The prison rape continues

FOX News Channel (FNC) garnered more than 50% of the cable news audience in primetime and total day during 2Q'04, according to Nielsen Media Research. In contrast, CNN and MSNBC both attracted less than a third of the same market share in 2Q '04. In primetime, FNC commanded 55% of the cable news market share, averaging 1.4 million viewers, while CNN claimed just 32% of that audience with 828,000 viewers. During Rick Kaplan's first full quarter as president, MSNBC's primetime line-up attracted a paltry 13% of the cable news audience with 321,000 viewers (down 41% in viewership year to year).

FNC's Total Day average of 820,000 viewers made up 54% of the cable news pie, nearly doubling CNN's 31% (468,000 viewers) and more than tripling MSNBC's 15% share (226,000 viewers). In the key 25-54 demo, both CNN and MSNBC lost more than half their 25-54 audience in these day parts over the same period last year. FNC averaged 457,000 persons in primetime and 291,000 persons in total day, exceeding CNN and MSNBC's combined totals of 344,000 persons in prime and 231,000 persons in the total day time periods.

In addition, FNC sustained its programming dominance capturing nine out of the top ten shows in cable news, as CNN's heavily promoted primetime lineup continued to flounder. CNN's only show in the top ten, Larry King Live, remained stagnant at number four with 1,291,000 viewers, trailing FNC's The O'Reilly Factor (2,051,000 viewers), Hannity & Colmes (1,492,000 viewers) and The FOX Report with Shepard Smith (1,339,000 viewers) respectively. Since launching in September 2003, Paula Zahn Now and Anderson Cooper 360 have yet to rank within the top ten cable news programs -- Zahn currently ranks at 16th while Cooper is languishing at number 21.

Obviously there's no market for right-wing commentary. Six months ago the St. Paul Pioneer Press turned down my column - for the second time in five years - despite the fact that I'm one of the only writers in their history to have been nationally syndicated. In thematically related news, the Pioneer Press's readership just dropped below 200,000 for the first time in a long, long time and a (ahem) restructuring was announced last week.

Now, I understand that newspaper editors have probably studied less economics than the average NBA draftee, but you wouldn't think it would take a rocket scientist to understand that if your dominant competitor does X, then you have to do Y if you want to compete. Offering more of X simply means that you'll eventually be run out of business or acquired. Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, saw the huge market left unaddressed by the ABCNNBCBS cabal and is cleaning up with a monopoly position in the rightward 50 percent of the political spectrum while he leaves all the others to fight it out for the leftward half. Surprise, surprise, guess who's winning?

I wonder how Eric Alterman explains this. I suppose he thinks the number of stupid people is growing every day. No doubt it's George Bush's fault.

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Eco on the end of democracy

Big Chilly once told me that he greatly respected how I often use my public platform for mysterious and seemingly nonsensical purposes. In that light, it gives me great pleasure to present more of that for which no one is asking, a translation of an article by Umberto Eco which appeared on June 25th in L'espresso: Apparire piu come essere.

To appear more than to be
Sixty-four years before Christ, Marcus Tullius Cicero, already a celebrated orator but the epitome of a New Man, estranged from the nobility, decided to declare himself a candidate for Consul. His brother, Quintus Tullius, wrote for him a manual in which he was instructed how to make an impression. In the front of the current Italian edition, (Manuele del candidato – Istruzioni per vincere le elezioni, editore Manni, 8 euros), are comments by Luca Canali, in which he lucidly describes the histoical circumstances and the personalities of that campaign. Furio Colombo writes the introduction, with a reflective essay on the First Republic.

In fact, there are many similarities between our Second Republic and this Roman Republic, in the virtues, (very small), as well as the defects. The example of Rome, over the course of more than two millenia, has continued to hold much influence on many successive visions of the State. As Colombo records, the antique model of the Roman Republic inspired the authors of the Federalist Papers, which delineated the fundamental lines of the American Constitution. They saw in Rome, more than in Athens, the example of what was truly a democracy of the people. In their pragmatic realism, the neocons around Bush were inspired by the image of imperial Rome and many of their actual political discussions gave recourse to the idea of an empire, that of a “Pax Americana” which makes explicit reference to the ideology of the “Pax Romana”.

I must note that the image of electoral competition that emerges in the 20 pages of Quintus is of extremely small virtue compared to that which had inspired the federalists of the 18th century. Quintus does not seem to even consider the possibility of a political man who boldly confronts the electorate in the face of dissent with a courageous project, with the hope of conquering the voters on the powerful strength of a utopian idea. As Canali also notes, totally absent from these pages is any notion of debating ideas; instead, there is recommendation to never expose oneself on any political issue, so as to avoid making enemies. The candidate envisioned by Quintus must only be sure to appear fascinating, doing favors and other self-promotion, never saying no to anyone but leaving everyone with the impression he will do what they want. The memory of the electorate is short, and before long they will forget old promises....

At the end of the letter we ask: but is democracy truly only this, a form of conquering the public favor that is founded on nothing but appearances and a strategy of deceit? It is certainly so, and it cannot be differently if this system, (which, as Churchill said, is imperfect, but is less imperfect than all the others), allows one to arrive at power only through consensus and not through force and violence. But we must not forget that these instructions for a political campaign were written at moment when Roman democracy was already in crisis.

It was not long after when Caesar definitively took power with the assistance of his legions, and with his life Marcus Tullius paid the passage from a regime founded on consensus to a regime founded on the fist of the State. But one cannot avoid the thought that Roman democracy had begun to die when its politicians understood that they no longer had to be serious about their policies but had only to engineer the obtaining of the sympathies of those we might well call television viewers.

This demonstrates that there is truly nothing new under the sun. In our modern arrogance, we believe that we are different, that our pseudo-democracy, (as false in every way to the democratic ideal as was its Roman predecessor), is a light illuminating all mankind. Quintus Tullius might easily have been Dick Morris or Karl Rove, advising hollow-suited frauds such as Bill Clinton and George Bush.

The laws of history are not as easily discerned as the laws of physics, but they are every bit as inexorable. Eco gives us one more reason to believe that we are living in the last days of the American Republic.

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Dayan wouldn't be surprised

The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, a Marine officer said Tuesday. The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The officer said Corporal Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell."It was very disturbing to him," the officer said. "He wanted to go home and quit the game, but since he was relatively early in his deployment, that was not going to happen anytime soon. So he talked to some folks on base he befriended, because they were all fellow Muslims, and they helped sneak him off. Once off, instead of helping him get home, they turned him over to the bad guys."

The Israeli general Moseh Dayan was once asked what made him so successful. "Fighting Arabs", he is said to have replied. Hassoun's desertion would seem to suggest that even the USMC can't make warriors out of them. A Marine deserting? I can't even imagine what my Marine grandfather would have to say about that. I think he'd be torn between leaving the guy to his fate and, as he liked to say, giving the guy a fair trial and hanging him.

In World War II the 442nd Regiment (of American-born Japanese Nisei) were sent to fight in Europe because it was considered unwise to put them under the psychological stress of fighting the Japanese. They acquitted themselves heroically, taking tremendous losses in rescuing the surrounded Lost Battalion and ended up as one of the most decorated units of the war. So, it's not a new problem and it should hardly come as a surprise to learn that using foreign-born Muslim troops to fight other Muslims in a Muslim country doesn't work out well.

This is yet another suggestion that this administration is hopeless when it comes to war-fighting. Foreign auxilaries can certainly be useful, but not within your own elite units.

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Where's my bottle?

Urs Meier, the referee who single-handedly knocked England out of Euro 2004, has the nerve to say:

I’m absolutely shocked by what’s gone on and the attacks from The Sun, the supporters and the other newspapers. I’m really shocked because the decision was 100 per cent correct and the whole world saw this decision was correct.

Meier certainly doesn't deserve the death threats he's been getting, but all the stick he's been receiving from the English press is absolutely justified. Their outrage would probably be significantly mitigated if he simply admitted that he made an honest and all-too-typical mistake of awarding a phantom foul in the box. But instead he flings this "100 percent correct" nonsense around and makes even lukewarm England supporters like me want to punch him in the face.

The truth of the matter is easy to ascertain. All that's required is a simple review of all the fouls called in the penalty box when there is a chaotic situation and the referee can't see exactly what is going on. I'd be willing to bet that at least 90 percent of the whistles blown are fouls called on the attacking team. This defies belief, and the unfair bias can be proved by comparing the ratio with the ratio of fouls called in the open field of play.

The only thing I hate more than phantom fouls in the box are diving strikers and phantom offsides calls. UEFA has done a good job dealing with the latter two, it's now clearly time to do something about the former.

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New look

It's just another Blogger template, but I figured it was time to get rid of that old "F11" problem. If you had that problem beforee, let me know if all the posts are showing up now.

And besides, I dislike orange.

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How they cling to their misconceptions

Bellatrys comments over at Dark Window:

Anyone who starts talking 'Kinder, Kirche, Kuche!" talk *deserves* to be tarred with the fascist brush.

This is an interesting confession. So anyone who supports children, church and women being able to stay at home with their children "deserves to be tarred with the fascist brush". This would make approximately 75 percent of the planet fascist, but never mind that. The fact that both Hitler, (who was not a fascist), and Mussolini, (who was), saw the Catholic Church as one of their most dangerous and troublesome rivals doesn't seem to trouble this poor leftist. Note too, that while the actual party manifesto written by the party founder is to be cast aside as mere propaganda, subsequent actions notwithstanding, a general slogan belonging to a different party in a different country somehow suffices to shine a light on my true fascist ideology. Stupendous stuff, Sherlock!

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From each... to each....

"the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

And who was it that was saying that modern Democrats are NOT left-wing? This is the message of Marx, of Lenin, of Hitler, of Mussolini, and every left-wing demagogue since Socrates who would elevate the collective over the individual. It is not possible to subscribe to both human rights and left-wing collectivist ideology. The two are in inherent and fundamental contradiction, which is why decent, well-meaning left-wingers so often find themselves trapped in a maelstrom of cognitive dissonance.

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Not that you care

I suspect this will be completely lost on the horde of Philistines that inhabit this sparkling corner of the Blogosphere, but UMBERTO ECO HAS A NEW NOVEL OUT!

Entitled The Mysterious Flame of the Queen of Loana, it is described as follows:

Imagine if you woke up one morning and did not remember anything about yourself: who you were, where you are, if you were married or if you had children. And that happens to the protagonist of the new novel by Umberto Eco, a sixty-year old stricken with amnesia following a serious accident. The events described in The Mysterious Flame of the Queen of Loana revolve around the figure of John-Baptist Bodoni, called Yambo, an antiquarian librarian in Milan in a desperate search for his past. He awakes from a long sleep in his hospital bed, a man with perfect recall of who Napoleon was, how to drive a car and open a box of cookies, but who does not know who he or those around him are.

Although he recovers fully from his injuries, Yambo does not recover his memories. To help him retrieve them, his wife brings him to the old house of his family in Solara, between Langhe and Monferrato, where the man spends his days interred in an immense attic listening to old records, leafing through his childhood comic books and reading the letters of his mother.

At first his life slowly begins to return, but the familiar sounds and smells lead his imagination to discover the fanciful life of his youth. He comes back to his consciousness, but only to discover the unforeseeable, for when the dramatic paradox of his life reveals itself, he truly learns who he is.

In anyone else's hands, this story would probably be so dull as to fail to slice butter, but I have no doubt whatsoever that it will be a masterpiece, as Eco spins the reader's mind around like a basketball on the overlong index finger of a Harlem Globetrotter, giving it periodic whacks as it whirls by.

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Fleeing from fascism

Dark Window hurls accusations of goofiness: [Vox's] new column implies that it's actually modern-day liberals who are the fascists and to prove his point, he gives us his own translation of Mussolini's Fascist Manifesto. I encourage you to go read the article itself as it's a little long to quote here at length.... Frankly, I don't like it when any side throws around highly-charged names like Nazi or Fascist or Communist to describe a political foe. And unfortunately, this seems to be happening with alarming regularity these days. These terms come flying from both Left and Right and although the people throwing them will generally say they're simply pointing out similarities between a particular person and a particular historical policy of one of the above-mentioned groups, their actual intention is obviously not to engage in a close historical reading of political theory. Rather, it's to generate the extremely visceral reactions associated with things like the Final Solution or Gulags or Death Camps or Totalitarianism. I think it's wrong when either side engages in this activity and, frankly, I think it generally masks an inability to debate the merits of particular issues or policies. It's far easier to call somebody a Nazi or a Commie than it is to participate in a reasoned debate.

Now, I like Dark Window and I agree that the name-calling is often pointless, however, as one who has extensively read through the history and intellectual development of Fascist, National Socialist and Communist ideologies, (as well as other, less famous leftist variants), I am not simply attempting to generate visceral reactions. Instead, I am methodically demonstrating how the Left has been successful in hiding the direct relationship between its modern forms and its historical forms for which most people harbor great loathing. So, I have to salute DW for making what is the only possible argument against the left-wing nature of facism. Unfortunately for him, it is ultimately a weak one.

But back to Vox. His main argument seems to be that since Mussolini used what amounts to a propoganda piece to advocate things like women's suffrage, a minimum wage, and systemization of national transportation, that liberals are far more fascist than conservatives or libertarians. The mistake Vox makes is to draw the simplistic conclusion that if Mussolini wrote something in his manifesto, it's what fascism came to be and what we mean when we use the term today.

It would only amount to a mere propaganda piece if Mussolini had not subsequently enacted those very measures he was advocating in his manifesto. Take women's suffrage for example: Mussolini took power in 1922 and women were granted suffrage in 1925, albeit with some restrictions. He did precisely as he promised in the manifesto when the Charter of Labour was enacted, setting up twenty-two syndicates where membership was compulsory for employers and employees, each controlled by a party member. Furthermore, if the manifesto is to be viewed as nothing but a meaningless propaganda piece, it seems most strange that it should threaten the Catholic Church, which was still a popular institution in Italy.

As with most American liberals, Dark Window is uncomfortable with the simplistic notion that written documents, such as the U.S. Constitution, mean what they say. This discomfort with textual precision is why the modern Left has such a difficult time coming to terms with aggressive forces such as the global jihad, as they cannot believe that bin Laden is so simplistic as to announce his intentions. Why would he, they think, when they themselves are sophisticated enough hide their true intentions?

Quite the contrary, the manifesto was written to wrest control of the government by gaining wide popular acceptance through political compromise. The words of the manifesto bear very little resemblance to what is meant by modern political theorists when they describe the doctrines of fascism. Once Mussolini gained power, he governed in a very different manner than that espoused in his manifesto. Industries were not nationalized but run under a structure of corporatism strongly influenced by the Church. Even more importantly, the driving factor of actual fascism was not to create an egalitarian society but to centralize power in the hands of a small and strongly nationalistic ruling body.

Modern political theorists either define the term so broadly as to be almost meaningless, or turn it back around in a circular definition equally devoid of meaning. What is fascism? The governing philosophy of Benito Mussolini's party. What was the governing philosophy of Benito Mussolini's historical party? Facism. The Church corporatism, or corporativismo to which DW refers is simply a form of collective class collaboration proposed by Pope Leo as an alternative to Marxian class conflict, but it has nothing to do with Christianity or capitalism and is yet another collectivist left-wing concept. Furthermore, Mussolini never had any intention of coming to power through compromise, as his planned 1922 march on Rome clearly shows.

What is amusing here is that DW fails to recognize that the driving factor of EVERY left-wing ideology is to centralize power in the hands of a small ruling body. This is true of Bolshevist Marxist-Leninism, of Maoist Communism, of the Khmer Rouge, of the National Socialists, and, it must be noted, of the corrupt Democratic-Republican globalist cabal. It is surely the height of irony that the heirs of Marxian dialectic cannot seem to recognize it at work in their own ideologies.

Finally, DW's position is wholly anti-intellectual. Taken to its conclusion, it suggests that ideas which cannot be put immediately into practice have no standing. The Left often attempts to have its cake and eat it too, in its common argument that Soviet Communism as practiced between 1917 and 1989 is not true communism as theorized by Marx, but Italian Fascism as practiced between 1922 and 1939, on the other hand, is true facism, all contradictions to fascist theory as theorized by Giovanni Gentile notwithstanding.

"And yet, the only serious question is if it is more ironic to tar a libertarian or a member of the Religious Right with the fascist brush, as one seldom hears James Dobson calling for the government seizure of all church-owned property." That's your only serious question, Vox? Considering the very strong ties between the Catholic Church and Mussolini's fascist party during the early years of power and the Church's strong influence over him and his policies during his entire reign, your example seems to break down. Because if there's one thing Dobson is calling for, it's more religious influence on our national leaders.

