“You know you’ll see it anyway.”

Will not. Won’t even watch the trailer. The outrageous stunts of the last couple of films, including and most especially the death of Data and his oh-so-stupid replacement by an oh-so-stupid lookalike, years ago turned me off to any more Trek. The glory days of the shows with continuity and similar look and just enough recall of the old show, i.e. the TNG, DS9, and Voyager triumvirate, are gone. And frankly, even without that, I’m just not into prequels, actor changing, and most especially not into Sylar as Spock. Forget it. I’m not even going to watch the trailer. I’m just not as easy-going a person as Lileks, who seems to take the new manifestations of things in stride even as he meticulously catalogues and dreams of the old. If you can’t bring it back, and you can’t, let it die in peace. And if you try too hard, may you die violently, instead, new Trek, after one spectacularly failed flick. I know, I know: Dream on.

I am sick and tired of reading the ever-changing scenarios under which the government or its component part Treasury will spend the $700 billion of bailout money. Do not buy up bad mortgages. Do not inject government capital into either private or public businesses. Let the banks either foreclose or renegotiate with the mortgaged holders themselves, which is not as far-fetched an idea as you’d think (note to Ed Morissey: Exactly why, if lenders do this, should the taxpayer take the risk instead of the bank investor?). People are already bitching and complaining about their 401Ks tanking in the stock market. The market tanking a bit farther won’t kill them. Either pull your money out and thus help it tank, or leave it in and wait for it to go back up as it always does. Do not bail out the automakers. The word “bailout” should be anathema in a capitalist society. Forget curbing CEO salaries and golden parachutes–just wake up, America, and quit investing your money in the stocks of companies who are willing to hire losers with failures like this on their track records. Let the market punish the guilty–by which I mean YOU, American investors. Stop assuming the stock market works the same way as your corner bank and that it’s some kind of travesty if you can’t get the same amount of money back out that you put in. Realize the risk that it is and take it with your eyes open and take far less of it, if you ask me. Stop this madness before extends to industries all but killed by the autoworkers’ unions and unrealistic ideas of what you can regulate people into doing. Kill it. Repeal the bailout.

Son: I like that stained-glass window.

Me: Yeah, me too.

Son: What’s it of?

Me: Well, there’s a cross in the middle there.

Son: I think it’s God’s eye.

What, did it die? Well, yeah, at least in my family. When I was a kid we drove from Washington, the state, to North Carolina and Kentucky every summer to see my grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins. Five days in the car or else in our full-size Dodge cargo van. We also sometimes drove to Wyoming to see yet more aunts and uncles. That van was the It Vehicle for us kids. There was one bench seat in the back with no seatbelts, and that was it. We could and did spread out blankets, lie down at full length in the floor, play cards, play games, read, sleep as long as we liked, awaken to see one of our parents getting a speeding ticket, usually somewhere in the Plains.

It’s not just the affordability of air travel that has killed this tradition before my son ever participated in it; it’s also the carseat laws and even the seatbelt laws. I know this doesn’t stop other families with children The Bean’s age (five), but I simply haven’t been able bring myself to coop him up in his rigid plastic carseat for several days on end. While I still greatly enjoy the concept of the long road trip, it’s just too depressing to think about him trapped in that seat, unable even to lie down in the back seat should he want to sleep (and as he gets bigger, the carseat is a less and less comfortable place to sleep). So the long trip remains a pipe dream. We’ve done a few two-day stints (about six hours per day) and one experimental trip of sixteen hours in one day, with multiple 30-minute breaks. He broke down only once, at about six in the evening, but at midnight, 10 minutes from our destination, he thoughtfully remarked, “I like airplanes the best.” I can’t say I blame him. If you’re a) not driving and b) can hardly move, a road trip is not the fun I remember from my own childhood.

He just graduated to a backless booster that uses the “adult seatbelt,” a fact of which he’s very proud. We’ll see if this plus the advent of the portable DVD player encourages me to get back out on the road.

Thank you.

As a kid trying to understand the scale of human civilization, I once observed to my father that our culture seemed to act like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between the two ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum. In my limited understanding of zeitgeists some of which were before my time, I cited the supposed characters of the various decades: the fifties, staid and proper; the sixties, loose and vulgar; the seventies, trying to recover from the sixties; the eighties–well, my pattern ended there because I was living in it and I couldn’t see anything so very decadent about jellies and stirrup pants. Dad said no, that isn’t the way it works: The civilization presses towards the loose and irresponsible end of the spectrum until it collapses.

