Lorie Byrd has been a long-time blog friend of mine.  You guys probably know her from her blog, her Wizbang posts, and the articles she’s had published in major conservative online sites.

Back in 2008, Lorie started working for then-candidate Renee Ellmers, who has been one of the stalwarts of the Tea Party.  Ellmers won, and Lorie continues to work with her, helping to expand Ellmers’ — and, by extension, the Tea Party’s — presence in the blogosphere.

The entire Republican branch of the House has figured out that the internet is the new frontier, one in which it can get its message out without malevolent mediation from the mainstream media.  To that end, the Republican House members are competing in a New Media Challenge.  The point of the competition is to get Republican House members (and their staffers) excited about and involved in Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as ways to spread the conservative message.

The competition is now down to eight representatives, with Ellmers on the list.  You can feel free to support whomever you want, but I’m all out for Ellmers.  After all, my representative is the reprehensible Lynn Woolsey.  Here’s what you can do:

“Like” Rep. Ellmers on Facebook.

Subscribe to her on YouTube.

“Follow” her on Twitter.

Then, ask your friends to do the same.

For Lorie, this is both a personal mission and a part of her job description, so she aims to win.  Keep in mind, though, that all of us win if we can help lift Republican members of Congress into the 21st Century.  So please, take a minute, and like, subscribe, and follow!

Earl sent me a link to an article about the shameful corruption that characterizes Argentinian politics.  Earl included in his email a reference to the Perons, whose malevolent aura still hangs over the Argentinian political scene:

Argentina’s government has become a massive racketeering operation. The list of international swindles the government has committed entirely openly is nauseating. The Obama administration recently suspended Argentina’s privileged developing-nation status because of its refusal to pay any arbitral awards owed to U.S. companies. That was hot on the heels of Argentina’s nationalizing a Spanish-controlled oil company and then laughing publicly at the Spaniards’ claimed valuation — another brazen swindle.

What happens in Argentina matters because the government is stealing from the American pocket.  It also matters because it should make us think about government corruption.

We all know that power and money inevitably lead to corruption.  In some nations, however, that corruption is endemic, while in others, America included, it periodically erupts, only to be stifled by our pleasantly Puritan political morality.  Yes, it continues to exist as a low, buzzing background noise, but it is not what characterizes American government as a whole.  After all, we recovered from the scandals of the Harding administration, and George Bush did a good job of pulling back from the Clinton corruption abyss.

I do wonder, though, how deeply the Obama tentacles are going to spread into the American body politic.  He doesn’t just to garden-variety power and money corruption; he does hard-core Chicago-style corruption.  To Obama, dishonest is the nature of politics, not just a byproduct.

Nothing better illustrates Obama’s view than an anecdote culled from Edward Klein’s new (and unauthorized) biography about Obama, The Amateur. The Daily Mail summarizes this particular episode in Obama’s early political life (emphasis mine):

He also had a run-in with Steven Rogers, a wealthy businessman who became the Gund Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Early in his campaign for the U.S. Senate he gave Mr Obama $3,000 and arranged for thousands more dollars to be donated to him on one condition: he come and speak at the school when he got elected.

After becoming a Senator Mr Obama is said to have gone back on his offer because he was too busy and told Mr Rogers: ‘Come on man, you should know better when politicians make promises’.

In a furious tirade Mr Rogers screamed at him: ‘You’re a dirty rotten m*****f*****. What kind of s*** are you trying to pull? F*** you, you big-eared m*****f*****.’

A year later Mr Obama finally showed up but by then Mr Rogers’ had all but written him off as a friend.

(Thanks to PowerLine for highlighting this passage.)

Back in 2008, a compliant media may have convinced the American public that Obama was a blank slate of uninterrupted purity, but one of the things that’s become clear during his 3+ years in the White House is that Obama has no honor:  he will say anything to obtain a political or personal advantage.  He’s also surrounded himself with people who have exactly the same attitude.  They reserve a tight, Mafia-style loyalty for each other, and everyone else (including the American people as a whole) is treated with contempt, disdain and dishonesty.

