Gun-Toting, Carnivorous Jew

2003-08-14T10:09:00.000-06:00

NEW BLOG! Gun-Toting, Carnivorous Jew is now The Waterglass! Join us at http://www.thewaterglass.net And thank you for reading! Dave, the Gun-Toting, Carnivorous Jew

2003-08-11T18:44:00.000-06:00

Don't Go! Stay tuned for an exciting new blog. Coming soon, I promise!

2003-07-02T06:22:00.000-06:00

I Lied I'll be on hiatus after this one mention of Ray's advice column:

Do you have any suggestions for a really tasty vegetarian entree? Something kind of nice, you know, for impressing ladies or special occasions. I used to make this orange pepper risotto but I'm kind of tired of it now and looking for something really good to feed my vegetarian friends at my next dinner party.

(I hope you're not one of those snotty meat-eaters that won't even try a vegetarian dish.)
Thanks! — SPS

Dear Vegetarian,

I guess I do eat meat but I can still think of some things which you may like to cook, even though you have pre-emptively insulted me. A Nicoise salad without the tuna, a gardenburger with grilled onions and sharp cheddar cheese…you know what? Fuck you vegetarians. It’s like, every time you write in for help you’re actually just looking for another opportunity to push your retarded agenda. Meat is part of the diet. Did you see those sharp teeth in the mirror the last time you pretended to smile? Eat it in moderation, buy it from responsible sources. Don’t go flappin’ your pussy lips in my face just because you misunderstand your place in the food chain.

I hate that shit.

Included because it has definite relevance to the Carnivorous part of this website.

2003-07-01T16:48:00.000-06:00

Blog Hiatus I will be in Calgary on a business trip and won't be back to blogging until Monday, July 7. In the meantime, read Lileks. Check out Achewood. Pray that I don't get another sinus infection. And never forget: if the glove don't fit, you must acquit.

2003-07-01T06:06:00.000-06:00

A Blog about Blogging I normally hate this self-referential stuff; there're a million avant-garde blog articles out there discussing the nature of blogging and why people blog and what their blog would taste like if it was covered in chocolate chips on the planet Venus, but here's an article that I thought was somewhat interesting:

I was vaguely aware that blogging was popular among non-professional writers, but only very occasionally stumbled across one of these diaries while trawling the internet. And I was happy to avoid reading them — I took the view that I couldn’t read everything I wanted to each day as it was, and I certainly didn’t need to spend time cringing at other people’s mundane ramblings....

I feel in need of some analysis myself and call Oliver James, the psychologist. In his view the fundamentals of blogging are “loneliness and narcissism and the need for contact with others”. He says that historically the diary has played the role of confidant to lonely people. Now, in cyberspace and particularly with the cloak of anonymity, people can “have relationships with a lot of other people without the hideousness of flesh-and-blood relationships. It’s attractive.” He adds: “There is a curious assumption that exists, particularly among young people, that the most tiresome aspects of their lives are interesting to other people. And they are, as one can see from Big Brother.”

Ultimately, this article consists mostly of the ramblings of a too-clever-by-far English journalist who's just stumbled upon this whole blogging thing. Like a blog, almost. Well, I'm here to tell you that I'll never bore you with the minutiae of my life out of a feeling of loneliness and narcissism. Never. Everything I say and do is extremely important and doesn't really fit into the category of "minutiae." And I'm sure that some of the readers out there in cyberspace are indeed hideous, or would find me hideous, or would taste hideous if covered in chocolate chips on the planet Venus, but I don't care. You are my public, and I shall always cherish you, hideous or not. All four or five of you. (Thanks to Jeff Jarvis)

2003-06-30T13:16:00.000-06:00

Portrait of a Cretin Pop quiz, hotshot. Take a look at the photo below and tell me which "Celebratrix of Diversity" will most likely be legally discriminated against in a future job or law school appointment because of her race: (Hint: sunglasses)

2003-06-30T07:25:00.000-06:00

Those Droll English Professors Check out this article from the UK's Daily Telegraph:

An Oxford University professor has provoked outrage by rejecting an application from an Israeli PhD student purely because of his nationality.

Andrew Wilkie, the Nuffield professor of pathology and a fellow of Pembroke College, is under investigation after telling Amit Duvshani, a student at Tel Aviv university, that he and many other British academics were not prepared to take on Israelis because of the "gross human rights abuses" he claims that they inflict on Palestinians.

Prof Wilkie made the comments after Mr Duvshani, 26, wrote to him requesting the opportunity to work in Prof Wilkie's laboratory towards a PhD thesis. Mr Duvshani, who is in the last months of a master's degree in molecular biology, included a CV detailing his academic and outside experience, including his mandatory three-year national service in the Israeli army.

In a reply sent by email on June 23, Prof Wilkie wrote: "Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they [the Palestinians] wish to live in their own country.

"I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another lab if you look around."

[After it got out that he's an anti-semitic prick,] the professor, who was elected Nuffield professor of pathology last month, said that he could understand the distress and anger felt by Mr Duvshani. When asked if he would look again at the student's application for a PhD, he replied "absolutely" and added that he "entirely accepted" the university's equal opportunities and race equality policies.

You know, I'd have more respect for this asshole if he'd stick to his guns and not let the Israeli student in instead of backtracking like that. I mean, at least have the courage of your convictions, for Christ's sake. I wonder if he gets his news from the BBC? (Thanks to Andrew Sullivan)

2003-06-30T06:44:00.000-06:00

Israel's Message to the BBC: Seeya! From the UK's The Times:

ISRAEL broke all contact with the BBC yesterday in protest at its repeated “demonisation” of the country and today’s planned showing on BBC World of a critical documentary on Israel’s nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal.

The move will involve a refusal to put up official spokesmen for BBC interviews. There will be visa restrictions, not imposed on other news organisations in Israel, to ensure that the bureau chief is rotated every few months and to make it hard for BBC staff to report.

“The BBC will discover that bureaucracy can be applied with goodwill or without it. And after the way that they have repeatedly tried to delegitimise the state of Israel, we, as hosts, have none left for them,” Daniel Seaman, director of the government press office, told The Times.

“We see the well-known pro-Arab touch of the Foreign Office and the traditional anti-Semitism of parts of Britain’s Establishment in the way they are acting against us.”

First thing is, I don't understand what a "critical documentary" is supposed to be. I thought that a documentary was, well, supposed to simply document things, not put a slant on them, critical or otherwise. Of course, we do live in the days where Michael Moore can lie and misstate facts in a documentary and get an Academy Award for doing so, so it shouldn't be unusual. Jeff Jarvis, from whom I got the link to this article, states: "By cutting off the BBC, they also cut off information and cutting off the BBC's audience and that is a mistake. But the frustration is clear." It's a valid argument, but I think that when you have a particular ideological slant (like anti-semitism), you don't need any extra information; you can always state the facts in a way that will get your slant across. The BBC has long been an anti-U.S., anti-Israel news agency, and I applaud Israel for taking this stance. Make no mistake: when you're living in the Information Age as we are, one of the biggest punishments you can mete out is the refusal to provide data. Fuck the BBC; let 'em get their news from CNN.

2003-06-30T05:56:00.000-06:00

Obsession The Bleat is back! Thank God. And it's chock-full of bleaty goodness like:

Some people are obsessed with thinking that we are obsessed. They think we spent our nights drenching our ids with the marinade of anti-communist paranoia, because we never confronted these things in the light of day. Never mind the headlines, the stories on the news, the covers of the magazines - no one talked about Communism, so the fears spurted out through twisted fissures in the popular cultures. Hence things in the culture that had nothing to do with communism were actually explicit parables about Leninist aggression.

I’m not saying that these things don’t affect the shape and flavor of a culture’s products; obviously they do. But a free society tends to hit these things head on. If everyone was so quietly terrified of the Red Peril, why didn’t more movies deal directly with the idea? “Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers” is not a metaphor for us vs. the Rooskies. It’s a story about Us versus flying saucers, for heaven’s sake. Perhaps that’s because we wanted an escape from the perils of the planet, or perhaps because it’s just cool to see flying saucers smack into the Capitol dome. Smash. Bang. Whoo-hoo!

Actually, I just saw The Hours over the weekend. It sure seemed as if it lasted for, well, hours. And it's really all about commies. You can tell. I mean, it's like, so obvious. Either that, or it's about lesbians. Julianne Moore kissing Toni Collette! Smash. Bang. Whoo-hoo!

2003-06-30T05:48:00.000-06:00

Beef! Check out Roast Beef's fate. Things look grim.

2003-06-26T09:45:00.000-06:00

Another Place to Boycott Read this excerpt, then try to guess the author, then follow the link and read the whole thing:

Abercrombie & Fitch, a chain that some say markets a "classic American look," faces a lawsuit, filed by a group of "civil rights organizations," aided by a law firm that specializes in "anti-discrimination cases."

Why? The clothier allegedly suddenly either fired or demoted Hispanic and Asian floor salespersons in favor of women possessing this so-called "all-American look" -- presumably blonde surfer types. (Note: A friend recently visited an Abercrombie & Fitch store and noted at least two Asian saleswomen.)

According to an attorney for the plaintiffs, "Through means both subtle and direct, Abercrombie has consistently reinforced to its store managers that they must recruit and maintain an overwhelmingly white workforce. The company has systematically cultivated an all-white 'A&F Look' and then faulted Latino, African American and Asian American applicants, potential recruits and employees for failing to fit this racially exclusive image." The plaintiffs further claim that Abercrombie & Fitch "direct that minority Brand Representatives (salespersons) be fired, moved to a stockroom or overnight shift or have their hours 'zeroed out,' which is the equivalent of termination." One plaintiff said, "Abercrombie's corporate representatives came to our store on an inspection tour, pointed to a picture of a white male model and told the manager that he needed to make the store 'look more like this.' Within two weeks, five Asian American employees, including me, were terminated and an African American Brand Representative was transferred to the night shift at a different store. The store then hired about five white Brand Representatives to replace us."

At least one of the un-hired applicants found work at Banana Republic, another clothing establishment that, according to him, "has almost all minorities working there." Does Banana Republic's sales staff result from laws pressuring companies to seek a "diverse work force," or because Banana Republic's marketing niche seeks a "diverse" clientele, or because they simply hired based on their perceived quality of the applicant? In either case, a private business ought to have the right to hire and fire as it pleases, just as employees may quit and customers may refuse to patronize the store.

Here's the whole story. While I understand and agree with a non-tax-funded company's right to hire whomever it wants to fill whatever position it needs, I have to say that it's a pretty dumb idea to fire all the minorities so that the store can have a more "all-American" look. Despite the Supreme Court's recent ruling on race, I was under the impression that if you're a United States citizen, you're all-American. You made it. No, I'm not entirely able to look beyond someone's skin color upon meeting him or her, but I don't know anyone that is, and by God I think I do a pretty good job of taking people on individual merit, person by person. It's stupid shit like this that continues to screw up race relations across the country. Yes, it's legal. But it ain't right. Remember the all-white prom that the Georgia kids held? Same thing: legal, but stupid and wrong. A&F can take their clothes and ram 'em.

2003-06-26T06:42:00.000-06:00

Good Luck, James Check out today's Bleat. The Instapundit says to put some dough into the tipjar, but I wouldn't; instead, go buy one of his books if you haven't done so already, preferably The Gallery of Regrettable Food. It's a scream, trust me.

2003-06-26T06:30:00.000-06:00

Raiders of the Not-Lost-After-All Ark I know it's all blown over, which is why I'm bringing it up now: the "rape of the Iraqi museum" fiasco. Remember that? It had been initially reported that over 170,000 objects had been stolen, but we learned later that maybe 33 or so were actually taken. David Aaronovitch of The Guardian puts the hysteria very succinctly:

When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than 170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed, representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the oil ministry.

Professors wrote articles. Professor Michalowski of Michigan argued that this was "a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop". Professor Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University claimed that, "By April 12 the entire museum had been looted," and added, "Blame must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture unparalleled in modern history." From Edinburgh Professor Trevor Watkins lamented that, "The loss of Iraq's cultural heritage will go down in history - like the burning of the Library at Alexandria - and Britain and the US will be to blame." Others used phrases such as cultural genocide and compared the US in particular to the Mongol invaders of 13th-century Iraq.

At the time, I'd said:

The press has been up in arms lately regarding the ransacking of museums in Iraq since Saddam's overthrow. It's important to note that this ransacking and looting is being performed by the Iraqi people, and not coalition forces. It's also important to note that we are being blamed for the looting, as if in all the shooting and precision bombing of military targets, we were supposed to take men and women off the front lines to protect museums. There are several issues here, and I'm going to address them one by one. I'd like to make it known, however, that I find it extremely awful that artifacts dating from the beginning of civilization are being taken and/or destroyed. I know that they're irreplaceable, and we are all much poorer for their loss. However, I'd burn every museum in Iraq to its foundation and every scrap of papyrus in it if it would save the life of a single coalition soldier. That's just me.

There are many, however, that don't feel the same way. They feel that chunks of carved stone are worth more than human lives, and are willing to say so without shame or equivocation. Their words can be found here. To get the full effect, however, you absolutely need to read some of the comments; they're extremely telling. I must warn you, however: they're not pretty. They're from people who judge the liberation of an entire people not worth the destruction and theft of some artifacts. "Ivory Tower" doesn't scratch the surface; these people are living on Mars.

I decided to re-visit the site that stated things like, "History lost. . . mention this to the blinkered ideologues who brought this about, and the arrogant blowhards who support them, and they'll point to a picture of Saddam's statue being pulled down and say something smug and self-righteous about the freedom of a people being more important. This is a good time to slug them." And, "How could people who believe so fundamentally in the depravity of man be so unprepared for a completely predictable consequence of invasion? Idiots! Fools! Vandals! Bastards!" Oh, and, "A thousand years from now, this will be remembered. How could we even begin to explain this to Rumsfeld; as if your Liberty Bell, your Constitution, God knows what else were lost. Not even. Things ten times older than America in shards, scattered. What will be his sound bite for history? How will this be remembered...The Nazis stealing art, hell, Napoleon's idiotes shooting the nose off the Sphinx, that at least was comprehensible, but this...I cannot begin to wrap my mind around this. And us all "chicken littles", are we? You smug, arrogant fool, Rumsfeld. Bad enough that you might yet get us all killed, but these should have outlived your new and frightening American century and whatever myriad perversions you would warp America into. Long after the last star fell from the Stars and Stripes, these should have endured. I am sure you will die peacefully in your sleep, Rumsfeld, dreaming the peaceful dreams of Stalin and all those other zealots who remained convinced of their rightness and infallibility until their last breath. When Kissenger passes on, will he be troubled by the thought that he brought the Khmer Rouge to power? No, of course not." So I figured that now, these dumbfucks would at least be able to manufacture some level of shame. I mean, they were wrong. They believed that the U.S. army destroyed the cradle of civilization. If you can't admit feeling ashamed, you should at least shut up, right? Wrong. Check this out:

Assorted ankle-high freepi have gotten the idea that this should be the occasion for a vast confession of left-of-center error and guilt. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No one owes anyone an apology for having believed a story that was reported by every major news feed on the planet. And if anyone were owed an apology, these pismires aren’t the ones it would be owed to; so what the hell are they doing trying to collect on it? Go away! Take dance lessons or something. Get a different hobby.

Actually, you total cretin, you do owe the rest of the world an apology. You and every other shitbag that compared this administration to Nazis. Not because you were wrong, but because you used what was then considered a tragedy to advance your typical anti-war, anti-U.S., Bush-hating stance. It was so easy for you to believe that not only had we let the artifacts be stolen, but that we'd likely encouraged such behavior. As usual, you took a situation that was bad and twisted it way, way out of whack to fit the axe you had to grind. If you're not going to apologize for that, at least have the good grace to shut your trap. Sound mean? I'm just sick to death of the left hijacking the moral high ground on every issue under the sun.