I wasn’t completely wrong, I know, but my image was wrong. Closer to correct is that various people and forces work to hold back the tide flowing to the irresponsible end and sometimes succeed in briefly damming it. Some people seem to believe the dam has now forever burst, or if it hasn’t already, it will as soon as Obama’s economic policies are enacted and turn bigger-than-ever swaths of the electorate into dependents.

As the previous post shows, I’m cautiously pessimistic. But I wonder if, even if our time has not come now, will it, irrefutably, inexorably, and inevitably? Can Western civilizations actually collapse any more? Or do they, as Peter Hitchens says, subside into the Third World?

I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they’ll be routed in two or four years’ time. The President-elect’s so-called “tax cut” will absolve 48 per cent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those that are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on the dole. By 2012, it will be more than half, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism, and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the nanny state.

I’ve no doubt you’re right, but the more you write about this, the less I want to have any more children who will have to live in this farce, which is of course in direct contrast to your main line of argument in life. What’s a girl to do?

Updat: Xrlq thinks I’m overreacting. If I am, then sure as hell P.J. is too:

The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the “rich,” and urban sprawl.

Which is even scarier than Steyn.

Time for any and all Portland- or Northwest-area like-minded blog-conscious conservative-stripe folks to get together for the proverbial drink. Last year’s effort was great fun–and in Portland, let me tell you, it is a huge relief to sit down for drinks with people who you already know won’t foam at the mouth if you dare mention the Name of Bush or announce you’re a racist by saying you didn’t vote for Obama.

A commenter at Ace’s, Rasputin, is putting this together. Email him for details at snitch20032@live.com and feel free to email me as well, anwynsnotes at gmail, to say you’re in. Hope to see you there!

ABC cuts Castle order to ten instead of thirteen.

The Bean: “I was born on a Tuesday. That means I’m full of grace.”

M: “Yep, very good, that’s correct.”

The Bean: “What day were you born?”

Me: “Friday.”

The Bean: “What are you full of?”

1) “Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress begat Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress produced Newt Gingrich. Who knows what would follow a President Obama and a Democratic Congress? Here’s one possibility: President Sarah Palin.”

2) Allah in opposition should be smokin’.

Quote of the Day: “As a great man once said, country first.”

Taylor tanks for Obama, like Billy and Bruce.

Advice for stars endorsing Obama: Say as little as possible about why your man is The Man. Please:

“And I just feel so good about seeing Obama present himself, and people getting to know who he is, and how he responds, how he works. I have a huge amount of hope.”

Come on. There’s also this gem:

“I am an Obama guy. I’m sure we don’t know the entire John McCain, we don’t know the entire Barack Obama. That’s what the campaign really needs to be about. We need to know who these guys are.”

Two things: 1) It would have been ridiculous, back in the day of “We don’t really know Obama,” to claim the same of McCain, who’s been on the national scene for decades and has run for president already. If you don’t know enough about it him it’s because you aren’t paying attention. 2) That claim is over even about Obama. We know as much as we need to: He favors socialist economic policies, tells generalistic lies about what caused the finance crisis, couldn’t see outside the bubble of his Chicago pals to know that his relationship with Ayers doesn’t play well with the rest of us, and uses race as a disingenuous club while having sat under a man who is certainly, at the very least, the most racist and flat-out craziest preacher I’ve ever seen or heard of, and I’ve seen and heard some fiery Southern Baptists in my time, people. That is “who this guy is,” James. You know I love you, and it’s certainly not going to stop me from singing “Sweet Baby James” to my son at night or keeping “Frozen Man” among my top favorite songs, but good grief. Just come out and say you’re in favor of rich people paying higher taxes and that Obama’s relationship baggage doesn’t bother you. Something wrong with that?

Allah thinks it’s refreshingly honest when they don’t bother to talk about issues, and it may be, but it also makes me think either A) they’re just not too bright or B) they absolutely think we’re not too bright. Probably some truth in both of those, but why embrace them?

H/t: J.

Reading this makes me uneasily rethink my disagreement with something like this.