We know what Obama is.  There are no more surprises, just ugly details.  But the important question is whether Obama will leave one more dirty mark on America, to go along with a damaged economy, massive debt, weakened national security, etc.  Will he have made corruption a permanent, inevitable, and pervasive part of American politics?

Yesterday, I wrote about European fairy tales versus American fairy tales.  Of the former, I said:

That’s the theme in the majority of fairy tales that originated in the old world:  be good, be passive, and some deus ex machina figure, usually magical, will come and rescue you.  Passivity is the name of the game.  In one fairy tale after another, the lead character, usually the youngest child of at least three siblings, prevails by virtue of being nice.

My own words popped into my head when I read David Pryce-Jones’ description of the way in which European leaders are coping with the EU’s economic collapse:

The level of unreality created by the masters of Europe is reaching new heights. It is like hallucinating to observe the politicians driving in expensive cars to meet one another, inspecting guards of honor, arranging for ministerial get-togethers, and all the while the construct that put them into office is collapsing all around them. These same politicians chatter extensively about saving the euro and the European Union, about bailouts and firewalls and fiscal pacts, as though words were deeds. No satirist could do justice to the sight of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and newly elected French President François Hollande shaking hands and vowing to work together to save the union and its currency. Insofar as this pair has any coherent ideas, they disagree. All they have in common is the precariousness of their position. Just trounced in local elections, Mrs. Merkel and her party are well on the way to joining the gathering crowd of electoral rejects. As for Hollande, he believes that growth comes from higher taxes and hundreds of thousands more state jobs, and all in arch-protectionist France. It can’t be long before such socialist illusion comes back to haunt that country.

Off they go, those little European fairy tale characters, being “nice” (leading parades, making speeches), all the while clearly hoping that some deus ex machina will come along and save them.  America actually did save them twice (three times if you count the Cold War as WWIII), but America now has a president who is also in thrall to the European fairy tale world view.  He’s waiting too.

Mitt Romney isn’t Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, or even Weems’ George Washington, but I think he has a much better grasp of the American fairy tale (stand tall and fight your own battles) than do the actual Europeans abroad or the faux European in the White House.

Here in California, faced with a devastating fiscal crisis, Gov. Brown is talking about cuts.  If I were in charge, I’d cut out whole departments and agencies because they’re inefficient, redundant, unnecessary, or entirely inappropriate uses of taxpayer funds. Or within departments, I’d simply do a “rip off the band-aid” approach and fire some employees entirely.  It would be painful, but the department would be pruned and the fired employees wouldn’t be in workplace limbo.  Instead, they could get on with their lives.

Gov. Brown, however, is going a different route, at least for some things.  Rather than get rid of entire departments or entire employees, he’s proposing cutting back on hours — and pay with it.  This means that a government office that was open five days a week will be open only four days a week.  Everyone working in that office will take a 20% pay cut.  That’s a big cut.

Two questions for you:  First, from the employee’s point of view, would you rather be laid off, making a clean break, or would you prefer to have a 20% pay cut in exchange for a much shorter work week?  Second, from the taxpayer’s point of view, do you think it’s better to get rid of whole programs or clumps of employees, or do you think it’s better to cut back on everything at once by shortening hours and pay?

UPDATE:  Here’s an email from someone with a personal insight into government employment:

May I suggest you consider one other little item?  Ask the employees what they think.  My wife works for the Cal State system ; they were confronted with something similar a few years ago.  The union was asked whether or not they’d like to accept fewer hours/lower pay or some number of layoffs (by seniority, of course).  They voted for the reduced hours by a fairly large margin.  Never came to fruition, but the peons seemed pretty well to know the right answer.

Remember, once you lay off all those folks, you just put them on the unemployment rolls for 99 weeks, then … Given our “business friendly” climate, what do you think will happen?

Something to consider.  State employees are human beings too.

State employees are definitely human beings, and I respect the ones who work hard and provide real services. Their views do matter, although I would never deny the government the right make raesonable and appropriate, albeit painful, cuts to the job roll.