The "strong ties" to which DW refers are precisely the opposite of what he is implying. Far from a partnership, the Church-Party relationship was an uneasy one of two opposing parties unable to gain sole supremacy. Once Mussolini realized that in confronting the Catholic Church he was taking on "a colossal force", he arranged to make accomodations in much the same way that Lenin made capitalistic compromises in his New Economic Program of 1925. Did Lenin therefore have strong ties to capitalism? If one reads the actual text of the Lateran Treaties, one quickly realizes that this is essentially a bribe, providing the Church with the land and sovereignty of what is now the independent Vatican in return for a free hand in the governance of Italy.

"In 1925, Mussolini encapsulated the heart of fascist philosophy in a memorable phrase: Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato. This means "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Now, I ask you, in the Year of Our Lord 2004, does that sound more like a Libertarian, a Republican or a Democrat?" If you read that in light of Mussolini's actions, you know that his definition of "the State" is far different than what Vox is implying. Replace "State" with "Strong Nationalistic Leader" and ask that last question again.

Here DW completely loses the plot. Mussolini may have come to believe that he was the State, (and certainly his assertion "the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality" is suspicious), but regardless of whether he is referring to himself, a vanguard of the People or a freely elected representative body, he shares with today's Democrats a belief that there is nothing outside the lawful purview of the national government.

PS - Just to set the record straight, it was not Dark Window or any of those who took up his Vox Challenge that made accusations of facism. I received several emails subsequent to the suffrage post that also made statements regarding my ancestry, my sexual preferences and the amount of fecal matter in my intestines. Now, DW can be hysterical, to be sure, but usually in the funny sense - Up yours, Luxembourg!

PPS - Dark Window adds: Update: Vox has posted an enjoyable and spirited response to this piece over at his own blog. Sadly, I will not be at home much the next couple of days so in lieu of a proper riposte on my part, I simply direct you over to him and invite you to formulate your own conclusions. In this instance, I happily cede the last word to him.

I can't take any joy in having the last word here, as he's clearly off to spend a week meditating in the forest as he mourns the tragic passing of Les Bleus, dead of self-asphyxiation.

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Shifting sands of argument

Naked Writing takes exception to my clarification of the Spanish Inquisition: It wasn't that bad. That's what I'm reading at several sites devoted to the faithful point that the Inquisition "wasn't that bad." Instead of millions killed, as popular sentiment maintains, the Roman Catholic Church itself "only" killed a few hundred thousand for heresy and witchcraft crimes - the grand excess of others who died actually perished at the hands of the secular authorities in Roman Catholic countries, carrying out harsh penalties for witchcraft and heresy under their own ensign as opposed to that of the Church. Above that, the other the pains and deaths of those eras attributed to the Inquistion was either Protestant propaganda designed to shift the blame from Protestant states and churches trials for similar crimes onto the memory of those states allied with the RCC.

What else can one say? Executing 6,000 people over hundreds of years is not as bad as murdering millions, is it? If millions of deaths is no worse than a few thousand, then why do so many people have their panties in a bunch over Stalin, Hitler and Mao? The USA has executed more than 6,000 people in less than half the lifespan of the Spanish Inquisition, should our country then be regarded with the same historical horror as is the Inquisition? Facts are facts, and the facts are that the common knowledge about the Inquisition is utterly, totally and completely wrong.

The problem is, the argument that non-theists such as myself make regarding the tragedy of these deaths, isn't one easily absolved by lowering the body count. Saying that the terrors behind the Inquisition "wasn't that bad" because "only" 25,000 people were killed in Germany or that the population of the Duchy of Lichenstein was "only" reduced by 10% instead of far higher numbers misses the point. And mounting an argument, as several of those sited do, that Church backed investigations into heresy and witchcraft accusations was better because the Church was "less" likely to use torture . The critique, the point, the crime non-theists point to existed the moment the first person was singled out for an accusation.

That may be the argument that this individual makes, but it's not one that anyone else is making. The argument everyone else makes is that the Spanish Inquisition was a terrible human tragedy in which the Church murdered millions of innocent individuals for the crime of not being Christian. And that simply isn't true. The Inquisition was State law equivalent to current Saudi law that requires citizens in Saudi Arabia to be Muslim, and was far more civilized as it simply exiled those who refused to comply instead of beheading them. Interesting, that "non-theists" are more troubled by events 500 years ago instead of what is happening right now. Are they cowards, racists or simply anti-Christian bigots? I'm not sure, perhaps all three.

That anyone, at anytime, in any place, for any reason, was maimed, tortured or otherwise victimized because their take on the illusory and intangible was different than the majority's, are grounds enough for anger.

You can tell this person is a left-liberal, as he is of the opinion that meaningless posturing counts for something. Notice how this insensibly mutates the argument from a specific assertion that the Spanish Inquisition was terrible because it slaughtered so many victims into an amorphous condemnation of All Bad Things.

The "evidence" that Majority Believers -- the Orthodox of whatever stripe, creed, faith, understanding, or religion -- put forward as evidence proving that their take is the right and correct, is just as fleeting, nebulous and non-existent as every other, heterodox heretic to grace either the rack or the stake. For no matter what flavor of mist one prefers, it is still, in the end, mist, evaporating quickly under the morning light of ration inquiry. It fails to solidify no matter its name "Orthodoxy" or "Heresy." Be it 1 dead or 1 million, all those who were felled, were so over nothing.

Naked writing, naked assertions. Under this individual's reasoning, one would deny gravity because one cannot see it. As for the latter statement, it reveals utter ignorance of the very reason the Spanish Inquisition came into being, namely, the fact that Spain was still in the process of expelling the Moorish invaders in completing La Reconquista - the Spanish Inquisition began in 1478 while the Ten Years War for the final piece of the Reconquest, Granada, did not even start until 1481 - and many Moors and Jews not loyal to the Spanish throne were making false conversions to the state religion rather than face expulsion. Contrary to the Naked Writer's assertion, the Inquisition was not "over nothing" but was a serious State matter of settling past scores and quelling internal insurrection. While other Inquisitions focused on heretics, the Spanish Inquisition was far more concerned with hunting down conversos. The uprisings of the Mudejares in 1500-1502 and the Moriscos in 1568-1571 indicates that these royal concerns were not unfounded.

Jewish history is rather more sober on the entire subject than the later Protestant propaganda, as it tends to concentrate more on the expulsion of their people from Queen Isabella's Andalusia (1483) and the rest of Spain (1492), and admits that many of the Jews who remained did make false conversions. Considering that the American people were quite willing to round up Japanese-Americans over the imagined threat of a Japanese invasion, it seems a little strange to condemn the Spanish people, who had been living under the heel of foreign invaders for 700 years, for wishing to ensure that they were completely rid of all their former occupiers following the long-awaited triumph of the Reconquest.

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Running smart or running scared

From Debka: The surprise move [to hand over sovereignty] prompted a rush of explanations by various informed sources who presented it as:

1. An attempt to pre-empt the spectacular Iraqi guerrilla-al Qaeda terrorist strikes that intelligence experts judged were scheduled for June 30. It was hoped that the secretly-planned fait accompli of the transition would catch the enemy off-balance.

2. A demonstration to the assembled NATO leaders that Washington and London, in asking for alliance assistance for the Iraqi army, seriously meant what they said about handing power over to an indigenous regime in Baghdad. The formal act was supposed to finally win round any waverers.

However, DEBKAfile political and military analysts believe these arguments which may sit well in the diplomatic arena are unlikely to stand the test of reality inside Iraq, where the precipitate handover looks less like a coolly reasoned move and more like a counsel of desperation, or even the loss of control by coalition leaders.... Iraq’s interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, in Istanbul for the NATO summit, explained the move in a nutshell. He said power was transferred ahead of time in view of “the deteriorating security situation.” In other words, the Americans and British passed a hot potato to Baghdad before the brew heated up still further.

I wonder if the administration's defenders will insist this is all part of a grand secret strategy to win... something. Then again, perhaps the Fallujah debacle has finally convinced them that this administration has less strategic competence than the average thirteen year-old wargamer. Don't get me wrong; I'll be very pleased if they pull the troops out and start actually dealing with the war declared on America instead of playing at nation-building. But nothing they have said or done leads me to conclude that they have any heart for taking on the twin centers of the global jihad.

Right from the beginning, when the administration showed that they would rather strip rights from American cititzens than do anything to offend illegal aliens, I had serious doubts about whether the administration was actually serious about its undeclared war on method. In fact, in my very first political column, I warned about how the response to 9/11 would likely be used to America's detriment. You can look it up in the archive at voxday.net if you like.

It's always interesting to see how we must divulge the contents of our bank account and allow the FBI and NSA to scan all of our personal communications because if we don't a terrorist might possibly do something bad somewhere. And yet, the borders remain wide open. It amazes me that the American people - conservatives, no less - continue to buy into this.

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Kerry's divorce papers

I don't see how Democrats will be able to argue that a Senate candidate's divorce records must be unsealed, but a presidential candidate's are private. I'm sure they'll find a way, though, since they proudly spit on the concept of intellectual consistency - then wonder why no one respects their intellects.

I find it interesting that so many politicians are divorced; I don't think it's so much that the job is demanding as it is the fact that the profession attracts the very worst sort of neurotic control freaks. Unsealed or not, however, I don't believe the papers will tell us anything new. We already know that Kerry is a complete arruso who has to be kept hidden away from the public in order to maintain any level of support.

Of course, if he wins, it could make for an even more amusing presidency than Slick Willie's. It will be entertaining to see his supporters turn on him like rabid dogs once they realize what a thoroughly dislikeable man he is.

Jack took Jeri to the club
To swing out in the open
Jack fell down at Jeri's frown
And John slipped down the slope then

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Eco on Political Correctness

It's probably bordering on insane to use Umberto Eco, who is considered notoriously difficult reading in Italy, as translation practice, but the upside is that it makes reading everything else pretty easy by comparison. The downside is that he enjoys creating plays on words and idiomatic turns of phrase that are completely incomprehensible to me. Still, the challenge is intriguing. The article appeared in L'espresso on June 11; as always, I can guarantee several glaring mistakes and blame for all infelicities should be laid at my door, not that of the Great One himself.

La Pistola dell'Ostrega(1)

Political Correctness is a true and proper movement born in the American universities of liberal and radical inspiration, therefore of the Left, with an eye towards acknowledging multiculturalism and reducing some of the ingrained linguistic vices that established lines of discrimination confronting various minorities. And therefore they began to say “blacks” and later “Afro Americans” instead of “negroes”, and “gay” instead of the thousands of other notorious appellations reserved for disparaging homosexuals.

Naturally, this campaign for the purification of the language has produced a true fundamentalism, which has led to the notable case in which some feminists proposed to no longer say “history” since it begins with the pronoun “his”, as they thought this meant that the story was “his”, but instead to say “herstory” - her story – obviously ignoring the Greco-Latin etymology which has no gender implications.

However, the tendency has assumed also neoconservative, or frankly, reactionary aspects. If you decide to no longer call people in wheelchairs handicapped or even disabled, but “differently abled” and after do not construct access ramps in public places, it is evident that you have hypocritically removed the word but not the problem. And the same is true if you substitute saying “indefinitely unoccupied” for fired or “in a program of transition to change careers” for dismissed. Who knows why a banker isn't ashamed of his title and doesn't insist on being called an operator in the field of savings. If it's not working, changing the name won't fix it.

On these and an infinity of other problems, Edoardo Crisafulli amuses in his book “The Politically Correct and Linguistic Liberty”, which strips naked all these contradictions. He takes on both sides, pro and con, and is always very entertaining. Reading it, however, I came to reflect on the curious case of our country. While Political Correctness exploded elsewhere, in our case it was diffused and instead we are always developing more and more Political Incorrectness. If, at one time, one would read a newspaper and a politician would say: “As a politics of convergence is emerging, one would prefer an asymptotic choice that eliminated single points of intersection"; today he prefers to say: “Dialogue? To Hell with that dirty son of a bitch!”

It is true that at one time in old Communist circles they used to label the adversary as “horseflies” and in speaking during a fracas, they might have chosen to use a lexicon more incontinent than that of a longshoreman, but that was in a time when there were no limits to what one could say – it was accepted as an affectation – as was once the case in the gentlemen's clubs of venerated memory - where the gentlemen were not verbally inhibited. Today, instead, the technique of an insult is televised, a sign of unconcious faith in the valor of democracy.

It probably began with Bossi(2), in which his manly hardness obviously alludes to the softness of other people, and the appellation of “Berluskaz(3)” was unmistakable but the thing spread widely. Stefano Bartezzaghi, writing under the name Venerdi di Repubblica, cites the play of insults today in circulation, but in good fun, all things considered.

Therefore, I too must contribute to the sweetness of Politically Incorrect Italian, and as I have consulted a series of dictionaries and dialects, permit me to suggest some polite and good-natured expressions with which to insult your enemy, graceful words: pistola dell'ostrega, papaciugo, imbolsito, crapapelata, piffero, marocchino, pivellone, ciulandario, morlacco, badalucco, pischimpirola...[long, long list of like insults removed for the sake of brevity].

(1) Ostrega can't be found in most dictionaries. The title, as near as I can tell, means "the weapon (pistol) of gosh", although for a while I thought he was playing off the term "strega" witch or "ostrica" oyster. This led me to wonder if there wasn't some deeper profundity there, but Vittorio emails to explain: "ostrega" is an old exclamation in Venetian dialect.
(2) Vittorio also adds: in the 1980's the Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, had a celebrated slogan "The League is the one that is hard" used against PC. That's where "celodurismo" comes from. I don't know about "celoflocismo". My undestanding is that Eco is implying overtones of hardness and softness as they relate to male tumescence. Alessandro also writes to explain: Celodurismo is a neologism in Italian politics derived from the (in)famous phrase by Umberto Bossi: "ce l'ho duro" meaning "I got an hard-on and I can keep it up for hours!", so that celodurismo means a rough and boasting attitude which is typical of Umberto Bossi and his mates of the Lega Nord political party. Actually, I never heard of celoflocismo, but it surely derives from "ce l'ho floscio" which is quite the contrary of "ce l'ho duro" so that celoflocismo means the contrary of celodurismo.
(3) "Berluskaz" is likely a combination of "Berlusconi" and "catzo", saying that Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister and owner of AC Milan, is a motherf-----. Well, they won the Scudetto this year, so deal.

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Loathesome quasi-literates

Perhaps this doesn't bother anyone else. But I swear, is there is anything quite so annoying as correspondence from presumably literate people signed: "Best"? Best what? Best wishes? Best of luck? Best watch out because I'm planning to chain you up naked against the wall in my stone-lined pit of sex slaves? From what I've seen in my emails, it seems as if started out as a New York thing, so naturally it's spread as others slavishly ape what they think is ever so spiffy and sophisticated.

Imbeciles.

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On the semifinals

Suprises, surprises and more surprises. No doubt the Eurobookies are hurting, as only a deluded patriot would have gambled on Greece over France, and while the Netherlands are seemingly an eternal contender, who was expecting them to successfully navigate a penalty shoot-out for the first time, especially against a facile and team-oriented Swedish squad?

The Czechs came out flat against Denmark; the game was so slow, dull and poorly officiated that I almost didn't bother returning to the television after halftime. That would have been a mistake, though, as they clinically executed two assassin-like goals stemming from sharp through passes to Milan Barros. Taken in its totality, the game was like watching a cat toying with a mouse, leisurely dispatching it with ease when it tires of the charade.

It forces me want to rethink my statement on the Northern Alliance show that the winner of the Sweden-Holland game would take all. But if Holland can win on penalties - we got two phone calls from SpaceBunny's best friend, a Dutch girl who sounded on the very verge of expiring from nervous tension, during the shootout - perhaps it is finally their year. However, I don't like the managerial matchup between Advocaat and Scolari, as the difference between the Dutchman and the man who doesn't fear to pull Luis Figo in the biggest match so far is a stark one.

And then, of course, one would be a fool to dismiss the hometown factor in a tournament that has seen the most unusual mix of great - love all the yellow cards being handed out to the divers - and appalling refereeing. So, what to conclude?

The easy game first. The Czechs have not only been dominant, but play an Arsenal-like open attacking style that will have no trouble cracking open the Greek defense. They should win easily, by as many as five goals. Despite the above comments, I don't trust Portugal. They should have lost to England even though they outplayed them. They've choked numerous times in the past and they have a Ewing Theory (see The Sports Guy) thing going with their best player, Luis Figo. I think we'll see Holland against the Czechs for the whole enchilada.

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Mailvox: freak out

satan writes:

uh...does Vox actually own a home or does he live with mommy? I mean the guy looks like he's about...what? 16 years old? what could he possibly know about home ownership other than by proxy? what kind of ass kisser would ask such a thing???

