Pot-Smoking, 9/11 Truth Lovin' Registered Democrat Pentagon Shooter...Must've Been a "Rightwing Extremist"

If there was ever any doubt about the current meme regarding violence, the story of John Patrick Bedell should lay them to rest.

John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting? screams the Christian Science Monitor. Pentagon Shooter Was Right-Wing, Anti-Government Terrorist soberly reports Think Progress. And both links talk about Bedell as an anti-government guy who was a 9/11 Truther.

Of course, as Newsbusters notes, 9/11 Truthers are leftwingers, not rightwingers. And given that Bedell was a registered Democrat, the liberal bullshit about rightwing extremism looks even more self-serving.

But that doesn't stop nuts like Jesse Taylor from blaming Tea Partiers and trying to equate Debra Medina with John Patrick Bedell. Taylor must be a yoga master to twist around to draw that comparison.

Wanted: New Pandagon Watcher

Friend Chuck Serio has suffered the Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels' fate and been banned from Pandagon for being "boring as f*ck" (i.e., intelligent). I'm now looking for a new watcher. If interested, send me an e-mail. Thanks!

Pandagon Watch: The Unbelievably Stupid Jesse Taylor Editon

God bless Chuck Serio for monitoring Pandagon for me (since Amanda Marcotte not only doesn't want me commenting on her site; she blocked my IP address so I can't even see it), because without him, we wouldn't get to see the naked stupidity and unbelievable callousness of jerks like Jesse Taylor.

Apparently, Jesse's wound up because Tim Tebow is making a commercial with a pro-life message, and the commercial will air during the Super Bowl.

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The group isn’t releasing details, but the commercial is likely to be an anti-abortion message chronicling Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim.

Jesse's enraged that the football star and his mother actually think not killing your babies is a good thing! Can you imagine?! The doctors told this woman she would die if she had the baby...and she selfishly didn't die but gave birth to a healthy baby who then went on to do wonderful things and have a great life! How utterly selfish of her!

Jesse's upset that Pam and Bob Tebow (a) didn't do what the doctors told them to do and (b) actually found a doctor who agreed to care for her so she wouldn't die (that selfish bitch!) and that the baby wouldn't die (that more selfish bitch!)

What this teaches us is that abortion is evil, so long as you have around the clock medical care and are lucky enough to defy the odds, not die and not have your baby come out stillborn. That’s the major problem with us pro-choicers: we keep forcing women to make hard moral choices like “Do I want to chance my own death?” rather than just telling them to suck it up and face it like a man. Well, if a man was about to potentially pass a lump of dead biological matter through their nonexistent vaginas and potentially die in the process.

Yeah, Jesse. That's the message. It couldn't be a message more along the lines of, Lots of people will pressure a pregnant woman to do what they've decided is the best thing for her and kill her baby, because making her own choice--which is what they spend so much time telling us they are for--is evil. These people always support a woman choosing to kill her own child for any reason whatsoever. But risking one's life for one's children is just plain stupid, vile and, yes, morally wrong.
Here's Jesse's flippant response to my argument:

Pam Tebow made a decision based on her circumstances. She chose to take a risk, and it worked out. Good for her, she should have had that choice. But there’s a rare breed of woman, called “most of them”, who might not have an all-day, every-day doctor on call, or who might be in more danger than Pam Tebow, or who make a different calculation and don’t want to run the risk of being the dead mother of a dead baby. Fie on their monstrous asses, though. Fie!

See, the problem isn't that Pam Tebow defied her doctor, risked her life, and loved her child more than herself. It's that she and her husband sought and found medical care to help her. Oh, and she didn't die like she should have.

But wait, there's more! Most people won't have famous and athletic children, and you won't know anyway, so it's ok to kill your babies (not just the ones that are medically risky but the ones you decide you don't want just cuz).

There’s also the teensy problem of the presumption that every woman having an abortion is somehow ending the life of Football Jesus. You will never know who 99.99% of people in this world are. You won’t read the novels they don’t write, you won’t listen to the music they don’t produce. This is not to say that human life isn’t valuable. This is to say that if your case against abortion is that your future child could be a one in a several hundred million talent, you need a better case.

Of course, Tim Tebow is about to fail miserably in the NFL like most of the rest of us six billion-plus schmucks would, so maybe this is a better ad than I thought...

I'm not surprised in the least that Jesse Taylor put together such an outrageously insensitve and stupid post. Like Amanda, women having abortions to prove that they have a "choice" is far more important than women actually making principled choices that have longer term consequences. So-called pro-choicers like Jesse and Amanda let the mask slip every time they write things like this, because it shows that they don't support women's choices; they only support women having abortions. Because choosing to have medically risky babies or financially risky babies or life-altering, career-changing babies is just plain stupid or, at best, simply unnecessary risky behavior.

Pandagon Watch: They Don't Get Christianity

Thanks to Chuck Serio for the latest Pandagon tip.

Pam Spaulding displays her ignorance of Christianity in this post, discussing Brit Hume's statement that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity in order to receive true redemption. Hume's statement:

Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News Chris Wallace Sunday.

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith, said Hume. He is said to be a Buddhist. I dont think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

Spaulding's response:

How does this prescription for redemption explain Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford, John Ensign and all of the rest of the Christian GOP sexual hypocrites?

I always have to remind myself that Pandagonistas are willfully ignorant about the basic tenets of Christianity, including redemption. The commenters continue the ignorance:

--"Buddhism, at least the Mahayana sects, typically emphasize making up for your sins after you sin, to correct your personal karma and avoid reincarnation as a hungry ghost, or somebody’s dairy cow."

--"Gotta love that “get out of jail free” card. It just takes timing. Don’t yell, “God damn it!” if you’re about to get hit by the bus—eternal damnation for that. But you can eat a boiled baby every day, and so long as you have the good sense to die of something lingering, like cancer, you can pray your sins away, and get into heaven.

So if I’m Woods, I keep sleeping with every man and woman alive, until the syphilis gets bad enough, and then convert.

Unfortunately, it will turn out that the Greeks were right after all. Alas!"

--"So, basically, if you’re a Christian all you have to do is apologize to God and you’re off the hook? Sounds like a great racket to me. Unfortunately, as a Buddhist, I have to acknowledge my mistakes and deal with the consequences. It’s a little rougher, but considerably more adult, IMHO.
(BTW: I’m talking not about the Christian tradition in its entirety, but the mind-numbingly simplistic take on it these folx seem to have...)"

