I’m selfish, im…

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

— Marilyn Monroe

There are claims Marilyn Monroe said it. The problem is that the women who identify with this statement and now use it as their motto are not Marilyn Monroe. Many are not even attractive. That should be a minimum requirement for the belief that one can behave like a psycho and be worshiped anyway.

But the biggest problem is that if you let someone you care about behave this badly, they will always behave badly towards you. They will never respect you. Tread carefully.

Marilyn Monroe studio publicity shot

Get Happy

I suppose if you’re going to have an earworm it might as well be an irresistably catchy one

Taxes then and now

The Conservative Manifesto of 1937

Wikipedia has a summary of the partial text, and the NYT article with the partial text is behind a paywall. Furthermore, while the whole text was published in 1937 with a circulation of over 2 Million, it is apparently so scarce that not a jot shows up on the Internet anywhere.

If you know where I can find it, let me know.

This is the summary.

The Conservative Manifesto (officially titled “An Address to the People of the United States” ) was a position statement drafted in 1937 by a bipartisan coalition of conservative politicians. Those involved in its creation included opponents of President Franklin Roosevelt‘s New Deal as well as erstwhile supporters who had come to believe its programs were proving ineffective.

The spring and summer of 1937 saw a return to economic recession (dubbed the “Roosevelt Recession“), a failed attempt by Roosevelt to “pack” the Supreme Court with judges sympathetic to New Deal policies, and a series of sit-down strikes by organized labor.^[1] A bipartisan coalition of conservative politicians emerged in light of these political developments, and Senator Josiah W. Bailey (D–NC) recognized an opportunity to oppose the New Deal through “bipartisan conservative action.”^[2] The document’s key authors were Bailey and Arthur H. Vandenberg (R–MI), with Bailey acting as “final editor.”^[3]

Portions of the statement were published prematurely by syndicated columnists Joseph Alsop and Robert E. Kintner on 15 December 1937.^[4] The New York Times carried the full text the following day.^[5] Although fear of political reprisal kept many politicians from publicly endorsing the document,^[6][7] the statement nonetheless won endorsements from hundreds of Chambers of Commerce and citizens’ organizations throughout the nation^{[citation needed]}, while forty to fifty business and manufacturing associations reprinted it in lots up to 100,000.^{[citation needed]} By late February 1938, Bailey estimated that almost two million copies had been circulated, not counting newspaper printings. Senators and congressmen were reportedly deluged with petitions from every state in the Union to uphold the policies stated in the declaration.^[8]

The statement called for:

1. lowering taxes on capital gains and undistributed profits,
2. reducing government spending and balancing budgets,
3. restoring peace to the relationship between labor and industry,
4. resisting government competition with private enterprise,
5. recognizing the importance of profit in private enterprise,
6. protecting collateral as a prerequisite for credit,
7. reducing taxes,
8. maintaining states’ rights,
9. aiding the unemployed in an economical and locally responsible manner, and
10. relying on American free enterprise.

Political Correctness is a Lie

We have had a lot of fun mocking the Left’s political correctness over the last thirty or so years. It has been a useful phrase to identify ridiculous behavior from the Left. But one thing that political correctness is not is correct. It can be a lot of things, but it is never the truth.

That’s why I say that…

Political Correctness is a Lie

Politically Correct (adj.) 1. Politically expedient & obviously false. 2. Nonsensical. 3. Untruth as enforced by govt or official edict.

That’s my own definition. There are many others. phrases.org.uk defines it as follows:

Meaning

Description of the practice of using speech that conforms to liberal or radical opinion by avoiding language which might cause offence to or disadvantage social minorities.

The winning entry from a contest at Texas A&M University to define political correctness went like this.

“Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”

The always edgy Urban Dictionary includes the following definitions, edited to reduce abusive language.

1. A way that we speak in America so we don’t offend whining [female genitals]
2. The laws of moral and ethical relativism; all systems of cultures and thought are equal in value, steming from a perceived guilt from white liberals who believe that the Western Civilization is the root of all evil to the exclusion of all else.
3. A powerful form of censorship.
4. The ideology of weird left wing liberals who want society to be nothing but accepting of all perverts and freaks everywhere. The main basis is not to offend anyone with one little incorrect word.
5. A method of controlling and dictating public speech and thought. (See also: Newspeak in George Orwell’s 1984)
6. A form of censorship practiced by Democrats and other socialists so they don’t have to hear any points of view that they don’t agree with.
7. Used in order to control what people say in public. This is a type of language used mostly by white liberals and other whiney [female dogs]. Makes it where Christianity is offensive and wrong but Islam, Buddhism, and Judiasm (Reform only) are really cool. Another form of liberalism where certain opinions and things are upheld and defended while other opinions and things are condemned and banned. See also: hypocrite.
8. The use of various euphemisms when communincating with people that have a hard time dealing with reality. Generally associated with social superiority/inferiority when referring to gender, race, economical status, handicap, etc.
9. Euphemism – an insidious guilt-trip placed on everyone so that reasonable people are afraid to say what everybody thinks.
10. conforming in words and actions to the dominant culture’s morality; using unoffensive speech except toward those deemed acceptable to demonize.
11. Political correctness is: The elevation of sensitivity over reality or fact. Example: You are a United States Marine, at war in a country ten thousand miles away from home. You enter a villiage where Islamic fighters have just killed twelve people and gang raped all adult women and an 11 year old girl. You chase after them! They know you are following, ambush, fierce firefight, you are alive! they are dead. Do not make a video of pissing on their corpses because that would not be Politically correct.