2003-06-25T07:25:00.000-06:00

Affirmative Inaction Okay, my understanding of the recent Michigan affirmative action decision handed down by the Supreme Court is that it's okay to discriminate based on race and skin color in law school admissions, but it isn't okay to discriminate based on race and skin color in undergraduate admissions. With this in mind, I have to ask one pressing question: What the FUCK? I mean, I don't get it. There's just so much wrong with this that I find myself wondering if I haven't dreamed the early part of this week and at any moment I'm likely to wake up and it'll be Monday morning. Which is fine, because aside from this I think the week has been shaping up just fine and I wouldn't mind living through it again. I just hope I don't wake up until I see what the Powerball numbers are tonight, that's all. Anyway, that's beside the point. It'd be silly to bring up Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," because it's very clear by now that Dr. King's concept of race relations doesn't relate to reality. Guilty white people and the majority of the African-American community are not interested in equality, but rather redress for past wrongs. Affirmative action is simply a symptom of that, and don't give me that "equality of opportunity" bullshit either, because I've heard it all before. If you were really intertested in giving everyone a fair shake, you wouldn't make affirmative action programs based on race, but rather economic circumstances; i.e., giving more points to poor people instead of people who happen to be properly pigmented. And yes, I know that inner-city schools suck, which is why I'm also in favor of school voucher programs that give children greater opportunities. Thing is, I'm not in favor of giving poor kids a leg up either. Sounds mean, but fuck 'em; when you move away from the meritocracy, you take another step forward into mediocrity. If you reward mere circumstance instead of ability, you drag everyone to the same level. Yes, I know that the poor have been taking it in the shorts for some time, but why should the rest of us be punished? When you play general economics like a zero-sum game, then eventually you end up becoming a socialist. Just because I have a piece of the pie, it doesn't mean that I automatically took it from the mouths of starving children. The point is that the concept of "quality" (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to understand "quality," if you can) is something that needs to be examined more fully, because despite everything, "quality" is not something inherent in all of us. There are vast numbers of people who simply tread water and take up space. There are whole subcultures that feel they have a greater "right" to resources because they feel that they have been victimized. Affirmative action programs foster these feelings. They contribute to (or are symptoms of) something that has poisoned our society for decades now: the lionization of the victim. It used to be that if something bad happened to you, you put it behind you and moved on. Now, instead of overcoming obstacles, it's more in vogue to claim helplessness in the face of them. Rather than fight, it's easier to demand a check. Bull. Slavery's over, Asian and Jewish kids seem to have a strong work ethic, and life is generally unfair: GET OVER IT. As a citizen of a free (and wonderful) country like the U.S., you have a right to the pursuit of happiness. You don't have a right to a living at the expense of others. For every job or position affirmative action provides, it displaces someone else who would have otherwise been successful on merit. Diversity in and of itself isn't an intrinsically good thing, a concept that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Diversity does not automatically equal quality, despite what liberal college campuses think. Yes, I think it's a good thing for young people to meet people of differing backgrounds, cultures, points of view, and skin pigmentation in academic environments. But I also weigh that against the scholastic merits of a school, and the quality of classroom learning is what tips the scales every time. If you want to start a college that has the express intent of exposing its students to students of other melanin amounts as its main draw, then you do indeed have a pressing need for diversity. Ultimately, what will end up happening in colleges that are looking for kids of the proper skin color is that they'll just develop a different nomenclature for quotas. Instead of "points," there will be "allowances." It's okay. The Supreme Court said so. Of course, when Dick Gephardt's in office, he'll change that and any other wrong thing that the Supreme Court does, so it doesn't matter anyway.

2003-06-25T05:52:00.000-06:00

We're with You, James Send some good thoughts down Minnesota-way to James Lileks:

Other adages for today: when life hands you lemons, head down the hall, hide in the closet of your enemy, wait until they get a papercut, then leap out shouting BANZAI and crush the lemon in your hand right over the papercut. Save the peel. Go downstairs to the bar. Order a vodka. Use the peel. Yum!

Why yes, I am being oblique, and I will remain so until things shake out. Don’t worry - I’m not fired; we haven’t been evicted from Jasperwood. Everyone’s fine, but everything is different now, and how this will affect the Bleat I’ve no idea. If all turns out as I expect, nothing will change, but for a while you might expect shorter stuff and more throughout-the-day, posted-at-night quasi-blogging.

I hope things are all right. Someone who has shared his talent as unselfishly and consistently as Mr. Lileks deserves our support, if nothing else. Good luck, man.

2003-06-24T06:29:00.000-06:00

What a Dick This is what presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt had to say about The Supreme Court and what he'd do when he became President:

"Any effort to deny our nation's compelling interest in ensuring diversity is short-sighted and wrong...When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day."

Forget about that whole Constitution nonsense; it's irrelevant these days. Dick's gonna do what Dick thinks is best, and damn the torpedoes. Affirmative action? When Dick's in charge, he'll diversify every workplace and every college until every person who wants a job has one, no matter what qualifications that person possesses. Roe v. Wade? With Dick in the Oval Office, there'll be an abortion clinic on every corner. And if you like entitlements, well you ain't seen nothing yet. Those rich will pay, by golly. Honestly, I couldn't make this up. He actually said it. Even if you think Fox News is misquoting, CNN has the same quote.

2003-06-24T06:07:00.000-06:00

Those Whild and Whacky French Here's an article from Time.com:

As Secretary Of State Colin Powell traveled to the Middle East last weekend to try to get President Bush's road map back on track, U.S. frustrations with the stalled peace efforts have begun to focus on a familiar target: France. State Department and White House sources tell TIME the U.S. has lodged complaints that Paris is turning a blind eye to fund raising in France by front organizations for Hamas, the terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for most of the recent wave of suicide attacks. The U.S. also claims France is blocking European Union efforts to restrict these front groups elsewhere. "There's a lot of intelligence to suggest that the French have become increasingly a conduit for funds to Hamas and that they're just not taking the steps that are necessary," says a State official. Some Administration hard-liners suspect the French of positioning themselves to influence the Arab-Israeli peace process by leveraging Hamas' European funding.

I think by now that it'd be pretty disingenuous for anyone to act surprised at this. The past sixty years or so have shown us that the French are inveterate anti-Semites and irrational haters of the U.S. There are many explanations for this, but they all end up sounding like rationalizations once you look at what's being explained: for whatever reason, the French are doing their best to be our enemies. At what point do you just say, "Look; we were allies before, but not any longer. It's over. Take yourselves and the UN and cram them sideways," huh? Eventually, you have to admit that the baby's ugly and deal with it. (Thanks to Instapundit)

2003-06-23T06:47:00.000-06:00

Don't Give Them any Ideas! Check out this article by Kevin McCullough:

See what Hillary or Al or Terry or the rest of the liberal leadership need to do is not go around securing $10 million donations that won't keep a network running for more than about a week. What they need to do is learn how to sit down, think for themselves, put some ideas on a computer screen in front of them, and see if the American public buys into it.

Actually, I think it's a very typical liberal thing to do: throw money at a problem in hopes that it will go away. The "problem" is that you can't get away with being a liberal asshole in public any more (like the Dixie Chicks). And it isn't that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, and Pacifica can't get the message out effectively, either. It's that NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR IT. Peter Jennings, Al Franken, and Katie Couric don't do it for America any longer, and this fact just kills them. Nobody likes being ignored and marginalized, like the left has been doing to conservatives since the days of Dick Nixon. Now it's coming full circle, and the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy is feeling it. So in the future, we're going to hear more crap about liberal talk radio and AlGoreTV, but it doesn't make a difference: they're still selling a shitty bill of goods, and nobody's buying. But hey, good luck with it, guys.

2003-06-23T06:23:00.000-06:00

I Didn't Know B.D. Wong Was Gay Jonah Goldberg talks about mainstreaming homosexuality:

After repeated protests from gay groups in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hollywood stopped casting gays and lesbians as villains (think of "No Way Out" and "Basic Instinct"). By the end of the '90s, gays could be found all over movies and TV, but they were depicted as virtuous celibates. In movies like "Sling Blade," "My Best Friend's Wedding" and that execrable drek by Madonna "The Next Best Thing," gays were cast as the only decent and honorable white men around.

I didn't know that there were any decent and honorable white men, according to Hollywood. Anyhow, it's an interesting article, and you should read it. On a side note, I think that the next "stage" in bringing homosexuality into the mainstream would be to make the occasional movie character gay...without making a big fucking deal over it. I know it's a stretch, but wouldn't it represent a truly effective change in paradigm, where the main character just doesn't seem at all interested in the love interest? As an example: the Civilizing Influence and I saw The Transporter over the weekend. It was extremely bad, but had a few good moments. Wouldn't it have been cool if the main character, played by Jason Statham, just holds up his hands and shakes his head when the Love Interest exposes herself? "I'm sorry, I'm not into that," he apologizes. "I'm gay." I know he's supposed to be a tough guy and all, but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. He doesn't make it a big deal and he's still able to get the job done insofar as explosions, shootings, and beating the snot out of people are concerned. We also saw Tears of the Sun over the weekend. Fun film. Monica Bellucci is always easy on the eyes, even though her exchanges with Bruce Willis were extremely painful to watch. (Thanks to Instapundit)

2003-06-19T06:42:00.000-06:00

Chimpy's a Big Fat Liar ...and it's all about the oiiiiiiiiilllllllllll... Sorry; had to get that off my chest. Anyhow, I was doing some thinking about the "Bush lied to us about WMD" issue, and I still can't wrap my head completely around it. It doesn't pass the laugh test, that it's all a big lie and we all fell for it. Here's the torturous train of thought that led me to it. First, you must remember that this is all predicated on the fallacious notion that we went to war in Iraq only because we thought that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass murder. This is a common belief among the Bush-haters, whose voices grow louder as fewer and fewer people listen to them. So I'm not going to get into the idea that Hussein's regime sponsored terrorism, and I'm not going to discuss the fact that we went in there to stop a monster from committing murder, torture, and rape. Yes yes, I know that there isn't enough "proof" for a lot of us that Hussein sponsored terrorism; to some, there will never be enough proof, because in their minds, there's never enough justification for any war (these same moral midgets would likely have chained themselves to the gates of Belsen as "human shields" to protest American hegemony had they been born a few decades earlier). And I also know that there are lots of other murderous dictators in the world that the U.S. doesn't do anything about, so we shouldn't have gone into Iraq (an argument that only makes sense when you put on your "Bush=Hitler" glasses). With that out of the way, we'll focus on the argument that we went to war in Iraq because President Bush lied to the world about its WMD program. If Bush lied, then he must have had a reason to do so (unless he was a pathological liar, in which case his name would be Clinton). What would Bush gain from a war in Iraq? Oil revenue from Iraqi oil fields? Possibly, but it'd be hard for him to personally profit from that without some very very clever financial dealings that would have to escape the microscopic scrutiny under which he lives daily (as part of his position as leader of the free world). The only other thing he might stand to gain was a higher approval rating, which translates to a greater probability of his being reelected in 2004. Which means that he went to war so that he could grab more power for himself. I mean, who wants to be President of the United States of America, unless it's someone who has an appetite for exercising authority? That seems more likely. Bush must've known that if he sent troops to Iraq to take out Hussein, people would be killed in the process: coalition soldiers, pilots, Republican Guards, Iraqi conscripts, and civilians who were caught in the crossfire. If this was simply a power/oil grab, then Bush deliberately sent thousands of people to their deaths for personal gain. That's a textbook definition of evil, right there. It validates the darkest thoughts of the "Bush=Hitler" left, and it's the only logical conclusion. A lie this big would require a great deal of planning, as well as several accomplices. One accomplice would have to be Vice President Dick Cheney. How would Cheney gain? Well, he no longer has a direct connection to Halliburton, so revenue from Halliburton's fire-extinguishing and rebuilding efforts would have to be fairly well hidden (under that microscope once again). It's not likely that he'll run with Bush for his reelection for health reasons. Perhaps, then, so that he could end his career on a high note in order to profit from the lecture circuit. Nah, that's stupid; Bill Clinton left office under a cloud as dark as Richard Nixon, and Clinton's speaking engagements still earn him big bucks. So I'm not sure what Cheney would gain, so we'll just assume that he's going along with it for complex personal reasons. Who else would Bush need to help with the Big Lie? Certainly Colin Powell; after all, he presented the case to the UN (though it's likely that he's just a dupe instead of a really great actor). Bush would also need Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Oh, and Tommy Franks. Not to mention their aides, assistants, and various agents in the field. So once Bush gathered this cabal (something he must've done months, if not years in advance), he set The Plan in motion. Only the problem is that we haven't yet found the WMD's. So, apparently, Bush and his cronies are so fucking stupid that they'd make up a false reason to go to war and then not even fabricate some kind of dummy anthrax canister to dump in Saddam's basement. I mean, if it was so easy for them to lie to us, why would it be any harder for them to plant fake evidence of WMD's? Get some perspective on it: Tony Blair, President Bush, and everyone in a position of authority who supported them are so venal, so avaricious, so power-hungry that they sent thousands of people to their deaths in order to personally profit. They lied so well that the majority of people in the U.S. believed them, but lacked the brains to plant the reason for the lie where it might be easily found (and therefore complete the con). That's the "he lied" argument. What's more likely: that, or the idea that we just haven't looked everywhere yet?

2003-06-18T06:36:00.000-06:00

Love, Hate, and Indifference It's hardly an original thought that the opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference. Both love and hate require energy. Even weary contempt requires some small amount of effort, as does absent affection. Keep this in mind when reading David Carr's commentary about a recent show on the BBC titled, What the World Thinks of America.

The BBC has a great, big monkey on it's back and that monkey is America. The nabobs who run that state broadcast organisation just don't understand how a country that (in their eyes) does everything wrong can end up so supremely dominant in terms of power, wealth and influence, while a country that does everything right (such as France) seethes and whines impotently about the unfairness of it all.

There's more, so read it all, especially the comments on the bottom of the page. I think that the pissing and moaning and passive-aggressive bitching about how the U.S. doesn't know enough about other countries and "world affairs" is linked to the notion that the amount you "care" about a particular issue has a direct correlation to not only your moral worth as a person, but your ability to do something about it. A perfect example: in the early 90's, Hillary Clinton cared so much about the "health care crisis" in America that she developed a plan to give everyone in the country free health care. It was unworkable, it was silly, it was without value in any respect. However, she really cared about the issue, so in her and many other people's minds, she was qualified to do something about it. You know, I don't really give a shit if my doctor really cares about doing a good job, as long as he does it. Caring without positive effort is meaningless. The U.S. is a great force for good in the world and continues to do great things, whether we care enough about French history, British cuisine, and German fashion or not. Which brings me in a roundabout way to my other point: there's a general feeling in the world that because your average American high schooler can't point out Luxembourg on a map in under thirty seconds, the U.S. lacks the intelligence and knowledge to comport itself properly in international affairs. President Bush is relentlessly mocked for his "simplistic" moral stance on any number of issues, that he can't see the endless shades of gray in the black-and-white world he's apparently painted. If he had European refinement, he'd see how wrong he was about Iraq. If he wasn't such a "cowboy," he'd leave well-enough alone in North Korea. If his country had the sophistication of, say, France, he'd let the Jews (in their "shitty little country") and Palestinians just kill each other. But like the rest of America, he's a bull in a china shop. Honestly, I don't know how to say "bite me" loud enough. If you don't like our culture, don't import so fucking much of it. If you don't like our success, kick us out of the UN and give us the office space back. If it bothers you so much that kids don't know if Italy is in the EU or not, GET OVER IT. And that's what infuriates them from coast to coast and pole to pole: it isn't that the U.S. hates Europe or England or Australia; it's that we don't think of them as often as they think of us. I'm going to paraphrase Clive Barker here and say that the flame of lust is like no other: it burns hotter and longer without fuel. In literature, unrequited love is treated as an almost noble thing, but unrequited hate just drives people nuts. Sorry, Nigel: we're just having too much fun in the U.S. to give a damn what your countrymen think of us. (Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer)

2003-06-18T05:51:00.000-06:00

Yougle and Google James Lileks laments:

I was vaguely annoyed that Google hadn’t cached the page. C’mon, guys, we depend on you for his sort of thing. We all need a personal Google, a place that automatically gathers the scraps, the flotsam, the little bits of our life that get shaved off, swept up and thrown away. That lost scrap of paper with a babysitter’s phone number? Look it up on Yougle.

Well, in Robert Sawyer's Hominids, there is a sort of Yougle. If you haven't yet, go read it. Very interesting science fiction; one of the more original stories to come around in years. On the other hand, I doubt that James would take my advice even if he was reading this; he actually liked that waste of celluloid named Star Trek: Nemesis. The movie's more fun if you pronounce the last part of the title "Nem-EE-sis." Why, I don't know. Try it.

2003-06-17T06:03:00.000-06:00

My Man Bill Bill O'Reilly from The O'Reilly Factor seems to have a problem or two with the Internet:

Nearly everyday, there's something written on the Internet about me that's flat out untrue. And I'm not alone. Nearly every famous person in the country's under siege.

