Seems there are many ways to celebrity these days.  There are a few consistent themes, however:

1. You must be ridiculously talented
2. You must be ridiculously stupid
3. You must be ridiculously beautiful

Pick two.

For starters, there’s Tiger Woods.  He fits the bill of a 1-2 celebrity — very talented, but unbelievably stupid.  I’m still unsure of how, exactly, one marries a Swedish supermodel; and renegs on his vows with…well, what appears to be pretty much anybody who was physically equipped, willing and immediately available.  Ordinary stupidity would be just cheating on your wife (whoever she is) with another woman (of any degree of beauty).  What Tiger did…that’s not just dumb, that’s Carrot-Top-Meets-Wile-E-Coyote-Meets-Napoleon-Dynamite dumb.

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And now for something completely different.

I am hardly the first to write about this subject, but I’ve had this subject rolling around in my head for a few weeks now…I want to talk with you (hopefully in the comments) about the collectivist philosophy of the Left.  Specifically, I want to talk to you about the difference in public treatment of collectivists who have moral failings (think Bill Clinton, for example; or possibly Eliot Spitzer for a more recent example), and the public treatment of conservatives who have moral failings (Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, John Ensign, etcetera).

It seems to me that the public, conservatives and others, all condemn the moral failings of conservatives.  This could possibly be seen as a hatred of hypocrisy; certainly it is difficult to defend the immoral actions of a man who has a long public record of advocating morality.  Can any of us really blame the non-conservative, then, for at least noting the failure of a conservative to live up to his own standard?

I mean that rhetorically of course; we all note that failure as a matter of course, and I don’t think we could legitimately deny non-conservatives that ability.  But is it a failure of the standard, or of the standard-bearer?  Does the failure of a conservative individual mean that conservatism itself has failed?  Does it mean that conservatism is a bogus standard?  Should we not have conservatism as a goal, even though it is difficult to reach?

I think of what Tom Landry used to say to the press: Winning isn’t everything.  It’s the only thing.

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But what else is new?

One of my favorite things to do in the blogosphere is fisking idiotic posts.  I’m bored, it’s snowing, I’ve actually played a full game of Monopoly with my little brother…he won, but we finished.  So I went looking for something fun to fisk on the DailyKos.

This is a bit old, but DUDE.  It’s past the make-me-angry stage, and well into the holy-crap-even-Olbermann-is-smarter range!  LET THE FISKOGRAPHY BEGIN!

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I have an idea so crazy, it just might work.

I see that our lovely socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is offering an amendment to the health-insurance bill that would change the whole bill to a single-payer bill.  So here’s the gist of my totally crazy, probably-won’t-actually-work, Senatorial jiu-jitsu idea:

Get ten hardcore Red-State Senators to actually vote this crap into the bill.

I told you it was nuts

Now, here’s why:  The red-state Democrats can’t vote for that in final passage.  They just can’t, they’ll get crucified for it, and they all know it.  No Republican, not even Olympia Snowe could vote for final passage on that bill.  So what does that mean?

It means that if Sanders’ crackpot scheme actually made it into the bill, it’s DOA.  The whole thing is toast.  And that’s what we want.

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So Saith The One.  So let it be written, so let it be done.

I’m being overdramatic, but this kinda ticks me off.

If you don’t have the time or are too lazy to click the link to find out exactly what’s on the other side, here’s the gist of what happened at today’s Jobs Summit:  The President walked into a room full of officials and stated:

“The tension we’ve been seeing is that what is good for the longer term may not work as an immediate short-term stimulus. We’re still getting slapped around in the Recovery Act for this,” Obama said. “The term ‘shovel-ready’ — let’s be honest, it doesn’t always live up to its billing.”

You THINK?!

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Chris Matthews is well known for his movie references — at times, they can be interminable.  Before his Gone With The Wind reference last night, he most recently compared Rush Limbaugh to Bond villain Mr. Big, wishing someone would “jam a CO2 pellet in his head[...].”

