Comment about the police action in Uvalde

 How in the hell can anyone stand outside of the school while hearing gunshots coming from a classroom full of kids and not do SOMETHING.

If you're a cop and you have a gun, you damn well better beat down that door after the first shot.

If there is no shooting, I get it...maybe a hostage situation.

But once a shot is fired you go.

I understand that law enforcement officers are not obligated to risk their lives to protect anyone.

If true, that's even more reason to own a gun ad learn how to use it.

Start thinking of the police as revenue generators for your town/city and that would be an accurate job description.

They carry guns to protect themselves. You? Not so much...

The liberals have demonized and feminized law enforcement at every turn, and this is the result.

Funny comment at Althouse on the NY Times

It must be really frustrating, being Dean Baquet.

First you and the people working for you report fairly and honestly on Donald Trump, pointing out that he is a three-headed demon from Hell who eats Mexican babies for breakfast and made his fortune trading slaves. And he attacks you as brazen partisan hacks. Then, you and the people working for you report fairly and honestly on Hillary Clinton, pointing out that she seldom walks on water before Noon, and many of the people she has raised from the dead still lack adequate housing. And Donald Trump attacks you as brazen partisan hacks. You just can't win with this guy!

What is a socialist?

Browsing Ann Althouse's blog I ran across a comment that is good.

Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and George Bernard Shaw all claimed to be socialists — yet the only thing these men had in common was a visceral dislike of certain hats. There's an interesting bit of film of newly-appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler walking to the Reichstag to be officially installed. Protocol required formal attire for the occasion, including a silk hat. However the self-identified socialist (I love that term, don't you? Self-identified, it means instant authenticity even if self-identifier is a total fraud.) knew his fellow socialist hated toppers, so he carried it instead of wearing it.

Anybody who isn't fundamentally stupid knows that socialism is a word without meaning. It's just virtue signaling. It's alleged opposite, capitalism, is also a meaningless word invented by socialists (two of them, actually) as a means to define an enemy. And yet a sizable majority of humanities professors self-identify as socialists, which ought to tell you something about the state of higher education in this country. Effectively a socialist is somebody who wants everything you've got — your money, your property, but especially your autonomy. A capitalist just wants your money, and in order to get it, is willing to trade something of his for it, which distinguishes the capitalist from a common thief, but not always. There are lots of different flavors of socialism, however the differences just boil down to at what level the guns come out. Many socialists try to bore you into submission — Surrender your liberty, neo-colonist scum, or dangerous tedium will ensue! — others just start shooting immediately.

Banned by Althouse

Ann Althouse is a blogger and teaches law at the University of Wisconsin.  She's an interesting personality and is somewhere to the right of Kim Jong-un. But she is of that particularly self-referential breed of that fell for the Cult of Obama in 2008. Her other characteristic is to present herself as "above the fray" treating her readers like students and nudging them to the "right" answer.

The interest I had in her blog was the community of commentators she attracted. I'll still go there but I'm afraid that something I said got me blocked.

I'll have to learn to live with that.

Ann Althouse thinks we're imagining what's happening on the campus

Ann Althouse is a college professor who runs an eponymous blog.  She recently blogged about a Chinese professor at Vassar, Hua Hsu, who believes: 

“there is a naïve idealism at the heart of student protest, which might be desperate or loud but never as cynical as the world that necessitated it."  

She goes on to say: 

“I — who went to college in 1969 — think they are a lot less weird than we were. But if you think they are weird — entitled, oversensitive, whatever — you should look to your own mind and ask why it has created the character you believe in:”

She's saying that we've created imaginary students based on an unrepresentative sample and amplified by the media.  Perhaps, but the things that have been reported are not isolated instances.  Mizzou's disruption ws based on lies but was followed by other campus disruptions across the country.  I believe in introspection, but I suggest that Ann is not introspective enough.  No, the students that have gotten our attention are not weird; they’re the product of a certain culture.  Ann’s culture perhaps.   I don’t really know her outside of her blog.  I don’t know what weird things she did and don’t particularly want to know.  For all I know she “entertained” the football team,  mainlined heroin and burned down the chemistry lab.    