Today's example comes from Web sites that picked up a false report from The San Francisco Chronicle that said a San Francisco radio station dropped The Radio Factor. If anyone had bothered to make even one phone call, they would have learned that Westwood One made a deal with another San Francisco radio station, weeks ago to move The Radio Factor. Thus the word "dropped" is obviously inaccurate and dishonest.

The reason these net people get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous, but it symbolizes what the Internet is becoming.

First thing's first: I watch The O'Reilly Factor every night I'm home to do so. It's an entertaining show, Bill's a fun guy to watch, and he often has some interesting guests. However, this whole "unrestrained Internet" thing is quite silly, and from the article quoted, seems to be born out of a rather petty and small concern. You can't be a television host without having skin a rhinoceros would be pleased to call his own, and if Bill's hurt by some stupid and/or inaccurate comments made on a website, he needs to find other work. I say bad stuff about people all the time here, without censure from my targets. I speak ill of the dead (like Rachel Corrie), I generalize about gigantic groups of people, and I make sweeping statements on any number of issues. BIG FUCKING DEAL. I know my corner of the Internet is pretty small, but hey: I live in a country where I have a right to speak my mind as long as I don't cause harm to others. And so does Bill O'Reilly. As much as I like his show, the hypocrisy he evidences here is somewhat...disturbing. Lileks weighs in as well, saying it all a lot better than I:

I’ve noticed that for some “on the Internet” is meant as some sort of sinister intensifier. Like this:

1. Bob Johnson is accused of torturing dogs and taking pictures.

2. Bob Johnson is accused of torturing dogs and taking pictures ON THE INTERNET.

The second one sounds worse; it makes you think of the Temple of Doom in the Indiana Jones movie, a dark fetid cave with people bowing to some mad leering priest showing them unspeakable acts.

(Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.)

2003-06-16T10:19:00.000-06:00

It's No Fun Being an Illegal Alien Michelle Malkin (no relation to the Nazi-hunter Peter Malkin) brings a deeply disturbing truth to light:

It's every mother's worst nightmare: A 9-year-old girl, dragged from her San Jose, Calif., home in broad daylight, is kidnapped and raped over three days before being released by her attacker.

The story made headline news all week. Now, here is the story behind the story that the liberal media has failed to tell.

The man arrested and charged with nine felony counts related to the terrifying abduction and sexual assault is an illegal alien. As of this writing, not a single newspaper covering the story has bothered to report on the accused attacker's immigration history.

Grim stuff indeed. Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for the parents, let alone the poor girl.

2003-06-16T08:08:00.000-06:00

What Liberal Media? Jonah Goldberg reviews Eric Alterman's tome What Liberal Media?

Tell typical Americans that there's a right-wing bias in reporting today, and by about a 3-to-1 margin they'll call you a false prophet. But the false prophets have a new Holy Book--a tome entitled "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman. It adds a sterling new example to the old observation that liberals will believe anything convenient if someone will just say it loud enough and often enough.

You see, large chunks of "What Liberal Media?" are simply prose versions of those spider-webby diagrams purporting to expose a vast right-wing conspiracy. So-and-so gave money to think tank A, which gave a job to writer B, who penned an article for magazine C, which once got a grant from foundation D, blah, blah, blah. You can almost imagine, in Mr. Alterman's mind's eye, a retromingent slug leaving a trail linking each nefarious conservative outlet and scalawag. Wherever the creature goes and whatever it touches becomes automatically tainted, somehow less than honest.

I don't know what "retromingent" means, either, but I bet it's pretty bad.

2003-06-16T06:19:00.000-06:00

Rumsfeld is So Damn Cool Donald Rumsfeld has recently told Belgium to go to Hell. The Belgians (Belges? Bilges?) have been doing their damnedest to try everyone from Israelies to Prime Minister Blair to General Tommy Franks in the International Criminal Court for war crimes, among other things. Perhaps if we bought more of their waffles, they'd be upset. Anyhow, Mr. Rumsfeld has suggestted to them that they repeal their "genocide law" or else we'll pull NATO out of Brussels:

The Belgian government reacted angrily Friday to mounting U.S. pressure to rescind war crimes legislation, arguing that the country had already addressed Washington’s concerns. Belgian government officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only made the issue more difficult to deal with by threatening Thursday to find another venue for North Atlantic Treaty Organization meetings if Brussels did not act on U.S. demands.

Read Den Beste's take on it, who provided the pointer.

2003-06-11T06:14:00.000-06:00

The Second Holocaust Ron Rosenbaum has written a chilling column about the possibility of a second Holocaust.

There is a horrid but obvious dynamic going on here: At some deep level, Europeans, European politicians, European culture is aware that almost without exception every European nation was deeply complicit in Hitler’s genocide. Some manned the death camps, others stamped the orders for the transport of the Jews to the death camps, everyone knew what was going on—and yet the Nazis didn’t have to use much if any force to make them accomplices. For the most part, Europeans volunteered. That is why "European civilization" will always be a kind of oxymoron for anyone who looks too closely at things, beginning with the foolish and unnecessary slaughters of World War I, Holocaust-scale slaughter that paved the way for Hitler’s more focused effort.

One has to put the European guilt complex not just in the context of complicity during World War II. One must also consider the malign neglect involved in the creation of the state of Israel. The begrudging grant of an indefensible sliver of desert in a sea of hostile peoples, to get the surviving Jews—reminders of European shame—off the continent, and leave the European peoples in possession of the property stolen from the Jews during the war. And that was when they didn’t continue murdering Jews, the way some Poles did when some Jews were foolish enough to try to return to their stolen homes.

There's more, lots more. Should be required reading. Bottom line is that on the surface, the thought of another concerted effort to destroy the Jews seems like it should be relegated to the realms of conspiracy theory and paranoia. A burned synagogue does not a Shoah make. Nevertheless, there's a lot going on here and it warrants serious thought. You need to determine where you draw the line between caution and paranoia: at what point do you decide that you're in danger, and what steps are you prepared to take in order to maintain safety? An example: I don't think anyone truly expected that Saudis would fly planes into American office buildings so that they could get laid in Paradise for the rest of eternity. However, in light of embassy bombings, past threats, and the USS Cole, we can see that the attacks on the Twin Towers were part of a war against the U.S. that the terror masters (Victor Davis Hanson's term, not mine) had been waging for years. Only, we didn't know it. We weren't prepared. If we had known then what we know now, I don't think a bunch of Saudis would've been able to take over a few planes as easily, no matter how many stewardesses they cut up on the way to the cockpit. The term I'm looking for is "vigilance." We were in danger, and didn't know it until three thousand people were murdered. Jews say, "Never forget." Never forget the concentration camps, the exile, the murder. Never forget that there are entire peoples who hate us and would see us dead. It's a hard lesson, but now America must learn it. My friend Kelly McCann always says, "The first confirmation of an attack generally comes in the form of injury to you." Real conflicts don't start like West Side Story where the bad guy malevolently brandishes a switchblade, singing, "When you're a Jet you're the best you can get." A real conflict starts with a furtive look, a hidden hand, and if you're not careful, it ends with you missing your wallet and several pints of blood from screwdriver stab wounds. That's why with every burned temple, with every news story blaming Israelis for retaliating when a homicide bomber destroys a pizza parlor, with every elected official claiming that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Jewish interests, we need to be watchful. Eventually, all of those little offenses add up. It happened once; we can't afford to let it happen again.

2003-06-11T05:41:00.000-06:00

Life Lessons Ray has the first installment of his advice column up. Go read it.

I'm having a little trouble with the drink. I'd given up liquor, for it turns me into a smallish, chubby man who thinks he is a hulking brute. This past weekend, I forgot my promise to myself and put my fist through my wall, nearly breaking my hand in the process as I punched one of the studs.

How can I maintain a penchant for sobriety? Failing that, how can I keep myself on beer and wine, and not fall through to the temptation of liquor? —A.A., Atlanta

Dear A.A.,

Do not blame your bad attitude on liquor. It makes me feel terrible when people blame alcohol for things, because alcohol is an innocent chemical substance, much like a carrot or a tomato. It's like what they say: “guns don't kill people, people kill people.” In the case of liquor the saying should go, “liquor doesn't punch holes in walls, you just hate your dad.”

However, if you want to stay off the hard stuff (which has more of the Devil in it), try just drinking like five times as much beer. You'll thank me.

I hope this was good advice.

2003-06-10T06:27:00.000-06:00

Civil War in Palestine? Dennis Prager suggests that only a civil war in Palestine will bring peace to the Middle East:

A significant percentage of Palestinians do not want peace with Israel; they want peace without an Israel. If these individuals and groups are not fought by those Palestinians who want peace with Israel, peace is impossible.

The need for Palestinians to fight one another in order to make a state is hardly unique. Many states, including the United States and, to a lesser extent, Israel, have had to fight civil wars in order to survive.

I think that Dennis here isn't going far enough. It's more than a "significant percentage." I'd say, "Most, if not the vast majority." They are a people for whom hatred isn't an emotion, but a facet of character. They hate the Jews, they hate the west, and they hate their fellow Arabs. Born and bred to hatred of Jews, I shudder to think what they will do with a legally-recognized country of their own. It sounds harsh, but I don't feel that they can be trusted to govern themselves. They'll become a UN-funded terrorist factory with as much clout as Israel, and we all know how much the UN loves Israel. More and more I see columns from pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Cal Thomas that foretell doom and gloom for Israel if it continues to follow this "Road Map to Peace." They say that every concession Ariel Sharon makes serves to weaken Israel more and more. I disagree. I think what Sharon is doing is giving the Palestinians one last chance, one last go at acting like human beings instead of angry chimps with C-4. Not because he feels that at heart they want peace, but to say to the world after the next atrocity committed by a homicide bomber, "See? We did everything you asked, and they still attacked us. They are monsters, they are a cancer, and we will have to excise them from the skin of the planet before we are consumed." And while Israel may lose U.S. aid in the brutal, cleansing attack that follows, no reasonable person will deny that in this case, no amount of diplomacy would have stopped it. Oh, the UN will carp, and anti-semites the world over will have more ammunition with which to attack the Jews, but what else is new? I know, I know. I sound like a warmongering racist who hates Arabs and wants them all dead. That's not true. The only people I want dead in the Middle East are the terrorists, the people who harbor them, the people who support them, and the people who feel that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Because if you can make common cause with the sort of people who would bomb a dance club full of teenagers, then guess what: you've just allied yourself with evil, and I'd rather see you dead than let you threaten me or my family. Call it pre-emptive self-defense.

2003-06-09T06:58:00.000-06:00

It Doesn't Get Much More Awful Check this out from the UK's Daily Telegraph (registration required):

Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."

I hope you don't think that I'm making light of this, but once your people start having to eat the "special meat," it's pretty clear that your country's close to being irretrievably fucked up. Well hey, like Iraq, it's probably none of our business and we should let them eat each other if that's what they want to do. I can imagine the protest signs being crayoned in liberal basements upon hearing a future declaration of war against the North Koreans right now: No Blood for Toddler Steaks or America Bad, U.N. Good, Baby Bibimbop Tasty or Bush=Hitler (an old favorite). I know it isn't funny, but if I don't make awful jokes about it, I'll end up putting a fist through the wall. And no, I don't think that we should immediately "go to war" against North Korea. But goddamn it, something has to be done, and who else is going to do it? Not the UN Not France or Germany or Russia. And if that "something" ends up having to be a long drive across North Korea in a score of Abrams tanks heading directly for Kim Jong-Il's palace/capital/bolt-hole, I'm all for it. Is the U.S. the world's policeman? Well, unfortunately, I think we sometimes have to be. (Thanks to Instapundit)

2003-06-09T06:11:00.000-06:00

Terrorism and Poverty It's long been a convenient assumption that terrorists who strap bombs to themselves and detonate them in school buses are poor, ill-educated, and generally disadvantaged. This article states:

In a study we recently circulated as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, we considered support for, and participation in, terrorism at both individual and national levels. Although the available data at the national level are weaker, both types of evidence point in the same direction and lead us to conclude that any connection between poverty, education, and terrorism is, at best, indirect, complicated, and probably quite weak.

As I and many others say so often, read the whole thing. Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the pointer.

2003-06-09T05:55:00.000-06:00

A Couple of Disjointed Thoughts First, Hillary Clinton's book comes out today. I may buy a copy as a gag gift, but I think it'd be a more ethical thing to steal it. More money in the Clintons' pockets is a bad thing. I also heard about the Barbara Walters interview with her last night on a local news radio station as I was driving into work this morning. The liberal crank on the radio could've been Sid Blumenthal's twin brother, ideologically speaking, so it wasn't surprising that he agreed with Hillary that there was indeed a right-wing conspirac- er, network, excuse me, that wanted the Clinton presidency to go down in flames. He cited such outlets as talk radio and Fox News as agents of the network. Upon hearing this, I felt it incumbent upon myself to calmly tell the radio, "No, you fucking moron. Just because there are people out there who don't like you and think you do a shitty job, it doesn't mean that there's a network/conspiracy out to get you. But hey, if you think that Ken Starr, Rupert Murdoch, and Rush Limbaugh sat around at a card table at 2 A.M. in Vegas with the express intention of humiliating Bill and Hilary Clinton, you go right ahead. Paranoia will destroy ya, by the way." *Matrix Spoiler Alert* In other news, I saw The Matrix Reloaded again over the weekend; the first time I've seen a movie in the theater twice since Total Recall came out. Notice the screens behind Neo when the Architect is talking about the evils of human civilization: President Bush gets shown, briefly. I guess if I were that clever, I'd be a multimillion dollar director, too. But at least I wouldn't cross-dress.

2003-06-05T14:49:00.000-06:00

Ann, Sweet Ann I've communicated in this space before about the ambivalence I feel toward Ann Coulter. She's so damn cutting that I sort of feel uncomfortable with her on my side, but she's also fairly easy to look at, which helps one to forgive a lot of sins. However, she did make me laugh with this sally:

Seething with rage and frustration at the success of the war in Iraq, liberals have started in with their female taunting about weapons of mass destruction. The way they carry on, you would think they had caught the Bush administration in some shocking mendacity. (You know how the left hates a liar.)

For the sake of their tiresome argument, let's stipulate that we will find no weapons of mass destruction – or, to be accurate, no more weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Hussein was using the three trucks capable of assembling poison gases to sell ice cream under some heretofore undisclosed U.N. "Oil For Popsicles" program.

I just love the "Oil for Popsicles" line.

2003-06-05T07:04:00.000-06:00

Conversions (Consider this an anecdote mingled with a rant, so if you're not interested, read Lileks or something.) I was at a dinner party yesterday with some good friends, pretty much all of them fairly left of center. They do a weekly dinner party at their house, a tradition that is almost unparalleled in its coolness. Anyhow, one of the other guests informed me, "You know, I've converted at least three conservative Republicans to the cause." The "cause" being, I assumed, liberalism. I didn't know what to say to that that wouldn't be construed as rude or insulting, so I simply nodded and refilled my champagne glass. I do my absolute best to avoid political discussions at the dinner table, the lunch table, the barbershop, and the vet's office, despite the fact that you can politicize pretty much anything. Such conversations are too much like minefields, in that it's very easy to cause an explosion with one misstep, and it's no fun to dance. Unless you're discussing issues with people who have a similar outlook, someone's going to get mad. When I have the facts properly marshalled in my head, I can argue with the best of them, so it's not an issue of timidity. Call it an issue of civility. Here, in my own corner of the datasphere/cyberspace, I don't have to be civil, and I can say what I want. And while I welcome any and all reasonable feedback, I'm not obligated to respond to any of it. I'm certainly not going to ruin anyone's dinner by doing so, at any rate. With all that in mind, I found it interesting that the guy I was talking to used the terms "convert" and "cause." In any issue, from whether the earth is round or flat to school vouchers in inner cities, from the Weaver stance to the dynamic isoceles, you'll find people who want to convert you to their way of thinking. This, I know, won't come as a surprise to any of you. What's important to realize is that nobody believes in anything that they think is stupid and wrong. I'd say that most people who espouse a political ideology have that set of beliefs validated every day through life experience. Of course, there are certain objective facts in life, things that no amount of spin from Salon or National Review can alter (such as, say, the fact that a socialist system invariably grows murderous and cannibalistic), but most of us deserve the benefit of the doubt that we've thought our beliefs through and are comfortable with them. It's a lot like religion, unfortunately. I say "unfortunately" because despite all the information available out there on every issue under the sun from every media outlet imaginable (including me), we all end up choosing what to believe, instead of having the objective truth of the world handed to us. If you don't agree, if you believe that what you read in the New York Times or the Daily Sun or Cat Fancy is the objective truth, think of it this way: the greatest, strongest country in the world had a leader who quibbled about the definition of the term "is." That shows you where objective truth went in modern society. So no, you won't convert me, any more than I can't convert you. You have to come to my set of beliefs yourself, and it needs to be validated by your worldview and life experience. I'm not going to deny that if you don't agree with me on certain issues I'm going to consider you wrong, misguided, or even evil (depending on the issue, of course). And despite the rhetoric above, I will say this: I believe that the war in Iraq was a mitzvah of incredible proportions; that despite its flaws, the United States of America is the greatest force for good the world has ever seen (or is likely to); and that Christopher Walken is one of the most talented movie actors of the past thirty years. I believe in these things so strongly that to me, they are objective truths. Lots of people think I'm dead wrong (especially about the last point), but my life experience has validated all these things time and time again. This is not to say that my opinions on all things are set in stone; far from it. When presented with evidence to the contrary, I've certainly changed my views on certain issues before, and will again. And I generally welcome the opportunity to talk about them in certain circumstances. Heck, I changed my mind already this morning, going from my typical plum preserves to a four-fruit spread on a planned peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But when it comes to the "cause," be it the nanny-state economics and moral relativism of the left or the notion that all human life on earth was started by aliens from the planet Ogo, don't try it, bub. Political ideology is a religion as much as Methodism or Bhagwan-ism (the worship of Rolls-Royces and women with lots of pubic hair), and if you want to turn me into a liberal, you're going to be shown the same door as the Jehovah's Witnesses. I hope I've made myself clear. (By the way, if you don't know what the "datasphere" is, read the Hyperion saga by Dan Simmons. The man's a visionary, as well as a terrific writer.)

