This article in the Atlantic is one of the unintentionally funniest things I’ve read I’ve read in quite some time. “There's No Such Thing as a Slut,” Olga Khazan breathless informs us as she plunges into a surpassingly puerile account of “slut-shaming” in a college dorm—as documented, natch, by a couple of sociology professors. We learn “that women practiced ‘slut-shaming,’ or denigrating the other women for their loose sexual mores. But they conflated their accusations of ‘sluttiness’ with other, unrelated personality traits, like meanness or unattractiveness. It seems there was no better way to smear a dorm-mate than to suggest she was sexually impure.” Now my takeaway from this factoid is that young women in college, who after all have just graduated from high school, often persist in high school-like behavior. Well, duh! But apparently it’s news to sociology and Ms. Khazan.

The article is fleshed out with much hand-wringing over the sad fact that upper-class girls from well-to-do families tend to look down on their classmates of more humble background. We are told that there are in-groups and out-groups— there is tale carrying and backbiting and snark and gossip in female college dorms—imagine!

I suspect Ms. Khazan realizes that the “slut-shaming” hypothesis is open to ridicule on the grounds of silliness and triviality. Ah, but she has us there—slut-shaming kills!

Perhaps no recent example of slut-shaming is as horrifying as the shooting in Santa Barbara last week. Before killing seven people in his rampage, Elliot Rodger vowed to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut”—all while complaining that those very same “sluts” refused to sleep with him.

To [Professor of Sociology Elizabeth] Armstrong, the shooting highlighted that “slut” is simply a misogynistic catch-all, a verbal utility knife that young people use to control women and create hierarchies. There may be no real sluts, in other words, but there are real and devastating consequences to slut-shaming.

On the other hand, it may be that the Santa Barbara massacre was caused by the meltdown of an individual with a serious mental illness, and that “slut-shaming” had nothing whatever to do with it. I’m just saying.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:11 AM EDT

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The climate-change mob will try anything to sell its increasingly unpopular product, including this: Climate Change Doomed the Ancients

Writing in the New York Times, Eric H. Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University, argues that for lack of green energy mandates or cap-and-trade regulations, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age collapsed, leading to a long Dark Age. But wait…those ancient peoples burned no coal, oil or natural gas, drove no SUVs, flew no airliners, screwed in no light bulbs…

Oh, all right, Professor Cline isn’t actually criticizing the Hittite Empire for neglecting the development of electric cars. But he is arguing, however, that climate change could doom us just as it doomed the ancients. There’s just one problem: Cline is engaging in pure speculation.

Now it may well be true a changing climate had something to do with the Late Bronze age collapse. But as Cline himself eventually admits, “We still do not know the specific details of the collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age or how the cascade of events came to change society so drastically.” Very true. So how can he then go on to say that “[I]t is clear that climate change was one of the primary drivers, or stressors, leading to the societal breakdown”? Beats me.

Nor am I quite convinced that “We live in a world that has more similarities to that of the Late Bronze Age than one might suspect…” It’s always possible, indeed, to draw parallels between present-day societies and ancient ones, for example the ever-popular equation of contemporary America with ancient Rome. But on close examination such comparisons usually turn out to be more plausible than solid; the US Senate and the Roman Senate are not really that much alike. And whatever similarities the modern world may have to the world of the Late Bronze Age, they’re trumped by one big difference: The ancients didn’t have science, but we do.

There are plenty of radical Greenshirts who would, if they could, dismantle industrial civilization and return humanity to some blessed state of nature—you know, like the Late Bronze Age. But if Professor Cline is right, wouldn’t that be futile in the long run…?

Posted by tmg110 at 8:57 AM EDT

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Remember Valerie Plame? Sure you do, because when she was outed as a CIA agent, supposedly by the Bush Administration in retaliation for her husband’s activities, Democrats had a meltdown. They and their media chorus touted it as the worst scandal since…since…well, since Watergate. Though no White House conspiracy to out Plame proved to exist, the Dems and the Left generally were not shy about using the word “treason.”

