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You know the rules. I make a note, I have to blah-blah-blog about it. For some reason the rules don't dictate that I check first, to see if I've already rendered those old notes into some excruciatingly boring post . . .

Oh, well. Here it is.

How big is the talk radio world? More than once I've heard the very same person on two different radio shows. The very same person, not just a seminar calling reciting the line from the daily fax.

Explanatory note: Back during the Clinton years the Clinton War Room had a daily fax they sent around to give the prescribed answer to the Scandal of the Day. So the loyalists in the media and the Congress all were reciting the talking points from the "10:00 o'clock fax."

Most recently (this note is very old) it was this (I am delivering the note just as Siri transcribed it) "D a.m. a guy."

Yeah, I have no idea either. It was something to do with ISIS or the Taliban or some group over in Trashcanistan and this guy would call and pester hosts "So, if you're so knowledgeable, what's your take on the . . . you know. That name I can't remember. Something that Siri thinks sounds like "D a.m."

It was some obscure practice or group within a governing body or something that the host was supposed to say "Omigosh, you're so much smarter than me and now that you've opened my eyes I can see that Democracy and the American Way are totally flawed!"

Anyway, the point was . . . 300 million people in this country and that one guy shows up twice just in the very limited time that I was listening to two different shows.

Well, there you go. Five minutes of our lives we'll never get back.

---

Side note:

Hugh Hewitt may have been one of the hosts that was accosted by this guy. I dunno, I sometimes get him and Dennis Prager mixed up in my memory (not in actuality, only in my memory, because they were back to back on radio . . . before 1430 AM totally wrecked the drive home with some local nobody).

The reason you find that piece of information fascinating is because Hugh Hewitt is famous for pulling that exact same thing. He calls it . . . I can't remember, setting up the table of contents or something. Anyway, baselining the background of who he's talking to.

Nothing wrong with vetting people, I guess, but it was the way he did it, like if you don't know this arcane piece of information, you are an idiot. He kept playing over and over an interview he had with someone who didn't know who Alger Hiss is. I know who Alger Hiss is. You know who Alger Hiss is. But I'm not going to base the value of a person on whether or not he does. In the clip the person got mad and hung up.

Then, after playing the clip, Hewitt went through a list (I'm trying to remember who he was interviewing and the topic) with his current guest to find out how many arcane names the guy didn't know. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard it, but I can't remember the content of the conversation.

You know the deal. Whatever your expertise, someone who knows nothing about the subject can find something on the internet about it that you don't know. "You're a linguist? What do you think of the etymology of the word 'serendipiy' as it relates to Dr. William C. Minor? Pffft. You're no linguist."

You recall how Hewitt did it to Trump (this note was written three months after this blog entry).

Anyway, I just thought it would be funny if one of the hosts that the loony Middle East expert caller had tried to corner had been Hugh 'Gotcha' Hewitt.

As I guy I used to work with would say, after not getting the response he expected to a dramatic recounting, "Isn't that crazy?!"

Years ago I was all bothered about something I was flapping my gums about. It was something that a note "Drama queen, reality" was supposed to spark some kind of memory of . . .

It was the pasture fence deal (from back in 2011, as you certainly recall), where you were on one side of the fence and someone on the other side was close, but in a different pasture. Perceptions of others based on where you are yourself. Like you don't drink. The person just over the fence does, but he's not an alcoholic. But he's in the same pasture with the alcoholics who are a long ways away from both of you.

That confusion that you're feeling is a natural byproduct of being blown away by the brilliance of the metaphor.

No, really, at the time it was really important to me.

:-/

The idea was that people have different values and they look around at other people's behaviors and some of them are troubling and some are not. I was trying to verbally diagram it out. So, for example, you might think someone is a slut, and they may be, or they may not be and in their mind you're a prude. But regardless of whether you think they are a slut or not, from where they're standing they aren't. Remember? I talked about Bart Simpson and how he's either funny or horrifying and . . . eh. Matters even less now that when I cared about it.

So, anyway, the rest of the note said:

Maybe the continuum thing is "is any harm done?" How bad is this hurting anything? Basically another way of saying "It ain't wrong it's just different."

Which I actually did cover later on in that post, "Fences and Pastures."

So . . . that happened . . . .

This is another note that ties in, but I didn't see the connection at the time I made the notes.

The corollary to the idea that if you commit a crime you're mentally ill, because you're stepping outside of the bounds of behavior.

I remember heard about some employee up that the U of U who did something horrific to his wife or something, but in his mind it wasn't horrific. I tried to find the story awhile back and couldn't, then accidentally came across a reference, but now I can't.

Wow. This is really riveting prose.

Anyway. It's a funny thing. Any behavior that you do comes inside the bounds of normalcy. It's kind of the justification deal. Trust me, it was a brilliant insight when I made the note.

Here's the deal. At the time the U of U guy did it I realized that any crime is a product of mental illness by definition, by being outside of the bounds of "normal" behavior. See? So you have your insanity defense or you see a crime someone does and say "Wow, that guy is mental." But to a degree and in a sense any commission of a crime is a defect in a healthy mental state, because it crosses the line of what's "normal." That's why it's a crime.

So that's the one concept. Then the corollary is that to the criminal those bounds encompass his behavior.

Screw it. Here's the note. I've gotta' clean up this desktop.

When someone pushes whatever behavior they're doing, that gets pulled into the envelope, or the envelope expands to include that. Mass murderers consider themselves mainstream.

I was trying to feed apples to the horses one time. All the horses love apples. Three of the horses came over right away. But Caesar wouldn't. It was like he was afraid of the apples. Caesar loves apples as much as the rest of the horses. Why would he be afraid of them?

Because Stormy loves apples. And if I had apples that means Stormy would be there to bully Caesar.

I'll let you ponder the brilliance of that for a moment.

:-/

I honestly don't know why you waste your time reading this drivel (he says to his imaginary reader).

