Yeah

This is too good not to share

It means that I can force churches, in even more blatant contravention of the first amendment, to marry gay couples. Never mind that the federal government, an institution whose only role should be mediation of interactions between states and representation of the states as a whole to the world, has no business in a wedding unless Maryland and Ohio get hitched. Marriage is all wrapped up in federal tax law, so in a parody of, the government gets to participate in the entire life of both members in a married couple, forever. If you want to turn marriage over to contract law, which already has a country-wide body of legal precedent and which does not give a fig what the genders of the parties are, you’re homophobic and probably also sexist.

And, yeah, mostly on Twitter these days [see below].

Change In Emphasis

My university supplied computer is not doing well with my peripatetic life and is starting to malfunction.  As it was the last perk from my teaching days, I have to replace it myself and am finding the various possibilities a bit daunting.  So, for the time being, I will be more active on Twitter at twitter.com/sadhubob

Why I surf

Why I surf

Ended Summer

It's going to be a near perfect week, made more acute by the fact that summer is short and the surfable days make it even shorter.  I went to a friend's funeral last month and haven't wanted to do anything but be in the water until my body screams.  I don't even mind the pain, as it means I have life.

Why I surf

Oh, wee-wee?

Ex-Obama adviser and other Iran experts: Obama is blowing it

Democrats before Iraq War started....

I mean, c'mon. She's yummy.

Gray skies and choppy surf

Back on the East Coast since Monday and it has rained every single day.  Fortunately, I'm back in the comfortable house until the end of the month and have access to a mostly empty boardwalk for walks and running and biking.  Why, oh, why was an academic for so long?

Anyway, I came across this in my morning readings and wanted to share:

In the past, the individuals who manned the New York-Hollywood axis and the university outposts in between -- the cultural left --tended to champion the cause of the accused. For nearly a century, from Sacco and Vanzetti to Alger Hiss to Hurricane Carter to Leonard Peltier to Mumia Abu Jamal, they would swarm a specific crime to sell the American public on the innocence of the guilty, even the conspicuously guilty.

Another reason why I surf

Why I surf

Jerk

Obama Derides Humanities Majors

If he had really studied anything he wouldn't be a world-class screw-up.  Wish he'd read some history but, you know, stuff like that and philosophy is for the lazy.  Really, really a jerk.

So, he screws up green energy, the VA, the IRS, the Global War on Terror,..

...releases terrorists back into the field, and loses Iraq as well as Afghanistan, yet he still gets a killer surfboard for his visit to Australia.

If he reduces us to global thermo-nuclear war, he gets to romp with Marie Osmond, the world's hottest babe*.

*Don't judge me, man.  Have you seen her weight-loss ads?  Oucha, mcgoucha.

I know the three people who read this also read Steyn, but still....

Obama and Clinton ended the war in Iraq by losing it. They "pivoted" from Iraq to Afghanistan, and wound up losing both. Hillary crowed over Gaddafi's corpse - "We came, we saw, he died" - and then sat by as her ambassador and best friend "Chris" was devoured by the mob: He died, she sat by, we're gone. The Arab Spring that Zakaria claims "crippled" al-Qaeda delivered Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood and a military coup, Tunisia to soft Islamists, Libya to ever harder Islamists, and much of Syria and Iraq to jihadists too hardcore for "mainstream" al-Qaeda.

Why I surf

If you ever thought there was a slightly nutty strain in American Feminism, there you go

Kate, herself, has written several books on this part of her life (Flying, The Loony-Bin Trip) chronicling the "oppressive" actions of our family, vilifying us for our deeply worried attempts to aid in her obvious sufferings. So I am telling no "tales out of school" as she herself has documented her own struggles with sanity although she consistently claimed, "mental illness is a myth". "Many healthy people", she said, "are driven to mental illness by society's disapproval of unconventional behavior and by the authoritarian institution of psychiatry." Really? Tell that to the families of the nineteen who suffered and died that Friday in Santa Barbara.....never mind, it's all just an illusion, a myth. Let’s examine and “have conversations” about the violation of the civil rights of these nineteen innocent families. She has called me and our other sister, Sally, plus family members, cousins, etc. vicious names, demonized us, and written reams of counterfeit versions of "the truth" concerning these matters. These are published works, which rest in the Library of Congress for all time and which slander our names as people who were petty and malicious and because we "hated her politics" were trying to shut her up and lock her away. By the way, many in our family agree for the most part with her politics and so this accusation is absolutely absurd on it's face. However, she is a famous writer and thus a recipient of the immunity fame seems to bestow.

