Overnight Open Thread (6-15-2015)

Quote of the Day I

I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.

-- PJ O'Rourke

Quote of the Day II

So it goes with healthy foods. In the food-stamp heavy districts of urban America, stories carry potato chips and tons of other read-to-eat foods, but no actual potatoes, carrots, or green leafy substances that are not smoked.

That is because stores are not museums. They stock the things people buy. Food stamp recipients buy junk food over healthy food.

-- Don Surber on 'Food Deserts'

Jonah Goldberg on the Gender Fluidity Clown Show

It is one thing to have a cultural argument about cultural institutions, including language. But you venture into a kind of totalitarianism when you insist that facts be bent to, or erased by, ideology as well. (The use of abracadabra words to change reality was hardly created by gender activists. Remember when the editors of Social Text believed that quantum physics was just a social construction? Remember when Arthur had Merlin change his appearance so he could lie with another man's wife?)

That only biologically female humans can get pregnant and give birth to babies is true no matter how inconvenient it may be. If that fact hurts someone's feelings, that's unfortunate. But that's no reason to change the language to fuzz-up the facts.

This points to one of the things that grates on me about all of this foofaraw. We are tearing down cultural institutions, rewriting language, and demonizing religion for the benefit of a remarkably small number of people. 

...I'll say it again: Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war. The only shocking thing about that statement is that it ever shocks liberals. On their own terms, they take pride in being "change agents" and "forces of progress." But the moment anyone attempts to defend themselves against the social-justice warriors, they are treated as the aggressors in the culture war. "Don't impose your values on me!" should be translated as, "Stop trying to defend yourself as we impose our values on you!"

And Just How Many Transgendered People Are There Actually in the US?

Jonathon Last takes a look at census data rather than the lies and exaggerations put out by activists and comes up with a number somewhere between 21,000 and 89,000. To put that in perspective the number of transgendered people in America is on par with the number of people born with extra thumbs every year, the number of practicing Druids, and the number of people who've ever won $100K or more in the lottery i.e. a very, very small minority.

Lee Siegel: Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans

Short version: As a Writer-Artist he was simply too good to sully himself with kinds of paying jobs that the Normals accept. So he stole an education from the government. And he's still better than you and also a moral hero.

Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn't want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school. Or I could take what I had been led to believe was both the morally and legally reprehensible step of defaulting on my student loans, which was the only way I could survive without wasting my life in a job that had nothing to do with my particular usefulness to society.

I chose life. That is to say, I defaulted on my student loans

...Maybe the problem was that I had reached beyond my lower-middle-class origins and taken out loans to attend a small private college to begin with. Maybe I should have stayed at a store called The Wild Pair, where I once had a nice stable job selling shoes after dropping out of the state college because I thought I deserved better, and naïvely tried to turn myself into a professional reader and writer on my own, without a college degree. I'd probably be district manager by now.

Or maybe, after going back to school, I should have gone into finance, or some other lucrative career. Self-disgust and lifelong unhappiness, destroying a precious young life - all this is a small price to pay for meeting your student loan obligations.

Note that Siegel took out his loans in the late 70s so it's bit much to blame them on tuition inflation of the last twenty years.

And if his name sounds familiar, it's because he's the Writer-Artist of such works as Memo to the South: Go Ahead, Secede Already!. Thank God he didn't waste that talent as a district manager of something in bumf*ckville.

Also Patterico rebuts sock puppeteer Siegel and Vice explains What Would Happen if I Just Stopped Paying My Student Loans.

Melissa Harris-Perry on Rachel Dolezal: 'It Is Possible That She Might Actually Be Black?'

Al Sharpton: Shame on Rachel Dolezal's Parents!

Jazz Shaw: Okay, let's do this. If Jenner can be a woman, why can't Dolezal be black?

The left is busy coming up with reasons why the two cases are completely different but they're not. If we must accept Bruce Jenner as woman simply because he feels himself to be one regardless of genetics and physical appearance, then Dolezal must be accepted as black by the same rules. In fact then anyone can be black at any time if they think they are. So I encourage all #WrongSkin asian students to start applying to colleges as the poor black students they are inside. And me: well today I self-identify as a Mayan octaroon. So respect my peoples' struggles.

Comet Lander Philae Wakes Up From 7-Month Hibernation

After a rough landing its batteries have slowly charged up enough for it to resume communication. No word if anyone wearing a bad shirt of wrong images was involved in the act or made to cry.

 

Soccer Mom vs. MMA Fighter

Advantage: Having any experience whatsoever.

Woman Killed by Wedding Celebratory Gunfire....in France

WHO Asks People to Stop Drinking Camel Urine Until MERS is Contained

Seems like a reasonable request.

And my twitter thang.

Tonight's post brought to you by dumb but clever:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Queen to queen's level 3. Respond.

posted by Maetenloch at 10:26 PM

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