I'm still your Daddy, pitchfork punk. (kiss, kiss on the guns). I buy low and I sell high. If the heat hasn't fried your synapses, maybe you can figure out where I am on the home ownership curve today.

A time to live, a time to die
A time to laugh, a time to cry
A time to rent, a time to buy

It's a little known fact that The Byrds were Austrians. By the way, Dread Pirate, don't get your panties in a complete twist over the Denning report. Sure, it's possible that he's right, just as it's possible that the email I received from a friend of someone who spent 30 years in the intelligence community is correct in saying that the election will be canceled this fall. It's also possible that even if Denning is correct, he's off by two years and housing prices will double between now and then as blow-off tops are notoriously hard to predict.

If you're stretched into a difficult mortgage, I'd get out of it now and rent. If you're simply living in a house that you can afford, that has doubled over the last few years, then what do you care if it drops 50 percent? Housing prices are basically inflation, and if your house goes up, then you'll be paying more for a different house. It doesn't really matter except for your ability to carry debt, which is always dangerous for any individual or corporation. Plenty of perfectly healthy, profitable companies have died because they took on too much debt.

I'm quite familiar with the FNME and FMAC situation and it does look, well, questionable. There's always funny business going on with these quasi-government institutions, particularly those that control billions of dollars in assets. Then again, I've been expecting some form of financial disaster since about 1998, and other than the short stock bear from 2000 to 2002, we haven't seen it. Remember, a) the world is always ending; and b) it hasn't ended yet.

That being said, a few rifles, some dried food and a pile of gold coins never hurt anyone. Might even make some money if Prechter counted wrong and what he thought was a 5th wave was only a really big 3rd.

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Aiutami, per favore

So, I'm working on another Eco translation, this time a recent article on PC language, or the lack of it, in Italy, and have NO FREAKING CLUE what he's talking about with the following words:

celodurismo
celoflocismo
ostrega (as in pistola dell'ostrega)

Since the latter is the title, this is particularly frustrating, especially since a) none of the fluent Italian speakers I know have any clue; and b) the words don't appear in my pocket dictionary, my Freelang computer dictionary or a 2,556 page behemoth of a dictionary that I picked up a few years ago. I know that durismo and flocismo probably refer somehow to hardness or softness, but I can't reconcile the prefix... or the suffix for that matter. It doesn't help that the only entry for "ostrega" says: exclamation (dialect) GOSH. Yeah, that helps.

I'm on the verge of using some other words, pretty much unprintable. Also, the ismos have to do with one Bossi, I presume Umberto Bossi La Lega Nord, but I could be wrong.

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Socialism's idiot cousin

Hindrocket writes on Powerline: The Democrats' position is that it is OK for Democrats to produce that show images of Adolf Hitler morphing into George Bush; but it is terrible for Republicans to reproduce those images to point out how nuts the Democrats are. Not all Democrats are crazy. But the Democratic Party has gone insane.

And then there's the fact that there is about a 75 percent overlap between the historical NASDAP program and modern Democratic Party policies. Democrats often remind me of children, with their almost total inability to remember what they did and said yesterday combined with typically over-the-top emotional reactions to anyone who dares point out obvious inconsistencies and errors in their words, policies and actions.

I despise the current Republican leadership. I believe they are taking the country directly in the wrong direction in a variety of ways. However, I do take them seriously, whereas Democrats simply make me laugh in utter disbelief as they flail wildly about. It takes true ignorance to argue for demonstrably fascist policies while simultaneously tarring the ideological opposition as fascists. Apparently the Kerry campaign knows its idiot audience well, as this latest propaganda effort demonstrates real contempt for its Democratic base's memory and analytical ability.

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By the way

If any of you clicked on the BUSH FILMED IN UNDERWEAR link on Drudge today, I don't want to know. I don't even want to think about it. The only thing that is scarier is the thought of a John and Theresa Kerry video ala Pam and Tommy showing up on the Internet. She's cheeky, sexy... whatever.

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Never Forgets

From Slashdot: I remember buying 5.25" floppy disks with Lifetime guarantees. I forget the name of the company, being pretty young back then, but they used to have an elephant head on their logo. I guess maybe they figured people might take the term "lifetime guarantee" seriously.

Ah, yes, Elephant Memory Systems. I still have stacks of folders full of pirated Apple II games saved on their floppies packed away in storage. As the two founding members of the Thieves Guild, which tended more towards the distribution end than the cracking front, Big Chilly and I used to spend hours and hours playing Wizardry, Autoduel, Aztec and other great games of the greenscreen era.

Unlike many of the retro games that are being remade, Autoduel and Aztec would actually make for good modern games. Falling through the floors, the creepy tentacled octopus things that have to be chopped to pieces by machetes, and the rooms that unexpectedly fill with water - until Wolfenstein 3D, Aztec was the only game that ever made me jump in my chair. Come to think of it, somebody should have done Swashbuckler 3D.

I think it was the Apple II that convinced me that I like computers better than the average human. I was a social reject until tenth grade, when the ranks of the Beautiful People unexpectedly opened as I grew taller and became a top athlete, but even so I was never quite able to convince myself of the supreme importance of the social hierarchy. I got invited to the right parties and while I sometimes went, it was never a priority.

I remember very distinctly the look of complete disbelief on the football captain's face when he asked me if I'd be showing up for the bash at someone's house that Friday night and I told him that no, I'd just gotten a new game the day before and I was itching to get home and spend the evening playing it. I'm not quite as bad as Big Chilly, though, who would sneak out of fraternity parties his freshman year of college in order to get back to his dorm room and play Wizardry - a game he'd played through in junior high - on his Macintosh.

People ask why I don't get out more. Hmmmm.... I have a hot blonde, a 3.4 GHz machine with a monster 3D card and a 4.5 x 6 foot projection screen. I have no interest in the big room with green carpet - there's nothing out there for me.

Elephant Memory Systems. "Never Forgets".

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Putting out fires preemptively

Robert Novak writes: George W. Bush's campaign planners intend to shorten debate on the party platform at the Republican National Convention in New York in order to limit conservative opposition to the president's policies. In the past, platform committee members have arrived in the convention city early Sunday the week before the GOP convention begins. This time, however, several delegates have been alerted that there is no need to get to New York before Monday, with platform meetings not scheduled to begin until Tuesday. That would leave only two and one-half days of platform committee sessions during which conservatives could push their positions on prescription drug subsidies, education and immigration.

That's an interestingly open admission of the president's anti-conservativism. Perhaps one of these days conservatives will wake up and realize that he has more in common with John Kerry than he has with them. You'd think the fact that his operatives are actively planning and working against them would serve as some sort of notice that he is not on their side and never was.

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The wrinkled whores

The entire S&P price action in the Futures is being controlled by one counter party. All the guys strongly hate them: their CME clearing number is 990N and they clear through Gelber trading. That one account is solely responsible for the current level of the S&P.

They are the ones that are throwing the S&P up overnight. Then they are the ones that are sitting on the bid all day long, supporting the market action. The S&P pits have been decimated, absolutely ruined. There is no volatility, so all the traders have left. Now the hot pit is the Eurodollar pit. Go figure, that used to be like watching paint dry. All the traders I have talked to view the market as being rigged. They keep waiting for the price action to break loose, but it never does.

They are stunned by the lack of volatility. And furious. Time after time after time 990 just sits there on the bid. Don't they ever go away. They just absorb the entire market and then push the price wherever they want it to go. "Gee, I wonder who that counter party is." They are all terrified of shorting, because every time they do, they get drilled. I thought it was just my systems that weren't working that well, but they are far more dispirited than I. Intervention at its finest, your tax dollars at work, providing the ultimate tax to us all.

We have watched 2000 contract market orders on the Bid at key down levels of - 50 and - 100 on those rare days when 990N decides the program trading will revert to a well-defined pattern of "allowable" retracements. The Mini's are being rigged in order to provide "support" for swollen price levels. They have to be for now, as without the daily rigging, "Price" would revert to its inherent "Value", a disturbing proposition to those benefiting from the financial economy's adolescent denials.

Counterparties provide an important function in any exchange, liquidity. Given the incessant "intervention" by 990N, there is very little liquidity beneath these markets to provide real support. I am actually writing you to alert you to this complete market manipulation and to see if you had any pull to get the word out to different traders and the media. I am one of the biggest S&P traders in the world as far as volume per day in that I average over 40,000 round turns per day on the screen in the e-mini. I tell you this because that is how I know one house is completely manipulating the market everyday because of all the trades I do with this guy. I know it sounds hard to believe that one person can control a world market but trust me: this is occurring. He works for the firm Gelber, which is house 990.

This is the basic premise for his game. He waits until the market is relatively slow, around 9:30 to 10:00 everyday, usually when the "paper trade" starts to subside then he begins a theme, mostly always long and he begins to buy. He is always looking for confirmation of his theme with what other people are doing. When the market stops trading in his direction he then drops in a offer of 300 to 700 which he sees if anyone is interested in buying it. If there is no interest he then buys the order from himself, with the order actually trading. He does this enough times until he attracts other buyers which then hits price points and the market runs violently in his direction.

I am sure I do not have to tell you that this is completely illegal to do. He started doing this with 300 lots back in November, now he has made so much money doing it that he is up to 2000 lots. He is completely in control of the market (illegally) the majority of the time. My firm and I have contacted the Merc on three different occasions with video proof that I recorded of my trading. It shows blatantly this guy crossing his orders thousands of times a day. The first person we talked to in compliance admitted that he saw something there when they reviewed the video of the trades I taped of him. He was mysteriously fired the next day.

We then came up with more examples for them to review and in the beginning they claimed he wasn't doing it. We called them a third time, this time talking to the head of compliance and he finally admitted that they had the guy under investigation because they saw something, but in the meantime he is still allowed to trade and make millions until their "investigation" is concluded.

They obviously love the volume the guy is putting up and how it makes the emini S&P look from a standpoint of a liquid market. But if the public had knowledge of what this guy was doing I don't think they would be too impressed with the liquidity. There is obviously some kind of cover-up. Do any of the pit traders you know have knowledge this is happening? And do you have any advice on how I can anonymously get the word out with what this guy is doing? I know you are not a true tick by tick "scalper," but this is getting to the point where it is starting to effect everyone in the marketplace.

I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but both the VIX as well as Adam Hamilton's analysis demonstrate that volatility has been at a historically low level for an incredibly long period of time, which is anecdotal support for what this trader is asserting. I have no doubt the markets are manipulated - they are regulated, after all, which is nothing but open manipulation, and one has to presume that the Working Group of Financial Markets was created for a reason.

You might think that we have a free market in this country, but a few minutes reflection about the myriad of regulatory agencies and their actions will soon convince you otherwise.

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On the radio

I'll be making my monthly appearance on the Northern Alliance radio show on the Patriot 1280 AM at 2 PM central today - some of the gentlemen are out and about so it looks as if we'll be postponing our cage match showdown on the Iraqi occupation until next month - but in the meantime we'll probably be discussing the implications of Iraq on the president's bid for a second term, Air America's financial shenanigans and how the soccer gods paid back France for its perfidy in Iraq and at the United Nations.

In somewhat related news, the Fraters Libertas are lamenting the fact that their favorite 20-something lesbian blogger turned out to be a 30-something man. This is news? I always thought the first rule of intersexual relations and the Internet is this: if a girl is on the Internet and you have no direct evidence of her sex, she's a guy.

By the way, no Northern Alliance web streaming yet, but I'm told there will be next month.

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A broken clock

Most Americans now say that sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds. For the first time, a majority also says that the war there has made the nation less safe from terrorism. The survey taken Monday through Wednesday shows a turnaround in views toward the war in less than a month. Continued violence in Iraq and questions about the war's justification apparently are eroding support even as the U.S. moves to turn over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government next week.

It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake. When the war in Iraq began last year, the public by three-to-one said sending troops wasn't a mistake. Just three weeks ago, 58% still held that view. Now, 54% say it was a mistake.

I'm not the least bit surprised. The Iraqi War has been over for some time now and the return of the troops is long overdue. Military force should be used wisely, judiciously and only for the purposes for which they are created. The armed forces went in, took out Hussein, captured him and so accomplished their mission. At that point they should have either been given a new military mission or brought home. Nation-building is a foolish and doomed enterprise in which we should never have engaged. The administration's decision to engage in it will have the net effect of severely weakening the war on method and is unlikely to help the coming war against the jihad.

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Is it the blonde or the liberal?

Now, I actually agree with the basic position Blondesense is attempting to articulate here. But a particular paragraph leaped out at me, as I happened to have translated Benito Mussolini's Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle only an hour before.

Well, hell no, Mr. Smith. It's still up to the parental units to decide what their kids watch and if it's questionable, don't bring the stuff into the house or turn on the TV if they are not sure if a program is appropriate. If the government wants to do something about the media, how about rolling back all the fascist deregulation of the media and allow independent companies to own some of it thus allowing democracy to flourish, duh.

Fascist deregulation. A fascinating phrase! Not only were the Fascists not exactly known for deregulating things, but to the contrary they demanded regulation - and often outright nationalization - of almost everything in Italy. In addition to demanding a National Council of experts from a variety of fields and creating a General Commission with cabinet-level power, they sought a national policy of furthering Italian culture, a sort of National Endowment for the Arts combined with the FCC and the US Olympic Committee. Mussolini famously declared: "Tutto nello Stato... nulla contro lo Stato." Everything in the State, nothing against the State. And by "the State" he meant the government.

Now, it certainly would be desirable for more independent companies to own elements of the media. And what prevents this? Primarily government ownership and regulation of the airwaves, as well as the many government restrictions relating to investment and the management of capital. The only answer is more deregulation, not less, still less the government seizure and control advocated by the historical Fascists and their modern descendants. National Public Radio is the epitome of a modern facist institution; the giant media corporations are only quasi-fascist by comparison, their Third Way corporatism notwithstanding.

Finally, democracy is not freedom and the two should never be confused. How is a more independent media likely to bring about the near-term demolition of the tri-partite structure of government and the replacement of the constitutional republic with a national referendum-driven system? Unless, of course, by democracy you mean a system of proportionate representation designed expressly to limit democracy, which we already have, in which case it has presumably already been flourishing for, lo, these past 215 years.

As the argument finally stumbles towards its corrrect conclusion that the government has no responsibility to ensure that all visual entertainment is child-friendly, the fact that the resident blonde would never make such asinine and ignorant statements forces me to conclude this is simply another case of attempted thinking while liberal.

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A winner for the Gipper

Grant Wahl writes on CNN/SI: Strange but true: Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo was named for Ronald Reagan, a favorite of his parents. Wonder what the Gipper would think?

If the Gipper saw him play, he'd love it. I'd rather have C. Ronaldo on my team than his more famous counterpart. He was the most dangerous player on the Portuguese side yesterday, and if Ashley Cole hadn't a) showed incredible stamina and b) played an excellent game, he probably would have scored at least once. The entire game was a battle between the two players but you could tell what tracking Ronaldo was doing taking out of Ashley, as he stopped making his trademark runs up the left side before the end of the first half.

To paraphrase Space Bunny on Ronaldo, "doesn't that kid ever get tired?" Even at the end of the game, he looked ready to play another 90 minutes. I just wish he didn't play for bloody United.

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Confused quasi-conservatives

Cliff Kincaid writes of Pat Buchanan: It was shocking news that Patrick J. Buchanan, Ronald Reagan's communications director, is getting $500,000 to write a Bush-bashing book to be titled, Where the Right Went Wrong.... there are disturbing indications that Buchanan, who left the Republican Party in 2000, may even back Ralph Nader for president. Buchanan's American Conservative Magazine featured a front-page article, "Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking. The long-time progressive makes a pitch for the disenfranchised Right"....

Yet Buchanan's magazine sounds increasingly like a left-wing publication with its constant talk of America's "empire" around the world. This is a variation of the old Soviet line that the U.S. wants to dominate and control the world. It's disconcerting to see conservatives who played key roles in fighting communism using such noxious terminology.

First, Pat Buchanan is never going to endorse Ralph Nader, who is a neosocialist egomaniac. However, there is a real point of connection between a leftist like Nader, true conservative like Buchanan and a libertarian such as myself. All three of us are diametrically opposed to the sacrifice of national sovereignty embraced by the Democratic Party and the dominant Bush-worshipping faction of the Republican Party.

What Kincaid and many other economically-illiterate Republicans fail to understand is that America does have an empire. It is a shadow empire, to be sure, but it weighs more heavily and is felt more strongly than the Roman or British empires ever were in their dominions. Ironically, the empire of the Imperial Dollar has never been more fragile or more in danger of collapsing than today, and with its inevitable collapse will come the reduction of America's stature on the world stage.

Nader's solutions are likely to prove disastrous than helpful, but unlike Bush and Kerry, he is neither invested in the present system of interlocking globalist institutions nor interested in sacrificing American interests to them. Pat Buchanan realizes this, and in the very fact of the two distinctly different men finding common ground, demonstrates how the most deadly danger to the long-term existence of America lies within.