The point is, creatures will sometimes avoid something they really like out of fear of being a target of bad guys. So you'd like a really nice car, but you don't want it to get stolen. Or a beautiful girlfriend, or . . . whatever might be attractive to the bad guys who don't care about hurting you to get it.

As long as we're doing animal analogies . . .

I had a rooster I really liked. He was a great rooster. Didn't threaten people but courageously stood up for his hens. Like really courageously. One time nearly got killed protecting them from a dog.

Well I got a younger rooster (in a package deal with some hens) and the older rooster picked on him a little to make sure he understood who was boss. That worked okay for him until both of them got older. The younger rooster started winning the confrontations, and he had a good memory. He was brutal to the older rooster.

Now for some reason I find myself sticking up for the old guys lately. I came out one morning and found the younger rooster picking on the older one. So I grabbed the younger one and put him out of the cage and closed it up. That'll teach him.

Here's what I didn't understand. I figured the young rooster would think I was the boss and make the connection that picking on the old guy would result in punishment; namely, separation from his hens.

But that's not what he was thinking. He was thinking that all day long the old rooster was in there with his hens. So when I opened the cage in the afternoon to let them all out, the old guy got it bad.

This is a lesson in unintended consequences and not understanding social dynamics. Just like I figured the love of apples would overcome Caesar's fear of Stormy, it just enhanced it. It was my fault the old rooster I was trying to protect incurred the increased wrath of the young punk. I was just trying to help and I made things worse.

I'm just like you. I'm always working on a Grand Unified Theory that ties all the concepts together. Kind of the philosophical equivalent of the Laws of Thermodynamics.

My current thinking goes along the lines of Free Will.

Let's start by imagining a graph with a straight line that increases as you go from left to right. The vertical axis we can call "danger" and horizontal we'll label as "usefulness." My early musings were profound philosophical cogitations along the lines of "A cat can't cause a lot of damage, but he can't do a lot of good either." (Obviously that was before we got Mauser)

Another way say it is that usefulness is inversely related to potential danger. Anything useful has to be dangerous. You wouldn't want a toilet cleaner that's safe, 'cause it's not strong enough to get rid of the hard water deposits. Airplanes are very efficient ways of getting lots of people long distances (compared to bicycles), but they have their dangers.

Side note: that's a good example of how we deal with increased utility. Anything useful has to be powerful; anything powerful is dangerous. Ergo, anything useful is by its nature danger. But airplanes are a very safe way to travel. If it's powerful it has to have very strict safeguards.

Okay, so you've got the graph in your head? The relationship makes sense?

There a lot of ways you could label the axis. As freedom increases so does danger. Freedom and security are inversely related. To be protected you must be somewhat constrained.

Now we get to the Grand Unified Theory.

That was the plan in the war in heaven. You have the freedom to fail. There was a plan that proposed no one would fall through the safety net. But it would require surrendering Free Will.

I remember during a Sunday School class the teacher asked "What were the two plans proposed in the Pre-existence?" I said that they were Liberty and Socialism. That's it. That's what they were.

You have a floor (protection) you also have a ceiling (limits). The further out you go on the graph the higher the ceiling gets, but the more the floor drops out from under you, too.

You need to look up Hugh Nibley and The Ancient Law of Liberty. I say you have to look it up, because even if I put a link here, you're not going to follow it. In that treatise he discusses the idea that there's no virtue in being good if you're forced to be.

You're probably asking yourself, how does this to relate to demorats being evil?

I'm glad you asked. Demorats would like to eliminate the charitable contribution deduction. Now, that seems like a good way to see who's serious about giving charity. Who would still give money to charitable causes if they don't get a tax break? But, what they want to do is steal it from you and give it to the ones they want.

See how that works? Forced charity doesn't allow people the choice to be charitable. There is no virtue to being good if you have no other choice.

You've heard me flap my gums about the Wild Weasel concept. Allow people to show their colors; to reveal themselves. That's what Nibley talks about. That's what I was talking about with the bus line deal. That's what removing the charitable deduction (bad idea) would do (Hey, did you see that? The Counterfeit Deal. Two things that could be confused for each other, even though one is bad and one is good).

You've seen relationships where people try to force behavior on their partner. Well, that's pretty dumb. Do you want her to be disloyal but have all the behaviors of loyalty because she's forced to?

You're hiding the truth from yourself, denying yourself information. If she doesn't love you and doesn't want to be loyal, don't you think that's good information to have?

Scott M. Peck said (paraphrasing) "Not being able to live without someone is not love; it's parasitism. Love is when you're perfectly capable of living without them, but choose not to.

Choice.

If I give you full ability to leave me, that keeps me treating you right. If the "cost" of leaving me is low and you stay, it's because it's your choice. A lot of (evil) men want to make the cost of leaving high. What does that gain them? "Look at my wife, she'll never leave me!" Yeah, and what does that mean?

I want someone to stay with me because they really want to be with me, not because the "cost" of leaving is too high.

Check that note off my list.

You've gotta' know that during the time of Noah they had conspiracy theorists.

"How was work today, Dear?"

"Oh, geez, you know, Wilson got all off track in the coordination meeting, with his "Hey, did you hear God is planning to destroy the Earth with a flood?" talk.

Shakes her head. "Where does he get these bizarre ideas?"

"I dunno. I guess some guy over in foraging is building an ark or something and they have lunch together."

That's it. That's the last of the notes.

Freeeeeeeedooooooooom!

You remember me explaining this. When it comes to Obama's intentions I'm right, where Medved and Limbaugh are wrong. Not because I'm smarter than they are, but because I'm dumber than they are.

Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved are successful, hard-working people. They think and they plan and they have a vision and put their energy into achieving it. They just plain can't see into the world where Barack Obama lives; a world where you just slack and still end up smelling like roses. You know I'm right ("Don't doubt me on this," as Limbaugh always says).

You need proof? You're looking at it. This blog.

