God's Own Crunk

This, friends, is an astonishing statement:

Perhaps now this will change. Is it possible to defend the president who is bugging your phone, whose IRS is knocking at the door of political opponents, who still refuses to tell us what he was doing on September 11, 2012, while American were dying under brutal siege?

Barack Obama is an American president, not a hero or icon. Presidents make mistakes. We’ll all be a lot better off if this can start a more realistic assessment of his strengths and weaknesses, his good days and his bad. Anything less is a disservice to the man, to the office, and, most important, to the public.

via IRS, DOJ, and Benghazi Expose Limits of Obama’s Big Government Vision – The Daily Beast.

To be clear – heh & heh – this is the same crew that viewed the man as a demigod a few years ago. The idea that this question is being asked – “is it possible to defend the president who is bugging your phone, whose IRS is knocking at the door of political opponents, who still refuses to tell us what he was doing on September 11, 2012…” is remarkable in its What The Fuck??? stupidity. If this were not Barack Obama, calls for the guillotine would be forthcoming.

Most other Donkeys couldn’t escape this incompetence, but The Lightbringer Cometh, yo.

It was creepy, it remains creepy and it will continue to be creepy how subservient Obamabots are regarding said Dear Leader. The man is either incompetent or beyond corrupt – probably both, oddly, in my view – but this idea that “is it possible?” is absurd: sure, defend away, champ, but the POTUS was, is, and forever will be what he is – an empty suit who raises $$ and spouts rhetoric. Deflect, deny, more deflect, more deny, the smartest man in the room being the most ignorant of the day’s comings and goings.

Jeebus. He’s my POTUS too, hence the “we’re fucked” sense of my analysis.

First, check dat bold premise. If this is true, then womynz are also swimming in debt, which leads me to…

Men are wising up to a no-fault divorce system that favors womynz.

Third – or, er, (C) – and this cannot be quantified yet it remains true: menz do not care. Men are indifferent, aloof, etc – speaking for the men who have no interest in getting married, we don’t have an interest in getting married, but beyond that, we don’t feel the need to get Educated for the sake of being Educated.

Men get that /privilege aside, the deck is stacked; ergo, we drop out and move on. Womynz! Ball’s in your court, time to move it:

They’ve endured a three-decade drop in earnings. Even before the financial crash, prime-age men were dropping out of the workforce altogether, and the problem has only worsened since. Meanwhile, women are far outstripping their male counterparts in the area that’s most important for a 21st century global economy — education.

The big question remains — why? On this, the research still falls short. So the outpouring of reader feedback on my column in the April 29 issue of Fortune — “America’s Wayward Sons: Why They Can’t Carry On” — offers some valuable on-the-ground perspective.

The focus of that column was an MIT study showing the sharp rise in single-parent households hurts boys more than girls. Other scholars have blamed a rise in more readily available government assistance, making aid checks more appealing than paychecks. The decline of well-paying manufacturing jobs, combined with fast-paced technological change, also factors in.

via 6 reasons why men are falling behind women – The Term Sheet: Fortune’s deals blogTerm Sheet.

I assume anyone who’s experienced higher-ed in the last decade knows how bad it seems, but Heather MacDonald, in this massive piece, deconstructs how abysmal University of California’s sprawling system is. The PC Police, the salaries, the titles, the waste – enjoy this read, and for a walk down memory lane, I – as always – remember the fun of reading Bright College Years, which now seems as antiquated as a horseless buggy:

In April 2012, one of Yudof’s five working groups disgorged its first set of recommendations for creating a “safe” and “healthy” climate for UC’s beleaguered minorities, even as the university’s regents, who theoretically govern the school, debated whether to raise tuition yet again to cover the latest budget shortfall. The Faculty Diversity Working Group called for hiring quotas, which it calls “cluster hiring,” and more diversity bureaucrats, among nine other measures. (California’s pesky constitutional ban on taking race and gender into account in public hiring, which took effect after voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996, has long since lost any power over UC behavior and rhetoric.)