Christian redemption isn't the idea that you can do whatever you want, ask for forgiveness, then go out and do it some more. It's the idea that, as humans, we are sinful by nature, whether we cheat on our wives, curse out the guy that cuts us off in traffic, or envy someone else's garden furniture. And because we are sinful, we needed Christ to die for our sins so that we could have fellowship with God. IOW, unlike Buddhism, which relies on the idea (as one person put it) of recognizing your grievances, correcting them and "living with the consequences," Christianity shows that we personally cannot save ourselves and must rely on Christ's sinless life, death and resurrection for salvation.

It's somewhat more humbling.

None of this, of course, negates the effects here on earth of our sins. Christians still "live with the consequences" of our actions, regardless of whether God has forgiven us or not. After all, we still have to live with and deal with those we've wronged, even if God forgives us.

One commenter stated, "What would make an impression would be if Christians could be statistically demonstrated to behave better as a group than non-Christians.

So, Christians, feel free to conduct population studies that show Christians are less likely to receive speeding tickets, have their taxes audited, get divorced, wind up on child-abuse lists, &c;. It should be relatively easy to provide clear documentation of a behavioral effect...or of its lack."

But, in fact, Christians are happier (or at least, profess happiness) than other groups and those who attend church regularly are less likely to get divorced than those who rarely go to church or those who never attend. We also have evidence that Christians are more generous with their own money and time (especially conservative Christians), and less likely to participate in anti-social behavior.

This doesn't mean you won't find Ted Haggards, Mark Sanfords or John Ensigns among Christians. It just makes it more rare. And more newsworthy when it happens.

UPDATE: Ann Coulter has a nice column on this subject.

Pandagon Watch: Amanda Marcotte Discovers the Secret Goal of Conservatives

And that is to piss off liberals. I'm not making this stuff up; she actually said that that is the reason so many people either don't believe in global warming or are skeptical about it and question the science. It can't possibly be that every couple of years scientists change their mind about something and announce that they now believe the exact opposite (example: remember when eggs were the worst food on the planet and nobody was supposed to eat them? Then, scientists changed their minds and decided eggs were great! Now, they're somewhere in between).

No, conservatives aren't just rational people with memories longer than Amanda's convenient memory about politics and logic. They clearly aren't skeptical about drastic changes in the way we are supposed to live, including getting rid of cars, crippling American industries and generally taxing the hell out of everyone and dictating how they will live their lives. No, according to Amanda, there are really just two reasons why conservatives don't believe the climate screamers:

1) They’re in deep denial.
2) They know that global warming is real, but they don’t care.

It's no wonder Pandagon has to screen every person who comments on their blog. They have to make sure only the idiotic and insane get on to say, "Wow! What great insight! I knew conservatives were eeeevillll but I didn't know their soul motivation was to piss off liberals!" Amanda couldn't handle someone explaining to her that no, there's not a scientific consensus on global warming and that many well-respected scientists think we need more evidence to make such a declaration (and to determine that (a) human beings are the cause and (b) anything we do will change it anyway). Nor could she handle anyone noting that the cult of global warming isn't merely about getting federal money, but about power and controlling what people can and can't do, which is a key element of liberalism (you don't know what's best for you; only Democrat-controlled organizations/governments know what's best and should have the power to force you to do what they want). Liberals think forcing you to keep your thermostat at 68 in the winter and 80 in the summer is a good thing and letting you decide what temp you want your house at (and pay the bills for) is a bad thing. Or driving a big SUV (and paying the gasoline for it) is a bad thing and forcing everyone who drives to drive a pregnant rollerskate is a good thing.

In other words, what pisses off liberals, and therefore, is the conservative goal, is the idea of individuals living their lives with little government interference, and actually remembering when scientists were afraid of global cooling. Perhaps pissing off liberals this way is a great goal to have.

Pandagon Watch: Even When They're Wrong, It's All the Right's Fault

So, the Kentucky census worker killed by those eeeeeevilllll rightwingers has been ruled a suicide. Worse, it was a suicide designed to bilk the insurance company. But those inconvenient facts don't get in the way of a good narrative for Amanda Marcotte. No, Amanda still finds a way to blame the Right for this man's decision to off himself.

But as much as the hate-mongerers will surely conclude they get 100% off the hook for this, they do not. Sparkman concluded that this was an effective disguise for his suicide because he’d been subjected to so many concerns about his safety working the Census. How realistic those concerns are is somewhat beside the point, since terrorism is about creating the perception of danger. Loud-mouthed threats aimed at government workers, right wing gun nut paranoia about “big government”, shirts with “jokes” about shooting liberals---all these add up to an atmosphere of fear that made Sparkman believe that this murder scenario was realistic. His fraud and suicide are evidence that creating a threatening, violent atmosphere is effective, and so no, the hate-mongerers are not off the hook.

You get that? This guy commits suicide, trying to make it look like somebody murdered him and...that makes it the fault of those paranoid Deliverance types. Call it the Matthew Shepard defense.

Were this sort of argument not so pathetic, it would be funny. Hilarious, even. But the fact is, Amanda's sitting there with egg on her face, trying to find a way to blame the egg for smacking her, when there are bits of egg and shell all over her own hand. In fact, a commenter points this out in the thread, only to be accused of--what else?--being a man, as though that affects the veracity of his/her/its point.

I never tire of pointing out the outrageous demagoguery of the Left, but trying to blame a guy's suicide-for-insurance-fraud on gun owners is pretty far out there even for Pandagon. Deliciously, there are even commenters arguing that it was only right to try to screw the insurance company, since they were to blame for the guy's depression in the first place. The fact that insurance fraud comes back to bite consumers on the ass is of no consequence to these jerks, I suppose.

Pandagon Watch: Christians = Radical Muslims

One of the reasons I love reading Pandagon so much is because of the fringe positions discussed there and lapped up by the commenters. On Pandagon, if you are a conservative, a Republican of any stripe, a Christian and/or a pro-life supporter, you aren't merely misguided or stupid, you're evil. Then the writer cherrypicks some individual or tiny group to point out some supposed universal truth about conservatives, Republicans, Christians and pro-life supporters.