At this moment my life is so far beyond insane that Shakespeare and Game of Thrones are fighting over the story rights. There is no way I could accomplish the things I have to get done if I cloned myself three times. I'm not talking about things that would be nice; I'm talking about surviving. Do you look at the dozens of vital things that I have to be doing right now or my life is over, and think "He's typing on a worthless blog. It's got to be a brilliant strategy!"?

You caught me. I'm counting on Jonah Goldberg stumbling across this concise writing and saying "Sign that boy up to write for National Review!" and my troubles will all be over.

Look, I'm a loser. That's all. That's what makes me uniquely qualified to comment on Obama's personality. He's not implementing a strategy, he's not thinking way ahead of the competition. He's just doing what he feels like doing even though the world is coming apart all around him.

Obama goes to his little required meetings and sits there and his mind is elsewhere and he's just putting in his time until the meeting gets over. That's me. That's me standing in my yard moving my rake around a little bit waiting for it to get dark.

But it's the literature professor deal. People are always going to find multiple levels of deep, hidden meaning that aren't there. You've seen it. The author writes about going to the Post Office and it becomes a deep metaphorical depiction of humanity's sojourn through the travails of mortality. In Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield hires Kurt Vonnegut to do an analysis of his own work. The professor tells him "Whoever wrote that doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!"

Can you really look at the mess Obama has made of every single aspect of Foreign Policy and think the guy could even find the topic "Strategy" in an encyclopedia? How stupid do you have to be to tell the enemy your battle plan? Or to not have a strategy on ISIS? . . . or to admit it?!!

What a useless fool.

Obama is just your garden variety slacker. But I don't fault guys like Limbaugh and Medved for their take on him. They can't see the world any other way. They just plain cannot. Especially when we're talking about the President of the United Freaking States.

That's one reason it's so natural for them to grant him characteristics he doesn't have. But another reason you could give them a break for their (erroneous) analysis is that Obama is, after all, a man of contradictions.

Here's what I mean. You've heard me carry on endlessly about the Evil vs. Stupid deal. Is he evil? Is he stupid? Well, he's both. He'd love to make America a socialist country, but he's not skilled enough at his evil to really carry it out. Not skilled enough and not driven enough. He wants to be seen as a socialist revolutionary, but actually being one is too darn much work.

Plus, he doesn't have to be skilled or driven. He's never had to work at anything, he just walks out and the power of his personality makes it happen. It didn't work for him trying to pitch Chicago to the Olympic Committee, but that was a perfect example of him expecting that it would.

So that's one way he's a study in contradictions.

There are a lot of other ways that is manifest. A very salient example is the way that he doesn't work with people. He just plain doesn't. He doesn't consult with his advisers or call up members of Congress and wheel and deal, he doesn't sit down and discuss with anybody. Bill Clinton (pardon my language) was the consummate politician. He'd be on the phone at 2:00 in the morning glad handing and trying to get a deal done. Not Barack Obama. He talks with Valerie Jarret and that's about it. Every other person he just talks at.

But here's the contradiction. The reason he doesn't get in discussions with people is because:

1) He thinks he's too smart for them
2) He knows he's stupid

Really. It really is both. He thinks he doesn't need to consult with anyone. It's like when you wrote that report in junior high and you didn't look up the references in the library and write them on the 3X5 cards like your teacher told you. You didn't need to. You just relied on your own knowledge. Who needs books?

But he also won't consult, with the military, for example, because he knows he's going to come across as stupid. He senses that he'll be in a briefing and say "I think right here we need the humvees to fly overhead and use the purple hearts to take out the torpedoes." And the general is going to look at him with the hairy eyeball. "uh . . . oh, okay, then . . . "

Someday I'm going to have a real blog. No, really, I am. See if I don't. At some point my way-beyond-crazy life will calm down enough that I can take the seven minutes required to load a real blog. Then I can have tags for all the things I'm always flapping my gums about.

Like the evil vs. stupid deal.

You know the deal. When politicians get caught, they always plead stupid. "Well, I guess it was a dumb decision to use my own server to avoid carrying two phones." "What? That donor abuses women? I never had any idea!" "What? Did I say two phones? I was never much good at math." No way she's going to admit to the real nefarious reason she did it.

But at that point they already did something wrong. Whether through stupidity or malice, they already messed up.

I'm talking about all the times Obama says he didn't know about something. Like that makes it right? So we're supposed to be comforted by the fact that you're clueless?

I'm sitting here typing hoping that the specific instance I was talking about when I made the note "Whether Obama knew or not it's bad" will pop into my head. But it's not coming . . . and yet I press on . . .

But take your pick. He's done it dozens of times. A real blog would imbed a YouTube compilation of all the times he's done it. "I found out about it the same way you did, when I saw it on the evening news." But I won't deny you the character building experience of looking it up yourself.

But the point of this particular post is that at that point it's too late. Whether Obama intentionally did something rotten to America or he just did it because he's incompetent it doesn't matter . . . What difference at this point does it make?!

Someday I'm going to sit down and come up with a diagramming scheme to map this all out. This ties in with the two-edged sword deal . . .

Liberals think they're pretty cute when they say "Fighting for peace is like screwing for chastity!" Oh, okay, then I can put you down in the 'Things are not nuanced at all' camp? "Yep, it's all pretty simple."

Okay. Well, so let's talk about Bill Clinton (pardon my language).

"Hey! Wait a minute! You say sex in the Oval Office is wrong, but it's much more complicated than that!"

Geez, do you have a rulebook or something I could refer to?

When it suits their ends things are pretty simple . . . or very complex, as long as whichever way it goes they get to validate their viewpoint.

It's the same old thing. They take a principle that is valid, but then they hijack it for an instance where it doesn't apply.

Oh! Oh! There's one for your counterfeit deal. You know, the one a real blog might have a tag for . . .

Here's an example of one of those counterfeit deals. You know, the one I'm always flapping my gums about, where you can only pass off the counterfeit if the genuine article exists. It looks like one thing, but it's really another.

