My Advice For The GOP

It's really simple.

Stop talking about rape.  Ever.  You only make it worse.

In criticizing controversial comments made by former Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, a California GOP leader ceded Friday that pregnancies by rape are rare "because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized."

"That was an insensitive remark," Celeste Greig told the Daily Democrat. "I'm sure he regretted it. He should have come back and apologized."

Greig is president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, a GOP volunteer organization that Ronald Reagan coincidentally once called "the conscience of the Republican Party."

However, in shades of Akin, Greig then added: "Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it's an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don't know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don't know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act."

Granted, Ms, Greig, your ignorance of science, biology, and law makes you disturbingly unqualified to head pretty much any other organization other than a group of conservative Republican morons.

Republicans everywhere:  when you feel the need to give a "scientific" explanation for your staggeringly stupid, uninformed, and completely wrong beliefs in order to give yourselves more credibility, choose instead to keep your damn mouths shut.  You'll get more votes.

Here's another piece of advice:  rape is rape.  It's a horrific, destructive act.  Getting pregnant from rape is not a cool bonus prize from God, and the traumatic experience of rape does not cause a woman to not get pregnant.  Get those two things through your rebarred concrete skulls and your party might even survive another 10 years.

Trying To Put The Crazy Back In The Tube

Our new friend James "I'm going to start killing people" Yeager is trying to fix his little image problem after you know, threatening to start a civil war over gun control.  His recent attempt at an apology isn't exactly helping much, either.

"I do not condone anybody committing any kind of felonies up to and including any aggravated assaults or murders, unless it's necessary," Yeager said in the second video. "Right now it is not necessary."

"I have drawn my line in the sand: Not one more inch," he said.

Yeager opened the latest video saying that he "probably allowed my mouth to overrun my logic," and announced he had edted some of the more heated comments out of his previous video and reposted it. Then he added: "But I don't, I don't retract any of my statements."

Yeager continued to get worked up over the Obama administration's "tyranny" and talked urged people to pack backpacks, get in shape, and load their guns. He said that his first video had "accidentally assembled an army … a quite formidable army."

He also asked those who "stole" and posted the unedited video version of his first video, which includes the statement about killing people, to take those videos down.

Shorter Rambo Jimbo here:  "I'm sorry you misinterpreted my call for the deaths of gun control advocates in a bloody rampage as a threat.  That's your problem, libtards.  Not mine."

Once again, if this guy was not white and/or a Muslim, and owned a self-defense company that trained people how to shoot, we would have the right screaming about the need to enforce firearms laws, yes?

Funny how this works.

[UPDATE] Guess who just lost his gun permit?

The CEO of a weapons and tactical training company has had his gun permit suspended by Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security after he published a video on YouTube in which he threatened to “start killing people” if President Obama pushes forward with increased gun control, reported News Channel 5.

Have a nice day, jagoff.

But It's Not About Race

President Obama is pretty magical, not only can he sell record guns and ammo, he can triple the membership of the Klan in Virginia just by being President.  Nobody seems to know why, though...

Residents in Richmond, Virginia have reported seeing more recruitment flyers from the Ku Klux Klan, in part of what one Klan member told WTVR-TV is a push for a membership surge fueled by opposition to President Barack Obama.

“Since Obama’s first term our numbers have doubled,” said the hooded man, who identified himself as a “Grand Dragon,” a leader of the state network. “And now that we’re headed to a second term it’s going to triple, this is going to be the biggest resurgence of the Klan since 1915.”

Think Progress reported that hate group membership is on the rise around the country, with racial animus against Obama cited as a reason.

However, the Klansmen told the station they see their group as the “white separatist” equivalent to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples.

“Everyone thinks that we’re a hate group,” he said. “We’re not a hate group, we don’t hate anyone, and we want to see good things come to our race.”

Yeah, because white men have had it so terribly hard in America over the last 150 or so.  Can't possibly imagine what's so different about President Barack Obama that would make Klan enrollment go up. 

Funny how that turned out.