The Free Dictionary says

politically correct
adj. Abbr. PC
1. Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.
2. Being or perceived as being overconcerned with such change, often to the exclusion of other matters.
3. demonstrating progressive ideals, esp by avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, esp concerning race and gender Abbreviation PC political correctness

Merriam Webster says

conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated

Wikipedia says

a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent.

See also “ideologically sound” as used by the American New Left.

In the meantime, the Left claims that there is no movement to push politically correct language on everyone in society. They claim it’s simply a smear invented by their political rivals. And then they go on to intimidate people with definitions of racism and hate speech that allow hateful or violent language and behavior against some groups of people and disallow any disapproval at all of other groups of people. The effect is to create an apartheid society where any possible offense committed against some groups of people (as defined by their skin color, sex, criminal activities, or sexual behavior) is preemptively punished, and other groups are prejudged as guilty of giving offense no matter what they say. This is political correctness.

In the language of the Left, political correctness is based on partisan tolerance, a concept invented by Herbert Marcuse in a phenomenally intolerant 1965 essay on tolerance.

Unfortunately, political correctness has not been stopped or even significantly slowed by all the mockery leveled against it. In the same way that 90% of everybody can identify obscenity when they see it, so 90% of everybody can identify political correctness when they see it. And yet partisans of the left continue to claim it does not exist, or is only a meaningless phantasm and bogeyman used by their partisan rivals to keep them down. Worse, they have continued to create actual laws that punish people for transgressing rules of political correctness.

Mockery hasn’t stopped the most egregious forms of political correctness, for instance campus hate speech codes, catch 22 style sexual harassment rules, divorce laws that disproportionally punish men, or the legislative passage of new Federal hate-crime laws that create two tiers of law, one that levies the traditional punishments, and the second that punishes criminals who offend against those groups who are under the protection of hate speech laws. Beat up a white mother of four and you get one punishment. Beat up a homosexual man and you get extra punishment because it was a hate crime. Hate crimes are Orwellian “thoughtcrimes.” This type of law has established an apartheid system in America, where some people (typically minorities) are protected by the same laws that explicitly do not protect others (typically the majority). This is precisely how apartheid laws were formulated that punished the South African black majority for doing things that were not illegal if done by minority whites. And it’s how oppressive Jim Crow laws worked in the American south. The only difference is that the colors have been changed. This does not make these laws any more right or just.

While the left claims political correctness doesn’t exist it has infiltrated into the law. Rather than fighting political correctness as the death of freedom it is, we have been mocking its proponents for being stupid, dirty hippies. Unfortunately, the dirty hippies and their communist mentors took over the Democrat Party, then they took over the Federal Government, the universities, the legal profession, journalism, movies, and television.

There is still a fight. Once we recognize the nature and size of the threat, we must deal with anything politically correct as we would deal with poison. Flush it out, clean it up, cure it, strike every trace of it out of the law, and seal the law against ever again being penetrated by the evil of political correctness.

Hack your next job

Find your way to your next job by hacking your way in.

Bain Capital

Bain Capital had two main lines of business. It supplied venture capital for startup companies with a good idea, and its private equity line of business bought and turned around failing companies. Staples, the business supplies mega-store, and Bright Horizons, the child-care provider, are two of the startups that came from Bain Capital. Sports Authority and Domino’s Pizza were saved by Bain’s private equity business. The second half of Bain Capital’s business, turnarounds, is what has drawn fire from the left and from a few strangely anti-capitalist Republicans.

When a company comes up on the radar of a turnaround specialist such as Bain Capital it is already in trouble. The business of the company is in danger. Its costs are higher than its revenues and it is going to go bankrupt if nothing changes. Its customers are in danger of not having a supplier. Its vendors are in danger of not having a customer. Its employees are in danger of not having an employer. Unless something is done, the company will fail and everybody will be out in the cold. And that is when the turnaround specialist gets called in.