Sometimes someone will put out feelers. If it doesn't work out, they can claim they were just joking. "C'mon! You really think I seriously wanted to invite your sister over to hot tub? Gosh, I was obviously kidding."

Hey, it happens. People sometimes say outrageous things and they were totally joking. That's why it works to counterfeit it—that's why people can piggyback on the concept and use it. Hijacking is a good term for it; for The Concept Formerly Known as the Counterfeit Deal.

You're not going to remember this because it was a thing for something like three seconds and that was three seconds about three months ago. Somebody in the Arizona legislatures jokingly said that we should make going to church mandatory.

You understand this: Nobody proposed mandatory church. They were making the point that church is good; that society would be a better place and we'd need a lot less laws if people lived by a moral code. Nobody proposed that we actually make church attendance mandatory. It was to make a point. Like no one should actually believe, for example, that you should hold a birth control pill between your knees.

It's sad that the lady in the Arizona legislature had to immediately explain in the next sentence that she wasn't serious. It would be like after I tell my favorite deer hunting joke I would have to ruin it by quickly explaining that no, my wife didn't really shoot someone's horse thinking it was a deer.

Society has become too dumb to tell the difference. This is because really stupid people do propose really stupid things. Like mandatory voting.

Obama did seriously say that mandatory voting would be a good idea.

Mandatory voting is a stupid idea. A horrific idea. So is mandatory church attendance. The difference is that one was jokingly "proposed" to make a point, the other was seriously presented by an idiot as something we should do. They sound very much the same. They are completely different.

But if the idiot were smart enough to understand how stupid he sounds, he could pretend he was just joking. "What? Oh, no, you people are just too dumb to realize I was kidding."

See how that works? Hijacking.

Standard Leany on Life caveat applies here. The rest of this post is really boring and doesn't have any point and is a complete waste of your time to read (and a colossal waste of my time to write). I'm just going to be going through various examples of how this is used. If I were you I wouldn't waste my time reading it.

Okay, so let's call it hijacking when the trick is used in this way. The perfect example is the people who want to get high, so they hijack medical marijuana to serve their purposes. Using chemicals to ease suffering is legitimate. Can't argue with that! So . . . omigosh I've got pain, I need to get high!

Another commonly hijacked concept is religious beliefs. "Oh, so you can't forbid me from practicing my religion? Okay, well, my religion says I have to use peyote." This is kind of masquerading. One idea masquerading as something else.

Maybe more timely is the idea that your religion prescribes that you kill people who draw cartoons you don't like. You can't deny me my religious practices!

I've flapped my gums about this before. Malachy McCourt said he's seen religion and it's bunk. Yes, what you saw was bunk, but it was not religion. So people see what the Islamists do and that screws it up for the rest of us. They don't know (or maybe they do and they're exploiting it—evil vs. stupid) what religion is about. So they see Islamists blowing up priceless ancient relics and decide that real religions have to be banned. They say things like "And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed."

That's not religion. It's hijacking religion; masquerading as religion.

In the circles I run in family is a very important concept. In fact, in my circles it's hard to imagine circles where it's not. But those do exist.

Family gives you support. They stand by you when no one else will. They love you even when you do bad things. That's all good stuff, right? Well, if it's your family, it's great. But if the guy is a punk who hurt your daughter and you kick his ass then his family comes after you, that's not so good.

Maybe you see this in inbred southern clans . . . or inbred clans in Idaho. They are scum, but you can't touch them because they have their own built-in gang as a result of wanton breeding.

From the inside it's one thing. From the outside it can look completely different. So that's why in some circles—like imagine liberal apartment dwellers in New York who don't have family—when they hear the term "family" they get an image of the mafia.

So that ties in . . . not sure where, 'cause I can't come up with a diagram. But it's two different concepts that can be grouped under a common umbrella. Like medical marijuana and recreational marijuana.

Then take a slight variation on this, not two different things that look alike, but the same things just made to be different. Let's call that one A Bad Idea vs. A Good Idea Poorly Implemented. This is what I was talking about with Sharron Angle. It's what happened with Ronald Reagan, when the party didn't want to nominate him even though they loved him, 'cause they didn't think he could win a general election. So instead of a good thing and a bad thing that can look like each other (straw man) you have a good thing, it's just poorly implemented.

You see this with liberals and socialism. Socialism is a bad thing. It's a destructive, damaging, hurtful thing. But liberals try to paint is as a good thing that just never has been implemented correctly. That loops us back to masquerading and hijacking. The idea that a good principle can be poorly implemented is hijacked by a bad principle.

And again, if all of these variations are segments of the same circle, the entire circle is ringed by the Evil vs. Stupid concept. Uh oh . . . getting dangerously close to an actual diagram here . . . If you are proposing socialism you are either evil or stupid, depending on whether you're buying it or selling it.

Then we move to just plain confusing things; Mistaking one thing for another. That would be the Sharron Angle . . .uh . . . angle again. They aren't the same thing, but you can get confused into thinking they are. See how that ties in to the evil versus stupid concept? You aren't intentionally trying to deceive anybody. You sincerely think you're right, but that doesn't mitigate the damage of you being wrong.

I saw a billboard with a picture of John Wayne that said "I don't much care for Quitters, son." Yep, that's valid (it has to be, it has a picture of John Wayne). But you know there are times when it's stupid to pursue futility.

It's like one fence that all the concepts are sitting on, but they're in different locations. If you look at it from the end they are all grouped together, but if you come around and stand in front of the face you see they are all along it.

Maybe the graph is simply linear (like all the concepts sitting along the top rail of a corral fence). I don't like skinny girls. "Then you like fat girls!" Uh . . . no. I like the curvy feminine girls sitting right about . . . there . . . along the fence rail. Hang on . . . getting distracted here . . .