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Mbeki knows best

There is a bitter joke in South Africa: what is the difference between Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe? About ten years. As Mugabe drives Zimbabwe ever deeper into socialist nightmare by murdering the nation's only productive class and confiscating their property in order to turn it over to feckless squatters, Mbeki gives South Africans clear warning of his long-term intentions to transform that country into yet another Left-wing African hellhole.

"In this climate taxation is depicted as the confiscation of what is properly our own -- an intolerable burden that should be reduced. The social, the collective and the public realm are portrayed as the enemies of prosperity and individual autonomy... and worse are opposed to the moral basis of society grounded as it should be in the absolute responsibility of individuals to shoulder their burdens and exercise their rights alone."

He [Mbeki] noted that [UK columnist Will] Hutton argues that Western democracies had been characterised by "one broad family of ideas that might be called Left -- a belief in the social, reduction in inequality, the provision of public services, the principle that workers should be treated as assets rather than commodities, regulation of enterprise, rehabilitation of criminals, tolerance and respect for minorities -- and another broad family of ideas that might be called Right: An honouring of our inherited institutional fabric, a respect for order, a belief that private property rights and profit are essential to the operation of the market economy, a suspicion of worker rights, faith in the remedial value of punitive justice and distrust of the new."

Mbeki emphasised that there could "be no doubt about where we stand" with regard to this "great divide". It is to pursue the goals contained in what Hutton called ideas "that might be called" Left.

At least Mbeki, unlike the majority of American Democrats who should more properly be termed Democratic Socialists, understands what it is he is rejecting in turning his back on law, order, private property, and age-old institutions. He is the more intelligent form of political evil, whereas the American "liberal" is, by comparison, evil's idiot cousin, always deluding himself that he is honoring the past by defecating on the present and "fighting" to destroy the future.

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Why I hate referees, redux

I have long loathed referees. From my childhood, when a zebra cost the Vikings one of their best chances to win a Super Bowl in handing the Dallas Cowboys a victory by allowing not one, but two blatant push-offs by Drew Pearson. Almost thirty years later, I don't think there's a Viking fan who regrets the bottle with which somebody clocked the ref responsible.

Basketball refs are the absolute bottom, as they haven't made a correct travelling call in decades and hardcore NBA fans like the Sports Guy openly joke about the corruption of David Stern's personal referee, Dick Bavetta. Need to get the Knicks or Lakers into the next round? Don't bet against them if Bavetta is on the floor.

Soccer refs run the gamut, from Collino to the pink-clad Brazilian league prancer who has to be seen to be believed. But all of them, from the world-class FIFA level on down to the local high school have a terrible, terrible habit that probably reduces global scoring at least 5 percent. If the ball is loose in the goalie's six-yard box and the referee can't see what is going on, he will always blow the whistle and call a phantom foul on the attacking team.

That's precisely what happened to England this afternoon, as they scored in the 90th minute to go up 2-1 just before the final whistle against Portugal. They hadn't played well and Sven showed his Italian roots by trying to go into a defensive shell for 70 minutes after Wayne Rooney got hurt, but they did score. Except, according to the referee, who was some 20 yards away from the action and in no position to see, John Terry committed a foul on the Portugese keeper as Sol Campbell was heading the ball in.

It was a horrible, horrible call and I wouldn't have blamed Sven if he'd pulled his squad off the field in protest. The linesman, who was standing right there, signaled goal, but was overruled by the idiot referee. One thing soccer refs should learn from basketball refs is to let play go on in the last minute of the game, especially when they can't even see what is happening!

A lot of fans hate penalties, but I quite like them. It's always interesting to see who chokes under pressure. For all that he's possessed of the golden foot, Beckham shouldn't ever be allowed to take penalties as they are primarily about psychology, not skill. He missed, unsurprisingly, as did Rui Costa - another midfielder, for some reason highly skilled midfielders are quite often bad at taking penalties - and then, the almost completely useless Vassell managed to take a lousy one that put England out.

Portugal was the better team once Rooney went out, but it's ridiculous that a stupid Swiss ref should be responsible for knocking England out of the tournament. At this point only the Swedes look like they can play with France, although you can never rule out the headcases from Holland, who can look awful against a weak team and great against a strong one.

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A possibly stupid question

I'm working on creating some web forms. I understand the HTML tags, what I'm not sure about is where to call the executable action. Is this something that has to be done by the hosting server, or is it more like Java where you just put out the call and it simply runs? The examples I've seen tend to suggest the latter, but I need to understand this better before I can move on.

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Back in the saddle again

From the Sun: FORMER President Bill Clinton is having a passionate affair with a wealthy divorcee behind wife Hillary’s back, a US magazine claims. The allegation comes in the wake of the publication of Mr Clinton’s autobiography My Life, in which he talks about his infamous fling with Monica Lewinsky.

But the National Enquirer alleges that Mr Clinton, 57, has been seeing a beautiful blonde for more than a year at a hideaway in Westchester County, New York. The magazine does not name the woman, but says she has several young children and got millions in a divorce settlement a few years ago. She is allegedly the daughter of a wealthy Clinton supporter.

An insider tells the Enquirer: “Bill Clinton has been sneaking off to the home of this woman for late-night trysts after her kids are in bed.”

You just can't keep a bad man down. Or in Bill's case, shut him up. I thought the whole idea was to move on?

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The Bible according to Stoner John

Mark 1:10-11

Authorized version: "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from the heaven saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

New: "As he was climbing up the bank again, the sun shone through a gap in the clouds. At the same time a pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God's spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, 'That's my boy! You're doing fine!'"

Matthew 26:69-70

Authorized version: "Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, 'Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.' But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest."

New: "Meanwhile Rocky was still sitting in the courtyard. A woman came up to him and said: 'Haven't I seen you with Jesus, the hero from Galilee?" Rocky shook his head and said: 'I don't know what the hell you're talking about!'"

In keeping with the times, translator Henson deftly translates "demon possession" as "mental illness" and "Son of Man," the expression Jesus frequently used to describe himself, as "the Complete Person." In addition, parables are rendered as "riddles," baptize is to "dip" in water, salvation becomes "healing" or "completeness" and Heaven becomes "the world beyond time and space."

It sounds to me like someone has been hitting the bong very, very hard.

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As long as we're on the subject

I've been working on improving my Italian, so I decided to tackle translating some the columns that Umberto Eco, one of my favorite writers, writes regularly for L'Espresso. Please note that this translation is without doubt riddled with errors and that the views expressed do not reflect my own. I'm not finished with this one yet, as there's a few references that are presently beyond me, but as the subject seems timely, I thought I'd post part of it now:

The Passion is a film that wants to rake in lots of money by offering lots of blood and enough violence to make Pulp Fiction look like an animated cartoon. Well, yes, since I was fearing a series of questions, I decided to resolve the affair once and for all and went to see Mel Gibson's Passion....I must quickly say that this film, which was done very well in technical terms, is not an expression of antisemitism or of Christian fundamentalism, but instead of an obsession with the mysticism of a gory sacrifice. It is splatterpunk, a film intended to rake in lots of money by offering oceans of blood and enough violence to make Pulp Fiction look like an animated cartoon for a children's school. Except a cartoon like Tom and Jerry never places the whole object of the lesson in the incidents where the characters are flattened like CDs being crushed by a steamroller, where they are falling from skyscrapers and broken into a million pieces or crushed behind a door. There is so much blood, gallons of it, that it appears to have been harvested by the work of every vampire in Transylvania, and brought to the set by ten tanker-trucks....

Gibson's hatred for the Nazarene must be inexpressable, who can say what ancient repressions he harbors as he pours more and more torture onto the Nazarene's body, and thank God the story does not permit him, otherwise he would have applied electrodes to Christ's testicles and poured gasoline into his wounds. This would give a healthy jolt to the mystery of Salvation.... Gibson leaps at the idea that Jesus had to suffer; like Poe, he thinks that the most moving and romantic thing is the death of a beautiful girl, and he senses that the more profitable 'splatter' will be that in which he puts the Son of God in a meatgrinder. There, he succeeds extremely well and I must say that, when Jesus is finally dead and has finished his suffering, (or enjoyment), when the hurricane is unleashed, the earth shakes and the Temple veil is torn, we find a certain emotion in that moment, we discern a hint of that transcendence that the film does such a disastrous disservice.

Yes, at that point the Father makes his voice heard. But the enlightened viewer, (and, I hope, the believer), perceives that at that point, it is with him and Mel Gibson that the Father is pissed off.

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Mailvox: You don't define the Truth

Dread Pirate writes of a friend: ...he basically told me that he could not believe in anything that he himself could not understand. He does not believe that anyone should go to hell, or (for that matter) that hell even exist. However, he believes that everyone should go to heaven. It simply not fair that some should go to hell, especially if one is really seeking truth, but rejects God; or any other kind of diety.

That's an interesting approach to life. Does he understand how x-rays work? Does he believe in them? Whatever the example, modern life is so complex that there is not a single person, however intelligent and educated, who understands everything. And yet, we have no problem believing whatever a sufficiently large number of people around us happen to believe.

If your friend doesn't believe in Hell, why does he believe in Heaven? And what does fairness have to do with anything, much less reality? Attempting to ascertain reality through fairness is bizarre - had the situation not been so sad, I would have laughed out loud in the days after a schoolmate died in a car accident and everyone was lamenting the unfairness of it all and wondering why, oh why, did this happen? Well, the girl didn't wear a seatbelt, drove like a maniac, took a corner too fast and rolled the car. Try it 100 times and you'll get pretty much the same result almost every time, cause and effect. No great mystery there. Was it fair that she died? Yes, the laws of physics and biology demanded it.

Now, the Bible and the story of Christianity are either true or they are not. Your friend wants to hang onto the parts he likes, and ignore the parts he doesn't. That's absurd. If he wants to reject the whole thing, that's fine, he should reject it all and indulge himself in wine, women and song for he only has a few short decades before his consciousness is obliterated into nothing. Encourage him to be honest with himself and follow his bliss, so to speak.

Not once does the Christian God claim to be fair. He claims to be just - everyone has sinned and is therefore damned. But He is also merciful - He offers a Way out to all. You don't have to take it, but if you don't, then be prepared to suffer the consequences. The unbeliever accepts this cheerfully because he rejects the totality. It is only the wishy-washy half-believer who suffers mental turmoil, because he cannot commit either way. But what he wants or what he thinks should be is as utterly irrelevant to the question of the existence of Hell as it is to the existence of Toledo.

It always amazes me that people don't understand the parable of the wheat and the chaff. If you can't believe or refuse to bow down before God's Son, then you are essentially worthless in God's eyes, you have failed in the purpose for which you were created and you will be tossed aside as useless trash. Don't think that's fair? So what. Fairness never entered into the equation.

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Rabbia per il risultato di Oporto

That's the headline - angry with the result from Oporto. And, here come the conspiracies. Never mind the fact that the Danes and the Swedes were the best two teams in the group and deserved to progress. Italy almost lost to Bulgaria - they would have if Bulgaria's striker had been capable of putting away an excellent one-on-one chance with Buffon. But instead of accepting their own responsibility, they'd rather complain that the other teams were too clever, as the Corriere della Sera writes of the tomatoes they will throw at Denmark for allowing the late tying goal: Chissà come si dice «imbarazzati» in danese, e magari in svedese. "Who knows how you say embarrassed in Danish, and maybe in Swedish."

What's silly is that Italy was losing at the time the Swedes scored and the Azzurri have no one to blame but themselves for not putting away either Denmark or Sweden in the first two games. Italy was dominating Sweden in the first half, they went into their trademark defensive shell in the second and gave the two points away. The Italian press was screaming that Trappatoni was too conservative after the World Cup; it so happens that they were right and he should have been replaced. The Swedes destroyed Bulgaria, the Danes beat them soundly and Italy had to score in the 94th minute to steal the win.

Italy and Spain have conclusively proven that you can have all the talent in the world, but if your manager is going to saddle you with a defensive approach that simply hopes individual talent will create something out of nothing, you're going to lose. I'd much rather see the wide-open styles of the Scandinavians going forward anyhow.

PS - the Pan-Gargler blogged that he's getting tired of all the soccer and baseball blogging on the net. To him, I quote the greatest one-line put-down of all time. "You can't spell Citrus without UT."

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Historical lies

I'm looking to make a list of ten or fifteen historical lies, things that conventional wisdom holds to be obviously true, but upon research and analysis can be conclusively shown to be false. Four obvious ones are:

1. The Spanish Inquisition was an evil institution comparable to the Final Solution or the Black Death.
2. Abraham Lincoln was dedicated to human liberty and fought the Civil War to free the slaves.
3. Religion is the primary cause of most of the wars in human history.
4. Islam is a religion of peace.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter. No cows are sacred; if there's any examples beloved of the Left, I'd like to hear them too.

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Pop goes the weasel

ENCOURAGING preliminary ratings for all-liberal Air America in New York have collapsed along with the fledgling radio network's finances. An unofficial "extrapolation" of Arbitron data released last Friday — which Air America's hosts crowed about last month but virtually ignored yesterday — showed WLIB's ratings dropping back to their lowly levels before the net's April launch.

Arbitron cautions stations and advertisers not to read too much into this interim monthly data — but that didn't stop Air America star Al Franken from boasting last month that he'd beaten WABC's Rush Limbaugh among the 25- to 54-year-old listeners chased by radio advertisers.

Being liberal means never remembering what you said yesterday.

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What media bias?

Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure to ideological measures of other political actors. That is, none of the existing measures can say, for example, whether the New York Times is more liberal than Tom Daschle or whether Fox News is more conservative than Bill Frist. We provide such a measure. Namely, we compute an ADA score for various news outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Drudge Report, Fox News' Special Report, and all three networks' nightly news shows.

Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News' Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC's World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample....


11.2 Republican average
26.4 Fox News' Special Report
40.0 Senate average
44.1 Drudge Report
44.5 House average
54.8 ABC World News
58.4 LA Times
62.5 NBC Nightly News
62.6 USA Today
64.5 CBS Evening News
64.6 New York Times
74.1 Democratic average

Of course, the fact that these are all big corporations trumps everything they are reporting, printing and broadcasting. If you're Eric Alterman, or dumb enough to be mistaken for him, that is.

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Your papers, please

From Slashdot: Today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that anybody can be compelled at any time to identify themselves, if a police officer asks. People who refuse to identify themselves, even if they are not suspected of a crime, will be arrested. Sound Orwellian? The Supreme Court also said people who are suspected of another crime might not be subject to arrest for not revealing their name. On this latter point, someone will have to bring a separate case. And the SCOTUS is at liberty not to hear any case it doesn't like. The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada.

What did Europe say after 9/11? We are all Americans? I think they had it backwards. Now, thanks to these black-robed defenders of our Constitutional rights, we are all to be good Chermans. It is now a crime to remain silent - so much for that right.

How long will it be before it becomes a crime to give a false name as well? Then, you will obviously be required to provide identification proving you are who you say you are. Thank goodness we can elect a Republican Congress and President to stop these egregious abuses of liberty! Wait a minute....

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Full of it on and off the page

Jennifer Saba writes in Editor and Publisher: It's been an embarrassing week for newspapers, especially for those in circulation departments at Newsday in Melville, N.Y. and at the Chicago Sun-Times. Both papers admitted, after markets closed for the day, to puffing circulation figures....

The ABC audit revealed the problems at Newsday and Hoy back in February, John Payne, senior vice president of communications for Audit Bureau of Circulations, told E&P. ABC plans to release its findings in July, though the Tribune Co., which owns Newsday and Hoy, essentially pre-empted ABC by announcing the overstated figures yesterday. "It's very unusual to talk about an audit that has not been released," Payne commented. Newsday had inflated its circulation figures for the period ending September 2003 by approximately 40,000 daily copies and 60,000 Sunday copies, while Hoy jacked up its numbers by 15,000 and 4,000 respectively....

Troubled by last week's circulation scandals at Hollinger International's Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune Co.'s Newsday and Hoy, Merrill Lynch's Lauren Rich Fine released a report today calling into question the reliability of circulation figures for the entire industry. "Our biggest fear," the report said, "is that these two announcements may not be isolated incidents."

As ever, I fail to be surprised by the reality that you cannot believe in the accuracy of anything printed in a newspaper. I spoke to an executive in the gold producing business a few days ago; he lamented that every single time he speaks to a reporter, they get something wrong in the subsequent story. I reminded him that the same is no doubt true of every other story in the paper - whatever you're reading almost surely contains something false, the challenge is to determine precisely which part.