And, speaking of the affected innocent victims: later, she wrote a book about her lesbian lover at that time. Sita was the title. This woman committed suicide in response to Kate’s “homage.”

As William Burroughs once said, "Every time there's a mass shooting, they want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."

First Elliot Rodger murdered his three roommates with a knife, hammer and machete. Then he shot eight people, three of them fatally, and tried to run over several others in his car. After the bodies were taken away, everyone on television agreed that it was the fault of the guns. 

Why I surf

Although I'm more interested in the car....

Is any story real? Do we simply live in a floating world of mirrors?

Sex-slave crusader ousted from foundation as her tale crumbles

I hate to say that I thought her poetry blew, so I won't

I'll let this guy do it:

Once everybody realized that Maya looked interesting and had a memorable delivery and that she was black, her insights into the beauty of the sun, and the sincerity of love, and the fact that time keeps on ticking ticking into the future were held in Emerson like regard. She quickly became a politically correct national treasure. You couldn’t have a graduation or Olympics or Presidential gala without Maya Angelou Captain Kirking some free verse ripped straight from the wisdom of a middle school girl who makes daisy necklaces and pencils hearts in her journal.

Murder as "Rorschach Test"

Rare is the case in which one can directly blame the acts of madmen on the particular cultural influences that they have appropriated. Words do not pull triggers;people do. As the Southern Poverty Law Center was not to blame for the shooting at the Family Research Council and Sarah Palin was not to blame for the attack on Gabby Giffords, no recriminations are due for Judd Apatow comedies,” “pathological white masculinity,” or “liberal Hollywood.” Unless we wipe out civil society, there will always be influences, urges, and upsets. John Lennon’s killer was obsessed with J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and to such an extent that he pretended to be its protagonist and, once he had committed his grisly execution, he stood and read the book until the police arrived. Charles Manson was so captivated by the music of The Beatles that he believed their lyrics contained messages for him, and took to writing out phrases in his victims’ blood. This latest shooter was a fan of Cenk Uygur, a onetime MSNBC host and leading progressive on YouTube. What does this all mean? Nothing much at all, I’m afraid.

The 6 Lamest Excuses For Failure From The Obama Administration

My fave has to be: "Shut up, racist."

Rachel Carson was a fraud

And Google wants us to worship her today.

Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies

Today's Scruton

"You will again see language used as it was used by the Communists, not to describe reality, but to subdue reality to a ruling purpose"

If words were weapons, this would be Antietam

Egotistic, attention starved, solipsistic, passive aggressive, perpetually aggrieved, and unwilling to change when posing as a martyr feels so damn good… there’s your new American manlet, same as your new American woman.

Traveling east on US 50

I may lose my mind, but I've always wanted to take this road.  Now, as long as the truck doesn't break down.

Well, at least it gave some chubby guy another chance to stand in front of TV cameras, so it's not a complete tragedy, is it?

Once again, though, liberals are denied the holy grail of mass murderers–a conservative perpetrator, preferably a follower of the Tea Party. Rodger, like most of the others, was a devoted liberal. He followed the Young Turks on YouTube, a far-left group led by a goof named Cenk Uygur who once was an MSNBC host. So, foiled once again, liberals can make only their broader propaganda points.

Michael Moore deserves to be singled out for special condemnation.

and this piquant observation:

"Beyond that, some might argue that Rodger was a prototypical liberal male, only carried to a pathological extreme. Consider the profile: socially awkward, convinced of his own brilliance but not notably successful in life, hungry for revenge against those who have done better despite their obvious inferiority, eager to gain power over others, but through political influence rather than firearms–is this not a typical liberal on Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet? Or, for that matter, in the Obama administration? Isn’t state power the legal path to the long-awaited revenge of the liberal nerds? This strikes me as a plausible suggestion."