You know there are concise logical fallacy sites out there that explain all this crap better than I do, right? That False Dilemma I just illustrated, which can be used as a Straw Man technique? All of that.

Just making sure you know. Heaven knows you don't have to wade through this agonizing text.

We've come a long way in the way we think about gender roles. I don't know anything about Mad Men, but apparently that's a good example of how not to treat women. But then you've got militant feminists who sit a lot further along on the same fence rail. The thing about that is that they color the perception of everyone sitting on the fence (baby and bathwater). Feminism is a perversion of the valid concept. We still have troglodytes who believe women exist to serve man. Nope. Just 'cause feminists are wrong doesn't mean that's true.

Boys are getting turned into pansies in our society. That's true. But I know of a dad who invoked that to excuse his son being a bully in school. Nope. You're conflating two completely different things under the same umbrella.

Sometimes Helpful can morph into Pain in the Tuckus. Hiding the truth is a bad thing, but so is the other end of the spectrum, which is being brutal about it. I had a friend who told her sister she needed to be "a little more hypocritical."

I'm just laying stuff down here from my notes, can you tell?

You can have Excuses vs. Reasons. The great example is in the M*A*S*H episode when Klinger is tracking down the stolen camera. The MPs find him with it and he explains and they say "You've got an answer for everything, don't you, Solder?" Well, yeah, he does. But it's exactly what he might say if it were a story.

That's a whole other "well, what's he going to say?" (likely story) concept that deserves its own horrendously boring post another time. I have no idea what this note means, but I wrote it down: I contact my daughter on Facebook 'cause she's sick and I don't want to wake her with a text.

Actually, no, I think it was because I was using Facebook at work. No, that's it. My daughter was sick and I was messaging her because I didn't want to wake her with a text. If someone had walked in on me that's the story I would have told them. "Uh, huh. Yeah, likely story."

Sort it out for yourself what that and the Klinger deal have to do with the topic (whatever it is—I don't even freaking know at this point) I'm discussing.

Okay, last one of this particular group of examples of masquerades and valid concepts.

"You've got to float the boat to find the leaks." That's valid. That is a true concept. Okay, here's the masquerade (and it's a doozy; one that has gone down in history for its stupidity):

"We have to pass the bill to see to see what's in it."

When you kick someone out of your restaurant because he's causing a ruckus you don't care what his sexual orientation is. But he happens to be gay. So the liberals are going to say you kicked a gay out of your restaurant. Nope. Nothing to do with it. I kicked a troublemaking jerk out of my restaurant. Wait, so his sexual orientation gives him license to be a jerk that I wouldn't grant someone else?

You notice the difference between this and confusing two issues. In this case the liberals know that he wasn't kicked out for being gay, but they exploit the fact that he is. This moves it along the continuum from stupid to evil.

They do this with anything they can. Sexual orientation is a big one. But the other one you see all the time is race. Yeah, I think Obama is a really crappy President. The same way I think white guys who think like him are not suited to be leaders. I'm not any more excited about getting robbed of my paycheck by a white politician than I am of a black one. So can you show me the rulebook again of what infractions your color (or sexual orientation or whatever) give you license to commit? Thanks, that would be very helpful.

One variation of confusing two different things is the concept of throwing the baby out with the bath water. The thing you discard is invalid, but in the process something that is valid is bonded to it. That's what Malachy McCourt did.

Slogging ahead here . . . wow, I hope this isn't as painful for you as it is for me . . .

I feel like Homer Simpson and the food poisoning sandwich . . . "Must . . . finish . . . eating . . . "

Public shaming. Vince Foster called it a "Blood Sport." Societal pressure is a major way that we keep order. It really is. You want your yard to look nice, you want people to think you're a good person, we are always gauging feedback we get from our actions. But there's a right time to do it and a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

Stalkers and bullies deserve to get called out. And . . . . and . . . ! Whoever is responsible for Office 2013! Omigosh, that piece of crap needs to be assaulted in the public square! Oh. My. Gosh.

But innocent people get caught up in it, too. I heard about the book "So, You've Been Publicly Shamed." I think the moniker "Public shaming" is attached to the end of the societal feedback system that is universally acknowledged to be bad. The book talks about ruining people's lives over a tweet. That really happens. To innocent people.

The interesting thing about the practice that the book seems to point out (haven't read it; just heard about it) is that it is typically done by people who think they're doing good. They feel like they are moral crusaders.

But they're not. They're just busybodies and they aren't thinking and they hide in the anonymity of the web. Some guy at work said that social media is like drinking—it gives you false courage.

Okay, so yeah, let's agree that the level of "feedback" that we call public shaming is bad.

Here it comes. The masquerading/hijacking.

Public shaming makes you the bad guy. That's valid. But in the case of the Clintons, it's misused. They seek refuge in it when they deserve the scorn. They hijack it and use it to divert. "I made funeral plans for my mother on that e-mail server!" Whoa, okay, then no worries about the nefarious stuff you did there.

In that case it becomes the Rape Hoax.

Okay. Let's talk about why this is even important enough to take up valuable space on this extraordinarily important blog.

Truth. That's what it all comes down to. Sorting out the truth from the BS.

The importance is the danger. The danger is that invalid things hijacking valid things can be mistaken for the valid thing. Wow, that's some amazing wordsmithing right there . . .

Counterfeit concepts can be mistaken for valid ones. That's the danger of hijacking.

Political Correctness.

The danger of Political Correctness is that it's based on something that is not only valid, but sacred to us (you notice shades of the Rape Hoax here . . . uh oh, I'm going to have to add that to my diagram). That is, treating people with dignity and respect.

Sometimes political correctness runs amok. You hear stories of people doing stupid things in the name of protecting feelings. Like when they were going to provide porta potty type deals in New York for all the thousands of pedestrians who might need to use the bathroom.

Good idea, right? Nope. No can do, unless you figure out a way to make them wheelchair accessible.