2003-06-04T06:47:00.000-06:00

Liar, Liar Hey, was Chimpy lying about this:

BASRA, Iraq (AFP) - At least 500 bodies have been unearthed from a mass grave near the central city of Najaf, in the latest such find in post-Saddam Iraq, witnesses said.

An AFP journalist at the site in Makhazen, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, saw the remains of about 200 bodies laid out on plastic bags.

Bones of women, children, elderly people and soldiers were identifiable by scraps of clothing or identity papers.

I have to wonder about the self-righteous, hypocritical pissing and moaning that dickheads like Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne have been doing lately, calling President Bush a liar because we haven't yet found a big heapin' helpin' of WMD buried in the sand below Baghdad. Okay, so the war wasn't justified on that reason. They can have temper tantrums over the monetary costs of the war if that makes 'em feel better. But these dumbfucks DARE NOT go on and on about the cost in human lives. Not when faced with mass graves filled with dead women and children. WMD or no WMD, we stopped that sort of behavior in Iraq. If you don't consider that an all-round good thing, I'm sorry, but your moral compass is so completely, abysmally fucked up that you've lost the ability to be taken seriously on any other issue. Yes, yes, I know that millions of people out there think that the mere act of dissent against the majority is a Good Thing, that "going against the grain" has intrinsically good qualities. I also know that millions of people out there haven't matured past a kind of adolescent stage of viewing the world, where it's always cool to say "no" when everyone else says "yes." Here's a wake-up call: it's not cool to bitch about stopping a mass murderer. It's not. It makes you look stupid and possibly evil. And when you ask to borrow the car for tonight's date, take out the trash first. It makes a "yes" answer much more likely. And to end on a pleasant note, Lileks informs us:

I read today of another mass grave discovered in Iraq. This one was reserved for children.

I repeat: this was a special mass grave for children.

The article said that dolls were found among the bodies. Which meant that the little girls were clutching their dolls when they died.

Or they dropped them in terror at the edge of a grave. The soldiers kicked them in.

Jesus Christ. I hope he was reading something someone made up. If reading that doesn't bug you, even a little bit, you're a tougher man than me, that's for certain. UPDATE: Whoops. Looks like Lileks wasn't making it up. Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.

2003-06-04T06:16:00.000-06:00

Big Media, Small Blog Jeff Jarvis says:

As for the anti-big-media bashing we've seen from webloggers -- inspired lately by the FCC and by the New York Times screwups -- I'll argue that they are essentially jealous. Webloggers are nanomedia moguls with big-media aspirations. Most of them are conservative or libertarian and thus should abhor regulation, even of media. But in this case and this case only, they endorse regulation. Why? Because they hate big media. And they hate big media because it has the resources and the distribution and the audience they don't have. Hell, big media pays; blogging doesn't.

I'm a conservative with objectivist leanings and a generally libertarian slant on many issues, and I'm against regulation of Big Media. Do I count? What's the effective difference between ABC, CBS, and NBC? They all show the same crap aimed at the same people. Who cares who owns what? Deregulate it all, I say; God will know His own. Ramesh Ponnuru puts in his usually valuable two cents:

Deregulation is supposed to spell the death of localism. Presumably people will still want to hear about local news, sports, and weather. It is true that it will be possible for networks to buy up a bunch of local stations. That's how Fox got started. The effect was to increase, not to reduce, competition. (Which is why Rupert Murdoch was allowed to break the usual media-ownership rules.) And when it comes to a story like the war in Iraq, it takes such networks to provide coverage. A mom-and-pop operation in the heartland isn't going to do it. As a result of Fox's existence, we didn't have to rely as heavily on Peter Arnett as we did during the previous Gulf war. (We did have to put up with Geraldo Rivera, but life is full of trade-offs.)

He's right. There's a lot of text in both articles, but read 'em both. With a thousand cable channels all clamoring for your time and a million more just waiting to get started, it's only the liberal Henny Pennys that cluck "monopoly" in such a buyer's market. Oh, and the jealous bloggers. But at least I'm not one of them.

2003-06-04T05:56:00.000-06:00

Ray's Place Ray has some good advice about a first date. Oh, and if you haven't read Achewood before, start at the archives and work your way forward. It might not grab you at first, but it's worth it.

2003-06-03T07:13:00.000-06:00

Can I Wear a Veil, too? I feel I must weigh in on the whole Sultanna Freeman thing. I know it's old news to most of us, but there may be some out there that don't know about it. In a nutshell, there's a Muslim woman in Florida who refuses to remove her veil so she can be properly photographed for a driver's license. The state won't let her have a legitimate driver's license because of it, so she's suing (of course!) because the state is denying her her religious freedom. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP Whoa! Let me turn that off. Whew! The Bovine Feces Calibrator went into the red zone for a few moments there. Thought it was gonna blow up! As a lawyer, how do you defend a case like that? In parental terms, it's like trying to think of an answer when your kid asks, "Why?" to your request that he put on a coat before going out to have a snowball fight on a snow day. It's not about religion, you fucking moron. It's about the state having a need to identify your stupid ass when you get pulled over for speeding, among a million other things. I can't help but think of Dale Gribble from King of the Hill when I see news about this case. I'm sure that they've got an episode of him trying to get a Texas driver's license for his "Rusty Shackleford" alias while wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, a gigantic (and obviously fake) mustache, and a baseball cap. Well, whatever happens, we all know that Islam means "peace," and the judge's verdict will likely trample all over somebody's rights.

2003-06-03T06:14:00.000-06:00

Caption: Kikes Paid off by Chimpy The Instapundit thinks that this political cartoon is anti-semitic. Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit comments:

The equivalent would be a blubber-lipped Jesse Jackson eating watermelon and saying "I sho' lub 'dese Democrats," while Tom Daschle beamed in the background. That cartoon never would have seen print, and the columnist would have been fired. The racial stereotyping here was just as obvious -- and, historically, tied to even worse things than Jim Crow -- and if it was really published out of ignorance, then the folks who oversaw it are too ignorant to work in the news business.

I've been saying for over a dozen years that the culture of victimhood in America is getting way, way out of hand. The freedom, the right to be offended has become so pervasive that free speech in this country has suffered greatly in terms of "campus free-speech zones," political correctness, and the inability to speak one's mind without causing a firestorm of hate speech allegations and name-calling. That said, is this cartoon offensive? Yeah, I think so. I also think that Reynolds is right on the money when he changes "Jew" to "black" in his hypothetical example. Should anyone be fired over it? I don't think so. The cartoonist was simply giving us his opinion, that President Bush is paying off hook-nosed, greedy Jews so that they'll make peace with the Palestinians. It's not an unusual opinion, and I know many Klansmen, David Duke fans, conspiracy theorists, and skinheads feel the same way. That's not necessarily wrong. Hell, Jesse Jackson can get away with calling New York City "Hymietown" and Louis Farrakhan can call Judaism a "gutter religion" without much censure. Jew-bashing is back; just ask your average Frenchman. Okay, okay. The sarcasm was getting a bit thick at the end there. Point is, I think the cartoonist is an anti-semitic wretch, but he and his handlers shouldn't be fired over it. If newspapers (especially Jewish-owned ones) decide to no longer pick up his work for publication, well...they're free to do that.

2003-06-02T09:43:00.000-06:00

Go See this Check out http://protestwarrior.com today. These people are my new heroes.

2003-06-02T06:41:00.000-06:00

Yes, but... Mona Charen talks about President Bush, Bob Geldof, and AIDS:

Reuters is now reporting that Bob Geldof, who, to his credit, never abandoned his interest in Africa's welfare, is praising President Bush's AIDS initiative.

"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this," Geldof told international aid workers, "but the Bush administration is the most radical -- in a positive sense -- in the approach to Africa since Kennedy." Lord Alli, described by Reuters as "an aid activist accompanying Geldof on the trip," agreed, adding "Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk but he does deliver."

And this raises the question: Why hasn't President Bush gotten more credit for this here at home?

Because it's all about Chimpy's oooooiiiillll...

2003-06-02T06:32:00.000-06:00

Tax Cuts and Handouts Bruce Bartlett talks about the recent tax cuts:

It doesn't matter that no responsible economist, inside or outside the Reagan administration, ever said that the tax cut would instantaneously pay for itself. Nor does it matter that the economy did grow sharply after passage of the tax cut, even as inflation fell. All the liberal warnings about how tax cuts would be dangerously inflationary went right down the memory hole. Because deficits went up, the Reagan tax cut failed in the liberal worldview.

Now, liberals are trying to do the same thing with the Bush tax cut, implicitly claiming that it would lead to an immediate increase in the stock market the moment it passed Congress. Never mind that no supporter of the tax cut ever said this would happen, or that the bill had not even been signed into law yet, or that key details of the legislation were not even known on May 23. All that mattered was that stocks didn't go up the day the bill passed, and therefore it was a failure.

Read it all. What I just can't wrap my head around, what just drives me completely nuts trying to understand, is why the left constantly whines/bitches/moans about things like tax cuts and tax breaks for business owners. I honestly don't get it when they pound their rattles on their high chairs, screeching, "These tax cuts only benefit the rich!" It simply shows such a completely dicked-up worldview that I often find myself wondering if it's not all some big joke that they've been playing on us for decades, that at some point someone's going to say, "Ha ha! Gotcha! That's two for flinching! Sure, we always knew it's your money, we were just messing with you. Here, you can have it all back." The refrain that the federal income tax cut isn't going to help poor households is ludicrous because families who work at the poverty level don't pay federal income tax. To complain that the poor are getting shafted here doesn't make sense. It's a tax cut, not a handout. The Democrats still don't seem to get that you can't make poor people rich by throwing other people's money at them. And we won't get into the fact that in the U.S., we have the richest poor people in the world. The bitching that rich people don't deserve tax cuts is silly because they still take up the majority of the tax burden. On its face, that seems like an irrefutable argument unless you believe that the people who earn money in this country don't deserve what they've earned. That's a standard collectivist/socialist/Democrat concept: punish success by taking money from wage-earners and giving it to non-wage-earners. No, I'm not against all government programs: just the wasteful ones. Don't forget that the definition of "rich" in this country, according to Dick Gephardt and his ilk, is pretty close to what I'd call "upper middle class." That's pretty subjective, though; at least as subjective as the definition of "poor." The notion of a "budget surplus" drives me totally batshit. That's MY MONEY. A "surplus" is simply money of mine (and yours, of course) that the government hasn't yet spent. It's not found money. It's not free money. It's what I earned from working. If you don't know what to do with it, give it back. If you're worried about government spending and deficits, it might not be a bad idea to start lowering senatorial salaries. Rant, rant, rant. The Bartlett article didn't cover all I talked about, but I had to get it off my chest.

2003-05-29T11:36:00.000-06:00

It's too Funny to Laugh at Mike Tyson says to interviewer Greta Van Susteren:

"I just hate [his rape victim Desiree Washington's] guts. She put me in that state, where I don't know...I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her."

What else can you say? I suppose this isn't funny, really. But it is.

2003-05-29T07:28:00.000-06:00

The Second Sex No, I'm not talking about sloppy seconds, you preevert. Suzanne Fields writes:

Modern feminism has freed women to work, but it liberated them to be lonely. Those who get the most gratification from the sexual revolution are men in their late 20s and 30s who enjoy the life of Don Juan (without having to cultivate the charm), picking from a new crop of single women every year.

A woman may need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, as Gloria Steinem famously said, but women listening to the tick-tock of their fertility clocks, no matter how successful they may be in a career, want to marry a man who will be a good father to the children they yearn to have. Their love lives, alas, are often limited to the transitory terms of hedonistic "hook-ups." (Ms. Steinem finally got her bicycle.)

Some churls see this state of affairs as male chauvinist revenge for the world created by the feminist sensibility that first relegated boys to second-class status. Classrooms are often organized to suit the female sensibility. Sugar, spice and smarts win. It's easier for girls to sit still and "cooperate" with the female (and often feminist) rules. They get better grades, too.

No, Ms. Fields, it's not male chauvinist revenge. It's the chickens coming home to roost. In the past couple of decades, no group of people has been so relentlessly demonized in every media outlet imaginable more than the American male. When men argue, it's because they're testosterone-soaked primates. When men make judgments, they're perpetuating the patriarchal tyranny that has kept women from being all they can be. When men succeed, they do so on the backs of subjugated women. And when men fail, it's because they've ignored and marginalized women all these years. The Quest for Equality has become, like so many issues, the Demand for a Victim. Environmentalists do it by calling yuppie SUV drivers the scourge of the ozone layer. Collectivists/Leftists do it by calling conservatives money-grubbing fat cats. The militant feminist movement has been doing it for so long, however, that it's now become an ingrained aspect of the American psyche. It's a joke, from car insurance companies that make "funny" commercials portraying the castration of a cheating boyfriend, to Katie Couric facetiously asking a jilted bride if she had considered castration as an option. If you keep cutting off balls, eventually you won't find any more to play with. I'm not saying that all women feel oppressed they way militant feminists say they are, or that all women are responsible for the castration of the American male. Unfortunately, however, we do live in a time and place where all complaints are viewed as having equal weight, where everyone is entitled to a feeling of victimization (unless you're a white American male), and where the fear of offending anyone is so great that it's de rigeur to appease the minority, however small or insignificant. That said, most behavior that characterizes the male psyche is generally viewed with no little scorn; after all, men are in charge, so it's okay to ridicule them. When so beleaguered, what else can you do but turtle up and make yourself as small a target as possible? We kid around (men included) about how all men are dogs, that "boys" will lie, cheat, and steal to get into a woman's pants. If that's a joke so common that it's no longer funny, what does it say about current popular attitudes about men? What's the solution? Got me. I'm a primate like all the rest of them. I will say this, however: if men are the loutish brutes so portrayed in the popular media, then women have surely failed in their attempts to civilize us properly. Jesus Christ, girls, you've had centuries. If I'm a brute, then you're a fuckup.

2003-05-29T05:46:00.000-06:00

Jesus Was Gay Really! At least, that's what Rollan McCleary of Melbourne, Australia has been paid public funds to prove.

Melbourne-based Rollan McCleary, who will today be awarded his doctorate, earned $17,000 a year to work on his three-year thesis on homosexual spirituality.

As well as his revelation about Christ, Dr McCleary has also reached the conclusion that three – or possibly four – of Jesus's chosen disciples were also gay.

Right. You may ask why the GTCJ is posting about Jesus? Because I can. Actually, I think the issue's more about junk science and insanity in academia than homosexuality. According to some, Abraham Lincoln was also gay, so go figure. Tell you what, though: suggest in public that Mohammed was gay. Try it and tell me that the Intifada won't come down on your head, a' la Salman Rushdie (whose latest book, I hear, will be titled The Satanic Verses of Buddha, that Fat Fuck). Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the pointer.