Take this post by--who else?--Amanda Marcotte titled, "We call them the cracker Taliban for a reason." The reason, in this case, is that one church burned a bunch of books on Halloween. The list of books included different versions of the Bible, music of all persuasions, and books by authors ranging from Billy Graham to Rick Warren to Benny Hinn to Mother Teresa.

The Amazing Grace Baptist Church of Canton, North Carolina is an "Independent Fundamental King James Version Baptist Church," meaning it believes the King James Version of the Bible to be the only true Bible and rejects all other translations and interpretations. It also holds some very strict interpretations of scripture, and only endorses certain kinds of music (no contemporary Christian music, no modern praise music). This church also condemns body piercing, cross dressing and surgery to alter one's sex. In other words, this is a very strict church with very narrow interpretations of scripture and many rules about behavior (a complete list can be found here).

And this church is also probably tiny. Pastor Marc Grizzard describes it as "small," although the total number of members is not listed. I'd put it at probably about 20. In any event, the beliefs of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church don't reflect the views of millions of Christians regarding faith or politics.

But that doesn't stop Amanda from tarring Christians with this group or comparing them to the Taliban.

Right wing Christians try to pretend there’s some kind of yawning gulf between Islam and Christianity, but this sort of thing just goes to show that no matter what the technical religion is, crazy ass fundamentalists are all the same.

Nowhere on the church's website did I find calls for squirting school girls with acid, beating men for beard length violations or the banning of kite flying or bird keeping. Moreover, to argue that because a tiny fringe group favors, say, dress codes, that that equals suicide bombers or jihadis is just batshit insane. But this is precisely the argument Amanda makes, and has made many times before.

The Cracker Taliban would happily ban art and music to prove their bona fides. The mentality that drives this sort of thing is inherently competitive and misanthropic. Misanthropic, because of the deep-seated hostility to pleasure (at least experienced by other people), and competitive, because religious nuts love to show that they’re tougher than their competitors in the art of making people’s short stays on earth as miserable as possible. No music, no entertaining reading, no diversion from sitting around hating life and wishing it could be over already. Meanwhile, the sadists get lots of pleasure out of hurting others.

Amanda doesn't bother giving any examples of how members of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church are "making people miserable" or "hurting others," but, nonetheless, she thinks it's a scary, scary place when 20 people believe in a non-government approved way.

Amusingly, Amanda finds a way to transition from "The Cracker Taliban is gonna throw acid on your wimmins" to "Not forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is genocide!!1!" This isn't the first time that every diatribe against some tiny church leads back to "don't stop Planned Parenthood!" or some such nonsense.

Part of what makes this comparison so bizarre is that nowhere in this post or others, can Amanda find even one case of the "Cracker Taliban" mowing down a lot of innocent civilians while yelling, "God is great" or something similar. Instead, her complaint is that *one* church has a book burning, which includes a wide variety of tomes. She complains that these Christians want everyone to be miserable (there's no evidence of that), which, I guess is supposed to equate with Sharia law, in which stealing is punishable by chopping off your hand.

Of course, the comparison is meant to be offensive; Amanda is probably another of those Hasan enablers/apologists who believe the real reason Nidal Hasan gunned down a bunch of his fellow soldiers while yelling "Allahu Akbar" was because of George Bush and pro-lifers. Sure, there's no evidence connecting those groups and Hasan, but then, there's no connection between fundamentalist Christians and the Taliban, either.

Pandagon Watch: I Guess PETA Is a Rightwing Organization

Amanda Marcotte has to dig deep in this post to find those malevolent conservatives to be at fault for violence at a animal protest.

Members of an animal rights group were the victims of sniper fire during a protest here Saturday and are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.

The Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS) staged a protest in front of the Aquarium & Pet Center to protest the retailer's alleged sale of "puppy mill" dogs, or purebred pups that have been bred in inhumane conditions. That's when the shots rang out.

Three protesters were hit with what was later determined to be brass pellets fired from a high-powered air rifle. The protesters suffered minor injuries, said Sgt. Jay Trisler with the Santa Monica Police Department, which is asking for the public's help in identifying the shooter...

(West Coast director of CAPS Carole) Davis said the attack occurred at a time when there is a "highly charged atmosphere" when it comes to animal rights. The Santa Monica City Council recently voted in favor of banning cat declawing and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have put caps on the number of animals used in puppy mills, becoming the only governor in the six states where puppy mill legislation passed this year to override it with a veto. Jeffrey Prang, a City Councilman from West Hollywood, which has also banned cat declawing, is working on an ordinance to ban the re-selling of any pets except bred or rescued animals in that city.

Here's what Amanda had to say about the incident:

But all that is essentially unimportant, especially if this is what it seems, which a case where an independent operator with no ties to the pet store decided to take potshots at people whose larger point---that puppy mills are evil and people should not financially support them---is a sound one. If indeed this is a random act of right wing violence, then that tells you a lot about how bad things have gotten, that someone is willing to act violently in the name of a man’s god-given right to torture puppies.

Huh? How does anyone--even a nutjob like Amanda--come to the conclusion that this was "a random act of rightwing violence," versus either (a) a nut or (b) someone with a different beef with this group or (c) an animal rights organization like PETA or Animal Liberation Front? Why, because Amanda tells us so! In the comments, someone asks how she knows it is "rightwing violence" and Amanda answers it.

I don’t know for sure, nor did I say. I went out of my way, in fact, to say that it was likely but not certain.

But, of course, she did say. She speculated that it was "a random act of rightwing violence," then went on to juxtapose that story with one on high schools barring cross-dressers from appearing in the yearbook as cross-dressers. It's an odd (and difficult to make) analogy to be sure, but leave it to those intrepid bloggers at Pandagon to make it.

But even before bringing up the cross-dressers, Amanda tries to find a way that Republicans are responsible for shooting pellets at protesters in front of a pet store.

Indeed, this attack came after the Governator vetoed a bill that would have set a limit on the number of puppies you could cram into a puppy mill, which seems to be yet another example of a Republican standing up for cruelty on the grounds that American penises will fall off if we don’t engage in needless cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

It really is too bad Amanda couldn't get the gig as official White House blogger. I mean, aside from attacking Fox News and trying to get people to snitch on their friends, there's just not enough leftwing hysteria on display from the POTUS.

