Republican gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman is severing ties with an elected official who described himself as a "proud racist."

An appalling masterpiece. Resist the temptation to laugh at the film's violent anticommunism and try to see it as the audiences of 1952 did, and you'll experience the most wrenching right-wing film ever made. The film's propaganda is all the more powerful because director Leo McCarey refuses to acknowledge any intellectual, ideological intent: his argument is wholly emotional, and it is a powerful one. Robert Walker, fresh from Strangers on a Train, is a government worker who signs with the reds in oedipal revolt against his domineering, patriotic father (Dean Jagger); Helen Hayes is the mother who must choose between son and country

First, you can't simply wave off the looks aspect. That's the single most important element of a woman's attractiveness to men, not so much where you rate on the 1-10 scale, but rather what sort of signals you are using your appearance to send. Most women make it very clear that they dress to please other women, not men, so if you do the opposite you will definitely stand out. I'm not talking about "going to a nightclub on Miami Beach" clothing, as much as I personally like that style, but rather wearing your hair long and down, wearing clothes that flatter most of whatever assets you happen to have, ignoring whatever the latest styles are, and paying far more attention to what the men around you happen to think looks good on you than you do to what your female friends tell you.

I strongly suggest taking up a hobby or two that is male dominated. You'll meet lots of men at martial arts studios, gaming stores, sports bars on game nights, car shows, and the free weight room. Set aside one evening a week to adventure into alien territory and you'll meet more new men in a month than you have in the last year. I've never quite understood how people try to meet the opposite sex in places that the opposite sex never goes.

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
[Keynes Sings:]
John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson
BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn’t bounce back—economy’s in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That’s outrageous!
I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple—boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total’s growing, watch the economy fly
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
You see it’s all about spending, hear the register cha-ching
Circular flow, the dough is everything
So if that flow is getting low, doesn’t matter the reason
We need more government spending, now it’s stimulus season
So forget about saving, get it straight out of your head
Like I said, in the long run—we’re all dead
Savings is destruction, that’s the paradox of thrift
Don’t keep money in your pocket, or that growth will never lift…
because…
Business is driven by the animal spirits
The bull and the bear, and there’s reason to fear its
Effects on capital investment, income and growth
That’s why the state should fill the gap with stimulus both…
The monetary and the fiscal, they’re equally correct
Public works, digging ditches, war has the same effect
Even a broken window helps the glass man have some wealth
The multiplier driving higher the economy’s health
And if the Central Bank’s interest rate policy tanks
A liquidity trap, that new money’s stuck in the banks!
Deficits could be the cure, you been looking for
Let the spending soar, now that you know the score
My General Theory’s made quite an impression
[a revolution] I transformed the econ profession
You know me, modesty, still I’m taking a bow
Say it loud, say it proud, we’re all Keynesians now
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Keynes] I made my case, Freddie H
Listen up , Can you hear it?
Hayek sings:
I’ll begin in broad strokes, just like my friend Keynes
His theory conceals the mechanics of change,
That simple equation, too much aggregation
Ignores human action and motivation
And yet it continues as a justification
For bailouts and payoffs by pols with machinations
You provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch
Then all that we’re left with is debt, and a bunch
If you’re living high on that cheap credit hog
Don’t look for cure from the hair of the dog
Real savings come first if you want to invest
The market coordinates time with interest
Your focus on spending is pushing on thread
In the long run, my friend, it’s your theory that’s dead
So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective
Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
The place you should study isn’t the bust
It’s the boom that should make you feel leery, that’s the thrust
Of my theory, the capital structure is key.
Malinvestments wreck the economy
The boom gets started with an expansion of credit
The Fed sets rates low, are you starting to get it?
That new money is confused for real loanable funds
But it’s just inflation that’s driving the ones
Who invest in new projects like housing construction
The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction
The savings aren’t real, consumption’s up too
And the grasping for resources reveals there’s too few
So the boom turns to bust as the interest rates rise
With the costs of production, price signals were lies
The boom was a binge that’s a matter of fact
Now its devalued capital that makes up the slack.
Whether it’s the late twenties or two thousand and five
Booming bad investments, seems like they’d thrive
You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press
Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed
Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No it’s the animal spirits

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
F A Hayek
The Fatal Conceit

The earthquake is not a sign that people should begin helping Haiti. It is entirely the opposite. It is a powerful warning that people must stop trying to help Haiti. Instead, they must leave the Haitians alone to help themselves, which, of course, it is possible they may not be willing to do after decades of dependence on external support. Recall that the Haitian population went from 5 million in 1982 to 6.8 million in 2000 to 10 million in 2009, so if you think this tragedy was terrible, just wait until the inevitable next one strikes. Unsustainable societies always collapse; they cannot survive indefinitely. International aid does nothing more than prolong the period of life support and ensures that the ultimate collapse will be more catastrophic.

For years, pundits and bloggers on the right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance with Middle America. They have reacted with scorn to such high-profile liberal political advocacy films as "Syriana," "Milk," "W.," " Religulous," "Lions for Lambs," "Brokeback Mountain," "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," saying that the movies' poor performances at the box office were a clear sign of how thoroughly uninterested real people were in the pet causes of showbiz progressives.

Of course, "Avatar" totally turns this theory on its head.

Hey, we wouldn’t be a proper evil secular liberal blog if we didn’t observe the War on Christmas. Of course, the way that liberals actually observe it is to point out that it’s strictly a conservative holiday, invented and observed only by conservatives who want to believe they are martyrs at the hands of invisible secularists who run into their houses, snatching presents from their children’s hands. That this has never happened has no bearing on the outrage---abuses that happen only in the mind of conservatives are, if anything, even better evidence that they are beset by liberal demons.

Neutering, huh? The word we use when we talk about cutting off an animal’s testicles? My oh my, Donohue certainly has a different experience of Christmas than the one I thought you were supposed to have! I always thought it was a holiday about peace and love and presents, but apparently what’s laying in that manger is not an infant god, but in fact a representation of wingnut genitals set up for us to worship. And if we don’t worship them, then said wingnuts are neutered.

In a way, the conflation of the baby Jesus with wingnut gonads makes sense. They’ve been practicing this equivalency for a long time: “babies=fetuses=Sperm Magic”, and so there comes a time when an infant starts to blur with your own <censored> worship. And since the Bible makes a big deal out of how Jesus was formed with god’s own mighty sperm, then the leap is pretty easy to make. God sperm, man sperm---either way, the point is that sperm is magic, and that gods and men can make it proves they’re objects of power and worship. And if we don’t have nativity scenes where everyone stands around worshiping the baby Jesus/wingnut phallic symbol, then we’ve essentially emasculated them. Might as well cut their balls off. Or, as Bill Donohue likes to put it, neuter them.