But she’s asking the wrong question.  I’m surprised that the students are not more weird.  Some kids will always experiment and test their boundaries while others, like me, were grateful for the opportunity to get academic scholarships, attend college and have an opportunity to have a better life than their parents.  I recall that it was the kids whose parents were “comfortable” or well-to-do who came back to lecture us about protesting and “finding ourselves.”  “Finding themselves” was a luxury for the rich, the rest of us wanted to get a degree in science or engineering because that was the route to a job that did not involve assembly lines in a muffler factory.   So we listened to the rich bitches and mentally told them to fuck off because our daddy didn’t have the money to pave the path to the middle class like theirs did.    

The difference between then and now is that now the administration and faculty is weird.   Kids were rebelling when I went to school, but there was at least some push-back by the grownups.  You only have to see the mewling apologies and/or wholehearted agreement of modern academic leaders with the most outré demands of our yoots to wonder why they don’t take over the President’s residence and live for the next four or five years.   The President of Smith College apologized for saying that all lives matter.  The President of the University of Louisville apologized for wearing a sombrero at a costume party.  Dartmouth’s vice provost for student affairs, Inge-Lise Ameer, apologized to Black Lives Matter protesters who invaded the library  calling one student a “filthy white b - - - h” and chanted  “F - - k your white privilege!” and “F - - k you, you filthy white f - - ks!”   

Where do they get the idea that they are idealists possessed of moral superiority?  Here’s a little test.  Who said this?

“Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, and tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps.”

• a.      Charles Blow – Op-ed columnist for the NY Times
• b.      Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. – Publisher of the NY Times
• c.      Christina Paxton – President of Brown University
• d.      Carolyn Martin – President of Amherst
• e.      Quentin Tarantino – famed screenwriter, director, producer and actor
• f.       Lena Dunham – actress and political activist
• g.      Bernie Sanders – U. S. Senator, Socialist, Presidential candidate.
• h.      al-Shabaab

(see below for the answer)

The answer is that any one of the above could have given us that quote.  Based on reports in the press and on the internet, the sentence I quoted would not raise eyebrows in the faculty lounge and would form the basis for a full year of pedagogy in any number of “studies” courses at virtually any university in the country with the possible exception of Hillsdale and Liberty University.   

She quotes Hua Hsu: 

“The imaginary college student is a character born of someone else’s pessimism.”  

Perhaps.  But I think that the actual college student, like the one at Yale who began screaming at the professor “Why the fuck did you accept the position?” is born of a certain culture.  One that views America as a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and the Ku Klux Klan.  One that sympathizes with rowdies who chant “F - - k your white privilege!” and “F - - k you, you filthy white f - - ks!”  knowing that they will be praised for their courage and speaking truth to power.  They are confident that if they want to intimidate someone there will always be a professor who will come to their aid by calling for “some muscle here.” 

I am beginning to think that Hua Hsu may be on to something when he says

 “ … the reason that college stories have garnered so much attention this year is our general suspicion, within the real world, that the system no longer works.”  

If by “the system” he’s referring to Big Academia, I think he has a point.  Its utility is questionable, it’s sold by hucksters with out-of-date statistics about its value, promising results that can’t be delivered, its cost is outrageous and its product is defective. 

As Glenn Reynold would say: WHY ARE UNIVERSITIES SUCH HOTBEDS OF RACISM, SEXISM, RAPE, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS,  LIES, OUTRAGEOUS PRICES, BIGOTRY AND ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC?   

We should think about scrapping it and starting over.  After all, this is the 21st Century.



The answer is

• h.      al-Shabaab

I

  

Misunderstanding Islam

A school in Virginia was teaching students to write the Muslim declaration of faith, the  shahada which says: "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God"

Blogger and law professor Ann Althouse remarks:   

I would observe that students were not required to declare a faith, only to copy a declaration of faith. That's like the difference between praying in school and staging a play in which a character says a prayer. That is, I don't think it violates the Establishment Clause to require students to copy the statement of faith as a calligraphy exercise as the students are taught not that Islam is the true religion but the history and substance of the religion of Islam.

Bob R, commenting at Althouse, says something profound about Americans understanding of Muslims.

The biggest problem here is people who don't take religion seriously teaching people who take religion seriously about other people who take religion seriously. It's all pen strokes to them. It's time to end the government monopoly on education.

Mark comments: 

Moreover, it imposes a Western-centric view on what is a non-Western system.  Students were required to make the Islamic profession of faith. Period. That it was written, that it was written in a language that they did not understand, that the students may not have even known what they are saying -- all this does not matter from the Muslim perspective. From that perspective, merely making the profession makes one Muslim. That you understand it is not necessary. There are plenty of voluntary Muslims out there reciting the Koran in Arabic who have no idea exactly what they are saying because they do not speak that language. And once one makes the profession, thereby becoming Muslim, for one to then speak contrary to Islam is to make one, not an infidel, but an apostate.