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A quote for Nate

SI's Excuse of the Week: "I had blisters on my heels at the end of the game. The thread that these socks were made with is too rough." --Christian Panucci, Italian National Soccer Team defender, explaining his poor performance in their Euro 2004 opening game tie against Denmark.

You have to love the Azzurri. What other team would dare to put gold lame numbers on their jerseys? If they win Euro 2004, I'm hoping they show up for the World Cup with Armani-designed gold uniforms.

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Full of it on and off the air

Many of Air America's investors and executives say they thought the network had raised more than $30 million, based on assurances from its owners, Guam-based entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen and Rex Sorensen. In fact, Air America had raised only $6 million, Mr. Cohen concedes. Within six weeks of the launch, those funds had been spent and the company owed creditors more than $2 million.

When the problems came to light, "we realized that we had all been duped," says David Goodfriend, the company's acting chief operating officer. Messrs. Cohen and Sorensen say they didn't mislead anyone about the company's finances. They say they planned to invest more over time but didn't because of cultural differences with other managers. Both resigned in early May.

Five months before a presidential election, Air America should be on a roll. Instead, it's grappling with a financial crisis. Creditors are lined up at the door, and it is off the air in two big markets, Los Angeles and Chicago.

How unfortunate....

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A giant red flag, waving

From Monday Morning Quarterback (of all places): On a recent trip to the Chart House, a fine restaurant where the minimum dress code is business casual on the west bank of Hudson River in Weehawken, N.J., I became distressed. As I walked to my table with my lovely bride, I spied a twentysomething man sitting with a woman at a table, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a light blue T-shirt with these words in bold, large black letters: "YOU SUCK."

[Correction] Ladies, this is the sort of thing I would strongly recommend that you avoid. If a man you are dating, or are considering dating, or with whom you even happen to make eye contact is wearing a shirt with this sort of message on it, run, do not walk, for the nearest exit.

I think the female equivalent would be something on the order of "MEN SUCK".

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Comparative ideologies

I'm thinking that I should back up my assertion that Christianity is provably the most humane and civilizing force in human history. To do so, I need to compare it to other significant religions and ideologies, and I'm sure I'll forget something. Here's a short list of ten off the top of my head; if anyone can think of anything else that deserves an analytical comparison, please do so in the comments:

Liberal democracy
Islam
Buddhism
Judaism
Atheism
The Roman Empire
Technological advance
Capitalism
Socialism
Communism

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The bull sans oysters

My worst day of predictions was yesterday, when Spain embarrassed itself by flaming out of the tournament altogether and Greece, suddenly realizing that they might go through, had a panic attack and gave up a goal only 68 seconds into the match. Portugal played all right - except for Gomez and Ronaldo they were pretty average - but Spain was downright horrid. They played defensively throughout, and in my opinion, deserved to lose. Every major tournament, they "flatter to deceive" as the English soccer press likes to say. Why Morientes wasn't playing, I'll never understand. You'd think the Spaniards would have learned from Real Madrid's experience earlier this year, as Torres and Raul did nothing.

So, Portugal and Greece stumble through the Group of Self-Asphyxiation, primarily because someone had to. I don't expect much from either team in the quarterfinals, although Portugal could make it to the semis depending on who they draw.

Tonight, in the Group of Sudden and Unexpected Death At The Last Minute, France will have no trouble with the overmatched Swiss, and England should put away Croatia, though not without difficulty. It will be interesting to see if Michael Owen can get himself untracked or if Sven will bring Vasell on early. I don't expect we'll see Heskey again this tournament, barring injuries to the other strikers.

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Atheist absurdities at the Star and Sickle

"I am seeing more and more bumper stickers saying, 'God, save us from your people,'" said Walsch, author of "Tomorrow's God," which proposes a broader concept of God than traditional religions. "Most of the killing in our world has not been done by those who do not believe in God but by those who do."

This is a silly statement in several senses, since it is manifestly not true that most of the killing in human history has been done by those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Even if Walsch is speaking crudely and incorrectly lumping in the worshippers of every historical pagan god and goddess with those who worship(ped) Allah, Pharoah, Caesar, Kali Durga or Jesus Christ as functionally identical believers in a deity of one sort or another, his assertion is meaningless since this encompasses the overwhelming majority of individuals past and present. The only relevant point is whether these diverse religionists are disproportionately responsible for bloodshed; the unprecedented murders of the godless Soviets, Chinese and Kampucheans indicates that atheists have a far greater taste for blood sacrifice than anyone since the Aztecs.

"Atheists are pretty much demonized," Castle [co-founder of Atheists for Human Rights] said. "People see atheists as anti-religious, anti-something good and with no moral compass. We want to show that we do have a moral compass and it is based on making this world the best that there is because, in our view, it is the only one there is."

Perhaps they see atheists this way because atheists are openly and overtly anti-religious. Christianity, provably the most humane and civilizing force in human history, is certainly something atheists oppose, even hate, and I've yet to encounter a single atheist who can make a case that his moral compass is anything but something instilled by the Judeo-Christian culture in which he has been raised. Sans what they unwittingly absorb from the world around them, they have no moral compass - which is why we can expect general societal immorality to increase in America as the ability of Christianity to influence non-believing individuals continues to wane.

Nonbelievers -- they go by various names, including atheists, humanists, freethinkers and brights -- say their goal is to become a part of the everyday fabric of society and be as accepted as anybody else.

Atheists remind me of the obnoxious fat kid who can't figure out why everybody hates him. If you insist on giving yourself titles that imply everyone else is anti-human, a slave thinker and dull, don't be surprised when no one wants anything to do with you. They're pretty bright, those godless. Interesting, too, that not a one of these supposedly first-rate thinkers was able to successfully make a case for either atheist rationality or morality in this forum a few months ago.

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You're not free if you're not free to leave

Consider the following sequence of events.

1. 12-20-1860. South Carolina secedes from the Union.
2. 02-28-1861. U.S. House passes proposed 13th Amendment, 133-65.
3. 03-02-1861. U.S. Senate passes proposed 13th Amendment, 39-5.
4. 03-04-1861. Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as U.S. President.
5. 07-11-1861. Ten remaining Southern senators expelled from the Senate, 32-10.

Now, keep in mind that there were 34 states at that time, thus 68 senators. The twenty-two senators from the Southern states mostly resigned or never showed up, and as for their seats: "During a brief special session in March 1861, weeks before the start of hostilities, the Senate decided to consider these seats as vacant to avoid officially recognizing that it was possible for a state to leave the Union."

This is significant as it proves that the Southern senators were not present to vote on the proposed 13th Amendment that passed in February and March. President Lincoln even referred to this Amendment in his inaugural address, saying:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

And what was this amendment? It was as follows:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

Three Northern states ratified this amendment, Ohio, Maryland and Illinois. To make matters even more clear, Lincoln stated:

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

He also makes it clear that he will recognize no right of secession or brook any possibility of breaking the Union, which he states is perpetual and unbreakable as well as being pre-Constitutional:

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.... It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

So, the facts are that the Northern House and Senate approved a Constitutional amendment permitting slavery and President Lincoln publicly announced his approval of this amendment in his inaugural address. To conclude that they then elected to fight a war with the primary purpose of ending slavery only three months later is not just incorrect, but downright absurd. Slavery was merely the primary flash point, it could have as easily been homogamy, abortion or any other issue on which people seriously disagree. This sequence of events demonstrates very clearly that the Civil War was about nothing but maintaining central state power, or, in Lincoln's famous words, "preserving the Union". Indeed, had the Southern states been willing to accept their continued economic abuse by the North, we might well still have slavery in the United States today. So died the American Revolution and with it the revolutionary concept of free and mutual association.

Ironic, is it not, that it should be argued that a people have no right to self-determination on the basis of living under a government that permits the ownership of human beings as private property. It seems to me that this argument involves little more than the simple exchange of private slavery for public slavery.

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Short-sighted Southern Baptists

In speaking for his amendment, Pinckney told messengers there is an abundance of evidence "government schools are becoming more and more anti-Christian," though he acknowledged "many differences from one public school to another." He commended Christians teaching and working in public schools.

I wonder how many people would, in like manner, wish to commend those Christians who worked in the death camps of Auschwitz, bringing "light and salt" to the inmates and guards alike? I don't care at all about intentions, it's the reality of the actions and predictable results that matter. Pinckney had the right idea with his resolution; why throw the sell-outs a bone?

In response, Calvin Wittman, Resolutions Committee chairman, expressed opposition, telling messengers the convention had passed 11 resolutions on education in the last 19 years, pronouncing its support for public, private and home schooling. In a statement issued later, Wittman said, "Southern Baptists have spoken to this issue sufficiently, and it does not need to be readdressed."

Wittman sounds like a leftist radical: "We won, therefore the matter has been settled and should never be brought up again. If we lose, however, that only means that the world/nation/organization is not yet ready and we will be back next year with the same proposition." And, of course, he skips over the fact that the resolution was killed in committee, not addressed by the convention.

After Pinckney's resolution was defeated, messengers approved the resolution on secularization with few opposing votes. The measure called for Southern Baptists to "cry out in desperation to God" and seek His forgiveness "for our part in the cultural decline that is taking place on our watch." It also urged them to hold government officials accountable "for their personal conduct and the legislation" they support.

It figures. They're pleased to "cry out in desperation", but the thought of actually doing anything themselves to challenge the single greatest engine of societal secularization is unthinkable. Well, the SBC leadership may be weak sisters on this one issue, but I have confidence that this will change over time, as the government schools continue to devolve towards overt paganism. At least the SBC leadership is not in direct opposition to the Bible and Jesus Christ's teachings as are some of their counterparts in other denominations.

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Oh nr, niet opnieuw!

Great, great game yesterday, and for once the Dutch didn't choke so much as they were outplayed by a team performing to the utmost of its ability. It looked like the Orange were going to run away with it, up 2-0 after twenty minutes, when Giovanni van Bronckhorst demonstrated why he'll never play for Arsenal again in making a horrid back pass to no one. The Czechs jumped on it and the game was on.

Paolo Nedved was incredible, getting stronger as the game went on until he took complete control somewhere around the 75th minute. The winning goal was a brilliant display of unselfishness as Poborci declined to risk drilling the ball home from four feet away, instead faking a shot to force Van der Sar to commit himself, then flicking the ball square to create a certain finish for Smicer. Definitely the best game of the tournament so far, although the Czechs were helped by a dumb substitute by Advocaat, who removed Robben for Gosvelt which resulted in ceding control of the midfield to Nedved.

I didn't watch the German game, but it was apparently a real snoozer. If they couldn't score against Latvia, I don't like their chances against the Czechs, not when Nedved is hitting crossbars from 35-40 yards away. For today, I'm thinking Greece knocks off Russia in a technical upset that everyone is expecting, and home referee conspiracies notwithstanding, Spain finishes off Portugal.

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Hearsay, twice-removed, but interesting

My late friend, Nobel laureate (economics), F.A. Hayek told me years ago when I visited him in Germany that decades before he had a discussion with the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes, where Keynes told him that he (Keynes) had made a terrible mistake and was prepared to write an important piece to disavow deficit spending and hence paper money creation. But two weeks later Keynes died. World governments have all embraced Keynes' mixed up theories because it gave them a convenient solution to cover up their economic mismanagement. Because of this, huge debts and huge piles of paper money have been fostered on populations creating what is now an economic tidal wave that is now on the horizon.

How would that have changed the world, I wonder? Keynes is almost single-handedly responsible for handing governments the world over an excuse to economically rape their citizenry. What a treasure a recanting essay would be!

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Buk-buk Baptists

Unfortunately, the Southern Baptist Convention didn't see fit to allow a vote on encouraging its membership to remove its children from the government schools. I didn't expect the motion to pass on the first go-round, but I did expect the leadership to permit a vote considering how strong the homeschooling movement is among Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians.

I'm not concerned, though. The issue isn't going away. The various offshoots of the Perfect Aryan Bible Study must have around fifty children that belong to its extended family, and I'd be surprised if a third of them are in state-run institutions - there are more of them suffering the lack of socialization that comes with being homeschooled than are having their little brains washed by government propagandists.

It will be interesting to see what they will have to see their children experience before the SBC leadership sees fit to stop supporting government-run schools. Graduates who can't read? Fifth-graders forced to perform sex acts on their teacher in order to prove they learned something in sex ed? Seventh-graders sacrificing a goat to Satan in World Religion 101? Ninth-graders turning in their parents to the Tolerance Police for thought crimes against humanity?

What's sad is that no matter how bad the schools get, you'll always be able to find a Christian who will justify them somehow. "I know they're worshipping Satan and using the naked body of their teacher as an altar, but they do have some of the best test scores in the state, and besides, his friends are all there."

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Whither Italia

It was a great game yesterday, and the Italians surprised me with their effectiveness in controlling the midfield in the first half without Totti. But del Piero and Vieri were miserable in front of goal and squandered too many chances, missing the opportunity to put the game away early. Sweden didn't win as I had predicted, but the draw puts them in the driver's seat for the group. Denmark, as expected, had no trouble with Bulgaria and could easily have doubled its two goals.

Italy has to worry now, as a 2-2 draw or higher will knock them out of the tournament even if they beat Bulgaria. In any case, I suspect Trappatoni will be out of a job unless the Azzurri come home with the trophy. They won't be able to blame anything on a Uruguayan referee this time.

As for today's games, I expect Germany to trounce Latvia and Holland to win a tight game against the Czechs. The latter could go either way, but I expect the orange-clad head cases to pull it together for a change. The Czechs weren't great against Latvia and as the German game proved, Holland has enough talent to rescue it even on nights when the team isn't playing well.

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Those irrational, uneducated atheists

As those who have read this blog from the beginning may remember, I have had a few run-ins with defensive atheists who took umbrage at being referred to as irrational for failing to fully embrace the sociopathy of the truly godless. In almost every case, those atheists who wrote to me criticized Christianity for being responsible for the "millions" of individuals killed by the Inquisition, which they regard to be one of the most monstrous institutions in human history.

I stated at the time that this only demonstrated their historical ignorance, as contrary to the cluelessness of the masses, historians have long known that the Inquisition was a markedly human institution, a civilizing force and one that was relatively innocent of bloodshed. This sounds like blasphemy to those who have gotten the bulk of their Inquisitional history from Monty Python instead of source material in the original Latin, but there is no certainty so self-assured as the arrogance of the ignorant. Now, copious and conclusive evidence has been released which demonstrates that these atheists are not only irrational, but downright uneducated.

In 1998 the Vatican opened the archives of the Holy Office (the modern successor to the Inquisition) to a team of 30 scholars from around the world. Now at last the scholars have made their report, an 800-page tome that was unveiled at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday. Its most startling conclusion is that the Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed. As one headline read "Vatican Downsizes Inquisition."

The amazed gasps and cynical sneers that have greeted this report are just further evidence of the lamentable gulf that exists between professional historians and the general public. The truth is that, although this report makes use of previously unavailable material, it merely echoes what numerous scholars have previously learned from other European archives. Among the best recent books on the subject are Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988) and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition (1997), but there are others. Simply put, historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth....

Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are actually records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be transferred to the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition. After 1530, however, the Spanish Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth.

The 763-page report states that approximately 1,250 sentences of death were meted out, around one percent of the 125,000 heresy trials, over a period of 356 years. Accounting for population differences, it was thus about one-half as deadly on an annual basis as children's bicycles in the United States. (This about one-quarter of the 6,000 deaths usually estimated by academic historians, however the larger number refers to the entire Inquisition, not only the Spanish.) Keep this in mind the next time that an atheist wishes to lecture you on the historical crimes of Christianity. The world will be fortunate indeed if the determinedly secular experiment of the newly constitutional (if still unratified) European Union should turn out to be one-tenth as civilized as the dread Spanish Inquisition.

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Slave doctors

Responding to scattered reports of physicians nationwide using unsavory tactics to fight for state aid and lawsuit liability caps, House Democratic leadership is pitching a law that would prohibit Pennsylvania doctors from refusing to treat a patient based on the patient's job, political opinions or litigation history.

It could be the first proposal of its kind in the United States, and it's already drawing criticism from the Pennsylvania Medical Society, which said the law is unnecessary and would unfairly target doctors, when attorneys -- doctors' nemesis in the fight for lawsuit caps -- are free to turn down clients as they please.

It is a very strange argument which insists that doctors must treat everyone. A right to free association, not to mention one's own labor, dictates that a doctor can treat or not treat anyone he wants, for any reason. There is no moral claim to another individual's knowledge, skills or labor, and I find poetic justice in witnessing physicians declining to treat trial lawyers, who are making a parasitic living off of them.

This is not to say that physicians are a collective paragon of virtue either. The AMA has probably caused more pain to more Americans through drastically reducing the number of medical schools and practicing doctors than almost any other organization outside the federal government. Watching the two sides battle is a win-win situation for the outside spectator - one rather hopes they will both lose.