Pandagon Watch: Raaaaacism Is Everywhere! Edition

Whenever someone I know expresses surprise at the bizarre naivete of the Left regarding Teh One, and the unbridled hatred the Left holds for anything conservative, I simply tell them to spend a few minutes at Pandagon and they'll learn all they need to know about the stupidity masquerading as political thought by leftwingers.

Granted, it's probably a little unfair to tarnish all liberal sites with the mouthbreathing Pandagonistas (take, for example, this site, with which I disagree quite a bit but tends to be less noxious than most feminist sites), but given the echo chambers easily found, I might be excused for assuming that all liberals (or at least a large number of them) are every bit as batshit crazy as the Pandagonistas.

Take the assumption that all Republicans are raaaaacists, and that good, upstanding people believe America isn't a fair and decent country. Not that this belief should be, in any way, construed as "hating America," because, as we all know, thinking your country is a terrible place is the height of patriotism, right up there with calling the president a liar and fantasizing about assassinating the POTUS.

Here's some slop from Amanda:

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama’s policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is “discriminatory” rather than “decent”? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration’s policies as “racist.” That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

The only theory he’ll accept is that there’s been a campaign to trick black people into assuming that there’s racism where there isn’t. And that they’d be so easily fooled. Not that what he’s saying doesn’t fall right in line with the usual conservative mythology that presents black voters as sheep that follow white liberal shepherds, because conservative literally cannot accept that black voters who vote for Democrats might do so because they want to. This assumption is 2 parts racism and 1 part unwilling to admit that the racism of Republican politics drives off black voters. But it’s 100% offensive, because the assumption is that black people are feeble, or they’d be able to see through the evil lies spun by the Liberal Mafia of Hollywood Elites.

The weird part about this argument--that Republicans are racist and think black people are gullible, voting for Democrats because they're "sheep"--is exactly the same argument liberals made back in 2004 with such scholarly works as What's the Matter with Kansas? Indeed, those voting for Republicans because they did not see themselves as victims were considered, well, gullible and stupid. Amanda's hypocrisy knows no bounds, of course, but it's still amazing to watch.

She buys quickly into the Sadly, No! idiocy, where a Tammy Bruce post titled Nobel Committee Announces Another Peace Prize Winner with a raccoon rifling through a Cracker Jack box, is raaaaacism.

Because, you know, it's a raccoon and that's short for coon which is a slur against black people. So, obviously, the headline ("Nobel Committee") doesn't really mean that the Nobel committee is the one sifting through a Cracker Jack box looking for a new peace prize winner. In that clever, clever skullduggery of the Right, the raccoon is President Obama, because, I guess, he's now a Norwegian on the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Or something.

And just to show how very subtle this raaaaacism is, many commenters to Amanda's post missed it until Amanda pointed it out. I mean, that's subtle, designed to infiltrate even the battle-hardened, racism-finding everywhere folks at Pandagon!

Of course, the opposite conclusion, that finding raaaaacism in a joke clearly not raaaaacist just emphasizes the raaaaacism of the left, is really just too subtle for these guys. Or that the reason black people might be thinking America isn't fair and decent has more to do with false raaaaacism charges from Democrat demogogues than actual racist statements and behavior. Nah. If we believe that Democrats are just using stupid raaaaacism charges to tar their political opponents, that would be impugning their motivations. Because, you know, only white Kansans can be "gullible."

Pandagon Watch: Amanda Marcotte Misses the Point...Again

It's become a normal part of any day: read Pandagon and count the number of times the Pandagonidiots mischaracterize conservatives/religious people/straight people/suburbanites and Amanda Marcotte misses the point of any article she links to.

In this case, Amanda links to this Nate Silverman post, in which he contends that the exaggerations of the 9/12 rally in Washington are wrong and not uncommon. But the salient point about the rally comes at the end of his post:

Mock the protesters at your peril: business as usual suddenly isn't so good for Democrats these days, and the sentiments of the 70,000 people who marched on Washington surely mirror those of millions more sitting at home.

For Amanda, of course, the march is about what else? Racism. And what better example of racism than the idea that conservatives clean up after themselves.

This is the first place that Amanda gets it wrong. Cleanliness isn't necessarily a conservative value, although self-sufficiency is. It is a working class value. Being a pig and expecting others to clean up after you is an attitude of the wealthy. But in Amanda's world, it's just another example of how racist conservatives are.

The “we don’t leave trash” thing is a way of saying that their shit don’t stink...

A lot of bloggers made fun of the teabaggers for not having coherent policy ideas, but they’re way beyond that even being a possibility. They just want to shut it down, at any cost. They don’t want to share health care with the Unclean People. The abortion example is a really good one, and I’ve noted before that they’re bone scared of having to share medical facilities with the Unclean. That’s why Joe Wilson nearly had a heart attack at hearing about illegal immigrants getting care. Yes, he heard it in the context of this being denied, but he was forced to picture it: Mexican immigrants, the sort he would let work on his yard but not use his bathroom, sitting right there in the hospital next to you! Taking this attitude into account, you can really see why a lot of them are just as motivated by the fear of abortion, which they associate with dirty girls---there’s a genuine fear of having to share medical facilities with sluts, I guess. It’s catching, particularly if you have to wear a hospital gown.

Never mind, of course, that all the Unclean People already share their medical facilities. Maybe they don’t realize this, because generally speaking when you go to the doctor, you only see a minuscule fraction of the patients he’s got in the waiting room. Maybe they’ve convinced themselves that the Unclean People are kept out from lack of insurance. Sadly, many of us are, but certainly not all or even most. We’re already sharing their facilities.

Again, Amanda mischaracterizes the views of conservatives and 9/12 protesters. The problem with giving health care to illegal immigrants isn't because they're Brown; it's because they're breaking the law.

My sincere hope is that at some point in the next four years, the charge of racism will have been so overused that it becomes meaningless. Surely charging that every objection to Democrats' overreaching and usurpation of individual liberty is because of racism has to become ridiculous at some point.

H/T: Chuck Serio for the Pandagon link.

Pandagon Watch: Amanda Lurvs Her Some Dan Rather but Can't Prove the Fake Docs Weren't Fake

Amanda brings immaturity and stupidity to new levels with this post which is supposed to be about how Dan Rather was right about George W. Bush, but can't bring up any evidence that supports that contention.

Instead, she crows about the fact that a judge is allowing Dan Rather's wrongful termination suit against CBS to go forward. This would be a bit like Don Imus supporters saying that the fact that Imus got 20 million bucks from CBS proves he didn't call anyone a "nappy-headed ho."