$10 million huh?  No wonder he looks so happy:

I wonder when we’re going to see something like this outside the White House:

(Image by David Shankbone)

(Don’t worry. I was just joking. Like that’s going to happen.)

I love fairy tales.  I’ve always loved fairy tales.  Growing up, I devoured fairy tale books, with special emphasis on the Disney movies, with their beautiful princesses.  My personal favorite was Disney’s Cinderella.  I saw it once when I was a child and then, in a pre-video era, all I could do was replay endlessly in my memory the wonderful scene when Cinderella’s rags are transformed into a princess’s ball gown.  When I saw the movie again as an adult, I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but I needn’t have feared.  The movie was as charming as I’d remembered, and the transformation scene was a perfect piece of animation (and, rumor has it, Walt Disney’s own favorite animation moment):

The message in Cinderella couldn’t be more clear.  First, be beautiful.  But if you can’t achieve beauty, at least be a patient Griselda, one who tirelessly toils for cruel tyrants, with the promise of future reward.

That’s the theme in the majority of fairy tales that originated in the old world:  be good, be passive, and some deus ex machina figure, usually magical, will come and rescue you.  Passivity is the name of the game.  In one fairy tale after another, the lead character, usually the youngest child of at least three siblings, prevails by virtue of being nice.

The other way to prevail in fairy tales that started life in the old world was to use guile.  My favorite in this genre is The Valiant Little Tailor:

A tailor is preparing to eat some jam, but when flies settle on it, he kills seven of them with one blow. He makes a belt describing the deed, “Seven at one blow”. Inspired, he sets out into the world to seek his fortune. The tailor meets a giant, who assumes that “Seven at one blow” refers to seven men. The giant challenges the tailor. When the giant squeezes water from a boulder, the tailor squeezes water (or whey) from cheese. The giant throws a rock far into the air, and it eventually lands. The tailor counters the feat by releasing a bird that flies away; the giant believes the small bird is a “rock” which is thrown so far that it never lands. The giant asks the tailor to help carry a tree. The tailor directs the giant to carry the trunk, while the tailor will carry the branches. Instead, the tailor climbs on, so the giant carries him as well.

The giant brings the tailor to the giant’s home, where other giants live as well. During the night, the giant attempts to kill the man. However, the tailor, having found the bed too large, sleeps in the corner. On seeing him still alive, the other giants flee, never to be seen again.

The tailor enters the royal service, but the other soldiers are afraid that he will lose his temper someday, and then seven of them might die with every blow. They tell the king that either the tailor leaves military service, or they will. Afraid of being killed for sending him away, the king instead sends the tailor to defeat two giants, offering him half his kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage. By throwing rocks at the two giants while they sleep, the tailor provokes the pair into fighting each other. The king then sends him after a unicorn, but the tailor traps it by standing before a tree, so that when the unicorn charges, he steps aside and it drives its horn into the trunk. The king subsequently sends him after a wild boar, but the tailor traps it in a chapel.

With that, the king marries him to his daughter. His wife hears him talking in his sleep and realizes that he is merely a tailor. Her father the king promises to have him carried off. A squire warns the tailor, who pretends to be asleep and calls out that he has done all these deeds and is not afraid of the men behind the door. Terrified, they leave, and the king does not try again.

Old world fairy tales do not feature epic battles of good against evil, or even minor battles of good against evil.  They abandon the heroic tradition of Greek dramas or even the mighty warriors of the Bible.  Instead, they present a world of little people who prevail because of good deeds or guile.

Different scholars have theorized that fairy tales originated to keep children in line (hence the emphasis on passivity and good house-cleaning skills as the way to achieve worldly success) or as fireside stories, often quite ribald, that peasants told each other during long, dark nights (explaining the tales that featured otherwise insignificant people prevailing through stealth and guile).  Regardless of origin, the net result is a genre that instructs children that assertiveness and self-reliance are much less important than submitting to tyranny with good grace and being sneaky when possible.