College Loan Kristallnacht

It must be very exhausting to compare everything the Democrats do to the Nazi atrocities before and during WWII.  I mean the knee-jerk stupidity of Republicans screaming that the Dems getting out of bed and brushing their teeth is the Reichstag fire, that Dems shopping for groceries is just like the annexation of the Sudetenland, and that Dems making college loans easier to get is just like the Holocaust is just getting tiresome, you know?

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) says he supports student loans, so America’s youth can get a good education. But the government getting involved in education, he believes, puts the country on a slippery slope that could lead to, say, something like the Holocaust.

At a town hall event at a college in Maryland on Wednesday, Bartlett said he could not find “a shred of evidence” in the Constitution that the government should be involved in education. It’s “certainly a good idea” to give students loans, Bartlett said in a video posted by the Washington Post. “But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad,” he explained. “You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other … The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.”

Barlett’s spokesperson told the Post that the student-loan remarks fit with the congressman’s belief in limited government.

Sure they do.  Needless to say, Roscoe P. Douchetrain here apologized.

 “While explaining my position on an important Constitutional issue I regrettably used an extreme example as a comparison that was ill-advised and inappropriate. I should never use something as horrific as the Holocaust to make a political point, and I deeply apologize to anyone I may have offended.”

Sure you do.  And you'll do it again anyway, but that won't really matter because you'll apologize again then, too.

And so it goes.

Happy Trails To You!

Former South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark "Hiking the Appalachian Trail" Sanford has popped the question to his Argentinian mistress (and soulmate) Maria Belen Chapur at a restaurant in Palermo.

According to the Argentinian newspaper Clarín, Sanford arrived early to the Bella Italia Grill in Palermo for a lunch date last week with Maria Belen Chapur, handed a waiter a bag containing the engagement ring and told him to “make up a good story” for her while he hid in the stall.

When Chapur arrived, she was told she had won a prize for being the restaurant’s 100th customer of the day. Though she reportedly didn’t know what to make of the story, Sanford soon emerged to spring his proposal, which she accepted.

CNN published photos of Sanford with Chapur Sunday, citing a source “close to” the former governor, along with a statement confirming the engagement.

“I’m both happy and excited for what that means,” he said. “I have long expressed my feelings for her, she’s a wonderful person. My closest friends have met and love her, and I look forward to introducing her to still many more that have yet to do so.”

Oh, you remember Mark, right?

Republicans began placing Sanford in high-profile positions three years ago to groom him for a leadership role, before he seemingly vanished that June; while reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, it turned out he had been visiting Chapur in Argentina without telling his staff, or his wife.

Sanford resigned from both his governorship and as leader of the Republican Governors Association and became a national punchline. He was succeeded by Nikki Haley, his former protege.

Eh, Sanford will be back eventually.  Don't count him out for 2014 when Sen. Lindsey Graham is up for re-election.  I'm betting South Carolina Republicans would much rather have Sanford than Graham in DC.

Last Call

GOP Rep. Todd Akin, running for Senate in Missouri?  Just...I can't. 

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

So...women have....what down there, Todd?  Spike traps?  Nannites?  Really, really small ninjas?  They can vomit up their uteri inside out like sea cucumbers to eject rapey sperm?   I'd like to know how this works, man.

Akin is perhaps the boldest among a crop of conservative 2012 nominees who could hamper GOP efforts to take back the Senate in the fall. Akin has called for an end to the school-lunch program and a total ban on the morning-after pill.

His claim about “legitimate” types of rape is not completely foreign to the current Republican Congress, however. In 2011, the House GOP was forced to drop language from a bill that would have limited federal help to pay for an abortion to only victims of “forcible rape.” Akin was a co-sponsor on the bill.

Nor is this Akin’s first time suggesting some types of rape are more worthy of protections than others. As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The PollTracker Average shows Akin leading McCaskill by a margin of 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent. 

I'm betting those poll numbers change now, but will they change enough?  Still a very good chance this moron is going to be a Senator.