Regardless of whether Rather wins or loses his employment case, he still used a fake document to try to pull an October Surprise on President Bush. Talk about EPIC FAIL.

Jesse Taylor explains why it's better for the government to bar you from the best diabetes drug rather than staying at your "shitty job" to get it

Jesse Taylor spreads on a thick slab of teh stupid to explain why it's way better for the government to decide what healthcare you will get and how long you'll live as opposed to letting you make choices. But hey, at least you won't feel obligated to stay at your "shitty job" because of the insurance (because "shitty jobs" always have great insurance benefits!).

This post has, quite arguably, the best description by a liberal of what the difference is between liberalism and conservatism. I'm not saying it's accurate, but it certainly explains why liberals are illogical, selfish and a lot like your average teenager. Here's the description of liberalism:

Autonomy in the sense of personal liberty, from a liberal perspective, revolves around the idea that we are free to make decisions about the course and direction of our lives, even though those choices may not be particularly favored by society. The liberal safety net is designed (or supposed to be designed) to allow for people to move from activity to activity, job to job, in order to figure out what works best for them - in essence, to maximize their happiness. There is a concept of shared sacrifice, but there’s also a concept of shared benefit - opportunity has costs, and it makes more sense if those costs are distributed so as not to potentially ruin those who seek it. There is still room for success and failure (and the consequences thereof), but you are at least provided the chance to succeed or fail.

Like your 16-year-old, liberals think that having fun is what being a grown-up is all about. And why shouldn't they? The government (sorta like your parents) will make sure that you have food, clothes, a place to stay, a computer, and that XBox 360, without worrying about piddly things like who's paying for it. Meanwhile, you get to "maximize your happiness" by going to the movies, hanging out with your friends, and changing jobs every 20 minutes because the managers are mean. It's not that you're being irresponsible, bratty, and defiant. "Society" (read: adults) doesn't have to "favor" your behavior. They just have to continue to subsidize it.

Of course, the analogy isn't perfect. Unlike your parents, the government doesn't provide any money made on its own. It has to confiscate money from a third party, namely taxpayers. It would be sort of like your neighbor being required to help pay for your kids XBox but not being allowed to complain about his loud music, peeing on your flowers or throwing empty Monster cans on your lawn. Because that's just another example of "favoring" your behavior. Hey, it's all about letting people "maximize their happiness," regardless of how it affects society at large. "Society" just foots the bill.

Now, here's Jesse's description of conservatism:

Conservative autonomy, on the other hand, is the autonomy of money. It doesn’t matter if you’re locked into constricting social roles, shut out of jobs, bolted down to a single place doing a single thing for the entirely foreseeable future, so long as nobody tells you how to spend your meager paycheck. If you were going to dinner, liberal autonomy might land you in a vegan restaurant or in a rib shack or at a really terrible taco stand, but the nice thing about it is that you have all of those options. Conservative autonomy would land you at any Applebee’s that took your new Discover Card, so long as you didn’t get one of those homo arugala salads.

Autonomy of money? I suppose what Jesse's talking about is the freedom you have to make money. Under liberalism, you don't have to worry about a piddly thing like making money, because the government's just gonna take it all and redistribute it, anyway. Don't worry about having to pay for the house, the food, the clothes or the XBox 360 because the government is going to require that everyone have those same things and not anything more. What if you want a Wii? Well, the Wii isn't covered under the government option, you see, and so we need to make sure you can't get one. Of course, the politicians writing the laws will still be able to have a Wii, but why should you?

In fact, Jesse's description of liberal restaurants and conservative ones is exactly opposite of what happens under liberal ideas. Under conservatism, you can have the vegan restaurant, the taco stand, the rib shack and the Applebee's, because individuals determine which types of restaurants they want to sink their own money into. So, if the vegan restaurant tastes like crap and nobody goes there, it fails. We're not required to support that restaurant because someone thinks it's unfair that no one wants to eat there. And if the Applebee's is really successful because people love the ribs and sliders, then that's ok, too. Because that's what people want to pay for.

Just like the 16-year-old, Jesse thinks society should pay for a lot of things that nobody wants because a handful of people think it's a good idea. And in the insurance debate, Jesse and a lot of stupid people think that you can suddenly build a new health care system that is just gosh darn better than the old one without any damage to all the patients and workers in the old system.

In the real world, Americans don't want to give up the health care they now get. They'd like to improve the costs of things and they'd like to not worry about losing their insurance, but they are very happy with their physicians, hospitals, nurses and pharmacists. All that will change under Obamacare, which is why Americans are turning against it.

Bobby Jindal has an excellent opinion piece on why Obamacare is bad for America and what real reform would look like.

Pandagon Watch: The Synopsis

Some days, Pandagon provides few examples of the nuttiness they are famous for. And then there are days like today when that site is so chockful of stupid and hypocrisy that I could spend all day dissecting it. But I won't. I have more important things to do. Like taking the kids to the waterpark.

When I first discovered Pandagon, it seemed like a normal moonbat site: lots of George Bush bashing, lots of "Republicans are teh hypocrites!" columns, lots of completely ridiculous and unworkable far left arguments regarding government, international affairs, family, work, and feminism. It wasn't alone in this regard; there are other sites that do much the same thing. But Pandagon is one of the most popular that had a regular stable of commenters. And even though most comments can be summed up as "You suck," they still provided enough gasps and chuckles to be worth blogging about and commenting on.

That was before the election of 2008. These days, Pandagon is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. You have to register to comment (so much for the liberal argument that regulating comment is undemocratic). I got banned (not merely unable to comment; I can't even pull up Pandagon on my home computer, an extremist solution I've never seen on any site) ostensibly for "thread jacking," which means I said something the Pandagonistas (a) hated and (b) couldn't refute effectively. Amanda Marcotte's not terribly tolerant of being bested in an argument, and if you do manage to do it, you're likely to be called all sorts of things, including a "woman hater," an odd term for me, being a woman and all.

But the real kicker these days is the inability of the Pandagon bloggers to criticize their god, Barack Obama. Even when he's saying and doing things that piss them off, even when he's clearly flip-flopped on an issue, even when he blatantly breaks one campaign promise after another, they cannot bring themselves to use any rhetoric stronger than, "I don't like that." In other words, like many, if not most liberal websites, Pandagon is in full hibernation mode now, unwilling to face the reality that the high standards of behavior they required of Republicans isn't being adhered to by their beloved Democrats, either.

