  Our nation simply doesn't have the money now to cover 30 million new people.  Even if it were a government program I could get behind like...um...hmm...giving every law-abiding household a handgun and lessons on how to use it, we just are too far in debt to be adding new programs to the list, no matter what they are.

And certainly we have too much debt to spend $40 to get a dollar of benefit.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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September 19, 2009

CONSTITUTION DAY FAIL

My government class in high school was a joke.  We just memorized and regurgitated how many representatives there are and how old they have to be to run, and then we watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and hoped that somehow we would all learn how this marvelous American experiment works.  FAIL.  Completely.

I was just reading an article about how a Muslim girl is suing Abercrombie and Fitch because they discriminated against her for wearing a headscarf.  In the comments section, a different Muslim girl is arguing that everyone has the Constitutional right to work wherever they want.  She said a size 20 woman has the right to be a runway model.  Quote: "That's the right of an American citizen per our grand Constitution."

Does anyone even read the Constitution anymore?  Apparently everyone's high school government class was as bad as mine.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:59 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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September 18, 2009

EFFECTIVE OUTCOMES

I am feeling less unsettled lately...

After the huge march on Washington last weekend, and the defunding of ACORN this week, I am feeling more like We the People can pressure the government to represent us.

Here are a few things that regular old Americans have achieved since I wrote that I was unsettled:



For an explanation of the list, in case you're not familiar with all of them, listen here.

I am feeling more optimistic.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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September 15, 2009

HELP, HELP, I'M BEING OPPRESSED!

I was racially discriminated against today.

I got in a black cashier's line at Walmart.  She took the lady in front of me and then switched off her light, saying that I'd have to change lines because she needed to close down for a few minutes.  So I hopped over to the line next to hers, behind three other people.  The black cashier finished up with the lady she was helping, puttered around for about 30 seconds, found out that she was no longer needed to help clean up another register, and then turned her light back on and motioned for a black lady who was just walking up to the checkout area to get in her line.

Raaaaacist!  She helped a black customer instead of telling me to go ahead and get back in her line!  She took a black lady who'd just arrived to checkout instead of white me, who'd been waiting for several minutes!  I need a Beer Summit!

94 percent of African-American eighth graders reported to Harris-Britt that they'd felt discriminated against in the prior three months.

Now, I don't really think it was racial discrimination at Walmart.  I think the cashier was kinda boorish and lazy, and that she didn't care who she helped next as long as she was doing her job.  When I called her on it, she apologized as if the thought had never crossed her mind to ask me to return to her line.  She didn't do it because I was white; she did it because she was unobservant and clueless.

But it got me thinking and I remembered the above statistic from a recent Newsweek article about children's racial attitudes.  If almost every single black pre-teen says they're constantly being discriminated against, then it seems to me that, if the tables were turned and a white cashier helped a white customer over a black one, some people out there are interpreting that as racism.

I don't think it's racism.  I think it's laziness, or bad manners, or tunnel vision you get from doing the same mundane task all day long.  But I don't for one second think she pushed me out of her line because I was white.  But do black people think that?  It seems some of these pre-teens probably do.  How else could they all say they've been discriminated against recently?  A few may have truly met with bigotry, but a good number of them must just be interpreting the slightest offenses as racism.

It just got me thinking that, if you try to find slights based on skin color, you will see them.  But I'd bet that much of the "discrimination" people feel they're encountering is just a misunderstanding or a breakdown in acceptable social behavior, not racism.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:43 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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September 11, 2009

ANGER SPREAD THIN



I am reminded of Nelson Ascher's post again today.

The problem is that I do not want to waste a milligram of my anger on all the idiots who have been getting ready to show us how idiotic they are. We're at a point where to be too angry at, say, Chomsky and the BBC, Old Europe and ANSWER, second and third rate entertainers and academics is to give them a kind of victory. They deserve disdain. Anger needs to remain concentrated like light in a laser beam, we must direct it toward its rightful target: Islamofascism first and foremost. If we spend too much time getting mad at those who are but idiots we run the risk of forgetting, even if only for a second, that it is the Muslim/Arab religious fanatics who are the ENEMY. In a way, that's the idiots' main weapon: to attract a wrath that could be more usefully directed to the really dangerous enemies. Whenever we're not thinking about the Jihadists we are losing some very precious time. And anger."

My anger has been spread thin lately.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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September 07, 2009

HE MAY BE GONE, BUT HE WAS THERE FOR A REASON

Count me in as relieved and thrilled that Van Jones was forced into resignation.  He was a big part of the reason I wrote that I was unsettled.  The fact that a man like that was anywhere near the White House is chilling.

Stanley Kurtz:

In light of all we now know, this gauzy January 12 profile of Jones in The New Yorker is well worth a read. What do you see? I see the too-rapid rise of an inexperienced and poorly vetted man (poorly vetted by the entire liberal establishment, not just the White House) adept at getting and wasting vast sums of money for virtually non-existent plans, all based on seductive political rhetoric rather than substance.

Jonah Goldberg:

I just watched David Axelrod, the top ranking political advisor in the White House, and Robert Gibbs, the President's spokesman on "Meet the Press" and "This Week" respectively. Neither of them was willing, even after repeated questioning, to offer a single negative word about Van Jones. Not one word. A 9/11 Truther and defender of Mumia-Abu Jamal is not radical enough for this White House to distance itself from the man in any way. Again and again, this White House has been offered chances to condemn the man's views and they have willfully and quite deliberately refused.

Andy McCarthy:

The point, of course, is that Obama vetted Jones just fine. President Obama is not Mr. Magoo — haplessly gravitating to Truther Van and Ayers and Dohrn and Klonsky and Davis and Wright and the Chicago New Party and ACORN, etc. Jones is a kindred spirit. Obama knows exactly who he is. Jones was given a non-confirmation job precisely because that circumvented the vetting process. This isn't one of those things that just happen. This is Barack "Transparency" Obama gaming the system. 

And similarly, from VDH:

When Van Jones talks of the aims of the civil rights movement and its initial minimalist agenda, he references the ultimate desire of 'redistributing all wealth.' When one collates that revelation with Obama's own off-handed "spread the wealth" comment, his 'fair share' sermons, and his 2001 public radio interview thoughts on “the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society,” we begin to see a pattern in which one’s income and wealth do not properly belong to the earner, but are seen as illegitimate and thus legitimately can be redistributed to others.

I am glad that man is gone.  But the fact he was ever there in the first place still alarms me.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:32 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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September 03, 2009

POMPOUS IS TOO NICE OF A WORD

As Jonah Goldberg said, this video clip will hurt your brain.

This is why people are fed up these days.  Our politicians are dimwits who cuss at and belittle their constituents when asked simple questions of fact.  

People are straight-up tired of pompous politicians, jerks who think they're better than us because they appropriate our money to fly around on fancy jets. 

I'm with Glenn Beck: if Congress can't agree to this simple 5 point pledge, then they're worthless.

The more we borrow, the richer we are...seriously?  That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:58 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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September 02, 2009

I AM UNSETTLED

I envision an ugly future.  Despite the fact that I have joked with my mother that I was born during the Carter administration and everything turned out OK, I worry.  I see my child being born into an America I can't even recognize.

I find myself channeling my inner Sarah Connor lately.

I used to think that we were living Atlas Shrugged.  But lately, I think we're seeing a different ending.  I don't see the politicians kidnapping Galt and asking him to fix it fix it fix it; I think they want the broken system.

I don't know how to live in a broken system.  I feel like I need to spend some time learning how.

And even the plains aren't enough to calm my soul.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:32 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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