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The good guys will defend themselves and their families using all legal means available to them. I go through bouts where I don't want to support candidates or lobbies but I always support the NRA.

Numbers, numbers...

I really feel good, like I'm in my prime or something. Haven't felt this good since I was 43.

Of course I'm not sure 47 years is mentioned in the Bible like 46 years is. So I'll miss that feature.

An in two more years I'll be a perfect square. But my kids think I am already.

Screw it; whatever.

Jay Carney Resigns

This has got to be Tweet Pic of the week.

'I Jay Carney hereby resign my... Wait a second! You want me to sign this?'

Someone immortalize this as a lolcat picture.

Think of how disillusioned Carney has got to be at this point. Seeing the men he once thought great for the incompetent and fatuous boobs that they really are.

Hold Obama Accountable for Benghazi

Around the internets, Vol. 1

A quick digest of stuff which I've seen, read, noticed, thought "Gee I ought to blog that", etc. over the last 4 or 5 months. Maybe I'll make this a regular feature.... Please don't hold your breath.

There's an interesting albeit rambling post on the Ochlophobist blog in which our friend Diane really shines in the comments. I like reading Owen's stuff; he's a lot more "picky" than I — for lack of a better word — that is why it's sort of interesting that he became Catholic, left the Catholic Church for Eastern Orthodoxy for 10 years, and has now sort of come back to here comes everybody, but admits he still might receive communion at a Greek church. Which I don't really get, but I'm me and Owen is more fascinating that way. And plus I get the feeling that he is a genuinely good person who knows what he is doing even if I don't get him.

In the hilarity department we have this from Kathy Shaidle, her rather deprecatory take on our favorite (snort) book, The Little way of Ruthie Leming. Here's an excerpt from the aptly-titled "Why not just accept that your family are jerks and tell them to drop dead?":

“When I was younger, I left my hick family in their hick town and went to the big city where no one would laugh or yell at me for wanting to make something of myself.

“A family tragedy forced me to go back home, where my family and I were reconciled — which is what I thought I wanted cuz I read it in a book somewhere.

“Better yet, I got a book of my own out of it that sold a ton of copies.

“But now I’m miserable again because it turns out that my family is still a bunch of assholes.”

Last but not least, our favorite Paleo-Paleo-Conservative, Thomas O. Meehan, reports on the quest for meaning and purpose on the part of "The" "American" "Conservative".

The American Conservative has a reader survey up at the moment. Have they finally noticed their own pointlessness? Once an dreadnought of Paleoconservatism, they degenerated into a ship of fools in search of a heading. It's telling that a magazine founded by people with adamantine convictions should now be reduced to asking the readership what it wants to hear.

I encourage all readers to rush to the TAC site and put in your two cents. I did. Of course, I asked them to get rid of the most egregious barnacles (Dreher, McConnell) and stowaways, (Millman). I also added that they can do without the children they recruited (Coppage, Olmstead). Of course, I also suggested that they might return to the Paleoconservative roots from which they sprung. Finally I suggested that they try breaking some news rather than merely mooning over events as they do now. Phil Geraldi is the only one at TAC who tells readers things they don't already know.

It is important to recognize this survey for what it is. TAC realizes that having purged actual conservatives in order to forge some sort of new conservatism, they have created an amorphous symposium of nothing in articular. The point of conservatism is to preserve the best, even if unpopular. Nothing speaks more of TAC's lack of Conservatism than its flailing about for direction in this way.

At first I thought Mr. Meehan meant to write "an amorphous symposium of nothing in particular". Then I realized that the word articular refers to joints in a skeleton. So maybe he meant to write that, pointing out the lack of any specific structural shape. Every other analogy in it is naval, so the jury's out. Keith referenced this piece in a recent comment, but I always enjoy good ol' Odysseus on the Rocks so I thought we'd RTWT together. When this TAC ship finally sinks we'll consult Mr. Meehan's blog again to find out news regarding flotsam, jetsam, life rafts and especially whether any of those cool old brass telescopes were found.

LOL, "egregious barnacles"....

In case of the rapture... or Google...

Remember our old Dangerous Ideas posts from days of yore? Well, I give you the whole Google robot car debacle-waiting-to-happen.