2003-05-28T06:26:00.000-06:00

That Despicable John Fitzgerald Kennedy William F. Buckley comments on the recent admission by Marion Fahnestock that she had an affair with then-President John F. Kennedy over 40 years ago.

Never mind his abstract indifference to adultery. What he did was to seduce a 19-year-old girl working in the White House under his command. A Great King, seeking that day's vessel for his runaway appetite. The commander in chief opportunizing on his rank in order to overwhelm a teenager who, as Sidey reports, was once spotted in the presidential limousine in Bermuda, "sitting on the floor of the car like a child playing hide-and-seek." It is simply disgusting, to use a word which, like virtue, has lost its license.

I know that a book has recently been published regarding JFK's personal life, but it seems to me as if Mimi Fahnestock is trying to grab her 15 minutes before fading away into deserved obscurity. If she's going to go public with it, I think she should go all the way: tell us stories of fellatio in the Lincoln Bedroom. Give us the details of fucking JFK in the presidential limo. Boning on Air Force One: How I Entered the Mile-High Club and Didn't Even Get any Frequent Flyer Miles. "Tonight on A Current Affair: Grandmother Marion "Mimi" Fahnestock describes JFK's johnson. John Stossel reports." Indiscretions like hers should be mocked. The broad should've kept quiet and let it die down. Anything else seems like grandstanding.

2003-05-28T06:07:00.000-06:00

Septermber 11 and the Death Penalty Byron York has a good article about shifting attitudes toward the death penalty:

In a new Gallup poll, 74 percent of those surveyed say they favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Just two years ago, in May 2001, support stood at 65 percent, its lowest point in more than two decades....

The climb has reversed a trend that began in the late 1990s, when support for the death penalty fell as a result of the "innocence" movement. Opponents of the death penalty argued that the capital-punishment system was so flawed, and the chance of an innocent person's being executed so great, that the whole system should be abolished....

"After 9-11, the country has come to grips with something that lies behind a good deal of support for the death penalty," says death-penalty supporter Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor who is an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University. "And that is that there is actually evil in this world, that there are people out there who will blow you to bits because they hate you, or for amusement, or to advance some bizarre view of the world, and that the only thing that represents proportionate justice in those cases is the death penalty."

Hear, hear. The biggest refrain I hear from death-penalty opponents is, "Capital punishment doesn't deter capital crime!" Sorry, but that's patent bullshit. Executing murderers keeps them from killing again, be it other inmates or corrections officers. Don't forget that many of the same people who are against capital punishment have very little problem with late-term abortions. Seems like a contradictory argument, but I'm long past trying to figure the left out.

2003-05-27T06:08:00.000-06:00

The Matrix Reloaded Lileks has some interesting things to say about The Matrix Reloaded:

Short version of the review - Attention, Wachowski Brothers: put down the bong and step away from the script.

Long version follows.

Of my innumerable complaints, the one that rankles me the least is Zion, but it's a long-standing worry of mine: who builds these massive lairs? Zion is a gigantic underground complex; looks to be about thirty stories deep. Who built it? Oh, I know: after the machines took over, everyone got down on their hands and knees and just dug like crazy until they heard Chinese voices. No, that can’t be right. It appears to be some sort of pre-Matrix industrial facility; I think I saw “ZION STEEL” on the side of some great wheel....

The Matrix may be fake, but so is lo-fat soft-serve dessert. Zion is that crappy homemade ice-cream that has chunks of salt and carob instead of proper chocolate. Everyone’s commented on the infamous rave scene, in which the population of Zion crams into the Temple Of No Particular Faith and confronts their imminent death by dancing ecstatically. Big huge slo-mo close-up of feet squishing in the mud. All of a sudden I was channeling my inner Agent Smith. I can’t stand the smell, he said of the Matrix. Buddy, if you thought an average air-conditioned office was bad, try 3 AM in a huge nightclub packed with a quarter-million sweaty people who live on beans.

Well, anyone who's read Lileks for any amount of time knows that he has a great interest in architecture, so it's not surprising that he'd ding the Wachowskis for set design in that regard. Me, I liked it. I wasn't looking for any deep philosophical insights, and I found none. I was looking for neat fight scenes, explosions, plenty of action, nifty special effects, and Monica Bellucci, and I got lots of all (even though Bellucci's dress was pretty silly). The cliffhanger ending didn't bother me, because I expected it. The dime-store destiny/free will philosophizing didn't bother me, because I expected that, too. I've noticed that most negative reviews of the movie include the term "disappointment." The way I see it, disappointment isn't the filmmaker's fault; he/she/they can't be responsible for whatever baggage you took into the movie theater before the starting credits roll. As far as I'm concerned, the Wachowskis delivered what they promised. Any disappointment you subsequently feel is your own damn fault.

2003-05-27T05:54:00.000-06:00

Rumsfeld Apologizes Check out this article from Scrappleface:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized to Senate Democrats today for pre-war "hyping" of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

"I'm sorry Senators Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd, Roberts and others," said a contrite Mr. Rumsfeld. "We overestimated the threat posed by a lunatic dictator, who hated the U.S. and Israel, and who paid rewards to families of Palestinian terrorists. In an age when two of the world's tallest buildings can be brought down with tools used by the stockboy at K-Mart, we should have demanded more concrete evidence of exotic weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was helpless as a kitten up a tree."

Read it all. I must remember to put Scrappleface on my Links section. The best part is the last paragraph. Short sentences today.

2003-05-26T09:25:00.000-06:00

More Apologies Sorry everyone; still not at 100%, blogging will continue tomorrow I hope. I'm not giving up on you, I promise. Today will be spent watching Planet of the Apes movies, hoping my sinuses drain, and gloating over the fact that the peppers and strawberries I recently planted are already beginning to sprout. Now if the tomatoes can follow suit, life will be good.

2003-05-22T10:27:00.000-06:00

More Light Blogging Still sick, etc. etc. Check out this article on Jayson Blair. The guy's a shitbag. That's it. Laughing about plaigiarism, happy to have lied, glad to have been an example of everything that's wrong with affirmative action (as if the whole concept isn't bad enough). I refuse to write about him any longer; clearly, all he wants now is publicity and I'll be damned if I help him in that. Shitbag.

2003-05-21T05:56:00.000-06:00

I'm Back But only for a bit. Blogging will be light today due to exhaustion and ear infection. Read Lileks, especially today's bleat about the dickhead in the BBC who's been publicly claiming that the Jessica Lynch rescue was faked. Drink your milk. Don't go to Canada when you're sick.

2003-05-15T07:05:00.000-06:00

One more Thing This from Emmett Tyrrell:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The dark times at The New York Times grow darker. Just days after the paper flagellates itself with a front-page story admitting that it repeatedly published fabricated stories full of plagiarism and other journalistic sleight-of-hand from a 27-year-old con-man reporter whom the editors of the Slippery Rock Herald would have apprehended, the indispensable Drudge Report announces that "at least two more NY Times reporters are being investigated for possible journalistic irregularities."

Drudge, one of modern American journalism's prodigies (and naturally a fellow objurgated by establishment journalists everywhere), goes on to reproduce a memo from the Times' editors calling all "news room colleagues" to "an open forum."

Just what the FUCK does "objurgated" mean? I've never even seen such a word. I think he's making it up.

2003-05-15T06:39:00.000-06:00

Trip Note I'll be going on a business trip this weekend and won't be back to blogging until Wednesday, May 21. I'm considering writing up a trip report as a kind of blog of the trip as it happens. We'll see. Despite that I'll be going to Canada, I doubt that there'd be much political interest there, but if I get any requests for a trip blog, it might sway may decision to write one.

2003-05-15T06:12:00.000-06:00

STOP THE PRESSES! Because it's such news in and out of the Blogosphere, I feel that I must weigh in on the Jayson Blair scandal. Who cares? The Gray Lady is so goddamn slanted anyhow you might as well be reading transcripts from NPR newscasts. If they caught some guy making things up, it comes as no surprise to me. Did he rise so high so fast because he's black? Seems pretty self-evident, and even Thurston How- er, Howell Raines has admitted as such:

"Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter," Mr. Raines said. "I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities."

"Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?" he added, a moment later. "Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes."

Well, it's a lukewarm admission, at best. After all this is over, maybe Blair will write semi-fictional novels like that other famous liar, Stephen Glass. What's most striking, I guess, is the lack of surprise here. Shows you how far the mighty have fallen, eh?

2003-05-15T06:01:00.000-06:00

No Food for Oil Check this out at SFGate.com:

The United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq allowed billions of dollars in illegal oil revenue to flow to Saddam Hussein, lawmakers said Wednesday in a call for making internal audits public.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas said his Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans to asked the United Nations to "fully explain this program that has never been externally audited." He acknowledged that Congress has no power to force such an accounting or even make the United Nations respond to the request....

The program also allowed Saddam to hand-pick many of the companies that would get contracts to provide the humanitarian assistance. He funneled business to French, Russian and Chinese interests, lawmakers were told at the hearing Wednesday.

Two experts on global energy markets told the subcommittee that while the United Nations has conducted internal audits of the Iraqi oil program, none has ever been made public. And they said they knew of no mechanism for formal, public audits.

It's criminal. It's another reason why we should pull out of the UN. Don't forget that this is the august body of America-loathing tyrants, cretins, and socialists that put Libya in charge of its Human Rights Commission. No external audits, no oversight, no controls. And people still bitch and whine that President Bush told the UN to stuff it when it demanded we become part of the International Criminal Court. Can you freakin' believe it? I also find it interesting (my euphemism for "disturbing") that a lot of that oil money ended up in the pockets of some of the biggest pains in the ass we've had since the war started. Figures. I'm waiting for the German connection. (Via Instapundit)

2003-05-14T07:50:00.000-06:00

A Bit more on the Catfight Columnist Kathleen Parker weighs in on it:

No, what's disturbing and frankly creepy about the "powder-puff" implosion is the apparent lack of remorse, empathy or insight -or any of the responses we might expect from well-adjusted, sensitive human beings -either from participants or among observers.

There's something very wrong with this picture, and it may well be us. We see something horrible and don't even recognize it as such. Just another day of Reality TV. Or life imitating art. Or, whatever , as they say. We've become so desensitized by various media's near-constant barrage of coarse, aggressive behavior that we fail to note when something's gone terribly wrong.

I don't think anything's gone "terribly wrong" here any more than it's gone "terribly wrong" with any act of violence. Many of the loudest women in Western civilization have wanted total and complete parity with men in all areas of endeavor, from military deployment to college athletics to distance-pissing. The Glenbrook powderpuff catfight pity there wasn't more baby oil hazing incident is merely an outgrowth of it. The National Organization of/for/pick-your-preposition Women is getting exactly what it wants; it's just that now, the idea of women behaving like men is getting more air time. If there's a rise in female-perpetrated violence, then I think we can safely say that the current state of affairs is reflecting current gender attitudes, and we should accept it, if not embrace it. Men have long been considered brutes and dogs in the mainstream media, so it's no surprise that women are now seeking that form of dubious equality as well. Am I against equal pay for equal work? Good God, no. Do I think women are inferior to men? Nope, especially in intellectual pursuits. I think, however, that gender differences are merely differences, not examples of inequality. And no amount of socialization can get past the fact that men and women are built differently, inside and out. So where do you draw the line? Beats me. And for all the tough grrls who whine and complain that there aren't any good men out there, look down: if you've got a knife in one hand and an excised scrotum in the other, you may want to examine your culpability in how things are turning out.

2003-05-14T06:13:00.000-06:00

Nothing I Like better than a Good Catfight! The recent dust-up with girls beating the shit out of other girls, also referred to as a "hazing incident," also called "the Glenbrook powderpuff hazing incident," called by me the "Glenbrook powderpuff catfight pity there wasn't more baby oil hazing incident" has been getting a lot of press of late, inexplicably so. Glenn Reynolds, also known as the Instapundit, has received a few interesting emails about it. My favorite is:

People who lack the intelligence and humanity to settle their differences more diplomatically many times resort to violence. These girls have a good example in our president and his henchmen who exhibit this kind of behavior to the max.

When in doubt, it's President Bush's fault. It's amazing, but there are people out there, in our own country, that loathe and despise President Bush so much that they feel he is responsible for all the evil committed in the world. They cannot see the world but through the prism of "Bush is Evil" eyeglasses. Lost your car keys? It's because Bush is giving tax cuts to the rich. Dog died? Bush invaded Iraq. Stubbed your toe walking up the stairs? Bush got in a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier. It makes no sense, but there you have it. Oh, my take on the Glenbrook powderpuff catfight pity there wasn't more baby oil hazing incident? These young women were doing something on their own time, off-campus. Why should the school get involved? If there were criminal activities going on (like underage drinking and getting the snot kicked out of you while you squeal in pain like Ned Beatty on a Friday night in backwoods South Carolina), let the cops take care of it. I saw assault and battery on that videotape. That kind of behavior gets you jail time if you're a man.

2003-05-13T10:06:00.000-06:00

No Blog Today, either Same illness, different day. All I have to say is that it really sucks that Jenna won last season's Survivor and I hope the entire jury except for Butch winds up with a raging case of crab lice.

2003-05-12T06:42:00.000-06:00

No Blog Today Blog canceled on account of illness. More later.

2003-05-08T07:10:00.000-06:00

Ann's Easy to Look at, but... Ann Coulter has written a withering criticism of Senator John Kerry:

As long as we're going to get self-righteous, why is John Kerry allowed to have an opinion about taxes? He has spent his entire life marrying a succession of heiresses and living off the fortunes amassed by other men. It must be the luck of the pseudo-Irish. How can Kerry claim to understand the anguish of people who pay high taxes? What does this pompous, whining, morally superior, mincing habitue of Boston drawing rooms know about confiscatory taxes on hard-earned money? (Not that his nuptial path to wealth is not also hard-earned.)

"Pompous, whining, morally superior, mincing habitue of Boston drawing rooms." That's rough. It gets worse, cringingly so. You know, I sometimes agree with Ms. Coulter, but she's so damn cutting and gets so personal that I often wish that she wasn't a conservative. She's almost a right-wing version of Maureen Dowd. Even so, I'm on her side on this one. You go, Ann!

2003-05-08T06:41:00.000-06:00

RIAA, You, and Me This from The New York Times:

Some of the world's biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.

The record companies are exploring options on new countermeasures, which some experts say have varying degrees of legality, to deter online theft: from attacking personal Internet connections so as to slow or halt downloads of pirated music to overwhelming the distribution networks with potentially malicious programs that masquerade as music files.

The covert campaign, parts of which may never be carried out because they could be illegal under state and federal wiretap laws, is being developed and tested by a cadre of small technology companies, the executives said.

On its face, it sounds rather nasty: the big evil company wants to destroy your computer because you take away minuscule amounts of their profits by downloading. And heck, according to Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy, the deliberate distribution of code that is designed to destroy data is criminal (as well as alliterative). Thing is, I agree with the Recording Industry Association of America here. Services like the defunct Napster and Grokster and Jerkoffster/Whateverster encourage and promote theft of copyrighted material. Yes, CD's are far more expensive than they have to be, and yes, I like music too, and yes, I'm not rich either. But what I do is bite the bullet and buy what I want. I don't try to "get back at the fat cats" by downloading Macy Gray's hottest single for free. If you think that the price is too steep, go without or buy a used copy. It's probably on Ebay somewhere, anyhow. Don't steal it, and don't try to tell me that Grokster encourages sales of music by allowing you to "try before you buy," because that's bullshit. I think that we can all agree that pirating software is a bad thing, yes? What's the difference between going to a warez site to download The Sims Online for free and going to Slapster to download Kid Rock at a five-finger discount? As far as I'm concerned, none. Theft is theft, and everything else is rationalization. Bring it on, RIAA. Erase some hard drives. I think it's time at least some of us sowed what we reap. What I'd really love to see is a company devise code that sends a lethal electric blast through computer monitors into the brains of the spammers who send me countless emails regarding my mortgage, the (apparently meager) size of my genitals, and invitations to websites featuring "Barnyard Love." I like cows, too...but not in that way.

2003-05-08T05:40:00.000-06:00

Raiders of the Lost Talmud An interesting article. Go read it. Looks like we weren't digging in the wrong place. Via Instapundit.