At the time she was publically identified as a CIA officer, Plame’s days as a field agent were over and she was working at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Thus, though her status remained classified, the leak did not really put her life in danger. Indeed, she became a minor celebrity and went on to co-author a series of spy novels.

But that was then and this is now:

The White House accidentally identified the CIA’s top official in Afghanistan on Sunday, sending his name to reporters traveling with President Barack Obama on a short Memorial Day weekend visit to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base outside Kabul.

The name appeared on a list of officials briefing Obama on security conditions in the South Asian country in advance of a second round of presidential elections there scheduled in about three weeks.

The identity of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan was “accidentally” disclosed? Really? Are we to take the White House’s word for that? Is not a thorough investigation of this lamentable incident warranted? Oh, but wait, we’re not talking now of Cowboy Bush and Darth Vader Cheney but of He of the Perfect Trouser Creases, President Barack H. Obama and his clown car of an administration, from whom gross incompetence is only to be expected…

Posted by tmg110 at 7:56 AM EDT

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As you may know, Democrats including the comical Nancy Pelosi have taken to blaming George W. Bush for the scandalous state of affairs at the Veterans Administration. But do the facts bear out these accusations? Let’s look at the record, as laid out in this March 2013 article in the Daily Beast. Some highlights:

Under President Bush, the average wait time for veterans filing disability claims fell by a third—this despite the fact that 320,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars entered the system between 2004 and 2009. When Obama became president, there were about 11,000 veterans who’d been waiting more than a year for their benefits. By December 2012, though, there were 245,000 and the problem has worsened since then.

The numbers show that the Bush Administration did address the problems of the VA and brought about some improvement—though I hasten to add that 11,000 vets having to wait more than a year for their claims to be processed is not acceptable. But the numbers also show that despite his rhetoric as a candidate and as president, Obama has allowed an unacceptable situation to become catastrophic.

If this were the first or even the second year of his presidency, the President could not be really be held responsible for the sorry state of the VA. It’s certainly true as many Obama apologists say that the VA has long been dysfunctional. But this is his fifth year in office and the blame-Bush mantra simply doesn’t cut it. Obama and his Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, have failed in their responsibility to America’s veterans. They talked a good game; now they insist that they’re “madder than hell.” Well, isn’t that reassuring?

It’s just too bad that this further proof of Barack Obama’s light-minded incompetence had to come at the expense of America’s veterans. But if you voted for Obama, I hope you won’t be too quick to revile him. Have a look in the mirror first.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:56 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 27 May 2014 12:02 PM EDT

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I'm pleased to announce that my short story, "But I Will Sit With You," has been accepted for publication by the online magazine, eFiction. Publication date: 1 June 2014. A subscription to eFiction is $1.99 per month with a 14-day free trial. Who knows? Maybe I based one of my characters on you…

Posted by tmg110 at 7:55 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 27 May 2014 7:57 AM EDT

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The continuing unpopularity of Obamacare has lefties, progressives and liberals in a tizzy. After assuring one another for months and years that the President’s signature initiative would become wildly popular after it began showering benefits on the American people, they see that roughly 50% of the country still loathes it. How could this be? The answer comes in one word: racism.

That’s what the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman claims, and he has the proof: “[T]here is a growing body of evidence that people’s implicit or explicit ideas about race affect how they look at the Affordable Care Act.” Let me quote from the abstracts of studies done by political scientists and psychologists over the last few years…”

And quote them he does, as if such actually proves anything. Let’s look at one of the quotes that Waldman provides: 

This study investigates the relationship between individual-level support for the 2010 Affordable Care Act and nativism, the perception that a traditional American culture and way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence. The results of an analysis of a 2011 public opinion survey demonstrate that nativism was an independent and significant predictor of opposition to health care reform and that this effect held for both Republicans as well as Democrats, although the relationship is stronger for Republicans.