American-born fairy tales are vastly different.  Of course, I use the phrase “American-born” advisedly.  Because America is a nation of immigrants, we imported our fairy tales too, which explains why every American child is conversant with Cinderella, Snow White, and Aladdin.  Nevertheless, Americans did create their own canon.

To begin with, American children dined on political hagiographies of our first leaders, with Parson Weems’ delightful, and untrue, stories about Washington leading the pack.  These tales focused on distinctly American virtues:  being honest, straightforward, and physically brave, virtues that are the antithesis of the trickery or downtrodden apathy in European tales.

American tales also dreamed big.  We had the imaginary Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Pecos Bill, whose size or energy literally changed the landscape in which they lived.  Real figures, such as Johnny Appleseed or Davy Crockett had their actual exploits mixed with a large dollop of artistic license, and these tales opened up the West for Americans.  Popular literature imagined dynamic, self-confident young people who made their own way in the world.  They had help, but it wasn’t magical.  Instead, it came from people who were attracted to the hero or heroines can-do spirit and gave them a helping hand.  (Louisa May Alcott and Horatio Alger were masters of this genre.)

That notion of the pushing, striving, dynamic American hero got a spectacular boost when Hollywood came into being.  Old Hollywood quickly discovered that American audiences craved big stories, with big heroes.  Western movies impressed upon Americans that America’s fictional heroes didn’t succeed because they sat around waiting for magic to appear; they succeeded because they blazed trails, fought battles, civilized the wilderness, and generally took control of their own destinies.

World War II movies also emphasized Americans’ fighting spirit.  We didn’t have endless movies about our victimization at Pearl Harbor.  Instead, movie after movie celebrated America’s fighting spirit, both at home and on the battlefield.  We had an enemy, said Hollywood, and we valiantly met in on the field of battle.

In the 1970s, Hollywood started feeling terribly guilty about the cultural imperialism in these tales and came up with the anti-hero.  That played well to a guilty middle class, but was never a dramatic trope that had legs.  The anti-hero works only if he acts . . . heroically.  Americans want the little guy to win because he’s got guts.  The artsy crowd may enjoy a Dog Day Afternoon, but ordinary Americans want to see little ole Luke Skywalker take on the empire, intrepid Indiana Jones fight bad guys the world over, or (with a big thank you to the British woman who dreamed him up) Harry Potter and Co. face off squarely against evil, and win through a combination of virtue and martial skills (all nicely packaged in some sparkly magic gimmicks).

The recent staggering success of The Avengers is just one more indication that Americans want their fairy tales to be proactive.  The characters in The Avengers are pretty (it is Hollywood after all), but their attractiveness — an attractiveness that has generated a staggering $1 billion in ticket sales — comes about because they are strong and aggressive.  They defeat the evil alien force by rock ‘em, sock ‘em, beat ‘em up action.  There is no room for negotiation, house cleaning, or even guile here.  The only “goodness” that counts is one that is folded tightly into loyalty, patriotism, and physical bravery.

The Left is busily trying to chip away at these classic American virtues.  Leftist movies have failed at the box office, but the Leftist challenge to the American virtues of physical bravery can be seen in the Left’s wholeheartedly embrace of the anti-bullying campaign.  Many have asked why bullying has seemed to be on the rise in recent years.  I think I figured out the answer when, in a casual conversation with my kids, I mentioned “school-yard fights.”

I got a surprising response to that throw-away line:  “What’s a school-yard fight, Mom?”

“In the old days,” I said (just like a fairy tale), “when kids, especially boys, would get into fights, they started hitting each other.”

“Did they get suspended?”

“Maybe.  But what usually happened was that they’d start swinging at each other.  Everyone in the school yard would instantly circle them and start hollering ‘Fight!  Fight!’  Then, a teacher would wade through the crowd, saying ‘Come on, everyone, break it up.  Break it up now.’  The teacher would then wade into the fight, separate the two kids, shake ‘em out and, more often than not, tell them to stop fighting.  And that would be the end of it.”

“That would never happen today.”