Last Call

Since I’m feeling kinda floaty today anyway, I’ll warn you about getting out of the boat into Jennifer Rubin country.  Do not go there, brave traveler.  It is a silly place.

The latest media obsession (or is it an Obama campaign talking point?) is to demand Mitt Romney explain how his budget and entitlement ideas differ from those Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). When he declines, the media screams, “Evasion!” 

Why on earth would Romney answer that, and, more important, does anyone care? If the media is really interested in a compare and contrast exercise they can do their own analysis or ask some staffers. Romney, of course, is running at the top of the ticket, and both Romney and Ryan are running on Romney’s agenda. All Romney need do is explain what HE is for and how that differs from the president’s plans. Is there any voter who will decide to vote for or against Romney because of deviations from the plan his VP has proposed? That would be a first.

The media might have a point if Ryan had criticized Romney’s plans or if his own plans were vastly different from Romney’s. But in basic framework there is no difference between the two. They both want to lower tax rates and expand the base. Both Ryan and Romney want to block grant and reform Medicaid. Both favor a premium-support plan for Medicare. In short, they are in sync on every significant fiscal issue, and Ryan has agreed to be Romney’s VP.

I don’t even have to say anything at this point, she is the tautology of terribadness, the existential essence of ERHMAGERD, the dao of derp.

I’ll say it anyway.  Jennifer Rubin is so shamefully awful a shill for Romney, that if his programming included the advanced neural algorithms to approximate embarrassment he’d have to sit her down and let her cry on his synthetic pauldrons for a while until he had to flush his cache.  It actually causes physical pain for me to contemplate how bad the other employees of the Post have to feel when they read Rubin’s whiny, adolescent crap.  Why somebody in charge up there hasn’t told her “look, you’re pretty much the worst political pundit on the planet, and we would actually gain readership on a sustained basis if we fired you just from the intensity of the euphoria generated by your terminated employment” I have no idea, other than I guess they like what she writes.  That thought alone could rip apart suns.

Here’s another thought.  The Romney camp should just hire her.  They really, really do deserve each other, and she can go on pundit shows and say “Why should Mitt Romney have to answer that question?  Who cares?” because why should our media do anything that mitt Romney doesn’t like?  Why should they ask questions when everyone knows the purpose of the media is to crap out talking points like owl pellets and nod seriously?  Heck, then she could get paid in energon cubes or whatever Romneybot runs on these days and we could all be really happy far, far away from the both of them.

Today In Village Idiocy

Has National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru ever had a decent idea in his entire life?

Cable-television shows about politics are often blamed for polarizing Americans. To this way of thinking, they are responsible for much of the incivility of today’s political culture and have made it harder for us to work together to solve our problems.

This concern seems overblown to me. While the shows don’t help, their effect is probably small. The main sources of polarization lie elsewhere (especially, I would argue, in the way that courts have put social issues at the center of national politics). 

Hey nimrod, which side keeps constantly suing to try to have the courts overturn established precedent on Roe v. Wade or to curtail the Civil Rights Act?   Asshole.

The real problem with the cable-TV shows is that so much of the discussion on them is dumb, one-sided or both. (I trust that readers don’t need me to supply examples.) Their main function seems to be to provide Team Red and Team Blue with their daily talking points and with fresh causes for outrage at the other side. A lot of people seem to like this kind of thing, and it has its place in a robust democracy.

There is a way to elevate the political debate a little bit, though, and it’s simple: One of the cable networks should bring back “Crossfire.” Yes, that’s the CNN show that Jon Stewart attacked in 2004 for “hurting America,” shortly before its 23-year run ended. 

Yes, because the real problem in America is not enough cable TV news shows where one side lies, the other side points out the obvious lie, and then the conclusion is "Well, both sides are probably guilty here."

What we need is far fewer cable TV shows and referee calls from the Village, where news is presented as factual, not to fit whatever ideology that happens to be in vogue.  The Village is incapable of it.  We need less of you pundit jagoffs, not more.