That's why you get posts like the post on David Letterman's apology to Sarah Palin (sorry, link isn't working, but you know where to look), where Amanda says bashing young women as slutty is perfectly ok...if she's a Republican. More specifically, if she has a child out of wedlock, then tells everyone that it wasn't a good idea. Because, you know, learning from your mistakes and trying to prevent others from making those same stupid mistakes is hypocritical.

The joke, as crude as it was, was obviously about poking at the gap between the goody two shoes “no sex for us!” image that conservative politicians cultivate and the reality.

But Bristol Palin isn't a politician. She's a young (very young) woman who obviously listened to idiots like Amanda who typically argue that 12-year-olds should be able to have abortions without parental notice but not tattoos. That's why this whole "but she's a slut" defense is so strange. Pandagon also sports this post, bashing crisis pregnancy centers for using images of women looking worried or upset that they're pregnant. If you just read that article, you would assume that being pregnant out of wedlock was a wonderful thing and then Bristol Palin would be a saint (not quite a god like B.O., but nearly as good).

If you view these two stories together--Bristol Palin is a slut that deserves mocking on national TV for having a baby out of wedlock then telling others that's a bad choice, coupled with the having babies out of wedlock is just another lifestyle choice--you can see how schizophrenic Pandagon thinking really is. Amanda tries to say that deriding Bristol Palin is permissible because her mother is a politician. But these are the same sorts of people screaming that we shouldn't make jokes about Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton. Making nasty jokes about the Bush twins was ok; laughing at Chelsea Clinton was not.

The truth is that either family members who are not politicians themselves (Hillary Clinton during Hillarycare, for example) should be off limits, or making jokes about Michelle Obama's Anchor Arms and Sasha's buck teeth are fair game. You can't argue that having illegitimate children is ok but Republican women who have illegitimate children are sluts. And no amount of "it's not the child, it's the anti-endorsement of illegitimacy that's the problem" will cover that sort of hypocrisy.

Understandably, this is the only way the Pandagonistas can justify continually deriding and mocking Republicans who aren't making any government policy these days, as opposed to deriding and mocking their own party which is pretty much making a hash of everything.

The same breathless hypocrisy is on display in this post, where Amanda argues that not speechifying the events in Iran is the right response for President Obama because it's not our problem. Seriously. That's the argument. I suspect if I were to look up Amanda's opinions on, say, Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor or the Palestinians, I'd find that she was quite vocal that the U.S. government must do something in those places. Of course, that would have been only when Republicans ran the government.

Thanks to Chuck Serio for sending me one of the Pandagon stories.

Amanda Marcotte: Lonely, Ugly Girl

Now that George W. Bush is unavailable for liberals' daily two minutes of hate, they are scanning the horizon for a new target. There are perennial favorites such as Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, and Lord knows we see rants against those guys on a daily basis.

But ranking up there with these guys is Fox News, the lone cable channel with anything approaching a conservative slant (and I say "approaching" because they still manage to have plenty of liberal and centrist news readers and such on the air). Only Rush Limbaugh can send liberals' blood pressures skyrocketing like Fox News can, and I've always found it more than a little amusing. Here we are, in 2009, when virtually every news outlet seems to have some fawning coverage of Teh One, but apparently the success of Fox News is still more than they can handle.

Which is why this stupidity from Amanda Marcotte is so delicious. Amanda is the poster child of lonely, ugly girls everywhere who complain because guys don't ask them to the high school dance. See, it's not that they are ugly, mean-spirited and childish. That's not why the guys are avoiding them like the plague. It's because they "have a life," which, evidently, includes considering playing video games and watching mindless TV to be a sign of intellectual superiority. What, not watching the news on a daily basis or checking out your competition for stories? Why, that's what the smart liberal blogger does.

My favorite part of Amanda's pathetic attempt at humor (which is what she would say if one were to point out how truly sad this post makes her look), is this section:

Fox News isn’t really a news station, and it’s unfair to compare it to the others. This is painful to say, because it’s not like CNN and MSNBC are reading Edward R. Murrow levels any time soon (except perhaps Rachel Maddow). But they are still news stations. You watch them, and there will be some news, some analysis, and not too many bikinis. But Fox News isn’t about the news. The news is featured, often in weird and badly spun ways, but the point of Fox News is not the news. It’s a propaganda station that also tries to entertain you with a whole lot of cheesecake...

Granted, the toxic mix of a loud sound effects, constant screen movement, T&A, alarmist bullshit about nothing, and bigotry isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, entertainment-wise. But it’s enough for a lot of people. But it isn’t news, and comparing its ratings to news is unfair. Its ratings should be compared to those of reality dating shows, which trade in the same T&A, race-baiting and scare-mongering, but just more honestly.

Obviously, Amanda must never watch MSNBC or else she wouldn't be able to claim only Fox News shows an inordinate amount of interest in bikinis and breast implants. This isn't even going into the whole teabagging incident, but, I'm sure Amanda, who only reads "serious" books during non-election years, didn't even know about that, since liberals don't watch news programs. No, Keith Olbermann's rants must just slip under the radar.

California Court Upholds Prop 8

The California Supreme Court held today that, yes, voters can actually amend the California Constitution by the initiative and referendum process. Like is outlined in the Constitution.

It's stunning, I know, for a court to decide that a document means what it says, rather than just making up something else. The answer for gay marriage supporters to to create another referendum, get the signatures, put it on the ballot, and get enough voters to vote for it. Again, a stunning observation.

Over at Pandagon the nutroots are going berzerk. The comments are crazy, with poor Dana getting attacked for actually using logic when confronted with indignant harrumphing from the lunatics. Here was my favorite exchange:

Magis wrote:

Then to make matters worse the gays that are married can stay married. But new gay marriages can’t be performed. Is that sane jurisprudence. How can you manage not only to create two disparate classes but create them out of the same subset of people?

Easily enough. If a state allowed first cousin marriage, and then changed the law to restrict marriage to people no more closely ralated than second cousins, the previous first cousin marriages would still be considered legal marriages. Similarly, a state which allows marriages no closer than between second cousins will still not normally fail to consider legal first cousin marriages from another state as legal in the first state.

