Friday, April 13, 2007

General busy-ness - a Random Thoughts post

Yeah, I've been a bit pre-occupied lately with - well, life in general. It happens.

I can't believe we're still hearing about this Don Imus thing. I actually heard someone talking on NPR about the "cruelty" of his comments... they were "particularly cruel" to these "young girls".

Ever hear the term "like water off a duck"? People should re-familiarize themselves with those terms, especially when someone throws out an off-hand, meaningless insult that would have been seen as glorification if it came from a rap star. "Young girls"? They're "young girls" when we want to drum up protective sympathy. They're "Young womyn" when they're speakin' truth to power. Cruel? Cruel????? If you think being called a "nappy-headed ho" is cruel, you don't know "cruel". But leftist indignation is all about hyperbole.

Now I'm no Imus fan. And I think it was a dumb thing for him to say on the airwaves. But as others have pointed out, Rosie O'Donnell is still on The View, and getting applause when she declares that conservative Christians are just as dangerous as Islamists. Lets look at the body count, shall we? 1 point for every 100 dead, and add a point for every Muslim or Christian authority who defends the murders. On a case by case basis, too. As far as I know each and every one of the young women on the Rutgers team are fine young ladies. And no off-handed slur-in-jest is going to change my mind about that. I'm fairly certain, especially after seeing the context, that Don doesn't really think that these girls are "nappy-headed ho's". I think he was saying they looked pretty tough. Which in gangsta talk could easily come out "nappy-headed ho".

Not that I'm any big fan of gangsta talk, either.

Fred Thompson. Haven't looked in to him too much, but he sounds fairly exciting as a conservative candidate. Frankly, I'd like to see the most conservative candidate on constitutional issues, foriegn, and fiscal policies nominated and win the general election, too. My biggest issues by far are not backing down in the defensive war on Islamists, the Second Amendment, and small government (I realize I have to speak in relative terms on this).

The kicker is, whoever gets nominated out of the field of Republican candidates will get my vote vs any of the possible Democrat nominees -- not because one is (R) and one is (D), but because the (R) person is without a doubt going to be hands down closer to my position on at least two of those three issues than any Democrat will be.

As a realist I have to keep in mind that in the end, I want whichever one of these guys gets nominated to be able to beat the nominee with a (D) after his/her name. That is critical in the War on Terror and on the War on the Bill of Rights. And if the most conservative candidate can't do that (and I hope he can and does, but) if he can't, right now Rudy looks real appealing to me. My biggest beef with him is on gun control. I am not pro-abortion ... realistically, I don't think President Guiliani would have any sway one way or the other over that anyway, though. On the other hand, I'm willing to give Fred a chance to prove himself.

I recently rented 1984 -- I'd never read the book or seen the movie, although I had a pretty good idea what it was about. Morgan brought up Newspeak in a post a while back, and after the Obama/Big Sister ad, I decided it was time.

It is shocking how much newspeak we really have around us. "Hate" is a top candidate for the equivalent of "crimespeak" or "crimethink". It's just doubleplus ungood. You're not even allowed to use a word more descriptive of what happened, because then you might actually think about whether the term is actually appropriate.

I was also quite struck by Goldstein Derangement Syndrome during the 10 Minutes of Hate. You can't hear a word the man is saying, there's just this emotional, hysterical reaction to his name and his image. Of course, it looks a lot like Bush Derangement Syndrome. Someone ought to to a YouTube video replacing Goldstien with Bush, complete with views of the hysterical crowd -- that's what the far and even middle left look like to me now. It's apparently catching.

Well, that's it for my blurbing today.

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