A Contemptible Motion For Contemptible Fools

Over at ABLC, Bon talked about the story of Lexington teenager Savannah Dietrich, the 17-year-old sexual assault victim who faced a six month jail sentence for contempt of court for tweeting the names of her attackers after the pair of young men who assaulted her (and circulated pictures of that, by the way) cut a plea deal in juvenile court.

Yet now it’s Dietrich who is in hot water. She was angry at the order stating she couldn’t speak of the juvenile hearing. Her attackers were given protection because they are minors, despite the fact that she is one as well and they attacked her, not the other way around. She unleashed her feelings on Twitter, which led to the defendant’s attorney calling her out on violating the order.

Dietrich admitted freely that she was violating the court order, but faces up to six months of jail time and a fine of up to $500. The remarkable thing is that the defendants in her case admitted guilt and took a plea bargain that got them a sweet deal. Now she may be the only one who does jail time over her own assault.

Well, it turns out the outcry here in Kentucky and across the country was so raucous that the contempt motion has been dropped.

Defense attorneys for two teenagers who pleaded guilty to assaulting 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich have withdrawn their motion that she be held in contempt for tweeting the names of her attackers in defiance of a court order.

David Mejia, an attorney for one of the teens, said given that the story has gone global because of a piece Saturday in The Courier-Journal, there was no reason to continue the contempt motion.


“What could contempt do now?” Mejia said in an interview, adding that the boys’ names have already been circulated far beyond the original tweet. “Seems like a rather useless exercise doesn’t it?”

The boys are no longer media virgins and the damage has been done?  That's the excuse for dropping the contempt charge?  Really?  That's so far into colossal douchebag territory we're going to need to invent new self-healing plastics just to maintain structural integrity of the unit.

Don't get me wrong, Savannah Dietrich went through more than enough as the victim here.  The notion that she spend six months in jail and pay a fine was preposterous, so seeing the charge dropped is a serious win.  But let's not forget the contempt charge was suggested as nothing more than vitriolic retribution by the defense team of the two assholes who got away with a plea bargain for sexual assault and circulating pictures of their conquest.

My sympathies for their tender fee-fees are infinitesimal.  You'd have a better shot of spotting a Higgs boson wearing a tiny Lady Gaga meat dress while performing various arias from La Traviata than being able to quantify how much of a damn I give about the social reputation of these reprobates.  Then these jagoffs decide they're going to send the victim to jail, and then when the solid wall of the sound of the country shouting the word "asshole" knocks all their dudebro beer glasses off their tables, their lawyer says OH WELL, SHE'S ALREADY DAMAGED THEIR REPUTATION ENOUGH, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO.

I don't say this nearly enough.

I'm saying it now.

Fuck you, the two sexual predator assholes who did this, and fuck you, attorney David Mejia, you rotten excuse for a human being.  You are awful.  You are in fact the greasy, burnt shards of hopelessness and rot at the bottom of the bag of life's kettle chips.  I hope one day that medical science masters the compassion transplant, because you're a couple hogsheads low in that department, guys.

Most of all, I hope you never have a daughter, niece, mother, aunt or sister who finds herself in the same hideous situation that Savannah Dietrich did and that you never feel that particular brand of pain and inchoate, impotent rage at finding yourself and your loved ones at the mercy of the caprice of a couple of teenage dudebro assholes.  I hope you never find yourself so far broken as a man that you are filled with a burning desire to gain denied justice through the application of a metal Easton softball bat and five minutes in a locked room with the jackasses that hurt the people you care about, a desire so strong you become physically ill at the effort needed to contain it, just to continue functioning, and that you have to stop and remind yourself constantly through the incandescent blinding futility of your rage that if your pressure vessel of a self cracks for even a moment, you will forever disgrace the ones you love and defeat the very purpose of justice itself by becoming a beast no more worthy than those who wronged the people you care the most about.

That is something I would never wish upon you or the two men who assaulted this young woman.  Pray you never experience anything close, because you will fail that particular test, gentlemen, and only compound your sins exponentially by hurting the innocent around you even more.

I'm going to get some air now.

