Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

Sounds like more of that ZOG stuff to me

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 15, 2009

Boo-hoo:

Tim Neal of Miller County was shocked recently when he heard a radio program about a strategic report compiled by state and federal law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism.

Titled “The Modern Militia Movement,” the report is dated Feb. 20 and designed to help police identify militia members or domestic terrorists. Red flags outlined in the document include political bumper stickers such as those for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, talk of conspiracy theories such as the plan for a mega-highway from Canada to Mexico and possession of subversive literature. . . .

“If a police officer is pulling me over with my family in the car and he sees a bumper sticker on my vehicle that has been specifically identified as one that an extremist would have in their vehicle, the guy is probably going to be pretty apprehensive and not thinking in a rational manner,” Neal said. “And this guy’s walking up to my vehicle with a gun.”

Oh, I get it.  Generalizing about people with Ron Paul stickers — people who are obviously completely comfortable with the borderline-Nazi views of that creep — that’s enough to garner the sympathy of Instapundit, who is nothing if not a bumper-sticker-rights absolutist!  But generalizing about frothing, fascist, jack-booted, itchy-trigger-finger police thugs?  No problem.

“I was going down the list and thinking, ‘Check, that’s me,’ ” he said. “I’m a Ron Paul supporter, check. I talk about the North American union, check. I’ve got the ‘America: Freedom to Fascism’ video loaned out to somebody right now. So that means I’m a domestic terrorist? Because I’ve got a video about the Federal Reserve?”

No, you’re not a domestic terrorist.  Necessarily. You’re just a loon who does a lot of things that domestic terrorists also do.  More:

Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians, also took offense. “It’s absolutely obscene,” he said of the report. “It seems like they want to stifle political thought.”

Oh, that’s those intellectual, rational libertarians.  No wonder this is their “moment.”  Identification of correlations between dangerous wingnuts and certain … obsessions … by law enforcement:  “Absolutely obscene.”  And clearly stifling, well, not just political thought.  Stifling thought.  This is our new libertarian vanguard, the “rationalists,” the “objectivists.”  Give me a break.

These guys are every bit as bad as the left-wing crybabies who run to the courts every time one of the Men in Black starts taking license-plate numbers at a “die in for Palestine” demonstration.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Americana, Oppression | 4 Comments »

Crime and punishless

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 12, 2009

What exactly do you have to do get put into jail for being a bona fide sex offender in Washington State?

When 13-year-old Alycia Nipp didn’t come home from a trip to Wal-Mart, her family had no idea where she was, but a tracking device was transmitting the location of her alleged killer. . . .

Darrin Sanford, 30, was one of several homeless people living near the field in an abandoned home slated for demolition, police said.

He was convicted in 1998 of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes and luring minors with sexual motivation; he was sentenced to probation, said a Clark County sheriff’s report. When he was released from jail in January, following a November probation violation, Sanford was fitted with a global positioning tracking unit on his ankle, according to the Washington Department of Corrections. . . .

Sanford was wearing the device seven weeks later when he tried to rape Licy before beating and stabbing her in a field a couple of blocks from the street where she lived, according to police.

Great work, Washington justice system.  Maybe when he’s out next year you can give him two ankle bracelets.  No, I’m not being fair:

Sanford violated his probation three times between November 2006 and November 2008, the DOC said. When he was released in January, he was required to check in daily with a probation officer, which he did the day before Licy’s murder and the day after her body was found.

(The day before.)

“Hey, Sanford, you gonna kill any teenage girls tomorrow?”

“No, no, I’m good.  I mean, not unless they laugh at me.”

“Well, don’t try nothing funny, Sanford.  See you tomorrow.”

(Two days later.)

“Hey, Sanford, missed you yesterday.  You kill anybody?  Your ankle bracelet looks okay.”

“Yeah, well, look, I was here the day before yesterday — what was I going to do, kill someone in between then and today?  Gimme a break!”

“Yeah, right, what was I thinking.  But don’t skip tomorrow, Sanford!”

It’s an awful story, and part of it is about a kid who wasn’t nearly scared enough of places and people she should have been scared of.

I don’t think that will be a problem in Clark County for a while.

Posted in Nuvo-Techno, O Mores!, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »

Did someone say “intellectual”?

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 12, 2009

Via Glenn Reynolds, it appears that someone is questioning the crammed-down concept of “Obama the intellectual.”  Indeed, that’s one of the themes of the last couple of days, as his Harvard Law Review “experience” is being questioned as well.

Only I already asked that question in a post called, well, “Obama the Intellectual?”  In June.  As I said regarding another fabulously credentialed young Democratic President:

Intellectuals are as intellectuals do. Bill and Barack utilized their credentials, as they had every right to and as almost everyone else does, as stepping stones toward the realization of their grand ambitions. But neither of them can in any way be credited as having demonstrated a genius for anything other than achievement of that ambition. And this is not the same, we should recall, as a genius for leadership or government, with which we might credit a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Neither man can be credited with being the moving or creative force behind the building of any great institution, public or private; of a noteworthy government program, initiative or policy; or a political movement that transcended the political institutions of their time and place.

Posted in Edumacallit, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 14 Comments »

Only connect

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 12, 2009

Via Reuters:

One in every 11 minutes spent online globally is on networking sites. Between December 2007 and December 2008, the time spent on the sites climbed 63 percent to 45 billion minutes. . . .

The biggest growth in Facebook membership comes from the 35-49 year old set. Facebook has added twice as many 50-64 year old visitors as it has visitors under 18.

It’s really not surprising.Western view

Online social networking is moving from a toy in the hands of adolescents to something grownups can understand and use.  Well okay, not all grownups; I needed half an hour to talk my mother via Skype through the process of uploading a picture onto Facebook.  But clearly its application has matured [UPDATE:] and, as Bill Scoble says in this article, there are separate FB worlds for grownups that have nothing to do with what “the kids” do there.