Another comment by R&B:

Americans simply need to stop making declarations about what Islam is or isn't based on their own wishful thinking and humanistic principles. The religion does have its own little codes and rules that apply to both Muslims and others and converts and they aren't simply what you presuppose them to be based on a Western or secular or Christian understanding of how life interacts with religion. It's. Not. The. Same.  The amount of commentary on Islamic theology by Westerners who have no understanding of it is astounding and alarming.

Secular people view religion as an outmoded superstition and religious people as either foolish, superstitious, deluded or stupid. Most can put up with it as long as it stays in its place.  And that place is out of sight.  If they give it any though at all, they view the leading religion in the West – Christianity – as the Department of HEW at prayer. From what they have gathered in popular culture, God is the almighty patsy.  “Jesus is love.”  The God of Christians is meek and mild, forgiving everything.  That’s supposed to be His job even as he’s kicked to the curb.   And in the view of the secularists, it's also the role that Christians are supposed to play.  If they don't, they're accused of not being Christians.  

Many Christian denominations are led be people who have the same opinion.  For many it’s a job with no heavy lifting.   Parenthetically, there is a history for this.  In old England younger sons were sent either to the military or to the Church; their faith or lack thereof was of no consequence.

Judaism is even farther away from”faith” than Mainline Christianity.  It’s a cultural identity that doesn’t demand belief in God.  Jews who are atheists, and there are many, don’t lose their identity as Jews. 

Most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there. Secular people see themselves as neutral.  But it’s a neutrality that piously proclaims that its moral and ethical positions are the neutral position.  That's deluded.  If you want neutrality try Switzerland. That's the real deal; taking no position between the Nazis and the Allies, between killing six million Jews and trying to rescue them.  It’s a country where art stolen by the Nazis in World Ware II still shows up.

Neutrality is a lie when Christianity is driven from the public sphere.  By removing signs of the religion that the majority of the people in the country profess, the secularists who decide the laws of this country actually believe that they are enforcing a "neutrality" that is specifically forbidden in the American constitution.  The part that says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereo, ..."    That prohibition against free exercise once meant that people were free to exercise their religion, but no more.  Now it's not OK to exercise your religion if they catch you doing it on public lands or in public places maintained by public funds.  A valedictorian may not speak of her faith in Jesus and a football team may not pray before a game.  A cross may not exist on public lands and if the Decalogue stands on public land it must be removed. The excuse usually given is that the expression of Christian faith may offend non-Christians, a right that is NOT found in the Constitution.  And all this, they tell each other - and us - is to protect religious freedom.  The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.

The secular chattering classes disdain those countries like Iran that are ruled by the Ayatollahs.  But we have our own Ayatollahs: people who tell us and our elected officials what they can say and do.  They are referred to as the Supreme Court.  Once they were limited by the words in the Constitution but now they are free of those constraints.  Instead of a brake on the passions of the moment, they now lead the march to that glorious future.  The very thought of breaking one of their commandments is grounds for accusations of heresy.  One may burn the American flag and be praised as a brave defender of freedom, but vigorously dissent from the Supreme's diktats and, if there is a stake handy, you will be burned on it.  Presidential elections often hinge, not on who the temporary holder of that office, but on whom he will appoint to that much more important tribunal.  They are the ones who make the really important decisions.  It's their world, we're just living in it.    

This is why Ann,  everyone in the press and every Democrat doesn’t get it. First, they don’t take religions seriously. Would anyone in that group die for their faith?   Multitudes of Christians who are being martyred in the Middle East are.  To ask the question is to answer it. They view all religions as important as flavors of ice cream. Today I like chocolate and tomorrow vanilla and it’s all a matter of taste. They are incapable of understanding that Islam is not something that’s practiced one day a week. The really “smart” may even know that Muslims pray five times a day. But they don’t know what makes a Muslim. They may know that the real head of Iran is a Muslim cleric but don’t really understand why. 

This far the ignorance and cultural arrogance of Ann and the rest of secular America has not impacted their lives all that much. It’s exhibited in the inevitable media reactions following some kind of attack - fear of the backlash by Americans against Muslims that never comes. It’s funny in a way. Drawing cartoons of Mohammad is followed by riots throughout the world with dozens killed. The press is afraid to publish the cartoons. Murder 14 Americans in San Bernardino and Democrats go to a mosque to show their solidarity.