(Incidentally, I am not talking about gang fights, which are a form of urban warfare.  I’m talking about the old-fashioned elementary school playground battle, where two little kids settled the matter with some kicks and punches.)

No, it certainly wouldn’t.  The focus today is on the bully.  The bully gets suspended and the bully gets counseling.  Kids are told that, if they get bullied, they should immediately get teachers involved.  Good kids know that any type of self-defense is dangerous, as it could lead to suspension.

I hate bullying.  I was bullied when I was a child and, I’m sad to say, when I had the opportunity, I immediately turned around and bullied others (verbally).  I had a sharp tongue and wasn’t afraid to use it.  But that sharp tongue was my self-defense.  A well-timed insult, especially one that raised a laugh from the audience, deflected the bully and kept me safe.  I never ran to the teacher.  I got a reputation for being somewhat mean (which was partially deserved), but people left me alone.  Had I been a boy, I might have punched someone and been left alone.

My point is that the best way to deal with bullying is two-pronged:  First, create an environment in which bullying is frowned upon and mutual respect is the order of the day.  This starts at the top, with teachers and administrators.  In too many schools, however, teachers and administrations treat students with condescension, disdain, arrogance, or fear.  Second, teach the victims how not to be victims.  If you take away the targets, you take away a lot of the bullying.  If students see themselves as warriors, not victims, bullying will become a much less enticing activity for those who are naturally inclined to dominate cruelly those around them.

I can already hear people saying that, if you emphasize the warrior spirit, our schools will start looking like a gladiator camp.  Au contraire.  If you emphasize brutality, that’s true.  But if you emphasize the honorable side of the warrior, one that sees him respecting widows and orphans (so to speak), our schools will actually be much more civil than they are now.  I’ve never known nicer kids than those who are martial arts black belts.  They have a quiet self-confidence about them, that makes it unnecessary for them to lash out.  Moreover, their peers respect them, and feel no need to test them.

It times to take the European Leftism out of our fairy tales, and reinstate an American ideal that involves honor, strength, and the willingness to fight for what’s right.

I can’t find a permalink, so you might have to hurry to catch this one.  Over at National Review, in the “Slideshow” section (home page, middle column, about half-way down), the editors have collected a series of media images showing Obama with a halo.  I found it a fascinating visual reminder of the way in which our ostensibly “free” press has chained itself to the role Obama’s hagiographer.

Women have been responsible for some pretty bad presidents.  Warren Harding leaps most easily to mind, since his was the first presidential election in which women participated, but women were also water carriers for JFK and Bill Clinton.

The Barack Obama campaign clearly hoped to capitalize on women’s bad habit of voting for bad boys, so they offered women (1) free birth control, (2) the charmingly helpless Julia, (3) stunningly stupid attacks against Ann Romney; and (4) the pithy claim that Republicans (and Romney) are waging a “War Against Women.”  If you live in a liberal bubble, this seems like a very good tactic.

Sadly for the Obamites, what looks good on Dem party paper doesn’t necessarily work in real life.  In real life, women have children, and they worry about those children.  That worry trumps their concerns about birth control or silly wars on women or gay marriage.  And that concern focuses on two things:  a strong economy, so that women can raise healthy, happy children who go on the a good life; and a safe world in which those same children will thrive.  Funnily enough, when the soccer Moms, and working Moms, and la crosse Moms, and football Moms, and harassed Moms, and happy Moms look at these serious, rather than superficial concerns, one candidate floats to the top — and it ain’t Barry:

After months of manufactured “GOP War on Women” silliness, a new CBS/NYT poll (!) finds Romney leading Obama 46-44% among woman voters. Mind you, that isn’t GOP woman or even independent women, but ALL women voters.

More importantly, today’s poll finds a notable shift among women in just the last month. In April, Obama was leading Romney by 6% among women. No other group saw an 8 point shift in their support.

Turns out women’s top concern is the same as men’s: The Economy. All the contrived outrage about contraceptives and women’s health can’t mask the fact that 73% of voters listed either the economy or the federal deficit as their number on issue.