Oh, shut up. Geez, so thousands of people have to rupture their bladder because you can't make them accessible to a fraction of the population. Figure out a way to accommodate handicapped people (believe me, I understand what it's like to be crippled. HS, believe me) without punishing everyone else.

Just stupid.

But hold on. You have to actually think. Other times not protecting feelings is stupid, too. You can't just make a rule "Okay, so we always just go with what's best for the majority." No. No, you have to actually use your brain.

Like in the case of Michael Kelley. He's the Down's Syndrome high school student who wasn't allowed to wear a letterman's jacket because they were reserved for varsity athletes.

Oh, shut up.

Wait, but I thought you . . .

Just step aside and let people with a brain sort through this stuff.

Wow. That was just excruciating.

You know you've been typing too long when the letters on the computer screen look like they're running out of ink . . .

More Obama bashing. Hey, everybody has to have a hobby.

I'm going to go over the brief history of time with you again really quickly.

• People want to be part of something significant. That's what gave us the American Revolution. It also gave us Vietnam protests and that idiotic Occupy Wall Street bullcrap.
• It also gave us the Civil Rights movement
• Because of the Civil rights movement it became a horrible thing to be a racist. It's sad that we had to come to that position instead of always being there, but we progressed from being wrong to now understanding
• Under normal conditions America doesn't elect radicals. We didn't elect McGovern, Dukakis, Kerry, Gore, Mondale . . . we did elect Jimmy the Worthless One Carter and Bill Clinton, but those were both special cases.
• We elected Barack Obama solely because he is black. He is too radical to be elected, but, beyond that, has absolutely no background or aptitude for the job. But people wanted to be part of something significant--historical! If he were a person with identical background and resume but white skin, nobody would have ever heard of him.

Okay. So here we are. I say we elected him because he's black just to get under the skin of the morons who don't want me to say that. Being black is part of it. He was elected because he was the cool candidate. I've explained that all in this blog entry right after the 2012 election.

But I've told you that's a stupid criterion to use to elect a President. Maybe something as important as the leader of the Free World requires a better skillset than being cool. At least one person besides me understands that concept, too.

I don't understand why you don't ever follow the links I post. Can you explain that to me? That was the whole point of this post, to send you to that article . . .

Okay, if you aren't going to read someone else's view on the matter, I'll make you sit through more of mine.

Being polite is about you. It's not about the person you're being polite to. Like the guy in Vegas who held the door for the hooker. She said "You don't have to hold the door for me; I'm no lady." He said "Yes, but I am a gentleman."

The most brilliant example you ever read was the analysis I did comparing voting for Obama to that YouTube video about the bottled water.

It wasn't about the water. It was about how the people wanted to be perceived. It couldn't be about the water, because the water was nothing special.

Nothing special. Hey, that sounds like Barack Obama.

That's the genius of it. He can't screw it up because he has nothing to do with it (You didn't build that!). It's about all the individuals wanting to seem cool.

Last ADD moment and we'll wrap up this agonizing session.

In his mind you didn't build it, because in his world he didn't build it. In his world he's just "present" and everything falls into place for him. So in his world that really is how things work.

That brings us around to the other bookend that matches where we started. Obama is not, contrary to the view of very successful hard-working people like Medved and Limbaugh, any kind of strategist or thinker. He doesn't have to be.

He just dashes out in front of the camera to say something stupid, then it's back to golf and watching SportsCenter.

Yeah, I know. This cartoon is old enough to drink it Utah. But I have a note about it, so I have to post it. You know the rules

Hey . . . where have you seen that concept before . . . ?

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Okay, here is the really odd thing about the Georg Smurfanopolous deal. It's that anyone is surprised.

He was Clinton's Chief of Staff, for crying out loud. Who thought that he was going to be more objective than the cow on the Chik-Fil-A billboard telling you to eat chicken?

My daughter's dog eats peas. I was at the counter in the kitchen and she was begging and I said "Okay, but you're not going to like it." I gave her a pea . . . and she ate it.

My daughter explained. She had trained her dog to eat stuff she didn't like, then my daughter would give her something she did. You know, no dessert until you eat your vegetables.

So I did the opposite. I started you out with dessert--the toons--'cause the rest of this blog entry is going to be really boring. I'm just housekeeping notes. If I were you, I'd just quit reading now.

I've flapped my gums a lot about my little theory about things that inform our thinking. But in the doing I may have merged two different aspects of that. The two aspects are Structure and Mood.

The structure is like language and that sort of thing. It's the idea that we think differently here compared to Great Britain because we drive on the opposite side of the road. It's how we expect the advance and the return buttons to be a certain place on our phones and our software. And the structure of the software we use affects the way we approach problem solving.

Other things affect our mood. You know, things like the weather and music. And taxes. That's different from the structure stuff, but I kind of grouped them together. Mind, body, spirit. But the point was that our approach to doing things is affected by a lot of little subtle stuff that we may not even be aware of.

A lot of these things are stuff I've already covered and then maybe I didn't delete the note. It doesn't matter. You didn’t read it when I posted it. In fact, you're not reading this now. So . . .

I talked about the other side making the case about how hard it is to get voter ID. I cautioned against arguing that way, but maybe you should.

Let them make the case. Let them establish that if it is difficult you don't have to do it. Then make your own case.

It's that same two-edged sword trick where you establish someone's position for sure, then use it to make your argument.

"Thank you. I like that you think I shouldn't have to buy government health insurance."

The classic example is how they say the government needs to keep its hands off their body. So you don't want the government to make decisions about your birth control? "Absolutely not!"

Okay, then. I'm not going to pay for your birth control.

No idea what this is. This is a quote from a guy I used to work with. "The agenda behind more fuel-efficient trucks is to eliminate the light truck." I think the theory is that the government is forcing higher and higher standards on the automotive industry so that eventually it won't be worth it to buy a pickup.

I told you about this when Obama was campaigning for the guy running against Scott Walker. Obama made fun of the fact that Walker drove a pickup. Just shows that Obama either 1) doesn't get the who idea of what it is to be an American, or 2) He understands and doesn't like it.