2003-05-07T06:55:00.000-06:00

Jews against Lieberman That's the title of a column by Rich Lowry.

In the most flabbergasting wrinkle of the early campaign season, Lieberman's fund raising has been hampered by the reluctance of some Jews to donate to a Jewish candidate. "This is so illogical," says a close Lieberman friend. "How is it possible that Jews are the biggest problem? It is hurting Lieberman financially."

The paradox is a testament to a paranoid streak in part of the Jewish community still traumatized by the Holocaust. No other segment of the population appears to hold Lieberman's Jewishness against him, and he is running strong among Southern Christians.

Two things: first, I'm not entirely sure that it's about being "traumatized by the Holocaust." And second, if it is about the whole traumatization thing (is that a word?), can you blame us? Actually, I'm not done yet. There are a lot of issues here, few of which get much mention in Lowry's article (this isn't a criticism of it; ultimately, I think Lowry, whose columns I generally like quite a bit, was simply bringing something to light and not analyzing it). It's important to realize that more and more in this country, Jews are losing their religious/cultural identity. As modern society moves closer to secularism and convenience, the trappings, if you will, of "Jewishness" become less a part of the daily life of Jews...which is odd in that you rarely see Jews in America call themselves "Jewish-Americans" but you often see "hyphenated Americans" everywhere else: African-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. You can make the argument that Catholics don't call themselves "Catholic-Americans," but that's a bit different: Judaism isn't merely a religion, but a culture as well. As such, I think that Jews in the U.S. identify themselves less and less as Jews and more and more as Americans. Is that a bad thing? I opine, you decide. What this means is that there is simply less of a Jewish voting base as there used to be, one that votes on issues and candidates most sympathetic to Jewish concerns. Hence, less money for Lieberman. To be a Jew anywhere is to be heir to a people who have since the dawn of Western civilization been hunted, reviled, and hated. While this is not generally the case in the U.S., there is still a significant undercurrent of anti-semitism here and abroad. When Jesse Jackson refers to New York City as "Hymietown" and Louis Farrakhan calls Judaism a "gutter religion" it tends to make the hackles of even non-practicing Jews rise some. Do I see the Holocaust in Jackson's rhetoric? No. But when a man who incites a riot that kills seven people in a store because the owner was a Jew running a business in a black neighborhood makes a fairly credible attempt to run for President of the United States, I get a little nervous. (That's the Reverend Al, if you didn't know already.) I'm harping on blacks here not because I consider them to be anti-semites in general, but because it seems that the leadership of the black community has some issues with Jews that need to be worked out (especially in light of the huge amount of support that the civil rights efforts of the last century got from Jews across the country). On college campuses, we also see anti-semitism coming more strongly into vogue...in large part because the left controls a lot of political thought in the collegiate environment. This is bad because the left doesn't seem to like Israel very much but does support Palestine. This is itself not pure evidence of anti-semitism, but too many times campus rallies for "Palestinian freedom" end up as "Kill the Jews" celebrations. Sorry, but if you chant the "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" line and believe it, then your moral compass is extremely boned, and I don't trust that you're able to separate pro-Palestinian from anti-Jew (as if the difference wasn't micron-thin, anyhow). Don't forget that great Palestinian martyr Rachel Corrie, who died to keep the world safe for bombing children on school buses. The left's support for Palestine makes me nervous. Abroad, anti-semitism is gaining a lot of favor among the intellectual elite as well as government officials (remember the French ambassador to London Daniel Bernard referring to Israel as "that shitty little country"). It's a problem that no one wants to solve very much, especially in places like France and Germany. One of the bestselling books in the Arab world is "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a famously anti-semitic tract, and Holocaust denial is rampant. Makes me nervous about the reception of Jews outside of the U.S. While I don't believe that the majority of Americans hate Jews, or that even a singificant minority do, Jews aren't out of the water yet. There's still an undercurrent of feeling that we're a hunted people, and it will take time to get over that. I suspect that having a Jewish President would certainly help that quite a bit, but I'll be damned if I give that political chameleon Joseph Lieberman a dime of my money. I remember his flip-flopping, going from moderate to leftist back during the Gore candidacy, and I don't think that Lieberman has the moral character to adequately preside over the country.

2003-05-06T06:16:00.000-06:00

If this Is True... It's sickening. Truly vile.

An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein's government were given passports by French officials in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The passports are regarded as documents of the European Union, because of France's membership in the union, and have helped the Iraqis avoid capture, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The French support, which was revealed through sensitive intelligence-gathering means, angered Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials in Washington because it undermined the search for senior aides to Saddam, who fled Iraq in large numbers after the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

What possible reason would the French have to do this? Are they deliberately making enemies here, or do they simply not care? I just don't get it. If this was sanctioned by the French government, secretly or otherwise, it's unspeakably evil.

2003-05-06T06:07:00.000-06:00

I'm Finally Weighing in on the Bennett Thing Who cares? Honestly, it's just another smear campaign perpetrated by the left. It's been pointed out by dozens of pundits wittier than I that the term "hypocrite" in this case is extremely bizarre: Bennett's somehow labeled one because he moralized about drugs and sex, but likes to gamble. First off, he gambles his own money, and he does so legally. So he's not a criminal. Second, I defy anyone to show me an article or speech where Bill Bennett preached about gambling, either for or against. And finally, the same dimwits who exult in the man's public humiliation and call him a hypocrite because of what he does in his private life surely have the memories of fruit flies or goldfish. I mean, does anyone remember the bitching that the left engaged in time and again over the Clinton impeachment? Here was a man, the President of the United States, who engaged in adulterous acts in the Oval Office, then lied about it in court. Michael Kinsley and all the other cretins time and again told us that what he did in his private life was no business of ours, and that it had no bearing on his ability to execute the duties of President. Huh. Seems like the whole hypocrisy label is a bit more sticky on the back side than the front. And guess what: Bill Bennett doesn't hold public office. Yes, I think his stance on drug use is ridiculous, but I also believe that we should legalize all drugs, from heroin to crack to pot to ecstasy. Eugene Volokh has an interesting take on it. Seems rather indiscreet for the casino to have released Bennett's gambling losses, doesn't it? Bellagio in Vegas and Caesars in Atlantic City. While I thought that the water show was very nice at Bellagio, I think I'll be visiting Mandalay Bay and the Luxor for my future gambling activities. And everyone knows that if you ain't at the Trump or Harrah's, you ain't in Atlantic City, anyhow. Yes, I like to gamble, too. Lock me up.

2003-05-05T13:36:00.000-06:00

The New Left David Horowitz has a very interesting article on neo-coms.

The new left imploded at the end of the Sixties a victim of its own revolutionary enthusiasms, which led it to pursue a violent politics it could not sustain. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in the early Seventies, deprived the left of the immediate pretext for its radical agendas. Many of its cadre retired from the “revolution in the streets” they had tried to launch and entered the Democratic Party. Others turned to careers in journalism and teaching, the professions of choice for secular missionaries. Still others took up local agitations and discrete campaigns in behalf of saving the environment, feminist issues and gay rights -- without giving up their radical illusions. In the 1980s, spurred by the Soviet-sponsored “nuclear freeze” campaign and by the “solidarity” movements for Communist forces in Central America, the left began to regroup without formally announcing its re-emergence or proclaiming a new collective identity as its Sixties predecessor had done.

It's a vast left-wing conspiracy. But I knew that already. Read it all.

2003-05-05T05:47:00.000-06:00

50 Corrections?!? The paper of record, the New York Times, is embroiled/mired/quagmired in a plaigiarism scandal. Say it ain't so.

Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who copied portions of a Texas newspaper's story about a woman whose son died during the war in Iraq, resigned under pressure yesterday.

"The Times apologizes to its readers for a grave breach of its journalistic standards," Executive Editor Howell Raines said in a statement. "We will also apologize to the family of the soldier . . . for heightening their pain in a time of mourning."

Raines said Blair's story last Saturday "incorporated passages from another newspaper's coverage of the family, in Los Fresnos, Tex., and we have been unable to determine what original reporting he did to produce it."

Via Instapundit.

2003-05-05T05:40:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the Hiatus I don't usually rant on my days off, and I took a vacation day Thursday. To make up for it, I'm providing you with the link to a particularly affecting bleat from James Lileks, of course.

2003-04-30T06:21:00.000-06:00

It's Mean, but... It's funny. Here you go.

I should probably get off the Dixie Chicks, but I couldn't resist this one.

2003-04-30T06:14:00.000-06:00

Hot enough for You, Rachel? Another homicide bombing in Israel.

Three bystanders and the bomber were killed, and 55 people wounded, police and hospital officials said. Twenty people remained hospitalized later Wednesday, including six who were in serious condition.

It was the 89th suicide bombing targeting Israelis in the past 31 months. Since September 2000, 2,287 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, and 763 people on the Israeli side.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said that "there can be no excuse for the violence and terrorist attacks the Israeli people have been forced to endure." She said the U.S. goal is a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

By now, it's patently obvious that the Palestinians don't want to live peacefully alongside Israel. They want to destroy it. They want to kill every Jew on the planet, and they'll never be satisfied until they do. That's actually a good reason to keep supporting Israel: if we don't and the country is finally eaten entirely by the animalistic cretins that would consume the world with their hatred, who do you think they'll turn to next? Supporting Israel, while being the right thing to do, is also a reasonable measure of self-defense. These vermin have far more free time on their hands than is good for them, and their loathing for the West, for progress, for everyone else who lives freely is simply boundless. And imagine it: some semi-literate shitbag with lice and BO strapped the bomber up with dynamite and told him that what he was doing was a good thing, that upon his glorious death, he'd be rewarded with several dozen virgins and all the raisins he could eat in Heaven. The deluded, imbecilic coward blew himself up and killed at least two other innocent people over an adolescent sex fantasy. That's what Rachel Corrie was fighting for when she stepped in front of a bulldozer.

2003-04-30T05:53:00.000-06:00

Too Good to Pass up I found this article by Mark Steyn via Instapundit:

Got that? Last month, the Russians were opposed to war on the grounds that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This month, the Russians are opposed to lifting sanctions on the grounds that there's no proof Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction.

There are a few striped-pants masochists in the State Department who enjoy this sort of thing and have spent the last four weeks pining for M. Chirac to walk all over them in steel-tipped stilettos one more time. But most Americans, given a choice between being locked in Security Council negotiations with the Russians, French and Germans or being fed feet-first into one of Saddam's industrial shredders, would find it a tough call.

It's got history, humor, and intelligence, all the things my own rants aspire to (but rarely achieve; I'd be at least happy to get Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! but even that's sometimes hard to reach). Read it all.

2003-04-29T11:28:00.000-06:00

Sorry Phyllis, but You're Wrong on this One Phyllis Schlafly writes:

Three young women were part of the U.S. Army's 507th Maintenance Support Company that was ambushed March 23 near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. Fortunately, Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, has been rescued, thanks to an Iraqi who told U.S. soldiers where American POWs were being held. In the joy of reconciliation, let us not forget the shame on our country that this single mother of a 2-year-old daughter was assigned to a position where she could be captured. Johnson, whose family immigrated to the United States from Panama when she was 6 years old, didn't volunteer to serve in combat. She volunteered to be a cook.

Hey, it sucks that anyone has to see combat, but the operant term here is volunteered. Shoshana and Jessica Lynch wanted the career opportunities the military provided, but unfortunately they had to take the risks that came with the career. I think they knew that. There are parts of my job I don't particularly like doing, but I do them anyhow. And no, my job isn't as dangerous as going into a war zone, but I'd like to think that if I accepted the job, I'd accept the risks that went along with it. I will quote the Super Chicken theme to end this mini-rant:

Fred, if you're afraid you'll have to overlook it
Besides, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

2003-04-29T07:35:00.000-06:00

Peaophobia Zoe Williams of the UK's Guardian writes about homophobia in black culture:

This mistake is born out of one syllogism, one misconception and one silly error. To deal with those backwards, the silly error is this: where no one would ever define "white culture" solely by the views of its young straight men, there is a lazy tendency to do this with black culture. Young straight men tend to be the most homophobic demographic in any culture, since open-mindedness comes from self-confidence, which comes with age. The misconception is a confusion between rap and reggae. Some reggae is homophobic - Bob Marley isn't, but modern artists such as Tok, Elephant Man and Beenie Man are. This music comes from Jamaica, which is also homophobic - it is one of three Caribbean countries with actively enforced laws against homosexuality. This attitude arrived with British evangelists, as a direct component of their Christian message. All the homophobic laws date from the period of British governance. There is no evidence that Jamaica was preoccupied with same-sex sex before the arrival of the British. In fact, the only sustainable cultural generalisation that can ever be drawn about homophobia is that it proceeds as a direct result of religious fundamentalism.

Now, I have a bit of a problem with some of the statements here, one of which I'll admit may appear on the surface to be nitpicking. First, I don't agree with the "Young straight men tend to be the most homophobic demographic in any culture, since open-mindedness comes from self-confidence, which comes with age." statement on several levels. First, I want to see the stats on young straight men being in the top percentage of homophobes. Show me a poll, Zoe. Second, some of the most self-confident people I know tend to be some of the most intolerant. Taken to its logical limit, we then assume that open-mindedness comes as a direct result of growing older. I'd say that in many cases, age tends to ossify one's thinking instead of the opposite, but that's just my own experience. I don't have any statistics, either. My other problem is the use of the term "homophobe." We all know that a phobia is defined as an irrational fear of something. Just because I don't like it, it doesn't mean that I'm afraid of it. I don't like peas, for example, but the sight of them doesn't give me the screaming meemies. Just because someone's turned off by homosexuals or homosexuality, it doesn't mean that he's terrified of them. It's a label that's used too often and too inaccurately. Claiming that you're afraid of something instead of not liking it tends to elevate the disliked thing, moving it from one realm (hatred) to another (fear). Also, just because I don't like something, it doesn't mean that I'm "preoccupied" with it. I don't constantly worry at mealtimes if I'm going to be served peas, for example. I think you can be anti-gay without being a homophobe. Me, I'm not anti-gay or homophobic. It's not my business what others do in their bedrooms, nor should it be anyone else's. There are a lot of "slippery slope" arguments about gay marriage opening the doors to polygamy and the like (restarted recently by Senator Santorum's ill-considered statements), but most of them make little sense to me. On the other hand, making loud, public statements about your preference of sexual partners seems indiscreet to me, and I reserve the right to not like hearing about it, whether you want me to or not. I am anti-pea, however.

2003-04-29T06:14:00.000-06:00

I Woke up Screaming Do you remember the movie Dreamscape where President Eddie Albert has recurring, debilitating nightmares of nuclear war and a parapsychological think tank headed by Kate Capshaw and Dennis Quaid use Dennis's psychic powers to unfuck his mind but are almost thwarted by evil psychic David Patrick Kelly? I do. I had a dream last night that Al Gore was the Potus. It was worse than one of those "naked on Main St., balls and all" dreams because it involved the end of the world. Imagine it: Al Gore running the country right now, dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. It's enough to make you want to shred those Scientific American issues where the physicists talk about alternate universes: there might be a Gun-Toting Carnivorous Jew living under the yoke of enviro-weenieism, tyrant-appeasement and nanny-state economics somewhere, and the thought makes me shudder. The hyphens are problematic, too. That's why I support The Reverend Al Sharpton. Please: if you're going to vote Dem in 2004, cast your ballot for Sharpton in the primaries. You won't regret it.

2003-04-28T14:18:00.000-06:00

One-Sided Pacifism David Lewis Schaefer wrote a very interesting essay on Gandhi's stance on Jewish suffering during World War Two.

It is interesting, in this regard, to recall how Gandhi himself responded to the evil perpetrated by one of Saddam’s role models, Adolf Hitler. In November, 1938, responding to Jewish pleas that he endorse the Zionist cause so as to persuade the British government to open Palestine to immigrants fleeing Hitler’s persecution, Gandhi published an open letter flatly rejecting the request. While expressing the utmost “sympathy” with the Jews and lamenting “their age-old persecution,” Gandhi explained that “the cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me,” since “Palestine belongs to the Arabs.” Instead, he urged the Jews to “make that country their home where they are born.” To demand just treatment in the lands of their current residence while also demanding that Palestine be made their home, he argued, smacked of hypocrisy. Gandhi even went so far as to remark that “this cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.” Of course, Gandhi added, “the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history,” and “if there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.” Hitler’s regime was showing the world “how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism.” Nonetheless, the Hindu leader rejected that notion, since “I do not believe in any war.” And for Britain, France, and America to declare war on Hitler’s regime would bring them “no inner joy, no inner strength.”