I actually heard grown men discussing the benefits of driverless cars with serious faces the other day. "Of course," said one, "you'd have to make sure everyone else on the road has a special transmitting device so the driverless cars 'knows' about them." Oh great, I thought, so these things are blind as well as looking totally retarded?

Immediately I was reminded of a Jack Handey deep thought: "I wish a robot would get elected President. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad." It might be fun to goof on these puppies, maybe spray paint the Apple logo on them, or tag them with that bumper sticker about the rapture, etc. But wear your ninja outfit; I'm sure they have wireless cams all over them with a lawyer or two on the other end.

And speaking of lawyers, I'm sure there are some ambulance chasers strategizing how you might sue the deep-pocketed GOOG over these marvels. Who would likely win a "she said / it said" case?

Oh. Never mind.

Our Cub Reporter was on the job, reporting on the causes of the UCSB murders last week. Of course, a cautionary statement is appropriate, lest the reader run off with his or her own pet theory:

First off, I think we ought to have learned by now not to interpret these horrible incidents as confirmation of whatever theory we previously believed.

After negotiating that traffic cone ("That said . . ."), let's plow ahead and do exactly that anyway: 

I think the fundamental issue here, the one connecting Rodger’s particular psychopathologies, is a craving for status. All of us want to feel a sense of purpose in our lives, and want to be respected and loved by others. Rodger believed that without sex, his life had no meaning. What undid him was the belief that he was entitled to sex, the ultimate status marker (in his world) because he possessed all the status markers that in his reckoning entitled him to sexual attention.  

And while it might be tough to work TLWORL into this piece, it’s pretty easy to use the Dante Hammer on the Rodger Nail, along with a little extrapolated indictment of the culture*:

Envy, for Dante and his medieval world, is not really wanting what others have; it’s wanting them not to have it if one cannot have it oneself. Rodger was envious in both the medieval sense and in the more modern sense. We have created a popular culture in which the worth of people and the meaning of life is measured by hedonistic values, which are constantly celebrated by the culture. What’s more, we have created a popular culture in which young people are acculturated into believing that it is their right to have these things, and if these things aren’t readily available, it is a cosmic injustice wrought by someone else against their innocent person.

There we go:  causes of a maniac’s murder spree all figured out from way out here in South La.  Work in a quote from Paradiso at the end to tie a ribbon around it, and it’s on to the next topic for our Newspaperman.

Except for:   

UPDATE: Sorry, but I've been gone all day long, and just getting back to this.  I'm learning from you readers that this Rodger kid had been psychiatrically ill for a long time, and his parents tried to get him help. That's a huge factor, obviously, and one I wasn't aware of when I posted the article this morning.**

Never mind. 

 * Not that the culture oughtn't be indicted for many reasons. 

** Emphasis added by me.

Here's to more backlashes

C-FAM reports on the Obama's Administration attempt to shove the LGBT agenda down everyone's throat in the international community. Excerpt:

U.S. and international leaders increasingly criticize President Obama’s foreign policy approach, especially his weak responses to massive human rights atrocities and religious cleansing in the Middle East and Africa.

But the Obama administration boasts – and few disagree – it has been all-hands-on-deck when it comes to expanding sexual rights.

The State Department released a fact sheet listing its “significantly expanded efforts” to promote LGBT rights through “private engagement with governments and civil society, public diplomacy, foreign assistance, and work in multilateral fora.”

“There are few areas where I think our task is so clear” as to work “for the rights and the dignity of LGBT persons around the world,” said Secretary John Kerry.

What a neat foreign policy. Tone-deafness and limp-wristedness is such a great combo. Luckily people aren't standing for it everywhere.

National leaders and foreign policy experts say this focus has caused a backlash in some countries.

Uganda President Museveni reportedly initially leaned against legislation toughening penalties on homosexuality. When he signed it into law, Museveni pointed out pressure from Obama had a reverse effect.

“I would like to discourage the USA government from taking the line that passing this law will ‘complicate our valued relationship’ with the USA as President Obama said,” Museveni said.

“Africans do not seek to impose our views on anybody. We do not want anybody to impose their views on us.”

Glad to see some people have courage. Here's hoping for more backlashes.