Not a dummy after all

Vox Day wrote a post about Big Media's surprise at Sarah Palin's writing ability. Her overall level was 8.5 on the Flesch Kincaid scale. However, it was Vox's own rating that piqued my attention, not Sarah's.

Out of curiosity, I popped my most recent column into the Readability Calculator: "Flesch Kincaid Grade level: 13.10". And my recent email to KW came in at 14.74.

It made me curious. So I popped a few of my blog posts in to see how I fare. This is the scorecard.

The Eisenhower Warnings - 10.50
An idea whose time has come - 10.07
Taking credit - 8.74
Prosecutorial misconduct - Texas style - 8.39
Maryland's Lost Icon - 7.61
Who to believe? - 8.38
The Circus is in Town - 9.00
A Retraction of Sorts - 8.59

That last one was a puzzler to me. I used the words "plausible deniability" and "habitue" in it! And STILL couldn't make a 9th grade level! My average score for the 8 posts was 8.91, not a whole lot higher than Sarah Palin's. And these posts were more or less cherry picked; I only included longer posts with minimal slang in my sampling. Sarah Palin's sampling was 24,000 fricking pages!!!!

If my writing, which hardly qualifies as simplistic, can't make it out of High School, what's a moron like Al Gorebells score? 3rd grade?

Kinda puts all of those "stoopid Sarah" stereotypes in perspective, doesn't it?

Democrats believe in unicorns

I've got to hand it to the Left. When they take an entrenched position, they absolutely will not abandon it. They'll resort to all manner of illogic, fabrications, diversions, and name-calling. But they will not budge, regardless of facts or the will of the American people.

Recently, I received an email from Congress.org asking if I support drilling in ANWR. Given that "f'in A!!!" wasn't a response option, I answered "Yes". I was then presented with a form that allowed me to write a note to my Congressman and Senators. I thought, "Hey, why not? They'll ignore it, but it'll make me feel better."

I don't recall precisely what I wrote, nor did I save a copy of it, mainly because in the past, when I have sent these emails to my "representatives" I haven't heard squawdoosh from them. I do recall writing words to the effect that we've got to stop letting the environmental wackos dictate our country's energy policy.

To my utter surprise, I received an email reply from Senator Ben Cardin, or, at least, from one of his interns. The complete text of the email can be seen here. I did not modify anything; I only wrapped it in HTML for purposes of formatting. So all typos and misspellings are left as-is, as are the Senator's words. I mention this only so that I can't be accused of tampering with the letter to make lefties look ridiculous. Trust me, they don't need any help from ME to look ridiculous.

Here are some highlights of the letter.

• The Senator believes that depleting the Strategic Reserve and voting for higher gas mileage standards (standards which won't be in effect until 2020) are efforts "to address rising gasoline prices".


• The Senator is against drilling in ANWR. These are his exact words: "Drilling in ANWR would be a short-term distraction from the new long-term solutions we need to power and fuel our nation."


• According to the Senator, ANWR "harbors a primeval wilderness ecosystem that is home to some of the most diverse wildlife habitats in the United States." Quoth the Senator: "Oil exploration and drilling are incompatible with the purposes for which this incomparable wilderness ecosystem has been set aside."


• Finally, the Senator goes through the laundry list of "renewable" energy sources we SHOULD be investing in instead of just drilling for dumb-old oil. You know, hydrogen, wind, solar, fairy dust, unicorn farts, the aura of Brittney Spears, and healing thoughts. Okay, I made the last four up. Just checking to see if you're paying attention.

Okay, let me start by commending Senator Cardin for having the decency to respond and to do so not with words I want to hear, but with how he really votes and will vote going forward. I know Senator Cardin is just a Freshman in the Senate, but he was a long-time Congressman prior to being elected Senator, so he's no novice making novice mistakes. He's showing an honesty and candor that I find refreshing and commendable, even though he's dead wrong on all counts.

• Voting for depletion of the Strategic Reserve isn't a solution to anything (except to assure that it'll have to be replenished in the future at higher prices).


• Drilling in ANWR is a "short-term distraction"? Are you f'ing kidding me?!?!? The economic ignorance of our elected officials (on both sides of the aisle) is staggering! When demand for a commodity is high, the ONLY way to reduce its cost is to increase supply. That's not rocket science, that's Econ 101.


• Waxing poetic about the "incomparable wilderness ecosystem" that is ANWR is a tired tactic. ANWR is a sh*thole. It's a frozen wasteland that makes Hell look like paradise.