As I always say, read the whole thing.

2003-04-28T06:12:00.000-06:00

Exactly Thomas Friedman of the New York Times writes:

As far as I'm concerned, we do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war. That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me. Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken. The thing about Saddam's reign is that when you look at that skull, you don't even know what period it came from — his suppression of the Kurds or the Shiites, his insane wars with Iran and Kuwait, or just his daily brutality. Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went. Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than those buried skulls? No way.

The whole "justification of the war" thing is truly baffling to me. There should be no doubt that the U.S. did a truly good thing, a mitzvah of gigantic proportions by taking out Hussein and freeing an oppressed people from a monstrous regime that used rape and torture as governing tools. Who cares if he had chemical weapons? I'll tell you who: the left, both foreign and domestic. And they'll use the same stupid arguments and make the same ludicrous claims that they have been since before the first bomb dropped: it's all about taking Iraqi oil, it's all about American imperialism, it's all about Halliburton, it's all about killing brown people because we're still mad about that little dust-up in New York in September 2001 (which was America's fault, anyhow). It wasn't about stopping wholesale murder; it was never about that, apparently. And every fuckwit holding a "Bush=Hitler" sign in the campus quad and every cretin blaming the U.S. for the fact that his country's irretrievably dicked up is going to get more and more outraged as the days go by and we don't find the "Big Sekrit Cache" of chemical weapons in Hussein's basement like we were supposed to. To them, it's not about stopping evil things, but rather who it is that's doing the stopping.

2003-04-24T07:03:00.000-06:00

See? I'm Not the Only One Larry Elder states:

Hollywood's antiwar critics seem to want it both ways. They use their podium to espouse their leftist views, yet, when individuals and private organizations react negatively, they shout: "First Amendment"! No, Mr. Robbins and Ms. Sarandon, the First Amendment prohibits governmental interference with political speech. It offers no immunity from criticism, indeed, revulsion by consumers of your movies or by organizations that extend you opportunities to speak.

It's just what I always say, but as usual, better put. Read the whole article.

2003-04-24T06:35:00.000-06:00

Touched by an Angel Sucks Big Green Donkey Dick And I'm not afraid to say it. Cal Thomas has an article about the show and its final few episodes, basically lauding it as a masterwork of TV splendor, or some such. That's the tough thing about being a Jewish conservative; you sometimes have to wade through "Jesus is just all right with me, Jesus is just all right, oh yeah" articles written by fellow (non-Jewish) conservatives if you want to stay informed as to current opinion. I hasten to add that I don't get my opinions from others; I form them myself from what President Bush and John Ashcroft tell me to think. Ha, ha. One of my favorite Jewish conservative columnists is Dennis Prager, but he tends to get a bit preachy from time to time, as well. I like to think of myself as didactic, but I generally hit "pontificating," which is as high as I'm able to go (hence the subtitle of this blog). My all-time favorite movie is The Prophecy, starring Christopher Walken. It portrays angels in a far more biblical manner than the "Jesus's little helpers" version that you generally see in modern media. What do angels do in the bible? They kill. Sometimes they bring news, generally bad. They even used to sleep with human women back in the Genesis days (and I don't mean Phil Collins Genesis). That's the angels I like. Most people don't rate a visit from Himself, so He simply gives a minion the job of kicking ass, and they're only too happy to do it. I suppose one of the reasons that I find shows like Touched by an Angel so offensive is that they not only get the notion of angels wrong, but they perpetuate the concept that religion is a crutch for people who would not otherwise be able to get through the day without angelic/divine intervention. Things sometimes get very very bad for people, but they ride it out without Valerie Bertinelli putting her well-manicured fingers into the pie, so to speak. People also do extremely bad things without needing David Ogden Satan to give them hints on how to be really evil. Who cares if the stupid show's wholesome? If I want wholesome, I'll read C.S. Lewis. There's a thinking man's Christian. Bottom line: I don't believe in angels. The God I believe in is, by definition, omnipotent. Hence, he doesn't need servants, winged or otherwise. When you start having patron angels and personal saints and stuff, you end up in polytheism, where there're a million little godlings, each maintaining its own sphere of influence, with the concept of a true God becoming redundant in all the micromanaging of the universe. I'll bet the average Touched by an Angel watcher doesn't get that far in his thinking, but I could be wrong.

2003-04-23T06:52:00.000-06:00

Whoops, One Last Bit, then I Go to Work Lileks has a great bleat today:

That said: if anyone insists Santorum should suffer consequences for his speech, they are denying his First Amendment right to dissent! A chilling wind is blowing across America! If anyone disinvites him to an event, the black cloak of Ashcroftian Throat-Chokery has been draped across another dissenter! If you don’t buy his book, Joe McCarthy cackles from his personal pit in hell! Don’t worry, Rick; Tim Robbins will be the first in line to support your right to speak your mind.

Actually, they're all great bleats.

2003-04-23T06:15:00.000-06:00

Rick "The Dick" Santorum The Volokh Conspiracy weighs in on the "faux pas" Rick Santorum made during the AP interview regarding gay sex. I must say that I agree wholeheartedly.

2003-04-23T06:01:00.000-06:00

French Perfidy Explained Check out Den Beste's USS Clueless for an article on the appalling state of the French economy, among other things. What other things, you ask? Read it. By the way, blogging will be light the rest of the week while I actually get some work done.

2003-04-22T07:28:00.000-06:00

You Can't Feel the Chill Wind when You're Dead I found this article from ABC News Online via Jeff Jarvis:

[The gravedigger] said all the dead that arrived during the last three years he worked at the cemetery were aged between 15 and 30, men and women who had been shot or hanged. "They were all youths ... the civilians were hanged, sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot ... I could distinguish them by their uniforms," he said through an interpreter.

Imagine it: walking up to the gallows with your hands tied behind your back, being prodded up the stairs by an AK-wielding thug while the stink of shit and piss and death fills up your nostrils. You can puke if you want, but you're going to die in a minute anyway. And why? Because you said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and the wrong person heard you. Rough way to go. If the evil, oil-thirsty, imperialistic Americans and Brits hadn't come in to take out Hussein, your son would've been next in a few years, because the apple probably doesn't fall too far from the tree. Of course, if we'd all seen the photos from al-Jazeera of the dead kid with the back of his head splayed out like banana peels, then there wouldn't be any war. 'Cause, you know, it's blood for oil anyhow. Yes, I'm engaging in the same emotion-as-argument behavior I regularly excoriate the left for doing. That's the point. What works on you? What's worse: the dead kid or the 1,000 dead political prisoners? It sucks either way.

2003-04-21T15:39:00.000-06:00

Break Like the Chill Wind The story is that Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were going to speak at the Baseball Hall of Fame to commemorate the 15-year anniversary of the movie Bull Durham, but the party was canceled by Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey because, as he wrote, "We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important and sensitive time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which, ultimately, could put our troops in even more danger." He feared that Sarandon and Robbins would use their time on the podium to discuss things not baseball-related, so he shut the anniversary celebration down. Now, I don't agree with Petroskey's decision, though I do celebrate the spirit in which it was intended. That is, it was a pretty stupid PR move to cancel the whole thing, but I believe he did so with the best of intentions. I wouldn't have those two at my house for dinner either, and when you're the boss, you get to make those kinds of decisions. It should be noted that Petroskey has since apologized to Sarandon and Robbins for canceling the engagement without giving them much prior notice, which shows that he's not too terribly rude. As far as I'm concerned, the big issue here is the definition of freedom of speech. Many people seem to think that having the freedom to speak your mind also translates to freedom from censure for what you choose to say. That's bullshit. If you're going to step into the ring, you're also going to have to take the punches coming your way. It sounds rough, but it's true: the left no longer has a monopoly on the media playground of ideas, and you can't get away with being an elitist socialist asshole anymore. On April 15, Tim Robbins gave a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where he whines about the same things I mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. I am reprinting parts of the transcript of it here for the purposes of satire and commentary. The original can be found here.

I can't tell you how moved I have been at the overwhelming support I have received from newspapers throughout the country in these past few days. I hold no illusions that all of these journalists agree with me on my views against the war. While the journalists' outrage at the cancellation of our appearance in Cooperstown is not about my views, it is about my right to express these views. I am extremely grateful that there are those of you out there still with a fierce belief in constitutionally guaranteed rights. We need you, the press, now more than ever. This is a crucial moment for all of us.

I looked through the U.S. Constitution several times, and I couldn't find where it says anywhere that anyone has a right to speak at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I always found it interesting that the anti-war left is big on certain constitutional rights, like free speech and freedom of assembly, but they're not so big on other constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms. Here's a little joke to illustrate: how does the ACLU count to ten? 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Anyhow, this isn't about guns, it's about Robbins' misreading of the U.S. Constitution.

For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it. I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

Okay, this is where it gets positively surreal. First, he makes sure to mention children, which is a vital component of any left-leaning issue. From hybrid automobiles to welfare reform to Medicare, "the children" have to get in there somewhere. Don't forget: to be liberal, you have to show that you care. And nothing shows caring like mentioning children. So, that base is covered. But next, he goes into cleaning up parks, visiting old folks, and tutoring children as a response to Arab terrorists flying airplanes into buildings to murder 3,000 people whose only crime was to go to work that morning. Honestly, I just don't get it. If you show weakness to bullies, you simply encourage them to bully you more. Everyone outside of Hollywood knows this. You can't "dialogue" with someone who views you as an evil to be extinguished. Somehow, I don't think that picking up litter at the local baseball field would have kept al-Qaeda from killing more innocent people.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior. In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.

Yes yes, the world would have been a utopia if our response to terrorism had been to implement more "Midnight Basketball" programs, all paid for by the good old American taxpayer. And if your moral worldview is such that you can find common cause with people who put bombs in school buses and pizza parlors, then I'm sorry, you ain't "with us." Strapping explosives covered with rat-poisoned ball bearings to your torso and detonating yourself in a nightclub filled with teenagers is the very definition of evil, and if you don't agree, then you're "against us." At least, I don't want you on my team. The "bitter division" he mentioned was about 75% for the war in Iraq, 25% against, according to latest polls. I'd call that "the jettisoning of the fringe," but I'll be the first to admit that it's a subjective matter of degree. However, this "contemptuous world population" thing is true, I'll give him that. It costs you absolutely nothing to express sympathy for someone, and you end up looking really nice to everyone when you do so. Big fucking deal. Places like France and Germany and Pakistan have expressed contempt for the U.S. before the 9/11 attacks, and no matter what we did, they expressed contempt for us afterward. Schroeder got elected on an anti-U.S. platform, for Christ's sake. As for bringing up the good old USSR, I wonder how outspoken Robbins was during the Cold War. Was he right or left then? I'm willing to bet he was a bit more red than red, white, and blue, but I could be wrong.

This past weekend, Susan and I and the three kids went to Florida for a family reunion of sorts. Amidst the alcohol and the dancing, sugar-rushing children, there was, of course, talk of the war. And the most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community, in their own life. Keep talking, they said; I haven't been able to open my mouth.

What's more frightening to me is that these "individuals" don't have the balls to open up their mouths and instead let people like Sarandon and Robbins do their talking for them. I'm sure that these people who felt "unsafe" were being followed by Ashcroft's goons carrying freshly-Xeroxed copies of the Patriot Act, all salivating at the prospect of violating the Robbins family's constitutional right to block traffic while holding "Bush=Hitler" signs.

Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their fair and balanced electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.) Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame. A famous middle-aged rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war." And here in Washington, Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleischer whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.

Interesting that Robbins should bitch about media bias in the first part there. He's got CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS on his side, what more does he want? He'd like to have that monopoly again. Sorry, Tim. I don't know who the "famous middle-aged rock-and-roller" is, but if he hasn't got the guts to stand up for himself and say what he feels, then he isn't entitled to his opinion. Christ, I'm sure it's not as if he's hurting for money, if he's close personal friends with Tim Robbins. As for Helen, she was "banished" because she was deliberately insinuating a moral equivalence between the U.S. and Saddam Hussein. She was using her position as a journalist to make public her hatred and loathing of the Bush presidency. Here's the quote, taken from a Michelle Malkin column:

Thomas: In terms of the pictures, the administration is upset because it is a violation of the Geneva Accords, you say, and I guess it is. Fleischer: That's correct. Thomas: Are we following the Geneva Accords in Iraq and Guantanamo? Fleischer: … [W]e have always treated people humanely, consistent with international agreements. In the case of the battle, the fight in Iraq, there's no question that is being done in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Thomas: But how about the detainees in Guantanamo? They have no rights under the Geneva Accords. Fleischer: As I just indicated, we always treat them humanely...

This is typical of Thomas' style. So it's okay when Helen Thomas exhibits some type of bias, but not Fox News (which I'm not saying is biased at all in its news reporting)? Gotcha.

A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear. I am sick of hearing about Hollywood being against this war. Hollywood's heavy hitters, the real power brokers and cover-of-the- magazine stars, have been largely silent on this issue. But Hollywood, the concept, has always been a popular target.

Yes, there will be ramifications, Tim. As I've said before, people are learning that they can exercise their opinions and beliefs in ways that matter: they can refuse to listen. How they do that is by making the personal choice to not invite you places, to not watch your movies, and to not buy the products you endorse. That's called freedom of choice. I know you don't like the notion of people disagreeing with you, but you'd best get used to it. If you don't like being shunned, then don't engage in behavior that others find unacceptable. There's no law that says I have to take the money I earned and buy a ticket to your next movie, even though I'm sure you feel it's in the Constitution somewhere that I do. And if you want to see "invective and hatred," just take a look at the photos from the latest anti-war rally. Hey Tim, do you support our troops when they shoot their officers? And the concept of Hollywood is a popular target precisely because it makes itself one. The vast majority of the "Hollywood elite" hasn't the slightest fucking clue as to what goes on in the real world of house payments, public schools, and health insurance, but the same band of cretins still feels compelled and qualified to speak out on them. Those "heavy hitters" are smart enough to keep quiet on things because they don't want to alienate their fan bases with the left-leaning tripe that characterizes show business thinking.

I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened. President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy -- this, as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies of our teenagers? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll? I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time. And curiously, no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo. Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies -- the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will -- recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind.

This is another group of statements that I find incredible to believe was stated in public, let alone thought. To Tim Robbins, taking a genocidal monster like Slobodan Milosovich out of power is analogous to two teenagers shooting up their high school. That's his thinking, and he complains that he's not being taken seriously, that he's being marginalized. I loathe Bill Clinton as much as the next Republican, but I won't lay Columbine at his feet. Note that Robbins equates people who enlist in the military to the murderers at Columbine in his statement. Certainly shows you the support he has for "the troops." Also, those "daily personal attacks" were for crimes, by the way, Tim. Perjury and stuff. I know, I know, it was all none of our business, and whatever the President does in the Oval Office is his concern, not ours. I've decided not to address the concept of fictional violence translating to real violence in this rant, which is way too long as it is. If you're interested in the subject, I do urge you to pick up a copy of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book On Killing, available from my friend Loren Christensen.

And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction -- it's very strange. As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan," we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen, but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life.

Here, Robbins engages in the typical anti-war behavior that I've talked about in previous rants. The concept is that if everyone saw the same pictures that he did, if everyone saw the al-Jazeera photos of the kid with the back of his head blown off, then we'd all stop being so violent. We'd do the join-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya-around-a-bonfire-of-destroyed-firearms-and-copies-of-the-Patriot-Act thing. By not seeing the real pictures, we're being insulated from the real war, and so we're ignorant of the true costs. War is instead "imagined and conceptualized." Even though he feels that he's worthy of the benefit of the doubt, the rest of us aren't. I wonder if Tim has asked the families of those coalition soldiers killed in Iraq if they have thought of the true costs of what we've done in Iraq, if their children and husbands and fathers were imagined and conceptualized. I could go on and on, but I'm bored already. Suffice it to say that with every word, Tim Robbins has earned that Hall of Fame cancellation.

2003-04-21T10:43:00.000-06:00

Perfidy Mean Mr. Mustard has an interesting discussion on the perfidy of the N3's (non, nein, nyet)/Axis of Weasels. Be sure to read all the comments. My favorite is this sally from a Frenchman named Paul:

Why is the French national emblem (?) the "coq" ? Because it's the only bird that continues to sing when it covered with shit. All you French haters should meditate this one sentence.