Glenn Kessler's Really Done For Now

John Cole catches Glenn Kessler not only digging the hole he lives in deeper on Mitt Romney's taxes, but then Cole finds Kessler stabbed himself through the heart with the shovel.

First, Kessler's frantic digging:

In 2011, Romney, as a presidential candidate, filed a public financial disclosure form, under pain of perjury, that stated: “Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.”

You can see Romney’s signature, on the first page. If Romney lied on this form, that would be a felony.

Oops.  You see, Cole points out the problem with this admission:

Well, yes, Glenn. That would be a felony, and it’s exactly what the Obama campaign said when they stated that he either lied on his disclosure forms and filings to the SEC then, or he is lying to the American public now. If I remember correctly, when the Obama campaign said the exact same thing, you awarded them… wait for it… wait for it…

THREE PINNOCHIOS. When will we see the column where he awards himself three pinnochios for using the same exact rhetoric as Stephanie Cutter?

How does this clown have a job?

I have no clue, but that needs to change.  Not only has Kessler abandoned any pretense of impartiality and objectivity, he's now admitting that it's all arbitrary, and that Glenn Kessler gets to award the Obama campaign whatever he feels like awarding then that day.  He's also stupid enough to think that nobody checks his own column for possible factual errors.

If he had any reputation left, it just died.

None Dare Call It Treason...

I'm trying to figure out what "leaving your race for State Senator in order to join an alternate government of the United States" is called if that's not treason, but I'm having a hell of a time finding any definition of the said practice apparently performed this week by Iowa Republican Randi Johnson that doesn't boil down to the T word there.

A Republican state Senate candidate in Iowa has decided to bow out of the race and become a U.S. senator of an alternative form of government.

In a letter released Friday, Randi Shannon informs supporters of her new position as “U.S. Senator in the Republic of the United States of America.” You see, according to Shannon, the U.S. government has been acting unlawfully as the “‘official government,’ which clearly it is not!”

The libertarian-leaning group she joined claims it “re-inhabited” the government on March 30, 2010. The group claims the “United States Corporation” unlawfully formed in 1871 without the American people’s consent. “Since 1871, the abuses of this corporation upon both the international community as well as the American people are inestimable and unconscionable,” the group’s website claims.

In her announcement letter, Shannon outlined her political plans. As someone who home schooled her own children, Shannon supports abolishing the Department of Education. She opposes unnecessary foreign wars. She believes life begins at conception. And she blames government abuse, invasive TSA screenings, “Obamacare,” and the 14th amendment on the corrupt “United States Corporation.” 

In other words, this woman is a few loop-de-loops short of an air show.   Yikes.  This is outright scary, actually.  She's basically arguing that the US government itself has been illegitimate since the end of the Civil War (which should be your first really big clue what the real agenda is here) and that these guys are now it.

Well good luck to ya.  And enjoy the knocks on the door by the actual government.

Nutjob,

Last Call

Having had a while to chew on today's SCOTUS rulings, I have to say that the ruling on Arizona's immigration law was the most interesting.  The court made a 5-3 ruling (Kagan recused as she argued the case as Solicitor General) that Arizona went too far on a number of issues.  Chief Justice Roberts sided with the majority, but Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito basically argued that not only should Arizona should be able to take whatever measures it deemed necessary in order to defend its border, but that all states summarily should be able to, even non-border states.

If that sounds moderately insane, that's because it is.  Greg Sargent:

The court’s decision to strike down the first three provisions is welcome news to immigration advocates, and suggests the Obama administration was right to challenge the law. But advocates expected that those provisions wouldn’t survive the decision. The problem is that the court upheld the aspect of the law that is most worrisome — the part that requires police to check the status of a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is here illegally.

“The real make or break was the show-me-your-papers provision,” Frank Sharry of America’s Voice tells me. “Basically they upheld it.”

There are several problems here. The first is that this could lead to racial profiling, says Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress. “It’s not a sweeping victory for the other side, but the provision we most worried about was the one giving cops the ability to stop people and ask for their papers,” Fitz says. “We think this will lead inevitably to racial profiling, based on the way they sound and the way they look.”