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Mailvox: breasts vs MBAs

Gregg writes: But seriously, who would tell their daughter: Honey, get a boob job and grow you hair out, and you can get more dates. Every women is someone elses daughter. Sorry Vox, but you are giving very poor advice, unless I missunderstand you.

Who would tell their daughter that? Anyone whose daughter is unhappy with her progress in mate-finding and is also cognizant with the way the world operates. First, is the statement true or not? Second, we're not talking about 15 year-old girls here, we're talking about 30-something women who have more than a decade of unsuccessfully doing it their own way under their belt and whose basic assumptions about the elements of attraction are clearly in direct violation of that which has long demonstrated proven appeal to men.

Now, I could have easily added ten other elements, but I was simply going with the two most obvious things. The idiocy of dismissing superficialities as unimportant is profound, as one cannot start with anything but superficialities here. And obviously, if a woman is happy with her life and does not want to attract more masculine attention, this advice would not apply to her.

Consider two women. Similar builds and facial structure, both dressed similarly in a silk blouse, short skirt, and heels. One has short hair, no chest, a degree from Brown and works at a law firm. The other has a long mane that reaches to her posterior, a Casta-lian chest, a certification as a personal trainer and works as an aerobics instructor. I would bet that if given the choice between the two, nine out of ten men would choose to ask out the latter, including 9/10 Ivy League-educated lawyers.

In fact, most of the less-educated men wouldn't consider asking out the first woman at all, correctly reading, (consciously or subconsciously), her signals that she doesn't want to date anyone "beneath" her. And what is a breast augmentation - $5k and a week of recovery - compared to the $100,000 and six years that go into obtaining an advanced degree that runs a real risk of hurting a woman's chances of finding the sort of man she wants to marry. Law firms hire secretaries too, after all, and if you want to meet young executives, you'll probably meet more as a nanny for a CEO's family than you will by becoming yet another middle manager yourself.

I'm not saying that things should ideally be this way, I'm only recommending accepting the world as it actually operates. Pragmatism and practicality have their places, and the Search for the Other is one of them. What is the conflicting principle anyhow, the right of everyone to be considered equally attractive? Please.

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A cogent point

Owen Harries writes in the American Conservative: To the critics, the belief that democratic institutions, behavior, and ways of thought can be exported and transplanted to societies that have no experience of them is profoundly mistaken. While the United States can provide an example to emulate, democracy is not a commodity that can be exported, or a gift that can be bestowed. To be viable, political institutions and political cultures require a long, organic, indigenous growth, and to attempt from without a sudden dislocation of what exists is more likely to produce unintended consequences than intended ones.

Supporters of the policy tend to regard all this as defeatist, an elaborate rationalization for doing nothing. Liberty, they assert, is a universal value, every society and culture desires it. To work for its realization through democratic institutions is not to impose anything, but merely to remove impediments and to render assistance in a learning process.

In terms of achievability, the trump cards in the hands of those who favor the policy and usually the first cards played are the examples of post-World War II Germany and Japan. But neither is particularly valid or relevant. The German and Japanese peoples were utterly defeated and crushed at the end of that conflict, and there were no surviving institutions or centers of opposition. In Iraq today the population is considered liberated, not defeated and deprived of rights. Second, Germany and Japan in 1945 were genuine nation states with homogenous populations and a strong sense of identity. This is true of few of the possible candidates for democratization today. Most of the states of the Middle East are artificial creations, arbitrarily carved out by Western powers. Third, and most important, before falling into the hands of extremist regimes, both Germany and Japan had considerable experience of the rule of law and civil society, as well as some significant experience of democratic practice. They had well-educated populations and substantial middle classes. Again, none of this is true of most of the targeted states today.

Another American experience seems much more relevant. Long before the United States became a global hegemon, it was a regional hegemon in the Caribbean. From the end of the 19th century it dominated the region and intervened as it saw fit. It occupied Haiti for 19 years, Nicaragua for even longer. Yet to this day the region has not produced one genuine, stable democracy. Nor was the United States to lay the foundations for a viable democracy during the three decades that it ruled the Philippines.

I submit that we're far less likely to succeed in creating viable "democracy" in Iraq than we have been in Haiti. It was a bad idea from the start, a fact which is becoming increasingly obvious even to the administration's allies and cheerleaders. History is not an inevitable force, but one ignores it at one's peril. Drawing the correct historical analogies is always an imperative.

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I'm sure it's just a coincidence

Last month, representatives of WTP went to the National Archives to pull the correspondence of the Office of Chief Counsel for the Treasury Department and for 1913 through 1917. The index of records showed the records were available for 1903 through 1912 and for 1918 and after. However, the index contained the statement “No Longer Available,” for the years 1913 through 1917.

At the same time, the researchers requested the correspondence for the House Ways and Means Committee for 1916. What was received was a box with a large, but empty envelope marked “Retained.” The researchers found additional instances of record deletions where, despite the fact the records appeared available in the Archive index – it was discovered after the record group was physically “pulled” from deep storage in the archives, that it was EMPTY.

It is inconceivable – and intolerable -- that the official records documenting the planning, strategizing and legal communications of the Department of Treasury and congressional committees during the implementation of the single most oppressive and controversial function of government known to Americans are simply “No Longer Available.”

Management level archivists at NARA were unable to explain these gaping holes of missing records In effect, individuals, in explicit violation of federal law, have, since 1992, been systemically DELETING evidence from the official records of this nation – in an attempt to rewrite history – and to conceal the fraud that has been perpetrated by our government for almost 90 years.

I'm just wondering at what point even the choir of tax cheerleaders is going to start getting suspicious that there is, in fact, something deeply fishy going on with regards to the Federal income tax. It's already well-documented that the 16th Amendment wasn't ratified by the states, that Title 26 was never passed as positive law nor signed by the President, and now all the relevant correspondence for the Congress and the Treasury Department for that important period are learned to be missing. It's difficult to argue "it's the law" when it is becoming more and more apparent that it isn't, and never was, the law.

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Watch out for older women

Passion turned to agony early Wednesday morning when a 43-year-old St. Paul woman locked in a kiss with her boyfriend bit off an inch and a half of the man's tongue, according to police.

43 and still not married. Hard to believe, isn't it. I imagine they won't be putting up any mistletoe at her office party this Christmas.

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On Engerlund

Yesterday's games went according to what appears to be the usual form - one team won as expected, the other surprisingly drew. I wasn't the least bit surprised to see England put Switzerland down without any trouble - Wayne Rooney is incredibly solid for a kid who's only eighteen - but Croatia really deserved to beat France instead of settling for only a point. Trezeguet definitely handled the ball on France's second goal and I don't know how the Croatian striker managed to put it wide from four feet out in the final seconds. France doesn't deserve to go through but they almost surely will, along with England, which will easily shut down Croatia. The English defense is much better than their French counterparts, as I've always thought Silvestre was suspect and Desailly, as much as it pains me to say it, is looking as if his long and distinguished international career should have ended before this tournament.

For today, I like Sweden to upset an Italy that lacks Francesco Totti, as the selfless passing and aggressive runs of Ljungberg and Larrson will be difficult for the Azzurri to stop if they can't dominate the ball-control time. In the other game, Denmark should provide a second Scandinavian spanking to Bulgaria, which looks entirely overmatched. If Italy can't get a draw today, they could be in real danger of failing to go through. I can't even imagine the hysterical conspiracy theories that will be flying around if Sweden beats Italy, Denmark beats Bulgaria, followed by a Swedish loss to Denmark. Good times, good times.

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Men, women and the art of attraction

Eugene Volokh writes: Women think a lot -- much more than men -- about how they can become more attractive, and are willing to do a lot to try to become more attractive. Don't know what to do about that, but there it is.

I agree that women think a lot more about it, but I'm not entirely sure that they actually do any more about it. One problem that I see with both men and women is that both sides seem to spend almost zero time thinking about what appeals to the other sex.

A few months ago, I was talking to two different single 30-something women. Both are well-educated and have good jobs, (one is an architect, the other is a mid-level manager at a glamorous company in NYC), both are flat-chested and have short hair but are otherwise attractive, and both have trouble getting dates. And both were astounded and distressed to hear me say that not five men in one hundred cared about either their education or their jobs.

Now, what is interesting to me is how women know that men love long hair and large breasts - you seldom see a stripper or a porn star without them - and yet few women will seriously consider the first option, still less the latter. Now, no woman should go in for elective surgery unless she really wants to upsize on the topside, but it amazes me how these dateless wonders will sneer at the "tacky stripper hair" of the girl that every man on the street is trying, and failing, to avoid noticing. As I told both women, if you want more attention from men, grow your hair and get a boob job. If you don't want to do the latter, I completely understand. But at least grow your hair out.

By the same token, I don't understand how many guys will continue to act like delicate china tea saucers when they've been witnessing their bold and brash counterparts date more women in six weeks than these shrinking violets have in six years. Or fail to shave and put on a decent outfit - be it cowpoke gear or Armani, depending on your surroundings - instead of going with the I'm-out-of-college-but-you'd-never-know-it-to-look-at-me look.

I conclude that many of both sexes are simply lazy. As one of Volokh's contributers said, we want sexy to be us instead of doing what the evidence suggests works. On that note, I take my leave, as it suddenly occurs to me that I am in rather dire need of a shower.

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Mind rot

Andrew Sullivan is quoted by Jonah Goldberg: But it’s time to say something very clearly: Bush’s endorsement of antigay discrimination in the U.S. Constitution itself is a deal-breaker. I can’t endorse him this fall. Like many other gay men and women who have supported him, despite serious disagreements, I feel betrayed, abused, attacked.... I will be excoriated by the same people who always denounce anyone who doesn’t toe the Democratic Party line. “What took you so long?” they sneer. Hope, engagement, principle are my answers. I do not regret trying to make conservatism safe for gays. It’s still possible to be in favor of small government, low taxes, a tough foreign policy, and to be a proud gay man. My principles haven’t changed. Nor will they anytime soon. But when a president allies himself with forces that really do want to keep gay people in jail, therapy, or the closet, it’s time to break off. The deal is broken. And no amount of rationalization can make it whole again.

The thing that is so typically stupid about Sullivan - who, with Michael Kinsley, ludicrously regards himself as above all conflicts of interest - is that if he were truly a conservative, he could easily justify a break with Bush over the president's implacable assault on small government. But, as always, Sullivan is guided by his abnormal desires above all else. As NRO's Katherine Lopez correctly predicted: "I do wish Sullivan would save time and come out for Kerry now. In just a matter of time he will come up with the rationalizations, but it's taking him painfully long to get on with it."

"I feel betrayed, abused, attacked...." Notice how Sullivan's feelings guide his philosophy. I have far more respect for Michelangelo Signorile than I do for Andrew Sullivan. It's one thing to be hopelessly and reliably wrong, it's another to be constantly flailing about in a state of complete cognitive dissonance. It will be a relief to everyone, including Mr. Sullivan himself, when he finally pulls a David Brock and returns to the left's warm maternal fold. He's been a counterfeit conservative from the start, not unlike the man he now so dramatically abjures.

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A question of notice

Here's a pair of questions for the Greek Choir. If the IRS is simply following the law, how is it possible that Notices of Lien, which contain the words "there is a lien":

a) contain no information about where the lien can be found, its identifying number, or the court order that established the lien?

b) usually cannot be found in the list of liens and Federal Tax Liens maintained by each of the 50 states?

In fact, using the service's method, one can easily place an identical "notice of lien" on any other property-owning individual in one's favor as long as one has the individual's name, address and social security number, since the counties do absolutely no fact-checking before they record their notices. If this is not illegal for the IRS, it is clearly not illegal for anyone else. This is why some counties are beginning to maintain a separate category of "notice of lien" which are not to be heeded by third parties as genuine liens must be.

The same thing holds true of Notices of Levy, however, one usually doesn't know about the notice until the bank has already sent off the money, and at that point it's too late. No doubt this is why the service harbors such distaste for foreign banks, as they refuse to provide such collection cooperation.

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Submission

It's fascinating to read Doug Kenline's decision to submit to the will of the collection of Puerto Rican revenue agencies that is the IRS. It reads rather like Winston's embrace of Big Brother, with the added pathos that Doug clearly believes that what he's doing is wrong. There's even a demonic Greek choir of tax cheerleaders welcoming him back to the fold.

But I don't fault Doug for submitting, any more than I fault those millions of people who know better but choose to continue filing because they fear experiencing what Doug has gone through for the past few years. It's extraordinarily difficult to live the conventional American life and not submit. A corporate job, a mortgage, a bank account, all these things can and will be used against you in a Tax Court of counterfeit law. Unless you want to pull a Fred Reed, sip margaritas and siesta with the signorinas, it's tremendously difficult.

Now, none of this surprises me or has any impact on me whatsoever. The truth is what is is, and the fact that the service is able to make effective use of third parties in order to bend many targets to its will is of no account. If anything, it tends to suggest the weakness of its legal position. But legalities make little difference since the IRS has operated outside legal parameters from the very beginning. I have understood the true nature of the IRS since my first, accidental encounter with them some years ago, when an agent was kind enough to explain to me that petty things like the law and the Constitution were irrelevant, as nothing was involved except the reality of force. It is an old story, indeed, one of the oldest.

No one ever said that following the truth would be easy. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

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Swiss scammers

I notice that there's a new variety on the Nigerian 861 scam. This time, the person claims that you have money coming to you from Swiss banks that are paying out money belonging to Holocaust victims. It sounds a little more plausible than that poor widow of General Abacha, but it won't help Switzerland get past England tomorrow. (Professional segue, don't try this at home.)

Yesterday, Holland did manage to self-destruct, as feared, but salvaged a draw all the same thanks to van Nistelroy, whose instinctive goal was not only unexpected, but hard to grasp. I'm still not sure what part of his body hit the ball - I'm thinking his upper thigh - but a great goal. Germany deserved the win, and that young winger, Schweizerschweiger or whatever his name is, was excellent coming in off the bench. And, as I predicted, the Czech Republic put away Latvia despite the surprise early goal.

Tonight, Spain has too much quality for the Greeks, while I expect Portugal to easily take down a Russia without their best player. Mostavoi isn't the only one who doesn't think the Russians can get past the group stage; even so, he should have kept his mouth shut.

As for American sports, I was quite happy to see the Lakers lose. When will teams learn that star-collecting doesn't make a great team? You'd think Daniel Snyder would have figured this out... I'm no Detroit fan, but it's nice to see team play succeed in the bastion of individual play that is the NBA.

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The Sun on Fire

TONY BLAIR has listened to the people of Britain like a man with no ears. His message yesterday should have been: “You have spoken and I am here to represent you. I will go to Brussels and tell them what you want.” Instead we got the same old platitudes, the same “trust me” fixed grin. What Blair said about the two-day summit on the European Constitution ranked alongside Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” declaration when he capitulated to the Nazis in the 1930s. The Prime Minister declared he was “reasonably optimistic we will negotiate an agreement that we want.”

Reasonably optimistic! You can’t expect to get away with that, Prime Minister. The people of Britain don’t want ANY new agreement. Britain should not be going to the summit with the aim of limiting the damage the constitution will cause us.

Let The Sun tell you what your duty is, Mr Blair:

You should be going to Brussels to demand that Britain is given back the powers it has lost to the EU. You must demand that we retain full sovereignty and full control over our lives, not to mention our money. You should demand top-to-bottom changes in the corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic European system. You must demand that only the British Parliament makes the law for Britain and only British judges administer it.

Just say NO to the constitution which the EU’s elitist leaders so desperately want to further their dream of a European superstate.

This is one of the most important moments in a generation, more important by far than anything happening in Iraq. It is no coincidence that the Sun referred to Nevill Chamberlain's infamous declaration, as the EU is posed to make Hitler's dream a reality, a Fourth Reich of united Germany dominating the entire continent of Europe. Only Britain has the ability to deal this panzerblitz-by-stealth a death blow, by refusing to surrender its sovereignty.

If the Euro-elites of Labor, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories are successful in selling out Britain's birthright, the focus will turn to the United States and removing its sovereignty in a trans-American Union. Already, the seeds have been planted with NAFTA. But if they are thwarted by the rise of populist parties like the UK Independence Party, this may inspire Americans to turn away from its own bi-factional one-party rule.

Interesting times.

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Statistics have nothing on polls

Sen. John Kerry "has taken big lead," according "to an L.A. Times poll." But the Times poll that showed Kerry "beating Bush by 7 points" has created a controversy over whether the poll's sample accurately reflects the population as whole, ROLL CALL reports on Tuesday. "Not counting independents, the Times' results were calculated on a sample made up of 38 percent Democrats and 25 percent Republicans -- a huge and unheard-of margin," ROLL CALL claims.