“At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right” Miguel de Unamuno

Boston University Professor Tweets That White Males Are A "Problem Population." And Yes. There's More.

This woman is a professor of African American Studies at Boston College. Here's what she thinks of white people, especially white males.

Deal with your white sh*t, white people. slavery is a *YALL* thing.

And there's this:

“White masculinity isn’t a problem for america’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for america’s colleges.”

... and this:

Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible.”

A Boston College spokesman replied to an inquiry:

“Professor Grundy is exercising her right to free speech and we respect her right to do so.”

From this we can assume that Boston College welcomes racists and bigots.

This is what racist bigots look like.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse compares Grundy to Geller.

Watching the Hillary movie.

Ann Althouse, a law professor at UW Madison and prolific blogger, wrote about Hillary’s stop at a Chipotle’s restaurant, where no one recognized her.

Her take on this event is that Hillary simply did not want to be recognized; leave her alone.

Ann’s mistake is that her “take” is like watching the rushes of a movie in the making; the focus is what’s on the screen. What’s really going on is that Hillary’s making a movie. Let’s pull back from the camera and look at the movie set.

A movie set consist of (among others) cameramen, lighting specialists, groups of extras, props, the director, script writers, wranglers and the actors. It’s a village. And that’s what a presidential campaign is. When we look at the pictures of the candidate we’re looking at the actor in front of the camera. And the actor isn’t playing to the crew around him but to the audience watching the movie.

Hillary’s getting kidded for being ignored by the people in the restaurant. People are asking why it took her 45 minutes to eat and why she wasn't glad-handing the servers and patrons.

Think about this for a minute. Clinton and her staffers drive cross country and stop to eat and NONE of them make an effort to interact with the locals? That is damn weird - as if they felt uncomfortable amongst the locals.

And if that is the case, why did they even do the cross country drive if they are going to avoid people?

But that’s not the reason for the stop. The reason for the stop is to get media coverage for stopping to eat at a popular middle-class restaurant. It says to the people watching the news: “she’s just like us.” The restaurant is the set.  Her van is a prop.  The patrons are extras.  Her campaign manager is the director.  Hillary's the star.  The crew making the movie include the press. They are the cameramen, the assistant script writers, and the publicity department.

Even the story that no-one recognized her works for the Hillary movie. Because there is only so much time in the day and the focus on Hillary means that her opponents get ignored while the cameras are focused on Hillary.

The next set after Chipotle was the auto shop of a junior college where The Star delivered her lines to the extras chosen from the students.  

Watching the daily rushes misses the point of what's really going on.  We are watching a movie being made:  "Hillary Saves the World."

In which Ann Althouse gets hammered

Ann Althouse decide to take up the cudgels for Rose Eveleth.  Defending this sexist, Feminist, coyote-ugly harridan when she tweeted a series of comments criticizing the shirt that one of the rocket scientists that just landed a spacecraft on an asteroid, Matt Taylor, wore.  She tweeted: "Thanks for ruining the cool comet landing for me asshole"

Right; that's what was in his mind when he put on his shirt: "I'm going to ruin Rose Eveleth - and every other feminist harridan's day - when I get interviewed for landing a spacecraft on a comet."

Althouse decided to throw in with this Feminist jerk by posting a critique of Glen Reynolds' comments, stating - among other things that fashion is more important than space travel.  I suppose that a mind that works that way explains why she voted  for Barack Obama. 

Here's the beginning of Reynolds' essay:

Better not to land a spaceship on a comet than let men wear sexist clothing.

So how are things going for feminism? Well, last week, some feminists took one of the great achievements of human history — landing a probe from Earth on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away — and made it all about the clothes.

Yes, that's right. After years of effort, the European Space Agency's lander Philaelanded on a comet 300 million miles away. At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female "close pal," featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women. And suddenly, the triumph of the comet landing was drowned out by shouts of feminist outrage about ... what people were wearing. It was one small shirt for a man, one giant leap backward for womankind.

What is it about women like this?  People who have never accomplished anything except manipulate words?  And the Althouse types, college professors, who - thanks to Jonathan Gruber - are now exposed to the entire country as elitist pigs who consider the American people "stupid."

Sounding smart to stupid people

Bud Norman has a funny, insightful article on the subject of things that people say that make them sound smart to stupid people.  Of course it may make them sound stupid to smart people, but since there are more stupid people than smart people, the odds favor bullshit.