That such a thing as nativism, so defined, actually exists in America today as a broad-scale social attitude is, to put it mildly, a dubious proposition. First, just what is “a traditional American culture and way of life”? I have no doubt that some people who oppose gay marriage also dislike Obamacare. But also there are many supporters of gay marriage who dislike Obamacare, particularly among the young. And is it really the case that a conservative who opposes Obamacare on the ground that it represents a dangerous extension of state power is guilty of the heinous sin of “nativism”? In short, this study’s entry argument is bunk. It lumps together a wide range of beliefs—political, economic, religious, moral, practical—under a pejorative term, “nativism,” and concludes that opposition to Obamacare is therefore nativist/racist.

Or how about this one? 

This study argues that President Obama’s strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race. Consistent with that hypothesis, racial attitudes had a significantly larger impact on health care opinions in fall 2009 than they had in cross-sectional surveys from the past two decades and in panel data collected before Obama became the face of the policy. Moreover, the experiments embedded in one of those reinterview surveys found health care policies were significantly more racialized when attributed to President Obama than they were when these same proposals were framed as President Clinton’s 1993 reform efforts.

Or it could be that the people surveyed just relate more easily to the affable Clinton than to the standoffish Obama—though polling has consistently shown that Obama is liked personally. Anyhow, when Bill Clinton and his lovely wife were actually trying to enact health care reform in 1993, they faced the much same sort of opposition that Obama has faced. And while it’s no doubt true that opposition to Obamacare has intensified with the passage of time, that’s because unlike Hillarycare, it has actually been enacted.

Probably there are some few actual racists who hate Obamacare because they hate the black man in the Oval Office, but such people are fringe loonies whose attitudes cannot possibly explain why Obamacare is so widely disliked. And the explanation is simple, requiring no studies of “nativism” or “racism”: The claims made by the President and his cabal on behalf of the Affordable Care Act have proved to be false—indeed, they’ve proved to be lies. And of course, the program’s actual implementation has been disastrous, leaving people with an uneasy conviction that the worst is yet to come.

In short, the proof of racism-based opposition to Obamacare that Waldman presents is really nothing more than pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, more revealing of the truly weird alternate reality inhabited by progressives than of any real-world phenomenon.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:11 AM EDT

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That ever-reliable Obama apologist, Ezra Klein, knows why his hero’s presidency has been such an embarrassing flop. It’s not that Obama oversold himself as a candidate. It’s not that he was unprepared for the burdens of the office or that ideas are just wrong. Nor was it the overweening hubris of a narcissistic jerk. No, the problem with the President is the presidency: Gosh darn it, but the office simply doesn’t endow its occupant with the power to get things done! That’s the thesis ofKlein's “The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, explained.”

The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, first proposed by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, is “the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics.” In other words, it’s a straw man analysis. No informed and thoughtful person actually believes that the power of the presidency is “functionally all-powerful,” as Nyhan puts it. I doubt in fact that anyone really believes this. But the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency serves a useful purpose for the Obama claque—of which Ezra Klein is a card-carrying member.

Leaning heavily on Professor Nyhan’s notion, Klein argues that the power deficit of the presidency has negated all the brilliance and wonderfulness of Barack H. Obama. One wonders why he didn’t see this coming back 2007-08, when he and so many others in the mainstream media were swooning for Barry. One also wonders if Klein realizes just how unflatteringly his analysis reflects on He of the Perfect Trouser Creases. For if the history of the top job tells us anything, it’s that the presidency is what you make of it. Exceptional men (Lincoln, FDR, Reagan) succeed; decent, average men (George H.W. Bush) can do all right; but the flaws of some men (Nixon, Clinton, Obama) are so magnified in office that they fail in whole or in part.

Time and fate, of course, happen to them all. That overgrown adolescent Bill Clinton, fortunate that he did not serve in interesting times, was spared the worst consequences of his antics. George W. Bush, a resolute man of good common sense, was not so lucky and his presidency was turbulent. Ronald Reagan, facing a similar time of troubles, demonstrated the sure touch of a leader.

