Casuistry

1. 85 home runs ago

Jose Bautista spent years playing baseball and consistently had trouble catching up with a 90+ mph fastball. It's odd how something will connect with a person. Like a key or a trigger. A catalyst.

QOTD

"You know what you should do. Think about starting as early as you can possibly imagine, so early that it seems ridiculous. And then start even earlier than that. What do you have to lose? If you look like a fool, you look like a fool. It's just one game."
- Bonzi Wells, batting advice to Jose Bautista, SI story

Since teammate Bonzi's advice, Joey Bats has hit 85 home runs and been the best hitter in baseball for nearly two years now. And he's the starting 3B for my first-place Naperville Oriole, thank you very much.

2. The Obama deficit

Repeat after me. We do not have a tax/revenue problem in our country. We have a spending problem. Revenues have dipped only slightly, yet fed spending has surged higher by more than a trillion dollars under President Obama. The Obama deficit.

ibd - The Dems unbalanced debt plan

I wish this simple message were penetrating the Bill media bubble, but it is not. We are suffering through the Obama deficit. The Obama deficit. The Obama deficit. We should be tired of hearing about the $1 trillion increase in fed spending under (you guessed it) the Obama deficit.

Fed revenues are not down significantly. Fed spending has skyrocketed from less than 20% of GDP to 25% of GDP. The Obama deficit will get even worse as Obamacare kicks in. And I shouldn't have to mention, but I will. How much more would have been spent if the feds had more tax money to spend? I posit it is logical to deduce from past behavior that more money available would have led to even greater deficits, not less.

3. Guilty pleasure
Book: "The Secret Knowledge" by David Mamet
Review: 4 bill-stars (out of 5)... very good!
Goodreads link: www.goodreads.com/review/show/180621202

QOTD

"And we have become a nation of noodges."
- David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge"

Lordy, my vocabulary sucks:

• casuistry: The use of clever but unsound reasoning, esp. in relation to moral questions; sophistry
• noodge: A pest of whiner
• risible: Such as to provoke laughter
• depredation: An act of attacking or plundering
• effluvia: An unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion, or discharge 
• agitprop: Political (originally communist) propaganda, esp. in art or literature
• inchoate: Just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary
• doyenne: A woman who is the most respected or prominent person in a particular field
• condign: (of punishment or retribution) Appropriate to the crime or wrongdoing; fitting and deserved
• Jacobin: An extreme political radical
• proprioceptive: Relating to stimuli that are produced and perceived within an organism, esp. those connected with the position and movement of the body
• phrenologist: someone who claims to be able to read your character from the shape of your skull
• cavil: Make petty or unnecessary objections
• ineradicable: Unable to be destroyed or removed
• incommoded: Inconvenience (someone)
• jejune: Naive, simplistic, and superficial
• aperçu: A comment or brief reference that makes an illuminating or entertaining point

David Mamet is one of my all-time fave screenwriters (imdb). Mamet was a hardcore NYNY Jewish  leftie who has been transformed, upon reflection and experience, into a rightie. He transformation began by yelling at the whiny, monotone, droning NPR voice on his radio to "Shut the fuck up!" (williamt post)

I wish Mamet had more personal stories in there. His philosophy is wonderful and well considered, but the book shines brightest when he presents a philosophy through his personal anecdotes, like his interactions with college students.


I haven't bought many rightie books. It's seems kind of, um, jejune (he he!) to read a book that you know will support your opinion. It's like lefties watching MSNBC as if it were a news broadcast or something. So, please consider my Mamet read a guilty pleasure, as I do.

It was actually uncomfortable to hear a true salesman, a true performer, pitching the politics that I believe in. David Mamet provides the one-two punch: 1) he is extremely passionate about his (rightie) beliefs, and 2) he is such a creative genius that he is able to deliver his passion full on, with no pause, no herky-jerky awkwardness. I am used being represented by a stuttering W or big ole Chris Christie sweating at the microphone; Mamet's polish is unsettling.

The content of Mamet's book is rightie doctrine. I won't summarize. It's outstanding from start to finish. His writing is the very definition of compelling and elegant. What is Mamet's "secret knowledge" of the title? There are no "beneficent experts", so beloved by lefties, to run our government, our economy, our health care, our environment, etc. In Mamet's dictionary, President Obama's likeness is side-by-side with the definition of "beneficent experts". I agree with Mamet on beneficent experts, though I prefer a more colloquial approach: There is no Daddy!

This book is very strident, but I empathize with Mamet in his presentation. His experience with lefties has been different from mine (and probably yours). He was so immersed in leftie culture and has felt its full brunt upon even questioning his leftie comrades (he he). He has been branded racist, misogynist, Zionist and more. The left does not suffer being questioned, especially by one of its own.

Oddly, I connected with this simple quote.

QOTD

"Culture will beat organization every time."
- shop floor sign at Chrysler Motors from "The Secret Knowledge"

Why is America the greatest of nations? Our culture. Our way. Mamet makes this point over and over again. Our uniquely American culture of freedom and opportunity and rugged individualism is the key. Yet this American culture is currently being tested and perverted by the left and it's an attack, can you believe it, is led by a part-time college professor who's never had a 9-to-5 job or made a payroll in his life. Sounds like a David Mamet script or something.
yow, bill