And its response from a clever fellow named Jeff:

Hey Paul, maybe you should instead figure out why the singing of your coq induces people to throw sh*t at it.

2003-04-21T05:45:00.000-06:00

Fascist! James Bennett asks, "Where have the fascists gone?" It's a good read. As an aside, I'd like my loyal readers to know that despite the near-end of the war, this blog shall go on. I will blog until I can blog no more, Monday through Thursday and the occasional weekend. Or at least until I run out of things to say.

2003-04-17T09:11:00.000-06:00

Rant, Rant, Rant Part Two If you haven't read Part One yet, scroll down. I feel that I need to explain some of my statements to make them a little less harsh. The main thing that I want to get out of the way is that I don't believe that every anti-war protestor is on Saddam Hussein's "side." That is, I don't believe that they approve of the rape and torture of children and all the other atrocities committed during his reign. Nonetheless, their actions and apparent mores seem less disapproving than they should be. For example, the people who staged "die-ins" to protest the war were willfully choosing the deliberate, institutionalized horrors of Hussein's regime over the incidental deaths of civilians caught in the war. That's wrong, and it's stupid. There's no excuse for such a choice. A lot of these people are very clearly motivated by hatred of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the rest of the administration, and conservatives in general. There is no good that can come of a conservative platform on anything, they reason, and as such, this war must also be bad. Many of the protests abroad are motivated by simple anti-Americanism, which tends to not only encompass hatred of the U.S. and its President, but also Israel. If you don't believe me, look at the signs they carry. You can find dozens of stories, with photos, on any news site available on the Internet, and I've posted too many here to point you to any specific one. Once again, I believe that these people are viewing things through the self-important prism of their own hatred, and deserve censure for doing so. I mean, whether you think President Bush is an idiot or not, it still doesn't mitigate the evil committed by the Baathist regime. It still needed to be brought to an end. So where's the argument? Vomiting fake blood onto the steps of the courthouse isn't going to keep Hussein from feeding his enemies into plastic shredders feet-first. This whole performance art as activism thing just bothers me too much to let it go. Where's the shame?

2003-04-17T08:18:00.000-06:00

Rant, Rant, Rant It's been brought to my attention that I may be rather less than charitable on this website regarding the people with whom I disagree, namely the anti-war crowd. Perhaps, I've been told, that some of them may indeed change their minds upon hearing a well thought-out argument for action in Iraq. It's a reasonable assumption, certainly. However, I don't agree with it, and I'll tell you why. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in reasonable comfort in the 21st Century can be considered also to be living in The Information Age, a title that deserves all the capital letters it gets. With the advent of 24-hour cable news channels, the Internet, radio news, and daily newspapers, there is simply no excuse any longer for the average adult to be uninformed about current events, whether they occur next door or in other countries. And while there's no doubt that most news outlets tend to give an ideological slant to their coverage of daily events, I believe that the average adult has the means and wherewithal to see through the spin (or at least recognize it). At any rate, news "spin" in the free world is rarely so impenetrable as to obfuscate what is really happening. Certainly, there's a large difference between Baghdad Bob telling the world that "The infidels are committing suicide at the gates" while American tanks rumble by behind him and The New York Times arranging the order and wording of its headlines to make it seem as if coalition forces are suffering major setbacks when they're not. The news of what's really happening somehow gets out and makes itself known. Even before the first bomb was dropped last month, there were certain incontrovertible facts regarding our enemy that no reasonably sane person would argue. We knew that Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass murder on his own people to kill thousands. We knew that he used the torture of children, the rape of innocents, and the murder of political dissidents as tools of statecraft, if not simply as light entertainment. Although the al-Qaeda link was tenuous, we knew that he funded other terrorist organizations that hated the U.S. and its allies with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. We knew that he shared that hatred, that if he was crazy and evil enough to use weapons of mass murder on his own people, he would use them on us. All of these things we knew, and more. To liberate an enslaved people, for self-defense, for defense of our allies: each is a reasonable excuse to go in and take him and his Baathist thugs out. And that is why I loathe and contemn the anti-war crowd. I believe that for whatever reasons, they are making the wrong moral choice, and choose evil over good. As moral creatures, I believe that we each have a responsibility to choose good over evil, and these people have cast their lots. Ignorance is not an excuse any longer, not in The Information Age. It doesn't fly. Either that, or they're stupid. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt: with the information they have at their fingertips, they still choose wrongly. To those that claim, "War is never the answer," I point to Auschwitz and Belsen and Dachau, and the abominations within that were stopped by war. To those who use terms like "unilateral," and "no UN support," I point to countries like England and Spain and Australia, who were strong enough to recognize evil and brave enough to fight with us. To those that complain about our imperialism, our arrogance, our desire to rule the world, I point to places like Egypt, that openly revile us while accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of our money for aid. When you carry a Bush=Hitler sign, you have abrogated your right to be taken seriously as an ethical being. To call you deluded excuses you too much, and I think that we have a tendency to consider evil/wrong acts to be symptoms of a disease instead of a moral choice. Blocking traffic and throwing rocks at police officers to protest the war isn't civil disobedience, it's criminal activity, and you will be punished as criminals. If you had your way, the children locked in Hussein's jails as political prisoners would still be rotting in their cells. If it was up to you, Uday would still be cruising Iraqi high schools, selecting the especially attractive for sessions in his rape rooms. That's the choice you made, and the world must never let you forget it. No, I don't see your point of view. I don't agree with it.

2003-04-17T06:06:00.000-06:00

Janeane Garofalo: Thoughtful Anti-War Mouthpiece or Cretinous, Elitist Stooge? Definitely the latter:

Actress/comedienne Janeane Garofalo is back. War coverage may be keeping her, for now, off the cable news channels, but she popped up Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Garofalo labeled the U.S. attack on Iraq as “not fair” because it is an “unprovoked strike.” Talking about those denouncing Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks for saying she was “ashamed” to be from the same state as President Bush, Garofalo suggested the attacks on the Dixie Chicks are a “wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet, they throw some things on the fire, they talk about Vin Diesel, they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is, they exchange phone numbers and in some cases has led to marriages.”

Fuck you too, Janeane. I'm still waiting for you to crawl on cut glass, like you promised us.

2003-04-16T10:27:00.000-06:00

Oh, and another Thing I found this link from Instapundit.

FOR three days, American tanks have been shelling a military intelligence building in the posh Al-Khathamia area in west Baghdad. The dozen or so tanks are not here to pound intransigent fighters but to break down concrete beams and steel, to reach bunkers deep underground at the Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya facility. The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers. Being trapped underground probably kept them safe from the bombing of Baghdad by the coalition. Severely emaciated, some had survived by eating the scabs off their sores. All the men had beards down to their waists, said onlookers. Most looked absolutely dazed when they emerged, said Mr Sadoun Mohamed, 37, who lives in the area. 'They had not seen sunlight for a long time,' he said. 'They kept blinking and covering their faces.' He said they were taken to the Saddam Hospital for treatment.

To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, I guess it's kind of hard to think about how the local museum's doing when you're eating your own scabs for nourishment.

2003-04-16T08:35:00.000-06:00

I Wish I Was Making this up, Folks The press has been up in arms lately regarding the ransacking of museums in Iraq since Saddam's overthrow. It's important to note that this ransacking and looting is being performed by the Iraqi people, and not coalition forces. It's also important to note that we are being blamed for the looting, as if in all the shooting and precision bombing of military targets, we were supposed to take men and women off the front lines to protect museums. There are several issues here, and I'm going to address them one by one. I'd like to make it known, however, that I find it extremely awful that artifacts dating from the beginning of civilization are being taken and/or destroyed. I know that they're irreplaceable, and we are all much poorer for their loss. However, I'd burn every museum in Iraq to its foundation and every scrap of papyrus in it if it would save the life of a single coalition soldier. That's just me. 1) It's the Iraqi people who are doing the looting, not the coalition forces. That said, we are still being blamed for it because we are apparently not doing enough to protect the museums. I'm not certain what we should do; would it have been better to shoot civilians trying to break down the doors? 2) Baghdad is still a war zone, despite the regime's recent toppling. It's more important that we keep ourselves and the Iraqi people from being killed than it is to park tanks in front of museums. It's all about resource management, and I don't think anyone outside of the military men in charge of this operation is qualified to state where and when our troops should be placed. 3) It might be that these places were pre-looted. Instapundit has a few links to articles suggesting that the Baathists themselves took all the good stuff before packing up and heading to France and Syria with their tails between their legs. 4) Don't think that the looters are the same cretins that destroyed their own neighborhoods during the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King trial. These are hungry people who, at least on some level, need money to feed their families. They're not going to live on handouts from the UN forever. Are they all Arab Jean Valjeans? No. Even so, they've got to eat, and it can be argued that they're only stealing from themselves, the "history belongs to everyone" argument notwithstanding. There are many, however, that don't feel the same way. They feel that chunks of carved stone are worth more than human lives, and are willing to say so without shame or equivocation. Their words can be found here. To get the full effect, however, you absolutely need to read some of the comments; they're extremely telling. I must warn you, however: they're not pretty. They're from people who judge the liberation of an entire people not worth the destruction and theft of some artifacts. "Ivory Tower" doesn't scratch the surface; these people are living on Mars.

2003-04-16T05:59:00.000-06:00

Two Fat Idiots for the Price of One Michael Moore is now claiming that the boos during his fictitious Oscar speech were only from a few people, instead of most of the crowd, as Jeff Jarvis quotes. We also get a peek into Roger Ebert's political savvy, also. It's not surprising that he's an idiot in this regard; I don't think I've agreed with him on a movie since Schindler's List.

2003-04-15T08:58:00.000-06:00

Happy Tax Day! Today's the last day to file your income tax, which the IRS tells me is entirely voluntary. "Voluntary" being a rather subjective term, in that it's backed up by people who are willing to use firearms to enforce it. Stephen Moore has an interesting article about it on National Review Online here. It's not particularly substantive, but does offer some "phun phacts." While I do think that the Federal Income Tax system as it stands is an unmitigated horror, a bloated, eternally avaricious shibboleth that only serves to perpetuate itself and does absolutely no good whatsoever, we do have to play by the rules until we can change them from within.

2003-04-15T06:41:00.000-06:00

I'd Suspected, but now I Have Proof Check out this article from Duck SEASON:

Give Gary Kamiya, executive editor of Salon, points for honesty, if nothing else. "I have a confession," wrote Kamiya Friday. "I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong." Among the specific things he has wished for, he adds, are that the Iraqis would have "resisted longer" and that "the Arab world would rise up in rage."

First, there's something gravely wrong with a man who would publicly admit to such feelings, as if he's proud of them. It's deeply disturbing that his loathing of the Bush administration is so pervasive that he'd wish the death of both soldiers and civilians in order to prove the President wrong. I have to give him points, however, for exposing and confessing to the vile hypocrisy that characterizes not only the anti-war establishment, but the left in general.

2003-04-14T09:10:00.000-06:00

Keep the Kids in Prison, They're Better off More clear thinking, this one from Australia. If you can't read it, her sign says, "Baghdad's children pay the cost of liberation with their lives. There must be no more of this." No more of what? Liberation? Does this veil-wearing cretin actually think that the Iraqi children are better off in Uday's rape rooms and Saddam's prisons than free? Yes, it's awful when innocent children die in war. But it's even more awful when their daily lives are characterized by the Hussein regime's form of brutality. Jesus Christ, lady. Did someone put your brain on the barbie, mistaking it for a shrimp?

2003-04-14T07:32:00.000-06:00

Just Keep Protesting, Guys; You'll Be Famous Soon Here's an article detailing war protests in Washington, D.C.

The demonstrators, wearing T-shirts like one that read "I see all the dead Iraqi children. Boy, do I feel safe," and carrying signs saying "Fight the new colonialism!" also condemned the way U.S. media covers the war.

Where can you get those T-shirts? Mother Jones? Does Pacifica Radio sell 'em? CNN? As for seeing all the dead children, didja see the living ones we freed from a political prison? Here, let me elucidate, so it can really sink in: Saddam Hussein had a prison designed to house children. Not because they were criminals in any rational sense of the word; they were political prisoners. What kind of monster does that? And where was your concern over the Iraqi kiddies back when Hussein was living high on the hog? Nowhere; there wasn't any fame/media coverage in it.

Police at one point used their batons to hit several protesters who pushed and shoved back. Three people were arrested, two for assaulting police officers, D.C. Police Sgt. Joe Gentile said, adding the scuffles began after some demonstrators threw stones at police officers. Organizers appealed to the crowd to provide records of the incidents of what they called "police brutality." "People started yelling and running back toward me and I could see police pepper spraying people," said freelance reporter Will Potter, adding police came up behind him and started hitting him in the back. "We were getting pushed between two sets of cops swinging batons," he said.

I'm appealing to the cops to provide records of what I call, "assault of a law enforcement officer." There's a difference between refusing to get up when a cop tells you to stop blocking traffic and throwing rocks at cops who are just doing their jobs, no matter what their politics are. Pepper spray, while most unpleasant, is a far more lenient method of crowd control than wooden bullets and beanbags, so stop bitching, Will.

As Saddam Hussein's government disintegrated and talk continued on rebuilding Iraq, anti-war demonstrators around the world have changed their focus to lobby against further U.S. military presence in the country and against the media.

It's a great strategy, because the anti-war crowd, no matter what happens, will always have a fallback position. That is, we'll eventually move out of Iraq, and to quote the UK Telegraph's Mark Steyn, "In a year's time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks' work." But once we're gone, the whiners will still have something to bitch about: media coverage. The Washington Post is a buncha right-wing stooges because they don't show enough pictures of U.S. Marines cheering over a bayoneted Iraqi baby. Fox News is a tool for the fictitious Bush presidency because it refuses to show clips of the "real war," where coalition forces gleefully bomb mosques and hospitals. They know the real truth: it's all about hegemony, oil, imperialism, Arab-hatred, and Cheney's profits from Halliburton.

2003-04-14T06:11:00.000-06:00

As Usual, Jonah's Got It Right Jonah Goldberg has a column that epitomizes my exact feelings here. It's not quite Neener Neener Journalism, but it comes close. Thing is, I think a bit of gloating, a little neener neener is okay, in that the anti-war crowd was so goddamn convinced that they were right and everyone else is wrong. Mike Farrell would sooner pass a baby elephant through his urinary tract than admit being wrong, however.

2003-04-10T10:34:00.000-06:00

Hey Janeane, No Knee Pads for You A transcript of an episode of The Pulse on the Fox News Channel, March 6:

O'REILLY: If you are wrong… and if the United States - and they will, this is going to happen - goes in, liberates Iraq [with] people in the street, American flags, hugging our soldiers… you gonna apologize to George W. Bush? GARAFALO: I would be so willing to say, "I'm sorry". I hope to God that I can be made a buffoon of, that people will say, "You were wrong. You were a fatalist". And I will go to the White House on my knees on cut glass and say, "Hey, you and Thomas Friedman were right… I shouldn't have doubted you"…

No, this wasn't taken out of context. Read the whole thing. I hope Janeane won't need a transfusion.

2003-04-10T06:34:00.000-06:00

"Wankers" Doesn't Quite Cut It This from SFGate.com:

Some American and European "human shields" were there, antiwar activists who had come to Baghdad and placed themselves in front of power plants and other potential targets. They chastised the Marines for attacking Iraq and promoting war. That angered some of the soldiers. "I didn't bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers," said one, angry and teary, referring to an Iraqi artillery attack that killed two of his colleagues on Monday. "They died for this country." Meanwhile, two Iraqis held up a sheet bearing the message: "Go home Human Shields, you U.S. Wankers."

I hope that the soldier quoted doesn't take those unmitigated idiots as being representative of the U.S. population as a whole. I wonder if, 60 years ago, they might have chained themselves to the gates of Dachau and Auschwitz bearing "War Is Not the Answer" signs and keeping the prisoners from being freed. Are these "shields" such egotists that they believe that their sacrifices are more important than the liberation of an entire people? At what point does their egotism and ignorance become, if not active malice, than at least (for lack of a better term), passive evil?

2003-04-10T06:11:00.000-06:00

Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, Neener Neener National Review Online, one of my favorite sites in the whole world, has unfortunately engaged in "neener neener journalism" in their latest article, which quotes various anti-war pundits, Monday-morning military quarterbacks, and the typical loudmouth cretins who predicted things like "quagmire" in order to show how wrong they all were. Like I said, neener neener journalism. Doesn't mean that it isn't brilliant, however. Ha!