It sounds like Kerry is in trouble. If Kerry is only up by 7 with a boost of 52 percent more Democrats than there should have been in the sample, he's doomed.

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R-dub Remembered

Ralph Wiley, one of the original ESPN columnists and former senior writer for Sports Illustrated, died Sunday night at his home in Orlando of heart failure. He was 52 years old.

Ralph was one of my two favorite sports writers. I won't be the only one who will miss him.

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Mailvox: whoosh

SB writes: Good article, but fatally flawed. This flaw is revealed in your first factor, wherein you discuss the importance to marriage of faith. You blithely equate pagan religions with Christianity, ignoring the one, True God's admonition that His people marry within His family. Untold conflict has resulted from people of different faiths marrying one another. And when a Christian is party to such a mis-match, he is violation of His Father's instructions and may end up having to choose Christ or his wife - as a good friend of mine had to.

It seems as if sometimes people are actively looking to spot any possible flaw in an article, and in so doing will purposefully choose to interpret any ambiguous passage in whatever way will best allow them to offer criticism. I was not blithely equating Judaism or Islam to Christianity, only saying that the same thing holds true for a Jewish, Muslim or Christian man; it is wise to marry within your faith.

I think it's obvious that I don't mind, and even enjoy, genuine criticism. But criticism for its own sake is simply annoying. Now, it's quite possible that SB just happened to misinterpret that one line, but given the context of my ouvre, it is somewhat of a strange point.

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I Azzurri, etc

I was disappointed that the Italians didn't play better, but then, the Danes are always tough. Buffone kept the Azzurri in it, but that's to be expected. Both goalies played very, very well, as there were desperate one-hand reflex saves on either end. The draw makes it tough, though, as Sweden looked imposing in utterly destroying Bulgaria. Excellent team play and unselfish passing simply tore apart the defense. It's no wonder that there are 30 teams lining up to try to sign Henrik Larsson out of Scotland.

And speaking of strikers, I think the Italians are more dangerous with Inzaghi up front. Del Piero and Vieri simply don't seem to work together very well, and Inzaghi is nothing if not a fox in the box.

As for tonight's games, I expect Holland to beat Germany and the Czech Republic shouldn't have any trouble with Latvia. Advocaat is a lousy manager at this level, but he's made the right decision to sit Kluivert since Van Nistelroy doesn't blow his chances the way Kluivert does. I still think the Dutch would be better off with Dennis Bergkamp creating chances from behind the strikers, but unless they self-destruct - which is always a definite possibility - they will win.

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Unworthy of the shoes

Jonah Goldberg agrees with my assertion that Bush is no Reagan: Bush seems to have abandoned the rhetorical high ground. Reagan declared that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. In countless ways, Bush has been saying the reverse. And once you concede that the "government has to move" every time "somebody" hurts, you've pretty much abandoned your dogma and picked up the opposition's. What makes things even worse is that while Bush may be good and decent and unfairly criticized for a host of things, he's a terrible spokesman for conservative principles.

I suggest that this is because George W. Bush is not, and has never been, a conservative. Is there one thing he has done that Bob Dole, the tax collector for the welfare state, would not have? Less than a year later, even Republican professional consultants are admitting that the Medicare entitlement is a disaster in both practical and political terms, and just imagine if his immigration amnesty had not been so vehemently resisted by the Republican Congress.

I'd thought that the homogamy issue would give Bush a slam dunk in the election, but the president, timorous creature that he is, is afraid to run on the issue. I am beginning to suspect that Joseph Farah is correct and Bush's cowardice and lack of conservative conviction may cost him the election, despite John Kerry's incompetence.

Reagan, one must remember, was always considered an over-principled extremist. He dared to take risks. He also won by landslides in a political environment that was markedly less open to conservative ideas than today.

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Mailvox: the truly important stuff

A friendly foe writes: It feels good, Vox. I was finally able to use one of your columns for its intended purpose today. That kind of scares, though. What's next? Will I soon be following the advice of Rabbi Boteach, too? Anyway, I'm mainly writing to ask if you got to see that incredible France-England match. I'm guessing you probably don't care much for my Bleus simply on principle but even you have to admit that Zidane was off the hook! That was unbelievable.

I don't think he'll have to worry about paying heed to the Rabbi's advice, not unless he's planning to become the next Britney Spears, Michael Jackson or Madonna. As for Les Bleus, I'm a little conflicted. I can't hate the team that supplied Henry, Viera, Wiltord and Pires to my Gunners, but I really can't cheer for them either.

Space Bunny and I watched the game and were very disappointed for the Lions. She's a big England fan and felt especially bad for David Beckham. I was worried about that free kick, Zidane is still, as he once said, "at the pinnacle of his art". And why is England STILL not practicing penalties - I take better penalties than that. I was surprised how flat the Blues were otherwise, though. I'm not impressed by Trezeguet, as he doesn't make enough runs to keep teams from keeping two and three defenders on Henry. It didn't hurt England that Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole know Henry better than anyone, of course. Still, I saw nothing in the Swiss-Croatian game that leads me to believe that England will have any trouble going through despite the loss.

Vassell for Owen and Hargreaves for Scholes were good moves, but I thought it was a huge mistake to put Heskey in for Rooney, although I never imagined it coming back to bite Sven as it did. Rooney had been effective in tracking back to help the midfielders all game; Heskey as usual, was nearly useless up front, then came back and plowed over Zidane to give up the fatal free kick. I know they keep naming Heskey to the squad because Rooney, Owen and Vassell are all so short, but I'd still rather have Kevin Phillips or even Teddy Sheringham as a fourth striker over him.

As for the other games, I suspect that Portugal's "Golden Generation" will be viewed as more of an Age of Brass. Their loss to the USA in the World Cup is looking like less and less of a shock in hindsight, as Greece was clearly the superior team, their dearth of stardom notwithstanding. What an embarrassment for the hosts! Spain simply toyed with Russia, so much so that I wouldn't be overly surprised if the Greeks upset the Russians and stole the second spot from Portugal.

In today's games, I like Italy over Denmark and Sweden over Bulgaria. Both Scandinavian teams usually play well in the European championships, especially the Danes, but I think the Azzurri are due this year.

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Mailvox: Wisdom is learning by someone else's example

CR writes: As always, you are spot on. I was married to my first wife for 19.5 years (dated for 5.5 before marriage, met at 17 years old). Every troubling sign you list was there and grew worse during those 26 years. As a Catholic, I did two things that I do not regret (because they were right) that hurt me considerably: 1) I never divorced her (until she threatened to shoot our children which led to me finding out how mean she was to them in general), and 2) I never told anyone else about what was going on between us (I don't recall the scripture passage but I remember that if someone doesn't NEED to know something bad about someone else, you have no right to tell them).

Only after the fact, I found out that for several years she had been saying horrible things about me to everyone we knew. I found emails from her seeking advice on how to "divorce [me] and keep everything." And so much more... At last that life is over for me...and I have remarried. My new wife of 4 years is such a wonder. I could go on forever talking about why...but the most important quality that makes this marriage such a fabulous marriage is quite simple...we both knew OURSELVES very well! No BS, no posturing, no game-playing, no disappointing revelations after the knot was tied. Your article is (as always) of the highest caliber. I am writing only to suggest that SELF-reflection is also very, very important. "Are you REALLY the man or woman you project to your intended spouse?"

The only thing I'd disagree with here is that one does not have an obligation to keep silent about another person's misbehavior. This flies directly in the face of the Biblical notion of accountability; seeking counsel and wisdom on matters that directly concern you should never be confused with gossip.

That being said, better late than never, and CR's story not only highlights the importance of being honest with yourself about your mate's potential flaws, but also that we can learn from our mistakes.

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The mind boggles

Bane writes: The lovely and talented Vox Day has some further insight on Islamo-Saxon weirdness.

So, when did Bane join VQPF? Zink, have you no standards?

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Fictitious Ladies

Consider that the author of Proverbs, who presumably knew something about women, saw fit to write: "A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies." If it was so hard for a king with 700 wives and concubines to discover one of noble character, it should come as no surprise that many young men, (and embittered older men), should see high-caliber women as being scarce to the point of utter myth.

Furthermore, it can be difficult for a man to find a woman who presents just the right mix of darkness and light to make a suitable partner for him. Few of us who have inhabited this fallen world and sampled its delectable but poisoned fruit would find an apt mate in the angelic near-saints that one occasionally meets being produced by Southern Bible colleges, while at the same time, a jaded girl with two abortions, 37 former lovers and divorced parents in her past is unlikely to hold much appeal for the man seeking a wife who will also be the mother of his children.

I knew Space Bunny was the right girl for me when she asked me why I seemed to be a little down one evening during our engagement and I told her that it was hard to accept that I was going to have to be good, when I had been so good at being bad. The fact that my sense of loss not only did not offend her, but saddened her, too, gave me the confidence to know that I had chosen the right girl for me. Her character is as honeyed as her hair, but has been sufficiently seasoned by events to prevent her inherent sweetness from cloying too much.

Now, I never recommend missionary dating, or dating someone in the hopes that they will change in any major way. But I have to admit that there is one exception to this rule, which is the woman who has never seriously considered Christianity, (or whatever is of supreme importance to you), and has a genuinely open mind about it.

My brother, who is exceptionally good-looking and occasionally an idiot of like proportions, had been lamenting that he simply could not find the kind of girl for whom he was searching. The women he met at church failed to share his interest in clothes, style and other ephemera, while those he met in the nightclubs were attractive to him but both spiritually dead and morally challenged.

My suggestion was that he try to find the middle ground and look for a girl in a nightclub who was willing to go to church with him. By this, I meant that if he went on a date with a girl he met out and about, he might casually introduce the concept of his regular church attendance and see what her reaction was. If she expressed curiousity or interest, invite her along and see her again. If, on the other hand, she expressed hostility, contempt or even neutrality, move on.

However, my brother has a disturbing tendency to take my suggestions literally. The next weekend, he saw a pretty girl at a night club, walked up to her and dropped an unusual opening line on her: "Would you like to go to church with me?" As she explained later, she thought that was a bizarre question and she had no particular interest in church, but she was perfectly up for going anywhere that this extremely handsome fellow might be interested in taking her. (Keep in mind, he can't even show his drivers license to write a check without the girl behind the counter marveling at it.)

However, God works in mysterious ways, and that pretty girl in the nightclub is now the mother of my nephews and an active God-fearing Christian who I am pleased to call sister. Change is always possible, for Jesus Christ makes all things new. Do not, however, count on anything else changing an woman, especially not a woman who holds herself in active opposition to the source of love, truth and light.

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Religion and the Left

Or, the lack thereof. I'm sure you're as shocked as I am. Beat Bush Blog writes: The Rittenhouse Review is polling its readers about their religious beliefs. The results thus far suggest that those of us in the left blogosphere are a lot different from "Middle Americans" in this respect. At this writing, 59% of respondents (222 out of 376) categorize themselves as "Agnostic/Atheistic/Unitarian." Various flavors of Christianity have a total of only 23% (88 votes).

I realize that online polls are not scientific, but this is still a striking result. The percentage of agnostics/atheists/Unitarians in the Rittenhouse poll is about four times the proportion in the general United States population. Of the 50,000 respondents in the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, a total of 14.4% said they were "No Religion" (13.2%), Agnostic (0.5%), Atheist (0.4%), or "Unitarian/Universalist" (0.3%). This was an open-ended survey (i.e., respondents could answer however they wished, without being limited to specified categories of religions).

An online poll of Daily Kos readers as to whether they believed "in a higher power, i.e. God" reached similar results to the Rittenhouse poll. Only 40% (90 out of 223) answered "yes," while 60% (133 out of 223) answered "No."

Of course, most of these Godless lefties consider themselves highly moral paragons of virtue, although I've yet to meet one who can explain the strange correlations between their independently reasoned morality buffets and the Judeo-Christian morality of the culture in which they, their parents and their grandparents have been steeped.

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It's the Brits?

From Debka: MI6, the operational arm of British expansion, historically opted for the Middle East camp opposed to Israel and cultivated a special relationship with Yasser Arafat going back decades. Strictly speaking, Egyptian intelligence invented the Palestinian national leader and used his services between the 1960s and well into the 1990s. Even today, the Egyptian official assigned to keeping tabs on him is intelligence minister General Omar Suleiman. It is less well known that during those decades, British intelligence ran a covert operation to build him up as a world figure. London saw in him a vehicle for planting British influence deep inside the Arab-Muslim orbit (which is why he was never received in Islamic revolutionary Tehran) and an instrument for keeping Israeli intelligence in check and limiting its influence in Washington.

These ties were somewhat loosened after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, when he relocated from Tunis to Gaza and Ramallah. But they were never abandoned. The British have performed two key services for the Palestinian cause:

A. They sponsored the concept of Palestinian statehood as a means of reducing the Jewish state to what London considered its natural dimensions, sitting behind Arafat’s shoulder and lobbying the international case for a Palestinian state year after year until it was taken up by President Bush. Few Israelis are aware of the pivotal role parts of MI6 through the British Foreign Office played over the years in developing and shaping Palestinian diplomatic and PR strategy, helping to make the Palestinian cause far more resonant internationally than the Israeli case – even when Arafat openly espoused and practiced terrorism.

B. They instigated the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987; it was not provoked by Arafat then still in Tunis or even the PLO leadership, but MI6 agents operating in the Rafah refugee camp of the southern Gaza Strip. The trigger was a road accident in which an Israeli army truck ran over a group of Palestinian children. The local protest raised spread quickly and was presented opportunistically to the media as a “popular uprising.”

I have no idea if this is true or not, except that Arafat is an Egyptian and the nephew of the Nazi-loving Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. I found it interesting in that it illustrates the point that the public very seldom has an accurate picture of what is going on behind closed doors. Whatever the truth may be about various geopolitical situations, it almost certainly isn't what is being discussed openly in the newspapers every day.

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Salon declares VD Day!

So, women are being encouraged to vote their genitalia this election. I hope my pro-suffragist critics will be conscientious about informing Eve Ensler that there's no need for her latest project, since they've done such a wonderful job of demonstrating how women voting has no effect on anything whatsoever.

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Sound familiar

"The convention whereby the dollar is given a transcendent value as an international currency no longer rests on its initial base... The fact that many states accept dollars in order to make up for the deficits of the American balance of payments has enabled the US to be indebted to foreign countries free of charge. Indeed, what they owe those countries, they pay in dollars that they themselves issue as they wish.... This unilateral facility attributed to America has helped spread the idea that the dollar is an impartial, international means of exchange, whereas it is a means of credit appropriated to one state."

Charles De Gaulle, 1965. I wonder how much longer we'll be able to get away with it, considering that the Euro has now surpassed the Dollar in its percentage of internationally purchased bonds? It doesn't do you much good to print more of what nobody wants.

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The evils of the American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 around two propositions: one, all doctors should have a "suitable education" and two, a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." [1] In the days of its founding AMA was much more open--at its conferences and in its publications--about its real goal: building a government-enforced monopoly for the purpose of dramatically increasing physician incomes. It eventually succeeded, becoming the most formidable labor union on the face of the earth.

AMA created its Council on Medical Education in 1904 with the goal of shutting down more than half of all medical schools in existence. (This is the Council having its 100th anniversary celebrated in Chicago this weekend.) In six years the Council managed to close down 35 schools and its secretary N.P. Colwell engineered what came to be known as the Flexner Report of 1910. The Report was supposedly written by Abraham Flexner, the former owner of a bankrupt prep school who was neither a doctor nor a recognized authority on medical education. Years later Flexner admitted that he knew little about medicine or how to differentiate between different qualities of medical education. Regardless, state medical boards used the Report as a basis for closing 25 medical schools in three years and reducing the number of students by 50% at remaining schools.

Many people, even otherwise sensible conservatives, wrongly believe that having strict standards imposed by the state is a desirable thing. They are appalled by the notion that just anyone be permitted to practice medicine, and yet, the history of the AMA proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that it has nothing to do with the quality of healthcare and everything to do with protecting its members incomes.

AMA certification is fine. Private organizations should exist to identify those practitioners who meet certain standards. But putting the force of the law behind the trade union will help ultimately destroy quality health care in America as well as doctors' incomes, as the state is compelled to get involved to reduce the cost of what, as is inevitable in the case of an artificially limited supply, has risen.

As Dale Steinrich points out, this is no different than if the government decided that no one should drive a lower quality car than a Lexus. The price of cars would rise, many people would be forced to go without, and the government would then step in to force Lexus to provide cars to those who can't afford them. Much better to have a range of health cares available, distinguished by private organizations, so that those unable to afford the best health care would still have access to what they could afford.

As Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and the Soviet Union have proved, equal health care means nothing more than awful health care for everyone. There's a reason they call it the LOWEST common denominator, after all.