It’s obvious that Bain Capital is going to be blamed for jobs lost when companies cannot be turned around. And that is what we have with the demonization of Mitt Romney for his time at Bain. Just look at Randy Johnson, who is following Mitt Romney around on the Democrat Party’s dime.

The 57-year-old described how he worked at a factory making office supplies owned by Smith Corona, which facing bankruptcy, sold his plant to another company, Ampad, that has recently been acquired by Bain Capital. Ampad promptly fired all of the workers at the plant, and then re-hired most of them. Since they were a union shop, and over half of the employees had been re-hired, the new owners were forced to recognize the union. They tried to renegotiate the contract, but the union eventually decided to go on strike, so Ampad shuttered the once-profitable factory.

Does that sound like Bain’s fault, or the fault of a union that wouldn’t face reality and drove yet another American factory into bankruptcy? The union went on strike after the new owners had already fired a warning shot by firing and rehiring the staff. It’s no surprise that Smith-Corona, the famous typewriter manufacturer, would have problems with its business model after the typewriter had become obsolete. Bain tried to save what it could from Smith-Corona’s operations, but was faced by a union that was unable to face facts or adapt to change.

If Bain Capital hadn’t invested any money in this Smith-Corona factory, would any jobs have been saved? Manifestly, no. The jobs would have been gone sooner. Randy Johnson would have been unemployed sooner. Bain Capital lost money trying to keep Randy Johnson’s job and the union scuttled that plan. Bain Capital did not make any money from shuttering the factory. It lost money. This is the opposite of the complaint most Democrats and other socialists have about corporate management, that they loot their companies and make out like bandits. The Wall Street Journal notes:

One of the persistent gripes of the left is that too many CEOs make too much money even as their companies flounder. Private-equity firms target such companies or subsidiaries, replace their management, and try to unlock the underlying value in the enterprise.

The WSJ article mentioned above goes into more detail, and you are free to read it in its entirety. I just want to stick with a few points about Bain and the nature of the turnaround business.

Let’s say your company is big, used to be a thriving business but is facing big problems and now losing money. Costs outstrip earnings, and this cannot be sustained. Your stock price is tumbling and a turnaround specialist like Bain manages to get a controlling interest in your company. First, your management is replaced by Bain’s team. Then everything goes on the table. Bain tries to save the profitable parts of the company including the jobs, capital equipment, intellectual property, and other assets.

Remember, without Bain doing a turnaround, every single gosh-darn freaking job at the company would have disappeared. Those jobs should be counted as already gone, not as jobs lost. And if those jobs are saved… well that’s really something!

So the first thing Bain did to its turnaround clients is it saved a lot of those jobs. These were REAL saved jobs: Permanent, full-time saved jobs. Not like the Obama stimulus “saved” jobs, where they are double or triple counted and none of them are permanent.

The people who got laid off by Bain would have been laid off without Bain. But lots of people kept their jobs thanks to Bain. For instance, Sports Authority and Domino’s Pizza are still in business today thanks to Bain. Without Bain they would not exist, and nobody who works for them would have a job for them.

Yes, sometimes Bain tried to turn companies around and couldn’t. Those companies went out of business. But they would have gone out of business earlier if Bain hadn’t invested money in them first.

So, every time you go to Sports Authority for running shoes and every time you order pizza from Domino’s, thank Bain for saving those troubled companies. They wouldn’t still be here if Bain hadn’t turned them around.

But the credit rating is dropping because the federal government does not have a signed plan for reducing the long term debt of the United States Government. As the Republicans have passed the only plan to do this out of the House, a plan that was killed in the Senate by Harry Reid and which Obama would have vetoed anyway, there is no real way that Republicans could possibly be at fault. This debt ceiling crisis was manufactured by Democrats, based on Democrat failure to pass realistic budgets for years, and the truth is that Democrats deserve all of the blame for it. Republicans have not been perfect in past years, but this year they finally stepped up to the plate. Only to have beanballs thrown at them by Obama and his fanboy media.

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/07/obama-has-gop-set-up-to-take-fall-for.html http://amplify.com/u/a19p08

In 2006 not one Dem voted to raise the debt ceiling #tcot #teaparty

URL:  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/r…

Now the GOP know what to do. Why do less than the Democrats did in 2006?

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a18770

Bill Maher & David Carr think you are idiots

If you aren’t a liberal democrat who lives in one of the DC-Boston Metroplex states or in some other huge, and hugely corrupt, city then you are a slope-browed neanderthal idiot. Nice to know where you stand on Americans, Carr. Why don’t you just emigrate from the US. We hear that French people are nearly as nasty and xenophobic as you, so why not move to France and spew your bile from there?

Amplify’d from www.realclearpolitics.com

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New York Times columnist David Carr responds to Bill Maher implying Alabama and Kansas are not the “smart states.” David Carr: “If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?” Read more at www.realclearpolitics.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a165b9