I’m a bit of a movie buff myself, as it happens; and I happen to be very pro-military.  So here are some movie references for Chris the Wide-Mouth Frog.

First up, my favorite war movie: Saving Private Ryan.  I’ve already written a lot about this for Veterans Day, so I won’t bother to rehash the whole movie.  But I would point out that Chris Matthews’ enemy is all through this clip.

Did you see him, right there at the end, grab Private Ryan by the shirt?  Did you hear him, Matthews’ enemy, demand that Private Ryan live a life worthy of his sacrifice?

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I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the theorizing of a guy who thinks the Republican party should shrink (kick out the conservatives) to grow.  That said, Frum didn’t write this; and if the following is even partially true, the White House deserves to get burned at the political stake for this.

Sean Linnane writes on the FrumForum.com:

Earlier this week, news broke that three Navy SEALs were charged and may be court-martialed for allegedly punching a prisoner.  The prisoner, a high-value target (HVT) was turned over to authorities with a bloody lip.

According to a source of mine — a retired SEAL who like myself still serves in other capacities — the feeling going around the Special Operations community at Fort Bragg is that this latest development is a kneejerk reaction to the situation a couple months ago when SEAL operators rescued Captain Phillips – Captain of the Maersk Alabama – off the coast of Somalia.

[snip]

So the word on the street is that this latest development is payback for the SEALs violating the ROE in rescuing the captain of the Maersk Alabama. The Chain of Command is asserting itself, letting everybody know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t follow orders.

Holy crap on a stick.

That has got to be the most craptacular reason for a court-martial ever created; and if it’s even slightly true, I hope it nukes Rahm Emanuel’s career.

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I’ve been watching the media reaction to these White House party-crashing morons with growing irritation.  Here’s why.

These crackpots, who were not on the guest list, were allowed within a hair’s breadth of the President of the United States.  Before this, nobody outside of Faulkier County, VA knew who they were — or cared.  These people, who it appears are slightly less nuts than Balloon Boy’s parents, were able to penetrate Secret Service-run security AT. THE. WHITE HOUSE.

While the President was THERE.

There are dinner knives on the table; pencils don’t set off the metal detectors; al-Qaeda has proven that they can sneak a bomb through high-security checkpoints (it involves plastic explosives and a container known as a “charger”, inserted into the rectal cavity); biological and chemical agents don’t set off the metal detectors either.  Heck, a necktie and a quick movement, people, can kill a man.  Dear lord, I don’t want that to happen.

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I may have seen this suggested here before, but for the life of me I can’t find it.  So if you front-pagers read this, please know I’m not plagarizing intentionally…

We need a plan in place for when we take back Congress.  It’s not enough just to elect conservatives like Marco Rubio, Bob McDonnell, and Jim DeMint.  To take back Congress, we are also going to have to put up with the occasional Mark Kirk and Mike Castle — it’s not as if we can keep them from running, can we?  And they have their place as well – just make sure they get in the right place, that’s the trick.

Here’s what I mean.  If you’re like me, you want Roe v. Wade overturned.  If you’re like me, you want to go a step further, and start chipping away at the foundation for Roe, a decision called Griswold v. Connecticut. The penumbra argument started there, and real progress can only be made in this arena if we start attacking the cornerstones of statism.  So how do we do that sort of thing?

Make sure the Kirks and Castles of the world stay off the Senate Judiciary committee.  Stack Judiciary with DeMints, and we start getting some Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases again.

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…about the military.

I hesitated for about four milliseconds before starting to write this.  You’d think that it would be an unpopular decision to attack Glenn Beck on Redstate.com — it seems a bit out of place.  But he’s gone too far this time, and he needs to be called on it.

Glenn Beck thinks his nephew shouldn’t re-enlist.  By extension, I shouldn’t enlist.  Here’s the video:

Apparently, he thinks that since our Commander in Chief is more concerned with where his next photo-op will be (and how good we military types look in said photo-ops) than with how, exactly, he plans to win the war in Afghanistan, that America is unworthy of my service.

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