The change they weren't talking about, but nevertheless have encountered

They were told by these progressive groups that they would get an efficient, engaged, compassionate, transparent leader who would stand up for the little guy. Instead, they got a dispassionate, disengaged figurehead who has divided the country by race, gender and equity, who mouths all the right phrases to get elected but displays no leadership when things get tough.

A number of us have noticed this, too.

He’s been described as acting like a bystander to his own presidency, but it’s more like he’s a victim of it, as though the presidency were this terrible thing that just happened to him one day that he’s now courageously dealing with.

Why I surf

Things I'm hearing more and more often from fellow vets

I don’t believe my Commander-in-Chief spares a second thought for me. I don’t think he cares about me, or that he would release the full wrath of the mightiest military force the world has ever known, just to bring me home alive. I genuinely believe that, if I were to take a bullet to save his life, my funeral would become an opportunity for him to give a campaign speech on behalf of whatever endangered Democrat happened to be running for office in my home state.

Driving across the USA and my only thought is "Dang, gas is expensive.  Thanks, Barry, you crumb."

Tell me about it; I was one of them

But then I grew up and many of the rest didn't, mainly because they didn't have to.

PJ O'Rourke: '60s Losers Are Today's Professors

Yep

You’re All Worthless and Weak

Why I surf

This may be the best album review ever. And remember: I was at Woodstock

Ghost Stories is from its arse to its f***ing elbow, one, long stagnant f***ing pool of premium grade f***ing cockwash! I would rather chew off my f***ing scrotum than ever listen again to this boneless f***ing melange of morose f***ing piss-shit! I would rather eat an entire f***ing yurt, washed down with f***ing beige paint recently shat out of an incontinent yak’s anus! Put it this way; so remorselessly insubstantial is this album that if it were submitted to the f***ing British Homeopathic Association as a f***ing potential remedy, they’d f***ing knock it back, saying: “No good, mate. You’ve over-diluted it, you silly twat!”

Yep

If I understand college administrators correctly, colleges are hotbeds of racism and rape that everyone should be able to attend.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 12, 2014

Why I surf

By the way, you should read this guy. He's an animal and my favorite Internet preacher.

Gun laws do not prevent gun violence. By definition, criminals work outside of the law; hence the title "outlaw". Laws such as these merely constrain the law-abiding. Criminals will always have guns. If I were of a more cynical nature, I would observe that, as the victims of gun violence in Connecticut are mostly young, black men, this does not seem to be a demographic that anyone in power deeply cares about. Good thing I'm not more of a cynic. 

I grew up in an urban neighborhood and taught in what used to be called an "inner-city" high school. I've been the pastor of urban churches. I've seen what violence does; I've also seen what creates it. Do you want to know what would reduce gun violence? First, secular and church politicians could do whatever is necessary to create jobs and skills training programs in their cities. Second, social institutions would need to be encouraged, especially those of relevance to an urban population.

And now here's something from the world's worst blogger

I've been a little out of sorts with things of late.  The money ran thin after my time watching spring training in Arizona; it's way too difficult to get carpentry jobs in California, where I'm currently staying, and I've been sleeping where I can in the back of the truck in any parking lot that looks to be both quiet and relatively safe.  The best place of late has been a doughnut shop by the sea in Long Beach.

It opens around 5 a.m. so I make a discreet departure around 4:50 and head down to Huntington Beach where I can park in the public pay lot and surf all morning, take a free shower, and then sleep through the warm afternoon.  I can even run up and down the beach path.

At night, I have a meal at a veg restaurant and then grok and groove to live music at the bar next door.  At midnight, it's back to the doughnut shop.

It's been a great time, but the only Internet connection I have is at the library and I'm beginning to look a little too homeless to easily hang out there.  Not that it matters, in a week I make the trek back to south Jersey for the summer; maybe until October or so.  I'm hoping that means work somewhere, too.

Well, I'll splurge on a hotel room on the trip east so that I can look human again and be a more regular presence on the net.  I know, you've missed me.