I feel vindicated.  Last week, I wrote that Barry is the Eddie Haskell of politics.  He’s a bad boy, who seems like fun, until he gets you in trouble.  Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is this election’s Ward Cleaver.  He’s the voice of reason, the protector, and the bread winner.  The girls in the political world know a good provider when they see one — and, more importantly, they understand that this “providing” doesn’t mean selective government handouts that slowly but surely eat away at the nation in which their children are born but, instead, means a stable, healthy economy that gives opportunity to all.

[Gotta run, so this is "dictated, but not read."  My apologies for typos.]

I had the opportunity the other night to see a first run movie and I ran out the door so fast, I forgot my jacket.  The movie was the smash hit The Avengers.  Of the predicate movies that introduce the various characters, I’ve seen only the first Iron Man, so it took me about 3 minutes to figure out who and what the characters were.  After that little cognitive exercise, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

The Avengers is a supremely silly movie.  I like that in a movie.  It’s not pretentious but, instead, feels true to its comic book roots.  The characters are pretty to look at, the explosions impressive, and the plot hung together, if only by a string.  There were the predictable laughs from unexpected confrontations that have been present in every adventure movie since the first Indiana Jones.  (Old Hollywood took its action movies much more seriously than new Hollywood does.)

My complaints?  A few.  The movie was way too loud, although that may have been because I saw it in a movie theater that had a special sound system installed at George Lucas’ behest for the first movie in the new Star Wars trilogy.  (Ah, life in Marin!)  I also didn’t like the fact that the action scenes were rendered so fast (and I use “rendered” in the sense of computer digitization) that one often had no idea what was going on.  I prefer a more lovingly filmed fight.  Finally, there were scenes at the end that were too reminiscent of 9/11 and they made me uncomfortable.

What I did like?  I liked that Captain America (Chris Evans) was a good guy:  he wore the stars and stripes, and he was the embodiment of honor and old-fashioned common sense.  That’s so rare in a movie it was downright refreshing.  As always, Robert Downey, Jr. was delightfully snarky.  As you know, I’m a snark aficionado, periodically practicing the art myself.  The actor playing Thor (Chris Hemsworth) was pretty, delighting the teenage girls.  Mark Ruffalo — well, I’ve never understood why the guy is famous, so let’s leave it at that.  Scarlett Johansson doesn’t work as a red head.  That’s not just my feeling.  A car full of teenage girls was loud and clear in its disdain for her color makeover.

If you feel like spending $14.00 for two hours of silly fun (plus 15-20 minutes of periodically amusing previews), this may be your movie.

Annals of motherhood, through the ages….

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi:  The exemplar of Roman motherhood who, when quizzed by fellow Roman matrons over her simple dress, unlike their ostentatious attire asked to show her wealth, pointed to her sons and said “These are my jewels.”

Ann Romney:  Mother of five, grandmother of eighteen, breast cancer survivor, and wife of the probable Republican candidate for president, writing about Mother’s Day, says that no matter the money roles women play in today’s society (often simultaneously), “one hat that moms never take off is the crown of motherhood.  There is no crown more glorious.”

Michelle Goldberg, MSNBC commentator, opining about Ann Romney’s view of motherhood:  “I found that phrase ‘the crown of motherhood’ really kind of creepy, not just because of its, like, somewhat you know, I mean, it’s kind of usually really authoritarian societies that give out like ‘The Cross of Motherhood,’ that give awards for big families. You know, Stalin did it, Hitler did it.”

Note to Goldberg:  There is a difference between a mother talking proudly of her contribution to society, and a totalitarian government that ran high class brothels to propagate the Aryan race.  Just sayin’….

As for me, I am truly grateful for women like Michelle Goldberg.  They represent the reductio ad absurdum of Leftist thought, the true purity of an ideology hostile to traditional American values, and as such we should be very pleased that they are willing and able to speak their minds to the American public.

For news about another Michelle, check out this PowerLine post regarding questions conservatives are asking the First Lady.  (Funnily enough, she’s not answering.)