Many years ago we had a friend on our high school debate team who adopted the odd habit of adding an extra syllable to words. When devising a plan he would “strategetize” rather “strategize,” for instance, and he was adamant that “conservativism” rather than “conservatism” is the political philosophy espoused by conservatives.

He did this on the belief that most people are impressed and intimated by multi-syllabic words, and that by adding an extra consonant to a three-syllable word he could make it one-third more impressive and intimidating. Judging by the awestruck looks that would cross some people’s faces whenever he unleashed one of his new and improved coinages, and they way they seemed willing to accept whatever nonsensical argument he was making, we were forced concede there might be something to his theory. We tried to persuade him that although his highfalutin and fundamentally incorrect verbiage made him sound smart to stupid people it also made him sound stupid to smart people, but he’d laugh off the criticism by noting that because there are far more stupid people than smart people he would ultimately be more widely regarded as smart by saying such stupid things. As much as his mispronunciations grated on our sensitive ears, we had to admit there was probably something to that theory as well.

Norman note that Obama used this insight in his recent campaign speech in the Rose Garden again extolling the wonderfulness of ObamaCare when he promised that a “surge” of the “best and brightest” professionals from the public and private sectors would soon have it all worked out.

Other examples abound in Obama’s political career. He once promised “peace in our time,” apparently either unaware or unconcerned that the slogan was famously associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous attempt at appeasing Adolf Hitler, and his apologists have created such formulations as “leading from behind.” “Hope and Change,” “Yes, We can,” “the failed policies of the Bush administration” and all the other vague slogans of his first presidential campaign had the same winning effect on the stupid and same calculated disregard for the smart, and all were delivered with a smug cocksureness and upraised chin that even our shrewd high school friend could not equal. It might not work with Obamacare, as even the stupidest among us can figure out when their health care costs are rising and grandma’s hip replacement is being put off, but most of the time it seems to work well enough.

We were particularly taken with this epiphany when we though of Ann Althouse, famed blogger and law prof at University of Wisconsin, Madison. She voted for Obama in 2008, totally taken in with his claims.  Proof, if anyone needed any more, that stupid is alive and well in academia. It's the one place where you can write an academic paper deliberately designed to be filled with total CRAP, and get it published.  And don't get me started on the super-concentrated collection of stupid in the press and the media. 

... the dead nicotine-stained slut was too fat, too.

 

 

Ann Althouse writes about a feminist blogger at Slate who took the AP story about a woman falling to her death from a 17th floor balcony when the railing gave way and turned it into a screed bout sexism.

Althouse's blog essay is fairly tedious. But a comment by navillus was hilarious.

LV Anderson [the feminist blogger] writes that the AP included the following 'totally irrelevant details' about the dead woman:          
1. She was 35 and single.

2. She was a smoker.

3. She invited a man back to her apartment late at night on a first date.

4. The man warned her not to lean against the balcony, but she did it anyway."

In fact, the AP article never mentions Rosoff's marital status; Anderson is guilty of the hetero-normative assumption that she was single. Rosoff could have been married in an open marriage or involved in a long term polyamorous relationship, for all the AP article tells us. Similarly, the AP never passes judgement on whether 12:50AM is 'late at night'- that's all coming from the fever swamp of LV Anderson's brain. Why does the Slate writer assume that 1;00AM is some slutty witching hour during which only fallen women are awake?

In other news, numerous stories have said she fell backwards off the balcony- it's hard to imagine falling backwards off a collapsed balcony corner when it's only your foot up on the rail while stretching. Much more likely her rear end was up on the corner & the extra weight shift when she stretched her leg along the railing caused the railing to give way. I'm actually surprised LV Anderson didn't accuse the AP of insinuating that the dead nicotine-stained slut was too fat, too.

Ann Althouse on Obama

 

I watched the video at the link 3 times because I was fascinated by the hesitations and the facial expressions. I can't tell when/whether he's lying, but I can tell when he's pleased with himself.

 

 

Ann Althouse is a woman. Her comment about watching an Obama video clip is a woman’s reaction. She’s looking of visual cues, for facial tells, for hesitancy in speaking. She probably does that when she’s talking with her husband or her female friends, because that’s what women do. And people who can speak with apparent sincerity, no matter if they are speaking the biggest bullshit, and do it with a straight face, convince her.