• I'm sick to death of the fairy tale pursuit of so-called renewable resources. Solar power research has been ongoing since the 70's. How's that working out? There's NOTHING to show for any of it. Wind power? It's a band-aid, and it kills birds who fly into the windmill blades. Hydrogen? Nothing but talk -- there aren't even any prototypes on the horizon. No, only unicorn farts qualifies as a more ridiculous solution to a shortage of gasoline than the aforementioned fairy tales.

Now, I don't fault Senator Cardin completely for the nonsensical "solutions" he's proposing. He's following his marching orders from the Senate leadership, primarily that colossal mental midget, Harry Reid. What I DON'T get is this. Why in the name of all that is holy don't the American people demand that Congress stop dallying with "solutions" and start opening up drilling? And by drilling, I mean pretty much drilling anywhere, because that's what it's going to take to reclaim America's energy independence.

In the meantime, the Lefties will continue their Quixotic search for their magical "renewable resources", and we'll be kept at the mercy of our oil-supplying "friends".

The full-service blog

DW asks:

Would it be possible to post clip art (appropriate) along with our comments?

The answer is a resounding "yes", provided the clip art is accessible via an internet address. For example, if you have an AOL Albums account, a Google Web Albums account, a Kodak account, or whatever, then you can send me a link to the picture.

Otherwise, I guess you could email the clip art and I could upload it myself. Whatever works, right?

Internet Hoaxes (and the Vulture that loathes them)

Like most Americans, I receive a LOT of email every day. Some of it is mail from friends and family. Some of it is "subscription" email: updates from news sites, notifications of new column availability from one of the columnists I follow closely, etc. Some of it is "necessary evil" email: newsletters you receive because you signed up for some software or registered some product. Some of it is spam -- Satan's own way of tormenting us. No, I do NOT want to try your product for "male enhancement", thank you.

And then there's the stuff that absolutely drives me nuts. Glurge is one of those things. No I will NOT send this POS to 12 of my closest friends so that they can be as annoyed with me as I am with the asshat who sent me the crap in the first place.

But top of my list is Internet Hoaxes. You know what I'm talking about - "the government is going to tax every email", "such-and-such drug contains poison", "'in God we trust' has been removed removed from the dollar coin", etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

So you can correctly surmise that I was none too pleased when I got this ancient nugget in my inbox yesterday.

DR. DOBSON'S PLEA FOR ACTION

CBS discontinued 'Touched by an Angel' for using the word God in every program. Madeline Murray O'Hare, an atheist, successfully managed to eliminate the use of Bible reading from public schools a few years ago. Now her organization has been granted a federal hearing on the same subject by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pave the way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lord and Savior, on the airwaves of America .
...

Please press 'forward', and forward this to everyone that you think should read this. Now, please sign your name at the bottom (you can only add your name after you have pressed the 'Forward').
...

My head exploded. This little "nugget" has been around F-O-R-E-V-E-R (the original version first appeared in 1996). And the copy I received had 2,118 signatures. 2,118 asshats who fell for the BS! I "replied all", with the following:

This may be the second longest-lived Internet hoax of all time, trailing only "Bill Gates will give you cash to forward this email to all your friends".

Here are the clues: Touched by an Angel was canceled years ago (2003), and Madalyn Murray O'Hare has been DEAD for even longer (1995).

See http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/fcc.asp

Okay, a little terse, perhaps. But Judas Johnson Methusalah! It takes less than 5 minutes to fact check this s****! And Snopes ALWAYS has the real dirt - at least check Snopes before sending me that crap!

This morning, I got an email from the sender (whose identity I'll protect; he didn't sign the thing and I'm sure he sent it more-or-less on a lark), saying, in his inimitable tongue-in-cheek way, "What a killjoy! All those people hoping to bolster Chritianity and you shower them with cold water.....shame."

Yeah, I'm a real bastard.

But, here's the thing. I wonder, when I see stuff like that, if people even READ that crap before they forward it, or if they bother to run it through their BS detectors -- or if they even HAVE BS detectors. Maybe because mine is S-O-O-O-O sharpened by following politics the way I do, I have expectations for the general populous that just don't jibe with reality. Or maybe we, as a general population, have become such sheeple that the merest hint of authority (the reference to Dr. James Dobson) is enough for the credulous to fall in line.

And they wonder why McCommie is able to sell himself as a conservative and "666" is able to sell herself as a moderate...