This has a current application, in that New York state recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries, even though it does not recognize such as being legally performed in New York.

This was an easy enough analogy. All states have some limitations on consanguinity, determining how close relatives can be to get married. It's an analogy that should be easily understood, even by the Pandagonistas. Yet they came unglued that such an analogy would be used!

Before anyone gets upset, I’m sure that Dana isn’t trying to imply that marriages between blood relatives (which are generally considered taboo on the basis of genetic science) are somehow analogous to marriages between same-sex couples (which are generally considered taboo on the basis of superstition). That would be stunningly moronic.

Right, Dana? Just tryin’ to help ya out here.

What was stunningly moronic was that any human being would complain that Dana's analogy was, somehow, a slur against homosexuals, rather than simply an object lesson into how state laws can invalidate certain marriages while recognizing others.

I suppose expecting the Pandagonistas to act normal, as opposed to hysterical ninnies, is expecting too much, since they are incapable of civil behavior under the best of conditions. But attacking Dana? Dana? The man who never tells them to STFU on his own site? Who allows Blubonnet to hijack every comment thread with 9/11 Truther garbage? The guy who doesn't ban reprehensible trolls? It just really shows what's wrong with Pandagon.

Pandagon Watch: Althouse Bashing

Leave it to idiots like Jesse Taylor to bash Ann Althouse for having the temerity to defend herself against leftwing slanders.

The tempest in a nutshell: Ezra Klein not-so-subtely accused Althouse commenters (and, by extension Ann herself) of anti-semitism because approximately commenter on her blog said something that could be interpreted as anti-semitic (my first reaction was that the commenter was being snarky, but perhaps I'm not *sensitive* enough). Althouse jumped on him with both feet, and that brought in sleezeballs like Jesse Taylor to Klein's defense.

I would never argue that the sort of blog you write tends to attract certain like-minded people. But the larger your audience, the greater the diversity of your readership. Pick a blog like Instapundit or Patterico and you will find as many differing opinions as there are commenters (of course, Pandagon long ago abandoned the idea that diverse opinions make for better informed readers by banning anyone not a mind-numbed robot and by requiring registration--and probably a blood sample and thumbprint--to comment there). The point of having comments on a blog is to stir debate and give viewpoints a chance to stand or fail on their own merits.

Nonetheless, a blog owner doesn't endorse every comment made any more than a political candidate endorses the views of every person who votes for him or her. That's why I tend to distinguish between posters and commenters when I discuss other people's blogs. And, to be fair, Klein didn't say that Althouse was an anti-semite. But by stating that "a lot" of her commenters were anti-semites, you get the impression that she must be saying something they agree with and that she approves of their comments.

That's not the case, as Legal Insurrection notes. And let's face it. We all get crank commenters and different blogs deal with those cases differently. Personally, I don't care if someone disagrees with me; just don't lie about my opinions, particularly when I've spent post after post articulating them.

But of course, it would require intellectual honesty on Jesse Taylor's part to actually note that commenters' opinions don't belong to the blog owner, and that sunlight is the best disinfectant. But intellectual honesty is something in very short supply at Pandagon.

Pandagon Watch: Wedding Edition

No, Amanda isn't getting married. Why would anyone want to marry her? Since she considers every norm of adult life to be another plot of Teh Patriarchy, I can't believe that there's more than a couple of winos in Austin who would be interested in standing up in front of a transgendered priest with her.

No, this is about the upcoming nuptials of Jessica "Let's take a look at those breasts" Valenti. Valenti became famous for being one of the women bloggers willing to take a photo with the Groper-in-Chief Bill Clinton (and stand in front of him, no less). I got into a discussion of this at Echidne's site, way back when, and was fascinated to find that to the Valenti defenders, giving blowjobs to the president and ignoring sexual harassment were perfectly acceptable as long as the POTUS promised to keep abortion available to every menstruating third grader. That they saw no hypocrisy in this position made it even more astonishing.

Now, Valenti has succumbed to patriarchal oppression and decided to get married. To a man. But not without having a lot of angst about...the fact that same sex couples can't be oppressed by Teh Patriarchy as well.

Andrew and I discussed not getting married until everyone could, and we think that's an understandable choice. Instead, we're trying use our impending marriage as a pro-active way to talk about same sex marriage among our friends and family, and being mindful of the inequity in every step our process. (For example, in our engagement announcement we asked anyone considering getting us a gift to instead donate to an organization fighting for same sex marriage rights; we're planning on saying something about it as part of our ceremony; and we've taken the advice of several commenters and will have cards indicating we've made a donation to said orgs instead of favors.)

Because a wedding should be a political statement, after all. It's too bad Valenti isn't printing up cards and asking for donations for, say, Juanita Broaddrick or, perhaps, a women's shelter for rape victims. Maybe she could ask for donations for a self-help group for those oppressed by men and tight sweaters. Or something.

But having lived through the "It's only a pattern on a shirt" kerfuffle, I'm not the least bit surprised that pucker-faced feminists like Amanda are now, well, pucker-faced that others are having a good laugh at Valenti's starry-eyed embrace of Teh Patriarchy. It's hard watching feminists who regularly excoriate marriage as oppression and slavery argue in favor of the institution without a double gin and tonic in one hand. How does Amanda even write things like this?

But this is an interesting double bind---there’s a lot of pressure on women to get married, but as soon as you start to live up to that cultural expectation, you are shamed for thinking that you deserve the honor of getting married, and now it seems that showing even the slightest bit of interest in your own nuptials makes you a Bridezilla. But showing no interest at all would make you a heartless feminazi. Femininity is the overarching double bind. If you reject some requirement of it, you are a transgressor of gender norms, and that incurs people’s wrath. But if you live up to any kind of standard of femininity, then you’re a target for mockery and shaming, as well, because caring about feminine things makes you a shallow bimbo.

Um, no. The mocking is for people who have derided marriage as slavery and then decided that they, too, would like to be slaves. But don't you dare shame them for it!

Amanda gets particularly incensed at Ace of Spades for having the temerity to point out Valenti's hypocrisy. From Ace:

Everyone who believes that she was seriously considering delaying marriage until “everyone could,” and believes she’s looking at her wedding as a “pro-active way to talk about same sex marriage among our friends and family,” rather than as Princess’ Special Day, please raise your hand.