Second: The fact that the High Court has suggested that there are ways for states to implement and/or interpret this law could encourage other states to try their own versions of it, rather than dissuade them from doing so. Efforts to emulate the Arizona law are already underway in a handful of states.

“There are lots of Joe Arpaios out there,” Fitz says, in a reference to the Arizona sheriff. “States will say, `Look, they upheld this.’”

That's a problem.  How the entire law wasn't trashed 8-0 I don't know.  We basically came within a hair or two of this becoming the new standard:  that states should be able to take whatever action on immigration they deem fit because Republicans refuse to allow a national policy to pass that's anything short of mass roundups and deporting millions.

Having said all this, the parts of the law that were struck down are, as Eugene Robinson puts it at the Washington Post, a big win for the Obama administration.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, points out something that many who seek to participate in the immigration debate fail to understand: “As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States.”

That’s right. It’s not a crime for “illegal” immigrants to live and work here without the proper documents. By “here” I mean all 50 states. The United States is one country with one immigration policy, and the Supreme Court means to keep it this way.

That’s why analysts who see this as a split ruling with “something for both sides” are wrong. The Obama administration won across the board on its central contention, which is that Arizona was trying to usurp a federal prerogative. This has huge implications for the other states, such as South Carolina and Georgia, that are also trying to design their own immigration policies.

So yes, this fight is not over.  A case will come before SCOTUS that claims that Arizona's paper check provision is in violation of civil rights (which it is).  Yet another reson to make sure President Obama is the guy picking the justices in the future, yes?

Calling BS On Ourselves

The snippet below is quoting an awesome article that refers to an awesome quote.  It also echoes something I've really been thinking about lately, but they were far more eloquent and concise.  Still, I want to lay the groundwork for some themes and ideas that will reappear.  We cannot afford to bullshit ourselves, and yet we all do a terrific job of just that.

We are our own best friends.  When it comes down to it, nobody has our interests and benefits in mind quite like how we look out for ourselves.  Yet we do it so wrong.  We lie to ourselves, and like parents who raise spoiled children, we do ourselves a disservice.  We act in direct opposition to what we know is good for us, and justify it with a permissive mental wave of the hand.  Some folks are self-destructive, some truly sell themselves that what they want is the right answer no matter what, some don't think at all but follow some whispering instinct that somehow turns into a compulsion.  It's human to do so, but it's the human challenge to make the most of ourselves, so we can make the most of our lives.  So we are also our own worst enemies, not as a choice but as a byproduct of our actions.

This is something all people do, regardless of age, period in history, culture or religion.  It may be the one thing that truly ties all human beings together.  Nobody is perfect all the time, but we are challenged to fight to be our best, not be content to wallow in our weakness. How many thousands, or even millions of things could we prevent simply by being good friends to ourselves and refusing to allow those lies to root and take hold?

The article is more lighthearted, but the implications just continue to more serious levels.  I smiled, but then I realized that this root problem has major implications for the world, from simple friendships to wars and global relations.

Sometimes we shove problems aside because we don't have time to deal with them. We've all been there. Or we come up with a change—like buying bigger pants—that makes a problem like sneaky weight gain less uncomfortable, but as Mr. Money Mustache reminds us, this is really no cure.

A better solution, he suggests, is to actually stare your problems in the face and not mask them:

My solution is the opposite: put those damned tight pants on and keep wearing them. When they bite at you, it's a reminder to take the stairs instead of the elevator, eat a piece of grilled salmon instead of a chocolate bar and bologna sandwich, and to start walking and biking more. Those tight pants are your biggest ally in addressing the underlying problem – if you give them up, you'll be allowed to forget what the real problem is: your lifestyle has become unhealthy and you're doing everything with a dull saw!

From tight jeans to civil rights to wars, being truthful to ourselves and overcoming our obstacles is what makes us better people.  Whether we try to be better or let ourselves drift and go along is what defines us.