The pickup represents our willingness and ability to do things for ourselves. We don't have to hire someone to move this or haul that. We get the job done.

The light truck represents the American spirit, and Obama wants to destroy it

Which kinda' segues into this one . . . kinda, but I don't care. I'm phoning this whole thing in.

When I got that e-mail about "You won't believe that Obama didn't put his hand over his heart for the national anthem" I didn't believe it. I had to check it out. C'mon, guys. They snapped the picture before he got his hand up.

Nope. I watched the video. He spent the entire National Anthem clasping his crotch. I know he doesn't care about those kind of patriotic symbols, but you'd think he'd at least understand that the idiots he's trying to get to vote for him do. Then Axelrod says "Well, sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't." Oh, so it's just a random optional thing. Does he sometimes wash his hands after using the toilet?

I guess I'm just too careful. Even after everything I see I still think "No, that's too outrageous. That smells like a hoax. Even that fool Obama isn't stupid enough to say that." I had to check it out for myself when when he blasted George Bush for acting on his own—coming from the man who brags about bypassing Congress.

"I don't know anybody who struggles to pay the bills."

What, is he trying to say something that's more ridiculous than anybody can make up as hoax?

Poor Josh Earnest. "Oh, you completely misunderstood what he meant! He was merely pointing out the relationship between fluoride as a precipitant in a solution and the troop movements of the Romans compared to nocturnal habits of mosquitoes in Bangladesh with respect to economic indicators regarding the use of vegetables in calendar factories!"

Speaking of hoaxes . . .

Does anyone really believe that Harry Reid had an "Exercising accident?" One liberal moron was scoffing at how ridiculous it was to speculate that it was anything other than a . . . whatever his story is this week. What's ridiculous is the idea that that pipsqueak is capable of stretching a rubber band around a stack of pencils.

The fact that Harry Reid said it is enough evidence for me that it's a complete lie.

By now you know the story. His alcoholic brother beat him up and told some people at an AA meeting about it. If you care you've already informed yourself.

Read this if you care. It's about Harry Reid's corruption.

Almost done for the day. Boring myself, so you've got to be in pain. I just hate having these same stupid notes mock me week after week after week.

Teacher: If you have four sheep in the field, and one jumps the fence, how many do you have left in the field?

Johnny: Zero.

Teacher: Johnny, you don't know your math.

Johnny: Teacher, you don't know your sheep.

This is related to Glenn Beck "leaving" the Republican party. Or anyone else who thinks we need a third party.

If you have two parties and you split one, how many parties do you have?

One.

It's fashionable to say "Oh, I'm not a Republican. I'm a . . . whatever." Conservative. Libertarian. Whatever. It just seems like everyone is anxious to differentiate themselves by being just like everyone else and bashing their own Republican party.

I'm a Republican. If you are a conservative and you're not a Republican what you are is a loser. You can't win political contests with splinter groups. You just can't.

I'm sorry if you don't agree 100% with Boehner or McConnell or whoever. Do you agree more with Obama?

By Glenn Beck's reasoning I can't listen to him. He thinks Romney is evil because they don't see eye-to-eye on the kind of tie clip to wear to a costume party . . . or some damn thing. But Glenn is totally wrong about Romney. So by Glenn's reasoning I have to abandon Glenn Beck.

Then you have to wonder, if Glenn Beck is so wrong on Romney, might he be wrong on Teddy Roosevelt? Or even Woodrow Wilson?

Okay, so we have to get rid of lethal injection because we can't import the serum from Europe that we use to kill death row inmates.

Seriously?

Like we don't have the technology here to chemically kill someone?

Veterinarians do it all the time. All. The. Time. Take them to a hospital. Those guys kill people with drugs every single damn day. Have you tried heroin? People are constantly dropping dead from that.

If I still did the Phil Hendrie corner deal this one would make it. You are just putting me on with that crap. You just want to see how stupid you can make a news story before I shake my head and wake up "Wait . . . what?!"

We can't make a chemical to put someone to death. Pfffft. Right. And Obama is a Christian.

Do you ever say something that is just stupid? Just the second it falls out of your mouth you'd give anything for a Ctrl-Z key on life. Of course I never have, but I have a close personal friend who says some pretty dumb things.

Imagine the stupidest thing you could say. Imagine someone asking you if you've been to Copenhagen and saying "I've never been to Sweden." Imagine trying to impress a girl at a car show and having her point out that the engine you're crowing about having a double pumper is actually fuel-injected. Imagine anything you could say that makes you look like a fool, and Bill Clinton (pardon my language) has said worse.

" . . . I've got to pay the bills, don't I?"

Omigosh Bill Clinton said something stupid! Who's surprised?

This is the man who said "It depends on your definition of the word 'Is'" and "She had sex with me, but I didn't have sex with her."

Eight of the top 25 stupidest utterances ever to escape the mouth of a politician (ever) came from Bill Clinton.

I'll never forget when he was trying to sell us on raising the minimum wage and his debate-ending argument was "You just can't raise a family on 5.15 an hour."

No! Really? Next you're going to tell me you can't cross the ocean on a bicycle!

I keep typing in stuff and deleting it. If you think the purpose of the minimum wage is to raise families you're in the wrong freaking blog. You need some, I don't know, serious professional help.

I was going to sputter "What an utter fool!" and end this post, but who's the fool? He makes statements a six-year old could refute with a diagram, and people still hand him a half million dollars to come say things to them.

:-/

I get it. Celebrities are a valuable commodity. How cool would it be to hire your daughter's favorite band to play at her sixteenth birthday? That would cost a lot because celebrities are in demand.

But nothing near $500,000.

What kind of person would pay someone $500,000 to come talk to them?

The kind of person who is getting more than $500,000 worth of value out of the speech.