And Amanda's completely twisted take on that sentence:

Ace of Spades comes right out and pretty much states that women, by definition, are shallow pieces of shit who don’t care about anything but showing off. Or that’s the conclusion I get from this. His only reason to believe that Jessica must be lying about her intentions is that she’s a woman, and all women want the same thing, and that’s to have Princess’ Special Day. I fail to see how this isn’t pure misogyny. All women are shallow bimbos who want to be tantrum-throwing Bridezillas, and women who don’t want that are just lying. I thought I was a cynic, but I have nothing on this sort of bleak view of humanity.

Of course, the reason Ace thinks Valenti is lying about her intention to turn her own wedding into a political statement about same sex marriage is that a person would be batshit crazy and completely tasteless to do such a thing, subjecting 200 of your closest friends and family to two hours of liberal whinging and then expecting a nice place setting from your bridal registration donation to your favorite leftwing cause for it. Only a pompous and narcissistic jerk would do such a thing, which is maybe why Amanda thinks it would be acceptable. Ace just pointed out that no normal person would do this. But a self-important, constantly lecturing feminist might.

It's often funny watching the lemon-sucking feminists argue about how horrible men are (both Amanda and her commenters make this statement in the comments thread to the post), then race to find one who will marry them. It's not that wanting to get married is a rotten thing. What's rotten is the hypocritical and self-righteous way Valenti and others behave as though their weddings--complete with smug lectures on favorite causes--are somehow morally superior to the Wedding Industry events they revile. Maybe if these "nonjudgmental" types were a little less, er, judgmental, they wouldn't get mocked so badly.

Pandagon Watch: With Democrats Running the Government, Why Are Pandagon's Panty Sniffers Obsessed with Michael Steele?

It's no secret that Pandagon hates all things Republican, but particularly black Republicans. That's why you could see the blood shooting out of Jesse Taylor's eyes when Michael Steele was named chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Like most liberals, Taylor's idea of a good put-down is to essentially call Steele a house negro (like we've never heard that one before), because everybody knows that no real black man would be independent enough to be a Republican. With so much creativity at work, why doesn't Taylor just call Steele an Oreo and get it overwith?

I mean, what's up with all the posts on Michael Steele (and that's just today)? Can the Pandagon "writers" not find another topic to cover (well, Michael Steele and The Watchmen). I mean, surely there's some news about those in charge of the government worth discussing.

Now, come on. Surely even Taylor or Amanda Marcotte could find something about Obama's foibles to write about. Maybe it could be his flip-flopping on earmarks? Or the fact that he's spending too much time marketing Teh One to run the government (and other people are noticing)? Perhaps they could take time out of Michael Steele Watch to discuss Obama's appointment problems. But, then again, that would probably take away from the time these bozos spend locking down their site ("Registration is now required!"). I'd say the behavior was disappointing if it weren't so typical.

This Pretty Much Sums Up the Problem with Amanda Marcotte's Arguments

From The Other McCain is a post with the wonderful title Silence of the Vagina Warriors, discussed the dearth of feminist blogging on the octuplet single mom:

There is exactly one narrative Amanda Marcotte is interested in, and because the octomom story doesn't confirm that narrative (indeed, it may be dispositive) then it is ignored as long as possible. When it cannot be ignored, throw some pretzel logic and fulminations about "choice" at it, then move on.

This is exactly what happened just before I was banned at Pandagon. If you recall, I asked Amanda, at the outbreak of Blagogate, why she hadn't made a single, solitary comment about the affair, given her amazing capacity for mockery when Republicans were caught in wrongdoing. Her answer boiled down to "You can't make me!", which is precisely what Robert S. McCain is saying.

And frankly, this is the problem with most leftwing blogs I visit. If the story fits their talking points, it gets splattered all over the blog. If it doesn't, the story doesn't exist. What? A woman with six kids and no husband goes and has eight more? No story there. If said woman had been married and the couple said they believed God was in charge of birth control, then Amanda would write post after post about the stupidity and misogyny of the people involved. Here, we just have a woman who either has a mental problem or is just selfish or shallow (thinking her story is worth millions).

That's not to say there haven't been any bloggers discussing the octuplets and their wayward mother. The argument tends to be that this couldn't have been her choice because no sane person would have chosen this. In other words, the woman is still a victim, but, in this case, she is perhaps a victim of either Teh Patriarchy, which has a Cult of Motherhood going, or of some mental illness. I don't know if she suffers from any mental problem or not, but this was still her choice to do this. No one made her.

But you won't see a discussion of this at Pandagon, or, probably, most other feminist sites. Because it doesn't fit the meme about female oppression.

Pandagon Watch: If They Only Had a Brain

That's the title of Jesse Taylor's post castigating Glenn and Helen Reynolds for having jobs with security and decent wages.

Jesse seems to think that such things are unavailable to the vast majority of people, but that's not true.

The fact that others don’t have the financial capability and planning capacity of Glenn and Helen Reynolds isn’t an indictment of everyone else’s ability to plan as much as it is an indictment of the fact that the kind of great jobs that let you plan like this aren’t readily available. I surely wish that the kind of jobs available in my hometown lent themselves to permanent guarantees of employment barring retirement or gross incompetence or unethical behavior. I wish that the kind of jobs generally available to people with high school, associates or bachelors degrees lent themselves to paying speaking engagements, subsidiary radio shows or publishing deals. I can’t help but think how great it would be if most of our jobs not only allowed us but were explicitly structured to allow us to pursue outside ventures in prominent and public ways, the nature of which may cause us to say things that our employers are uncomfortable with, but must accept. That jobs like these exist is great, because the people in them often provide vital scholarship and leadership to society.

Actually, jobs like that do exist for the rest of us, but most of us don't want to work in them. The median salary for a registered nurse (that is, a nurse with a bachelor's degree) is $61,603. No, that's not $200k, but it's far from poverty. And nurses have virtually guaranteed employment as long as they are not "grossly incompetent or unethical."

There are also air traffic controllers, who make a median $100,000, and aren't likely to be fired because of economic downturns.

I have family members in these fields, which is how I know about the marketability and job security of these career paths. But there are other similar jobs that make decent money with little instability.

Jesse's right, though. If you work at the mall or in an office, you probably don't have the same low turnover and higher salaries. But isn't that up to individuals to choose careers that suit both their aptitudes and their lifestyles?