Klein waves away such fine distinctions, arguing that Obama simply couldn’t help but fail:

Presidents consistently overpromise and underdeliver. What they need to say to get elected far outpaces what they can actually do in office. President Obama is a perfect example. His 2008 campaign didn't just promise health-care reform, a stimulus bill, and financial regulation. It also promised a cap-and-trade bill to limit carbon emissions, comprehensive immigration reform, gun control, and much more. His presidency, he said, would be change American could believe in. But it's clear now that much of the change he promised isn't going to happen—in large part because he doesn't have the power to make it happen.

There’s a kernel of truth in what he says, of course. Every candidate makes some promises that, as things turn out, he can’t fulfill. But does this explain away the near-total failure, foreign and domestic, of Barack Obama’s presidency? Even the promises he did keep—health-care reform, a stimulus bill, and financial regulation—have flopped in execution. And does the power deficit of the presidency really explain Obama’s failure to grapple with the problems of the Veterans Administration health-care system, problems of which he was made aware as long ago as 2008?

It appears to me on the contrary, that Obama’s problems are the product of his personal deficiencies: (1) he’s simply wrong on a wide range of issues, from environmental policy to Mideast diplomacy, (2) he has too much vanity and self-regard to profit from experience and (3) he’s simply too lazy to do the work. But Ezra Klein can’t see this—probably because he doesn’t want to see it.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:30 AM EDT

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Politico’s recently published battleground poll delivers further evidence that the Democrats are in fro a rough time come November.

Despite all their squealing and rending of garments, the Dems have failed to impress the voting public with the importance of such issues as income inequality, immigration reform and climate change. These three issues are the top concern of, respectively, 3%, 2% and 2% of voters. Of far more concern to the American people are the economy (26%), jobs, (12%) and health care (12%). Moreover, President Obama’s net disapproval rating comes in at 59% in the poll, while 55% of voters think that America is on the wrong track and 51% are pessimistic about the country’s future.

Democrats would no doubt respond that Congressional Republicans are even less popular than the President. But this is an apple-and-oranges comparison. The dislike focused on an individual who is the face and voice of the party in power is far more potent that the vague and general dislike for a largely faceless group. They would perhaps also argue that an off-year election is a base election, and that their emphasis on such issues as income inequality and climate change is designed to energize the party base. Fair enough, but it also has the effect of making Democrats seem uninterested in the issues that actually concern Americans. Anyhow, here’s the bottom line: The Politico battleground poll shows that 41% of likely voters support the GOP, while 34% support the Dems. The other 25% remain undecided. That’s a recipe for a Republican sweep.

Sure, something could still happen to change this electoral calculus—but as the weeks pass and we draw closer to Election Day, it would have to be the political equivalent of a comet strike. It’s beginning to look like the final act of the Age of Obama will be a debacle on the scale of 1994 or 2010. The pillars of the temple are trembling…

Posted by tmg110 at 7:40 AM EDT

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Speaking of that Gallup poll, its finding on the issue of income inequality isuggests just how effective the Democrats' harping on it likely to be in the upcoming election season. Fully 3% of Americans rate the gap between rich and poor as an issue of major concern.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:34 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 19 May 2014 12:39 PM EDT

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According to Gallup, Jobs, Government, and Economy Remain Top U.S. Problems

"Twenty percent of Americans," Gallup reports, "name unemployment or jobs as the most important problem facing the country in May, up from 14% who mentioned these issues in April. Dysfunctional government (19%) and the economy in general (17%) also rank among the top problems."

This no doubt explains why President Obama and his minions are emoting over climate change, racism, income inequality, amnesty for illegal immigrants, the "war on women," gays in the NFL, etc. and so forth. Because what concerns the American people is of far less interest to our lords and masters than their own obsessions.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:26 PM EDT

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