Men, on the other hand, listen to the words. They listen for inconsistencies, for untruths, for self-congratulation, for straw men arguments and, as Obama does again in this speech, blaming Bush.

That’s disappointing in a law professor, but then she did vote for Obama.

Kermit Gosnell Trial

If Gosnell is not convicted...


... it will help the pro-life movement.

The moral preening of 2008 Obama voters in the person of Professor Ann Althouse.

I hope that I’m not misunderstanding Ann Althouse when quote her but when I read this I was immediately struck by the amazing amount of preening going on.  The subject is Dan Quale’s comment surrounding the unwed parentage of “Murphy Brown.”  For those too young to remember the character was the lead in a situation comedy show named after her who had a child without being married.  Dan Quayle, then Vice President, tried to make the point hat having children without being married was not a good idea.  He was pilloried by members of the media for (1) being mean to unmarried mothers who everyone knew were just as good as married mothers and (2) referring to a fictional character as a role model. 

 

Ann Althouse is “pushing back” against the belief that Quayle was right in his comments because … well I – as a long time reader of her blog – think that in her view, nothing that she’s for is wrong.  For example, here is her comment regarding her position: 

 

Look at what is being admitted. There are a whole lot of people who are insufficiently smart, competent, and emotionally stable to make a decision involving a complex set of factors, so we need to dominate their minds with a starker structure of "right" and "wrong," even where those of us who are really smart and able to process complex factors know it's not really a matter of right and wrong. 

Putting it in other words: people who are not as smart as Ann may be having babies out of wedlock so they have to be brainwashed into thinking that they are doing wrong.  The really smart people know that those stupid moral rules are for simpletons.  We can create our own rules because we are “really smart.”

Not to pick on Ann, but I have noticed the tendency of people on the Left to be sinless in their own eyes.  Ann has a homosexual son so to her the issue of gay marriage is not open to debate.   To her it’s human rights issue that’s clear-cut; her son should not be excluded from the military or from matrimony. 

 

Ann voted for Obama and that wasn’t a mistake; it’s not her fault that Obama has turned out to be the kind of President that the Right predicted.

 

The Christian view of humans is the belief that we are all fallen creatures, prone to sin, in need of Christ’s redemption.  Ann Althouse prefers to believe that she’s a very good judge of good and evil and if her view come into conflict with religious doctrine or millennia of human experience, her view is superior because  she’s one of “.. those of us who are really smart and able to process complex factors.” 

I'm a cow... and sometimes I write about cow related things.

I don't think EBL likes Althouse.

Ann Althouse asks what heppened to Wisconsin's "clean-cut" politics?

No Ann, Wisconsin is not seeing the sudden transformation you describe: “We've gone from clean-cut to really being on the cutting edge of the new form of American politics — battle to the death, win at any cost." Revolutions and counter-revolutions, the things you’re seeing in Madison, don’t happen like that.

What we’re seeing is what happens when the ruling class loses control. Wisconsin is Syria without the gunfire. The Liberals have been in control for so long simply won’t accept the last election. As long as

Republicans accepted defeat gracefully, they were tolerated as a voiceless, powerless minority whose function was to as demonstrate that there were two parties. But the thought of them actually exercising power, and moreover exercising power in opposition to established policies … well who in the hell did they think they were?

Wisconsin’s Democrat politicians are demonstrating that they are no more clean-cut than any Chicago thug. They did not just discover the power of mob rule; they knew how to use it as soon as their hold on the state was loosened. The battling harridans on the Wisconsin Supreme Court bench are not clean-cut jurists but gutter politicos who don’t hesitate to make sexist accusations of assault if it means that they can regain control.

Surface tranquility is always seen in one-party states. The willingness to use violence and thuggery usually keeps things quiet until the people rebel. That’s when violence breaks out and people who had no problem with the regime ask “what happened, everyone was so happy … and proud … and clean-cut.”

Top 10 Reasons Why Ann Althouse Will Vote for Obama in 2012.

1. Because running off the cliff with the other lemmings is a rational decision.
2. Because the guy who screwed up is the only one who's able to fix what's wrong.
3. Because voting against the black man would make her a racist.
4. Because the rest of the faculty of UW Madison knows where she lives.
5. Because Obama won't come out in favor of gay marriage until the next election.
6. Because Obama's soooo dreamy and sends a thrill up her leg.
7. Because Palin's a Republican.
8. Because of Obama's steely nerve
9. Because of Obama's groundedness
10. Because not voting for Obama would be admitting she's a rube.