Solyndra is an Anagram...

I just realized that "Solyndra" is an anagram...for "Sold Nary".

or Nary Sold...

The Lesser of Two Evils is Still... A Crock of Muddled Thinking

I saw it again today.

"If you vote for "X" over Obama, you're just choosing the 'lesser of two evils'. And the lesser of two evils is still evil."

I mostly hear it about Ron Paul, usually delivered in a vaguely smug and condescending tone. "X" is only different in degree from Obama, (in this area or that) therefore if you vote for anyone but "Y", you are choosing evil."

This facile argument is deeply flawed. It takes a statement which is true and weds it in unholy matrimony to an assumption which may be (and generally is) completely false, but the true statement gives it some semblance of truth.

While it is true that when you choose the lesser of two actual evils, you are choosing evil, it does not follow that every time you choose between a lesser and a greater good, that any of your choices are evil.

Voltaire, pointed that "The perfect (or the better) is the enemy of the good." If you reject everything or everyone that isn't perfect, you reject all (or in the case of the Paulites, nearly all). If you compare candidates on a scale of one hundred where one hundred is the perfect conservative and President Zero is, by some coincidence, zero, maybe your candidate comes in at an eighty five, but that doesn't mean that the other candidates, who may only come in in the seventies or low eighties, are "evil". That is a mere verbal "sleight of hand", where one directs your attention away from what is real and shows you what one wants you to see.

Please banish the "lesser of two evils" argument from your discussions. It only muddles the very important discussion of which of the flawed* individuals running for President, on both sides, will be the greater good for our nation. He or she, I guarantee you, will not be perfect.

I intend to vote for the person who will bring greater good to this country. Part of the ability to bring this greater good, is the ability to get elected first. A "perfect" candidate who cannot get elected can sit on the sidelines for four years and say, "See? I told you so!", but that will not stop the harm being done to the republic in the meantime.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Those who call "evil" that which is not evil are enemies of the good as well.


*See: Original sin

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Obama Takes a Bow on 9/11

I didn't see this. Every time some program would cut to Obama reading a passage of Scripture, I turned away. This man may be able to read from a teleprompter (unless the word is "corpsman"), but the two instances I cannot bear to hear his whiny drone is when he tries to read Scripture, which he clearly was not taught at the feet of Reverend Wright, because he tells us for twenty years, he did not listen! The other, is reading the citation of brave men picked to receive the Medal of Honor. I've heard people read the phone book with more passion and enthusiasm.

Had Mr. Obama more familiarity with either the Scripture or with warfare, he might have known the passage he was reading referred to a bow, as in "bow and arrow" as opposed to the bow he routinely makes in front of every known head of state.

Next Sunday, if he can be dragged off the golf course, maybe Michelle can elbow him in the ribs whenever he starts to nod off during the sermon?

H/T Gateway Pundit

Dick Cheney and the Bitter, Frustrated Book Reviewer of Doom

I was reading an article by Christopher Hitchens over at Slate. Now, while Hitchens is a liberal, he has demonstrated that uncommon quality among liberals of being sane, so, while I don't always agree with what he says, I respect his honesty.

On the sidebar, there was a link to this Washington Post story:

‘In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir’ by Dick Cheney. Only the link was titled "Dick Cheney's Self Serving Memoir".

Question for all you non-rabid, intellectually honest people out there: Has there ever been a "memoir" that was not in some way shape or form "self serving"? Anything from "this is how I remember or perceived events at the time" to "the publisher gave me a nice fat advance on the book"?

And even though it is in the "Entertainment" and "Books" section of the Post, don't read Robert G. Kaiser's column to find an analysis of the book, as one might expect in a "book review", but rather you can see Kaiser's bitter partisan take on Cheney the man, not the book.

Far be it for an "honest liberal" (stop laughing!) like Kaiser to analyze the book on its merits or lack therof, and allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

If I had to sum up this review in six words, it would be "Move along! Nothing to see here!"