The only student who thinks there is something wrong with the actions of a husband who, in a fit of rage, tears an ear-ring out of his wife’s ear with such force that he rips her ear-lobe apart is a male student from France. Everybody else believes this character is a loving, kind husband.

One huge recent success of the Democrats in the arena of creating coherent narratives was the centrality of the concept of the War on Women for the most recent presidential election. Whoever came up with this idea practically handed the victory over to Obama.

Ezra Klein writes:

As I understand it, the GOP has five basic goals in the budget talks:

1) Cut the deficit.

2) Cut entitlement spending.

3) Protect defense spending, and possibly even increase it.

4) Simplify the tax code by cleaning out deductions and loopholes.

5) Lower tax rates.

The White House is willing to cut a deal with Republicans that will accomplish 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Republicans don’t want that deal. They’d prefer the sequester to that deal. That means they will get less on 1, basically nothing 2, 4, and 5, and they will actively hurt themselves on 3. So, rather than accomplishing four of their five goals, they’re accomplishing part of one. Some trade.

I have an explanation for this phenomenon. The main goal of the Republicans right now is to sabotage everything they can in hopes of creating a narrative of constant disasters happening during this presidency. They know that the next presidential election will be their very last chance to save their party in its current format, so they have started working on their campaign already. A budget is small potatoes compared to that huge goal. So the things Klein enumerates can easily be sacrificed to keep the scary concept of a sequester in play.

This is a war of narratives, and we need to remember that the Democrats consistently fail to present a coherent narrative of anything. This has historically been a problem of all progressive movements that I’m aware of.

Thank you, Rob F., for the link.

Sarah Palin says America will eventually default on its debt and claims that the federal government is “stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest” to prepare.

“If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest,” Palin wrote in a Facebook message Tuesday.

Jokes aside, do you, dear readers, think the sequester will happen? How bad will that be for all of us? I’m scrambling to grade the essays while preparing for my trip to Spain, so I have zero time to follow the news.

I can’t believe that the expression “budget sequester” follows me from one continent to another. I grew up hearing hushed whispers about it and now I’m hearing about it all over again.

A student regaled me with the following pearls of wisdom in the very first essay I have read:

– Women want men to give them extravagant gifts because the cost of a gift is proof of love from women’s point of view.

– Women are more likely to choose men who give them expensive gifts over men who don’t because men who don’t give expensive gifts have no way of showing their love.

– Women whose husbands work a lot are likely to cheat on them because they get bored.

– Women need more attention, gifts and compliments than men.

– Women don’t like men who can’t help them to improve their economic standing.

If I manage to teach students that academic essays are not a good place to went their medieval prejudices, I will be a happy person.

P.S. This was a female student.

The mayor of Paris has been deluged with checks for just a few cents each after complaining about damage that protesters opposed to a law legalizing same-sex marriage did to one of the French capital’s most exclusive parks. Demonstrators opposed to “marriage for all” legislation must have guessed the chaos they would cause when they sent donations of just 10 cents to help settle the $132,000 bill for repairs to the lawns of the Champ-de-Mars near the Eiffel Tower.

In fact, their petty cash protest looks set to cost Parisian taxpayers even more money, after Mayor Bertrand Delanoe revealed it could cost more to issue receipts for the money than the amount of cash he had received. Opponents of the gay marriage bill passed by the lower House of Parliament on Feb. 2 had gathered on the Champ-de-Mars on Jan. 13 in a demonstration that saw about 350,000 protesters trample  lawns that were closed off to the public and “resting” for the winter.

I don’t know what they were trying to achieve but engaging in a series of actions so idiotic and so irredeemably stupid is a sign that the anti-gay movement is on its last breath. The childish tantrum with the small checks proves that homophobes have no idea how to make anybody interested in their barbaric worldview except by these stupid stunts.

It is really great to observe the agony of a hateful movement.

It is mind-boggling how many blathering idiots think they should be squeaking instead of just chewing silently. I opened my blogroll, and here is what I immediately saw:

If feminism were about gender equality and not just about changing women’s positions in society, feminists would have chosen a word for their movement that had no connection to the concept of female or feminine.

The freak who wrote this probably congratulated himself on being super smart when he came up with this idiocy. It doesn’t occur to him that the things he lists are not mutually exclusive. Feminists work to change women’s positions in society in a way that would promote gender equality.

What a tragedy it is when people are so intellectually limited that they can’t make such a basic logical connection.

 

I’m watching a Russian match-making TV show while grading papers and peeing myself with laughter.

TV show host: Why did you love this man so much? Was he beautiful?

Woman: Yes, he was very beautiful.

TV show host: Tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged?

Woman: No, he wasn’t an alcoholic and he didn’t smoke or swear. That’s beautiful! And he was a very good person. He had minor imperfections, just like anybody.

TV show host: Like what?

Woman: When I was 7 months pregnant, he stole a ring of mine and gave it to his mistress. But he was a nice person.

TV show host: Isn’t it true that this nice person also stole the money you had been saving to buy an apartment?

Woman: Yes, but we had such a nice family, he was so good to me.

TV show host: And what about your second and third husbands? Were they as nice and beautiful?

Woman (completely seriously): No, they were even better.