In other words, people like people.

They particularly like people whom they like.

That includes people they used to like, and with whom they may not have had contact for decades.  Even more powerfully, it often includes people whom they hardly knew, and even some they didn’t like at all, but who now connect as adults with far more in common than once divided them, across the intertubes.

I guess you could really say that, well, the whole thing is very nice.  Contrary to all our talk about alienation, atomization and polarization, maybe the very things that threatened to chill and isolate us could, with increasingly compelling levels of truly warm, personal interaction, bring us — back — together again. A great thing happens when we can lap  at the milk of human kindness.  Yes, it’s an absolute good to be reminded of how others care about us, remember after a generation good things about us we thought were ignored or didn’t even see in ourselves, or even build bridges over long-dessicated channels of separation. When spirits connect and share each other’s warmth, a lot of other harsh, stupid and ultimately meaningless things can recede to their appropriately subsidiary places in our lives.

What if, because of the Internet, the famous attention that, for so many of us of a certain age, “must be” but is not paid… can be?  Even just a little?

Do pay attention.

UPDATE:  Other are.  Here’s a thoughtful article from a mature adult professor at William & Mary about how faculty members are using FB to stay in touch with the development of recent graduates; and Mashable, of course, is way ahead of everyone else.


Posted in Heart and spirit, Nuvo-Techno, Social networking | 1 Comment »

On TV on my birthday

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 11, 2009

Pajamas TV, that is.

Look, Mom — 46 today and I’m a star of the widdle-bitty screen!

Posted in Narcissus Rex | Leave a Comment »

The libertarian moment?

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 11, 2009

Glenn Reynolds points to Reason TV and “Why you’re living in the libertarian moment. ….”

I’ve suggested otherwise more than once, unless by “moment” we mean a passing pulse of time — then, perhaps, that’s about right.

But libertarianism is neither the default position of human affairs, nor, as an all-encompassing program, is it practical, sustainable or moral.  Read my post here and perhaps you will want to engage on this issue.  For even if this is that moment; and even if it is a longer moment than some of us would want, as of right now libertarianism isn’t even getting pushback from the non-evangelical traditional Right.

Well, that’s not right!

Posted in Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens, O Mores!, Oppression, Politics and Poker | 3 Comments »

Turnabout is fair play

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 10, 2009

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. (Unlike the biblically-based Jewish holidays, this is one, like Chanuka, during which I’m allowed to blog!)

As well explained in the Book of Esther, it’s the holiday of turnabout, surprises, false identities, intrigue, perhaps some emotional legerdemain, and not a little spiritual confusion. The outcome isn’t always funny, or even fun, except perhaps in the sense of the divine comedy.

It all comes around in the end, though!

Posted in Faith and Works, Past is prologue | 1 Comment »

Our boy Madoff

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 9, 2009

The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman finds something to smile about on Purim — someone who finally demolishes a Jewish stereotype:

“With his spectacular loss of billions of dollars,” he said, “Madoff has accomplished what billions of ADL press releases and full-page ads have somehow been unable to.

“It’s a shande for the goyim, and we couldn’t be prouder.”

I for one feel a lot less pressure now, that’s for sure.

Posted in Gelt, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »

Not socialism enough

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 6, 2009

Harold Meyerson:

Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn’t that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.

Judging by the failures of the great Wall Street investment houses and the worldwide crisis of commercial banks; the collapse of East Asian, German and American exports; the death rattle of the U.S. auto industry; the plunge of stock markets everywhere; the sickening rise in global joblessness; and the growing shakiness of governments in fledgling democracies that opened themselves to the world market — judging by all these, a more social capitalism is on the horizon because the deregulated capitalism of the past 30 years has blown itself up, taking much of the known world with it.

Wow, really?  Funny, because looking out my window the world looks more or less the same as it did last month.  And I’m up on the 44th floor, okay, so I can see quite a bit of it.

This is not merely facetiousness; rather, it is a key point.  It’s odd that a “democratic socialist” would miss this point, but maybe, on consideration, it’s not.  Let’s flesh it out.

Very, very wealthy people losing almost all their wealth — or, Madoff victims aside, losing more wealth than most of us could ever dream of, but still being immensely richer than the fantasy of that same dream — is not “taking much of the known world with it.”  The same goes for once-powerful institutions such as commercial and investment banks.  What on earth kind of socialist sees the fall of such “robber barons,” exploiters, real live capitalist pigs, as “taking much of the known world with it”?  The bigger they are, the harder they fall, right?

An 8.1% unemployment rate is rotten, but “most of the known world” would seem to be some profound multiple of eight.   Is the prospect of a massive reduction in the United Auto Worker’s cashflow, and its ability to finance its political projects, really the end of days?

Foreclosures on unreasonably overbuilt, stupidly overfinanced McMansions?  That’s most of what world, exactly?

I’m not underplaying the economic crisis we’re going through now; but it is not quite the hoped-for collapse of capitalism that Marx, like a modern-day goldbug, predicted “any day now.”   Obviously if the UAW takes it on the chin because of massive unemployment in Detroit, that is bad all around… in the near term.

On the contrary, this moment in economic history, and the reason it can and is taking place now, is as good a proof of the vitality of the market as there is.    Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gelt, Medialites | 3 Comments »

Fool’s gold

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 4, 2009

Why is the never-ending campaign of President Obama elevating Rush Limbaugh’s profile?

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

October?

Gee, has anything changed for Barack Obama, and that praise shower, since… October?

Somethings changed

Something's changed


UPDATE: Still looking golden?

Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 13 Comments »