You would think that an institution ostensibly dedicated to reason would have documented the widespread bias against women and minorities before creating such a costly apparatus for fighting that alleged epidemic. I ask Dianne Klein, the spokesman for UC’s Office of the President, whether Yudof or other members of his office were aware of any faculty candidates rejected by hiring committees because of their race or sex. Or perhaps Yudof’s office knew of highly qualified minority or female faculty candidates simply overlooked in a search process because the hiring committee was insufficiently committed to diversity outreach? Klein ducks both questions: “Such personnel matters are confidential and so we can’t comment on your question about job candidates.”

via Multiculti U. by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Spring 2013.

Great piece by Dalrock:

While men were motivated under the old family structure, they absolutely detest the new child support system of family formation.  Under the old system a man who married before fathering children could reasonably expect access to his children and the opportunity to direct their upbringing (in concert with his wife).  Under the new system the children are de facto considered the property of the mother, whom the state compels him to pay so she can direct their upbringing generally as she sees fit.  Since the new system has removed the incentive for men to work hard to provide for their families, it has to rely instead on threats of imprisonment to coerce men into earning “enough” income.  Where men used to take pride in the birth of their children and celebrate with cigars, large numbers of men now fear fatherhood more than anything.

via Why aren’t men responding to economic signals? | Dalrock.

I always give a muddled answer when my mom hints that I should be thinking about marriage by now (I’m 38 lol). I usually muddle through some non-answer, but Dalrock hits about 90 percent of the reasons I’ve no interest in marriage.

So good was his piece I did something I never do – I forwarded it to my parents.

Christian Laettner was my last favorite college basketball player, but as soon as I saw that Grantland was doing a 32-man bracket of the most hated college basketball player of the last 33 years, “Christian Laettner” was the first name that popped in my head. The only other player I could think of at Laettner Tier was his teammate, Bobby Hurley:

So who wins? Well, Christian Laettner wins. But who makes things interesting before that foregone conclusion is up to you. Should you vote for a player who was hated in his time over a guy who just pisses you off? Your call. And honestly, if you never saw Patrick Ewing play at Georgetown and you just want to vote him into the Final Four because he traveled every time he made his hop-skip-jump move across the lane or because he blew the layup that cost the Knicks the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals, well, we can’t stop you. Just rage out all over this bracket and help us crown the most hated college basketball player of the last three decades.

via A tournament to determine the most hated college basketball players in the last 30 years – Grantland.

Over at Reason, Mike Riggs relates a few anecdotes regarding the thin-skinned White House image machine:

My first thought was of Valerie Jarrett, who the New York Times desribed in a September profile as having “a tendency to take political criticism personally, even when it would be more useful not to.” In that same profile, the Times reported that Jarrett had attacked ACLU President Anthony Romero for criticizing this administrations atrocious handling of the War on Terror. “Great harm has been done,” Jarrett wrote to Romero. “There has been a material breach of trust.” The Times also dug up this anecdote: After Cornel West called Obama the “black mascot of Wall Street,” Jarrett, in a creepy echo of the Bush years, called him “un-American.” But as economic advisor Gene Sperling demonstrated by haranguing Woodward, its not just Jarrett. This administration is obsessed with image management. Sometimes the focus on the president being portrayed a certain way results in cuddly stuff–Barack Obama slow-jamming the news, Michelle Obama doing the Dougie–and sometimes it results in the White House acting petulant, bizarre, and gross.

via The Most Openly and Transparently Thin-Skinned Administration in History – Hit & Run : Reason.com.

Eric passed the Ron Fournier piece that has made quite a splash today regarding the same topic, and Fournier curiously closes his piece with this:

This can’t be what Obama wants. He must not know how thin-skinned and close-minded his staff can be to criticism. “I have the greatest respect and admiration for what you do,” Obama told reporters a year ago. “I know sometimes you like to give me a hard time, and I certainly like to return the favor, but I never forget that our country depends on you.”