Why I surf

Why I surf

Today you're being lectured for having your laptop on while President Jor El uses 2 giant fuel guzzling flying machines to surf the country

— S.M (@redsteeze) April 22, 2014

Why I surf

Why I surf

Why I surf

Um, no

Welcome to the Streisand Effect, chief.

Man ordered to take down police officer’s name and picture from Internet

You mean this guy?  Jerry Bledsoe, the cop?  Personally, it looks to me like there's plenty of room for an outdoor range on Redbud, but what do I know?

Why I surf

She may be speaking about Big O's lap

Condi Rice Blasts Obama on Weakness, Leadership: 

“Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand....

Of course

Sen. Yee charged with trafficking firearms in sweeping FBI probe

"In 2006, Yee was named to the Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll by the Brady Campaign for his efforts that included co-authoring a first-in-the-nation bill to require new semiautomatic handguns be equipped with ballistics identification technology known as micro-stamping."

Why I surf

Why I surf

Who would swim in one of those things anyway?

Peeing In Pools Can Create Dangerous Neurotoxin Cocktail

One may have something to do with the other

Zimbabwe broke but Mugabe charges taxpayers $5 million for daughter's wedding

If we're going to stop labeling little girls "bossy", can we stop labeling little boys with finger guns "psychotic latent mass murderers"?

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 11, 2014

He wrote one of the great works of propaganda...I mean politcal commentary...of the late 20th century

Joe McGinniss, the author who reported on political campaigns and murder cases in the books “The Selling of the President” and “Fatal Vision,” died on Monday. He was 71.

While certainly very different from Hunter Thompson, McGinniss lived his own form of Gonzo Journalism.  Thompson would, albeit in an exaggerated manner, insert himself into the events he was covering in order to gain direct perspective on the people of the extreme portion of society such as bikers, revolutionaries, and druggies.  McGinnisss did the same, but with politicians and criminals, only to manipulate the people who served as his subjects.

Ah, well, they both made money and had full lives.

Yeah, this could have been me back then

An excellent observation

Fortunately, the actual voters behind the tea party movement of 2009 did some good before the vultures arrived. 

Since that movement's peak in 2010, the sentiment of those original voters — a pretty even split of Republicans, Democrats and independents — has been hijacked by every political circus-barker able to buy a domain name that includes such key words as “freedom,” “liberty,” “warrior,” “conservative” or “tea party.”

Educated women hate boys. And men, too, it appears.

The reason for the disparity between boys and girls isn’t exactly pinned down. Kessler points to various factors—community perception, interpersonal skills—as major points of influence: “We had an anthropologist working with us, and the anthropologist went and talked to and watched the kids in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, and their perception was that when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents,” says Kessler. “Whereas with the girls, it was exactly the opposite. They were embraced by the community—‘you poor little disadvantaged thing, let me help you.’”

and

How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement

and

"Kitchen bitch"?  Really?

University libs are always happier when the "people of color" acquiesce to their cultural leadership

Rutgers rage against Rice -- why do liberals have so much hate for black conservatives?

Why I Surf

For those wondering [alright, for you, Alan], my favorite Cactus League team right now is the Cleveland Indians.  They're currently 6-1.  Yes, I know, I know it's just exhibition time, but it's been fun watching they're poetic style on the field.

Found some WiFi, which means some reading, while waiting for the next ball game

From VDH:

Young, charismatic, good-looking, hip, and glib are all superficial traits that supposedly cerebral liberal elites have a bad habit of believing trump experience, knowledge, humility, and what the Greeks called pathei mathos, learning through requisite pain. Once someone is acclaimed as a liberal prodigy by elites, stamped with the right Ivy League brand and aristocratic contacts that resonate through networking and cocktail parties along the Boston to D.C. corridor, all normal cross-examination seems to end. 

He is anointed a genius—and then usually Nemesis strikes, in the fashion that the once just-about-to-be-appointed New York senator Caroline Kennedy could not find a polling place or finish a sentence without a “you know” (142 times in an interview), or Barack Obama became Phaethon, his crashing chariot our presidency, and his collision scorching those below him. Harvard Law can teach one everything one needs to know except how to pronounce corpsmen, establish a deadline, red line, or step-over line, and why not to be post-election flexible with Vladimir Putin who really was America’s chief conventional worry all along.