Hillary is Secretary of State, some group pays Bill a half million dollars . . . you don't need a Cray computer running Bayesian inference algorithms to know what happens next.

Five. Hundred. THOUSAND. Dollars.

Oh, I'm sure it's completely legit!

I honestly don't know what to say about Michelle Obama's . . . rant? What in the actual Hell was that? At Tuskegee University.

I just . . .

Wow.

Really? Is that really how you meant to come across when you practiced that in front of a mirror?

I just . . .

Wow.

Watch it and draw your own conclusions. I don't have the freaking time to analyze crap like that. It just makes me horrifically sad and confused.

Sure, I'm a racist, because I'm not sure people who just graduated from college need to hear a black woman who is on top of the world tell them they can't make it in America ("And people will say I hate America, just because I'm black!" Uh . . . no, I think it was that part where you said that you hate America). As long as I'm hating on completely innocent people (who can't possibly be wrong, because they are, after all, black) I'll just go ahead shock you with more . . . whatever.

Remember, I'm the guy who had to look up what a transgender is. Okay, you've got your gays and your lesbians, then you've got your one flavor who used to be the other flavor before surgery, and then . . . wait. That covers it, doesn't it? You've got your plumbing, whatever it used to be, then regardless of that plumbing you can prefer to lay pipe with someone who has either the opposite kind or the same kind . . .

The matrix is all filled in. What is this transgender deal?

I'm sorry, what? Wait, so you're naked in front of a mirror and your plumbing says you're clearly one flavor, but . . . you're . . . uh, you're not really . . . ?

Are you putting me on? (I hear the voice of Bill Cosby. "Who is this really?!")

I really did. I had to look it up.

Apparently it's when a person is in, for example, a man's body but he "feels" like a woman.

How does he know what it feels like to be a woman?

I'm sorry to post logic on the internet, but that's nonsense. You say you "feel" like a woman. You can't know that. You've never been a woman.

Right?

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer are trying to golf one morning behind a really slow group of golfers. They are very frustrated when the greens keeper comes along. They ask him what the deal is with the slow golfers ahead of them.

He says "That's a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."

The group is silent for a moment.

The pastor says "That's so sad. I'm going to ask my congregation to remember them in their prayers."

The doctor says "I'm going to contact some ophthalmologists I know and see if there's anything they can do for them."

The engineer says "Can't they play at night?"

I'm an engineer. However you "feel," if you've got a wanger and male DNA, you're a male. I'm sorry, you may like dolls or Nicholas Sparks movies or you may not get aroused by the sound of a 300° cam idling through open headers. But logically if you don't have female DNA and female genitalia, you cannot feel like a woman.

I always thought it was cool when people could "war game" and see that if this happens and that happens it will cause this, that, and the other, and this will be the result. Ayn Rand did it. You read Atlas Shrugged and are amazed at how she predicted what would happen . . . well, you know, except the whole main part about the new colony and everything. I'm talking about the situation where the government is forming board to decide what you can and can't do and picking winners and losers.

It's just very prescient.

Rush Limbaugh did it when he said that after we elected the first black President race relations would get worse. Plus, he would get away with things no one else could because you wouldn't be able to oppose him without being called a racist.

You look back on it and it makes sense—it couldn't happen any other way—but wouldn't it be cool if you could analyze the equation before and come up with an accurate prediction?

I am going to do that very thing right before your very eyes.

The case against the Baltimore police officers is going to result in riots when it ends.

You heard that gal reading off the charges. You thought something didn't smell right about it. You should have celebrated it. If the cops did bad things they should definitely be prosecuted. You have to do that.

But something seemed off.

It happened so fast, before the investigation was even done. She postured as siding with the mob, even invoking their "No justice no peace" BS.

Maybe it was that she charged the police with murder.

Really? So your lawyers are going to go in front of a jury and convince them that six people with malice aforethought intended to murder Freddie Gray?

The jury can't convict on those charges. Whatever the police did wrong, they did not set out to kill Freddie Gray, but that's what the prosecutors are tasked with proving.

The cops will be acquitted. And Baltimore will burn.

I know. I'm freaking brilliant. I'm a prophet. I have super-human powers of . . .

Gosh darn it . . . my conscience won't let me do it. I have to show the audience at the magic show how it was done.

Year ago some cops beat Rodney King. There was a videotape of the cops beating him. Videotape. There was no question that the police had done it. Everybody in the country saw it happen.

But the jury acquitted. Why?

Because the cops were being charged with what was essentially second-degree murder.

The cops were clearly guilty of beating Rodney King, but that's not what they were charged with. So the jury had to acquit. The cops were not guilty of what they were charged with.

You remember what happened next. Riots. Reginald Denny. Looting. Burning buildings. Shop owners defending their property with rifles from the roof. You remember.

That's what's going to happen in Baltimore. You cannot convict the cops on intentionally trying to kill Freddie Gray.

You know the left. They operate under the rules of Alinsky.* They want chaos. Having the system function doesn't suit their purposes.

But I don't know that the State Attorney did this on purpose. I really don't think she did it with the intention of creating chaos. I think she did it to pacify a mob and to further her political ambitions.

But I'm certain chaos and rioting will be the final outcome. I would bet money on it.

You know I'm going to be proven right, 'cause I thought Manny Pacquiao would win the fight, but I certainly wouldn't have bet any money on it.

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Ben Carson (who is a wonderful conservative and human being but has the exact same chance of being elected President that I do) pointed out in his announcement that liberals follow the Alinsky handbook. He said they try to make you think the way they think is the only way intelligent people can think. Show me an Obama speech where he doesn't do that. "Upon this there can be no debate."

Excerpts from the speech

“You have to realize that one of the rules in Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules For Radicals’ is you make the majority believe that what they believe is no longer relevant and no intelligent person thinks that way and the way you believe is the only way intelligent people believe,”

And, as long we're talking about the Baltimore situation read this excellent article by Allen West about the dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore.

. . . you're not going to read the article are you?

:-/