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Nightly Ramble: “Now You’ve Got No Excuse” Edition

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the sphere: The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

ramble-cowfly [1]This is the “Now you’ve got no excuse” edition

  • LIBERAL FACIST: Jonah takes the theme of his recent book, Liberal Facisn, and runs with it here: [2]

    Thomas Friedman writes [3]:

    Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

    One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

    Our one-party democracy is worse….

    So there you have it. If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.

    I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s.

    Well, precisely. And don’t think for a moment that Overly romantic view of turning our future over to a select few who would make all our decisions for us died out when they hung Mussolini by his heels, either. Consider Donald Fagen’s “IGY . (International Geophysical Year)”.. an ode to the view from 1958:

    A just machine to make big decisions
    Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
    We’ll be clean when their work is done
    We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young

    Gee… sounds like the vision of “Change” we were supposed to be so fond of a mere 8 months ago. The reason we as a people fell for it was that we fell for it back in 1958… and despite the rather stark example of what happens when we’re run by fellows with ‘compassion and vision’, from a mere 12 years of so earlier. History is rife with examples of such ‘leaders’… and yet we keep falling for their line….

    And John at Power Line suggests the press at least hasn’t learned those lessons still saying:
    “Yesterday it was Adolf and Fidel, today Hugo.  Will our journalists ever learn?” [4] John points out, the entirety of the left is completely unable to learn from history. They will of their nature invariably go for shallow egalitarianism. they will go for the easy answer. As I have been recently reminded through some observations of a friend’s problem, the easy answer is usually the easiest way to get screwed worse.

  • AS AN EXAMPLE: Via Facebook, Lori Bird points out Mental Midget Bill Moyers, claiming the Republicans are trying to ‘slit Obama’s throat’.I won’t even comment on the sheer level of projection that Bill Moyers has always used. This example is certainly no different.  It does suggest though, that the situation is unlikely to change had any point in the near future.  They will even ignore the massive defeat that they’re about to be handed in the midterm elections.
  • WHY THEY REALLY HAVE SEX:  Since it’s Hump Day, I’ll pass this one on.A few weeks ago, I passed on an article about why women have sex.  Another article with a rather different view, popped up down under yesterday, and I thought I’d share. According to the article, she’s just not that into you. [5]

    FOR every woman expecting the earth to move, there are two with more practical motives.

    From relieving boredom, to keeping the peace or curing a headache, women have sex for many reasons but romance and passion come rather low on the list, a new book has revealed.

    One woman even admitted to having sex just so her husband would put the rubbish out.

    “Research has shown most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all,” Why Women Have Sex authors Cindy Meston and David Buss said.


    But mostly the explanations were far more mundane, with 84 per cent admitting to having sex just to ensure a quiet life or to bargain for household chores. One woman said: “I have sex to relieve the boredom because it’s easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do.”

    Gee, that’s encouraging.  Pardon me. I need to have a word with my wife.