In an otherwise excellent piece, how Fournier can be so blind to the POTUS’s paper-thin skin is beyond me. I think all of us, to a degree, can be guilty of overlooking the obvious character flaws of people who tend to agree with. Of the men who’ve been POTUS in my lifetime (beginning with Ford), none – not even “Definition of Is Is” Clinton – hold a candle to the current POTUS’s refusal to ever admit a flaw, a mistake or cede a point.

I’ve heard many libertarian types use the term “disappointing” regarding the complete absence of transparency and accountability in the Obama White House and throughout his cabinet. To be disappointed, one must first have anticipated a different outcome. What, exactly, were all these people watching and reading when then-Sen. Obama began his march to the White House? One would have to rely only on his campaign’s portrait of the man himself to overlook the vapid narcissism, the refusal to make a decision, the Clintonian politics of personal destruction, the buck-passing, and yes, their refusal to take criticism of any kind without seeking some form of revenge.

History’s graveyards are littered with failed leaders who surrounded themselves with yes-men who not only served to reinforce whatever ideas, good or bad, the leader had, but also to shield said leader from any criticism. This is not a good thing. I don’t care about Barack Obama’s standing in the history books, but I do care about the country his is systematically destroying.

As I’ve said before, it may be a historical cliche, but pride cometh before the fall. There isn’t a tablespoon of humility at 1600 Pennsylvania, and it’s going to end in turmoil and disaster.

Here’s Guy Benson, defending Gov. Christie from the purge:

Which brings us to the impulse to purge.  I have no beef with conservatives who say they couldn’t support Christie for president.  I have no quarrel with those who mount strong, principled arguments against some of his actions; indeed, I share more than a few of their criticisms.  But I am alarmed and slightly perplexed by the “he’s dead to us” posture many conservatives have adopted toward the truculent governor.

via In Defense of Chris Christie – Guy Benson.

There are lots of folk out there I like who love them some Christie. I remember watching his perfectly-played appearances on Imus backintheday where and when he deflected the fat jokes and got real. 

In 2013  and beyond, dunno, duncare. He’s a heftier version of Bloomberg. The GOP – to say nothing of various Conservative brands – will rue the day they attached themselves to this guy.

He’s a Democrat posing a Republican, and in NJ, who cares. But … this won’t end well. Yes, he gives good YouTube beating up teachers and their unions (huzzah) but this monkey act has come to town before and it will come to town again.

He’s a younger, fatter version of John McCain – capiche?

Joe McCarthy is a personal hero of mine. He died two decades before I was born, but his battles and the smearing of his name are a warning shot to Conservatives of all stripes as to what will be done to their name and their memory if they assault the sacred cows of liberalism in America. I fume, then comment, then eventually email any Conservative writer who uses the term “McCarthyism” as a stand-in for irrational witch-hunting.

Our country could use a lot more men like Joe McCarthy today – hats off to RSM for this post:

Democrats and the major news media — but I repeat myself – have decided that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s opposition to the Chuck Hagel nomination makes him the “New McCarthy.”

And they say that like it’s a bad thing.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been unjustly and dishonestly maligned for so long that even many conservative Republicans nowadays use “McCarthyism” as a slur, without any real understanding of who the man was, or what he was trying to accomplish.

Intellectuals who today think of themselves as the rightful heirs of William F. Buckley Jr. often seem to forget that the second book Buckley wrote, after God and Man at Yale, was McCarthy and His Enemies, which Buckley co-authored with his brother-in-law Brent Bozell (father of Brent Bozell III, who is today head of the Media Research Center). Buckley knew, as do all honest and intelligent students of the Cold War era, that even if one stipulates McCarthy made mistakes and had unfortunate personality traits, he was really a better man than his vindictive critics, and certainly more sincerely patriotic than the Communist enemies he sought to expose.

via Never Forget: Joe McCarthy Was Right! : The Other McCain.