So, last night, I woke up in the back of the truck laughing about the dream I had.  In it, I was sitting in a movie theater watching a trailer for film entitled "Fatwa Jones, Muslim Black Belt", starring Jim Kelly.

I know, I should lay off the southwestern pizza after 8 o'clock.

Yeah, I know

I'm just checking in and I know I haven't had much to say lately, mainly as I've been traveling and staying in places with no WiFi or, in some cases, electricity.

To make a long story short, I'm hanging out in Arizona with the Cactus League baseball teams, completely soaking in the remarkable fun atmosphere of spring training fans, while on my way to southern California.  I have to say, these campsites in the desert aren't bad, except for the crazy bikers, meth heads, and Mexican criminals.  Other than that, aces.

However, for as long as the exhibition season continues, there is a calmer atmosphere and one I plan on enjoying with the Daytona Beach carpentry money I saved.  That's at least two more months of independence and I'll figure out what to do in California to supplement the retirement allotment when the time comes.

Alright, it's time to play ball.  I'll be back sooner rather than later.

Why I surf

Why I surf

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

"The family has become a subversive institution – almost an underground conspiracy – at war with the state and the state-sponsored culture"
— Roger Scruton Quotes (@Scruton_Quotes) February 9, 2014

An interesting perspective on post-modern feminism

A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions — e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography but (2) women at Wellesley are victimized by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke’s Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

Well, a 24 hour race certainly livens up the town, not to mention attracts a surprising variety of musical acts, colorful tourists, and general mayhem.  Glad to be here for this.

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

The discipline of sitting down and writing...well, anything...never came easily to me.  Odd, since I was an academic who has actually been published.  It was suggested that I keep at this nonsense by a former colleague as a way of using the requirements of keeping a journal but with the added impetus of a public document.  That seemed sound, especially as at the time I was suffering from a profound depression after my wife's death.  I was even, by fits and starts and with an inexorable inevitability, killing myself with food, alcohol, and a general withdrawal from life.

Instead, I found this to be more a channel for my dissatisfaction with the state of the world and the numbing incompetence and dis-ingenuity of the political class, coupled with their entitled sense of moral superiority.  As I worked for a public university, it was merely what I saw every day from administrators and trustees, just expanded to the national stage.  This made my politics inconvenient for professional friends.  It also seemed absurd to continue to work and live where I did.  Thus, the change that I have described earlier.

I've become bored with Daytona Beach, though.  The water is often too cold to stay in for very long, or else the air is significantly colder than the water and...what am I saying?  I'm complaining because, even though i can surf almost every day, it's sometimes cold.  In January.  Pillock.

House sitting ends next month, though, and I want to head west for the spring.  I wanted to make it a slow drive, maybe across Route 66 with a stop to see some Cactus League baseball in Arizona.  I've saved enough from some odd carpentry jobs, so maybe I can splurge a little and spend three or four days watching baseball, eating hot dogs, and checking out the desert culture.  Maybe I'll even buy a serape and meditate like some Carlos Castaneda nutcase.  Yep, that's the new plan.

Ah, freedom.  I feel as if I can breath again.

The people that are lecturing you about income equality are throwing secret parties with millionaires http://t.co/ihAXgIFcNT

— S.M (@redsteeze) January 20, 2014

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

#Benghazi pic.twitter.com/UBbH9un4N9

— Lisa Michalek (@defendressofsan) January 15, 2014

Roger's A Bit Brighter Today

"Look at contemporary art, literature and music and you will find in much of it a singular joylessness, a revulsion towards human life"
— Roger Scruton Quotes (@Scruton_Quotes) January 6, 2014

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf

Today's high temperature was 33 degrees Fahrenheit.  What the hell?  I thought that meant it really was time to make the big drive to Surf City, but their high temp is 44.  I'm sitting indoors today and stoking up the fake fireplace.

Sorry I haven't posted much, but I was given a lift to Bimini [well, I helped crew the boat] and didn't bother to take any kind of electronics with me.  Stories to tell once I get back to Daytona, plus it's getting time to plan the California trip.

Rule 5 Friday: Why I surf