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Mailvox: On Marriage

Gypsy asks: Does anyone out there feel that marriage is worth it?

A marriage to the right person is worth it. A marriage to the wrong person is not. How does one decide who the right person is? Aye, there's the rub.

This is not to say that the question is impossible to determine, only that it requires a certain amount of analytical detachment about the relationship that is difficult for most people. Some of the more important factors for a man to consider, in my opinion, are as follows:

1. Is she a woman of genuine faith? A woman who seriously believes that marriage is a sacrament, be she Christian, Jew or Muslim, will have a very different view of the commitment and the institution than a secular or casually religious woman. As a Christian, I would not consider marrying a non-Christian woman for a moment. For the irreligious men, I see no purpose in marrying whatsoever - why put yourself at serious risk for a sacrament in which you do not believe? If you're doing it simply because she demands it, you're starting the relationship off down two touchdowns already.

2. Does she accept the notion of personal responsibility? A woman who is constantly blaming others for her problems in life will soon begin to see her husband as the source of all her problems. These women always blame whoever they are around the most instead of themselves - if she's constantly complaining about her coworkers or her family, don't even continue to date her. If you do, you'll soon find her bitching about you.

3. Are you comfortable with her? Space Bunny got a little annoyed with me when I once compared her to an old shoe, until she realized that I refuse to give up my old shoes until the soles have been replaced three times, they have holes everywhere and at least one is missing laces altogether. And even then, she has to throw them out over my protests. If the two of you can't contentedly spend several hours in the same room together without talking or otherwise interacting, you may not be comfortable enough with one another.

4. Can she entertain herself? Men need their downtime. This becomes problematic if she sees your free time as a violation of her time with you. Space Bunny doesn't want to see or talk to me before 10 AM and she always requires two hours alone in the evening. I am delighted to provide her with that time... it should be obvious when I get much of my writing done. The time we spend together is then mutually enjoyed, even if it involves watching a ridiculous chick show on E! or a diatribe about Greenspan's latest idiocy.

5. Does she genuinely put the interests of others first? I love a beautiful, self-centered drama queen as much or more than the next guy, but I would NEVER want to marry one. They're fun to watch... from a distance. Keep your distance.

6. Do your friends and family think she's good for you? All of my friends were very pro-Space Bunny, even the ones who didn't have much use for her personally. My mother shouted "I got my girl!" and pumped her fists when we told my parents we were getting married. Those around you are not blinded by the rose-tinted lenses of infatuation and will often have a better read on her true personality than you do. If you find yourself defending her by saying things like "oh, but you just don't know her" you are flirting with long-term trouble.

7. Does she attempt to control you? This tendency will only get worse with marriage, so any sign of this in a dating relationship is a red flag. Women have a strong maternal instinct and have a hard time grasping that men loathe being mothered; can she back off when you need her to?

8. Does she treat you with respect, in public and in private? If she does, this is an excellent sign. If she's always putting you down, just "giving you a hard time", "keeping you in your place" "just in fun", find someone else. Marriage is not a buddy cop movie.

9. Are you in agreement in the larger issues? If she wants kids and you don't, forget it. If she wants to keep up with the Joneses and you want to save for the future, there is a seed of much future conflict already embedded in the relationship.

10. Finally, do you know her? Really, truly know her? Do you know why she overreacts to stupid little things, why she wrinkles her lip in contempt at the TV screen, and why her favorite movies - appalling though they might be - appeal to her? Do you know what she hopes her future will hold, even if she can't articulate it? It's not always about a mansion on the sea, it can be something so mundane that the mere knowledge that was her dream will devastate you.

Marriage and family are definitely good things. But they are important things, and not to be entered into lightly. If you are so fortunate as to find the right woman, don't let shallow concerns get in the way, pursue her and see it through. If neither you nor those close to you have any serious doubts, it is likely the right decision.

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Bring the noise

One CV posts elsewhere: An increaase in the divorce rate some fifty-odd years later? Had they predicted a drop in the divorce rate they would have been correct as well. Just a matter of waiting for the correct moment in history to holler "aha!" Look, you are being deeply dishonest; you must know that. Why are you doing this?

This is so deeply stupid as to approach handicapable. The American divorce rate has declined since it peaked in 1979-1981 at 5.3/1000, but even at its lower rate of 4.0, it is still more than five times as high as it was in 1900, at 0.7, when the predictions of increased divorce due to women's suffrage were being made. So, no, they would not have been correct to predict a drop in the divorce rate.

Now, how to explain this mysterious drop in the number of divorces since 1980? That's not difficult either. The marriage rate was 10.6/1000 in 1980. Since then, many men have figured out that it doesn't make much sense to take the risk of marrying the wrong woman and many women have decided that they need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, as the marriage rate has dropped 37 percent, to 7.8/1000. This is also 16 percent lower than the 9.3 marriage rate in 1900.

I'm not anyone's master, but CV is my bitch.

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One for the Ages

Everything you need to know about the establishment's view of Ronald Reagan can be found on Page 624 of "Dutch," Edmund Morris' weird postmodern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:
" 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,' declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance. ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: Applause.
"What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost's poem on the subject, 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall,' to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay's lines, which he surely holds in memory.
Only now for the first time I see
This wall is actually a wall, a thing
Come up between us, shutting me away
From you ... I do not know you any more."

"Tear down this wall!" is now a classic piece of rhetoric, booming Shakespearean thunder in its pure expression of righteous outrage. It is one of the very few quotes of the modern era that may survive the test of time. It inspired one of the great moments of human liberty. But what is all that compared with the opportunity to quote a poet named Edna?

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All Your Ballot Are Belong To Us

The Dark Window not only comes up with a better name for the MP3 non-radio show - Voxic Shock - but after four days of grueling debate on an issue almost completely disconnected from the current political discourse, announces a verdict in the first annual Vox Challenge.

Tune in next year, when Vox will weigh in strongly on the controversial Roman occupation of Long-haired Gaul.

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Racist liberal media

Ralph Wiley writes on ESPN: [Jim] Gray asked [Shaquille] O'Neal to characterize the Laker season; and O'Neal did, with the last word he used being "enigmatic." Good word. O'Neal seemed to try to humorize his use of it by smiling and saying Jim might not feel the use of such a word was appropriate -- if, in fact, he knew what it meant. O'Neal was sort of diffusing his own use of the word, as if Jim would take it as inappropriate, not as a word -- it was exactly the proper word -- but inappropriate for Shaq to use.

The word seemed to throw Jim Gray, who said to Shaq, "Spell that."

I was stunned. Almost as stunned as when O'Neal almost defiantly spelled it perfectly. He's lucky Shaq responded. Responded? He's lucky Shaq didn't drill him. Luckily for Iceberg Jim, Shaq's not that type. Spell that? What is that supposed to prove?

So, it's racist for Rush Limbaugh to correctly point out that the media cheers inordinately for an overrated black quarterback, but Jim Gray can get away with publicly making the assumption that Shaq doesn't know what enigmatic means and can't spell it either. Interesting. Apparently assuming that all black athletes are stupid is not racist, but making note of what the liberal white media writes and says is.

I'm not a fan of Shaq the basketball player. He commits an offensive foul almost every time he touches the ball and then, he plays for the Lakers. But he's a good guy, and unlike most people, he actively works to expand his mind. Why would anyone be surprised by his use of a word like enigmatic - which is an excellent word to explain the Lakers' season - from someone who once said that he wished to be called the Big Aristotle?

Next time, Shaq should drop some Metaphysics on Iceberg Jim. "There must be from the first a cause which will move things and bring them together." Aristotle knew, all those years ago, that the Zenmaster was to blame.

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And now for something completely different

From Chase Me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry: "My favourite liberal is Hildebrando Pascoal, a Brazilian poltician from the forest state of Acre. He was barred from Congress for "failings in parliamentary decorum" for murdering people with a saw. He was also involved in illegal land deals, cocaine trafficking, dissolving a boy in acid, murdering a doctor, and murdering the local bishop.... If this is their idea of a liberal, you can imagine what their young conservatives are like."

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A woman for whom I'd vote in a heartbeat

From the Corner: No commentator I heard noticed that the Baroness Thatcher curtsied to the coffin - a gesture which protocol reserves at state funerals to the corpses of royalty.

You have to love the Iron Lady. She's everything Hilary Clinton wants to be, and will never ever even come close to approximating.

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Mailvox: what's so bad about divorce?

Leo writes: 1) What is wrong with women working? Vox, you seem to be taking it as God-given fact that women working outside of the home is a Bad Thing. I disagree completely - it adds to GNP, it gives employers more people to choose from. As well as the fact that women, as individuals, have the right to decide what they want to do. You've included this as a bad thing, a negative consequence, but you've not said *why*.

Did you miss the bit about falling real wages? An extreme example might help you understand. The USA doubles the size of the work force by importing Chinese workers. Is this good for the economy? Or will it accomplish very little, except cutting wages in half? If it's so good, I'm sure we can find 100 million volunteers to move into the country.

Now, women should have the right to decide what they want to do, but as matters stand, the increase in inflation, the fall in real wages and the rise in taxes means that two incomes are required where once one sufficed. It's still a choice, to be sure. Do you want a lower standard of living, or do you want to farm your children out to day care and government schools while you go work. I'd go with the former, but it's hard to blame those who choose the latter. Unfortunately, the latter tends to increase stress on the family, leading to divorce, etc. The greatest irony, is that women are mostly working to pay for the Social Security benefits of the 65+ men who used to work, but thanks to the entitlement designed to help widows and orphans, are now collecting a check and playing golf.

2) I consider no-fault divorce laws to be a good thing. People get married by mistake; people get married young and then mature into different, incompatible people. Why should these couples be required by law to stay together- I know the fundamentalists' reason for saying this, but how can you argue the viewpoint as a libertarian?

As Larry pointed out, why should a marriage contract be any less binding than a fitness club membership? The right to make private contracts, sans third party involvement, is sacrosanct to libertarians. The government should not concern itself with recognizing marriage or divorce in any way. It did not do so for thousands of years and there is no need or benefit for it to do so now. Quite the contrary, as is being demonstrated in Denmark, Holland and Massachusetts.

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And the best response is....

That was fun, but we're approaching tenderizing expired equine time. And while I appreciate both Discordia and Bartholomew taking the time to compose reasoned critiques - I didn't bother posting the various emails and blog posts that didn't address my points specifically - in the end, I have to say that this riposte to my assault on suffrage was probably the most salient.

A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.

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Mailvox: Apple peels

This was rather amusing, especially since in one aside, Eris mentioned that I was explaining how casual correlations are useless for the benefit of my "slower readers". Now, read some of his objections to my response and see if Eris shouldn't perhaps consider in which group he belongs.

He writes: [on selection bias] I see a similar problem with Vox's argument. Even if I assume that people in the 1920's predicted that illegitimacy, divorce, and homosexuality went up, I don't know if they predicted other things that didn't happen. And did they predict falling wages? If so, Vox didn't mention it.

They did not predict falling wages, but then, I haven't read a single anti-suffragist document focused on the economic aspects, as opposed to the social, so that's hardly surprising. Indeed, I don't know that I've ever read anything specifically linking the entry of women into the work force with falling real wages even after the fact; I'm under no illusion that I'm the first to make such a link, but let's face it, real wages and century-old political debates are common subjects for popular reading these days. As for other predictions, those happend to be the ones that I recall. I'm sure there were others, but not so many that their success rate is not astounding eighty plus years on.

Let me see if I'm following Vox's logic: Women are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. Per Vox, Democrats support the various issues that cause those social ills. Ergo, we should curtail women's voting rights because they vote Democratic. Going a step further, we should also deny the vote to any group that is predominately Democratic - and if you read Vox's posts, you'll know that he does not rule out disenfranchising other groups. The conclusion that I draw from all this is that Vox thinks voting should be restricted to a specific elite consisting of people who agree with him. And he calls himself a libertarian.

No, Vox thinks that voting should be restricted to an elite capable of thinking beyond their immediate personal interest and willing to avoid the temptation to vote themselves largesse taken by force from others. There is plenty of room for disagreement within those bounds. If voting is not restricted to this relatively broad elite, demagogues will purchase the favor of the short-sighted mob using the powerful mechanisms of government and a very much smaller oligarchical elite will impose its rule. Choose your poison.

I call myself a libertarian I support the concept of my rights ending where yours begin. This is antithetically opposed to democracy, which can be rightly equated to two wolves and one sheep deciding what to have for lunch. I'd much rather be free to live my life free of government control of my behavior, speech and property than be permitted to vote while being forced to endure countless violations of individual liberty. In case this is hard to follow, I will spell it out. Voting is not freedom. Voting is an act, freedom is the ability to act as one wills. Voting was mandatory in the Soviet Union, was the Soviet Union therefore free?

Note how he stops talking about homosexuality and illegitimacy at this point. I think the points about welfare are supposed to be about illegitimacy, but since out-of-wedlock births are not the only circumstances under which one would have cause to go on welfare, that point is a bit - dare I say it? - disingenuous.

It is disingenuous to posit a strong link between welfare and illegitimacy? That's an interesting point of view that would amuse many a social scientist. As I stated explicitly in my response to him, I was not writing a complete causal chain but merely demonstrating that it was more than mere post hoc propter hoc. The homosexuality aspect opens the door to a lengthy debate of its own, which was why I left it for the nonce, but those who understand that I subscribe to a Paglian view of homosexuality, (on the secular side), will grasp the essence of the link with divorce and illegitimacy.

I must be misreading this. He seems to be arguing that the mere fact that women are allowed to vote is contributing to divorce, but more than that, to these eyes, he's saying that women shouldn't be able to work either.

First, the combination of my train of logic with the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiment suffices to make the suffrage-divorce link beyond a reasonable doubt. I am not saying that women shouldn't be able to work, only that barring the burden of government spending partially created by women's suffrage, more women would be able to choose to stay home with their children should they so desire. I am quite confident that most would.

At this point, I'm starting to question Vox's libertarian cred. In my opinion, women should be allowed to vote and work, even if it does increase divorce, because people in a free society should be free to make mistakes. Vox, on the other hand, seems to be saying that the government should curtail freedoms to prevent people from making bad decisions. Now honestly, which of us sounds like the starry-eyed libertarian and which sounds like the big government, para-socialistic left-liberal?

This is only because Eris is still operating under the misconception that the universal vote is conducive to human freedom. He equates voting with freedom, which I have already demonstrated is obviously fallacious. A connection between universal suffrage and freedom has never been proved anywhere, indeed, everyone from the Founding Fathers to the Algerian Army to the present administrators of the Iraqi Occupation believes precisely the opposite. Vox is saying that the voting franchise should be curtailed in order to prevent people from exerting control over other people, which in the long run will also be to their benefit, but more importantly will benefit those who only want to live their lives as they see fit, in freedom.

Which of us sounds as if he knows whereof he speaks? That question, dear reader, I leave to you.

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The divorce link

From the Declaration of Sentiments: "He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women - the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands."

So, one of the first things women wanted to do upon getting the vote they were demanding was change the divorce laws. This was declared publicly by the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. It took 72 years, but women got the vote in 1920. Only 49 years later, the first no-fault divorce law was signed by Ronald Reagan in California. Women now initiate 75-80 percent of all American divorces and I don't think anyone would argue the fact that the divorce courts are significantly biased towards women.

Probably a complete coincidence. Thanks for the tip, Bufelda, I'd forgotten about that.

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Selling out the Kurds again?

From Debka: After the provisional government was installed in Baghdad, a senior Arab statesman confided elatedly to DEBKA-Net-Weekly : ”Bush has returned to the old political fundamentalism of the Middle East. It is good for us and it is good for him. ”It is a Middle East every Arab leader knows, a Middle East in which we also function best. I am certain that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Syrian president Bashar Assad will support the new president, Ghazi al-Yawar, and trust him not to neglect their interests in Iraq.”

Democracy
Sounds good, you see,
To strike that common note.

And yet, you know,
I told you so -
They'd never let them vote!

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Mailvox: Loved by all and sundry

KS writes: You must live in a different universe than I. You are so wrong. You must have some kind of brain disease to even think up the crap you wrote in The Cowardice of His Convictions. Perhaps you should visit your doctor for a check up.

My dear Ms S,

That's quite the eloquent rebuttal. I'm really going to have to rethink my position based on your exquisite reasoning and stunning grasp of the salient facts.

Kisses,
Vox

UPDATE - actually, KS is all right. She emailed back this: "Thanks for your thanks, just trying to help."

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Mailvox: it depends on your principles

AS writes: Your argument so far seems to be a pragmatic one: Women gaining the right to vote has lead to illegitimacy, divorce, abortion, etc. This from the king of ideals. I can't find it right now, but I remember you made a post saying that people should stop their pragmatic view of the world and start standing up for their ideals. Isn't your argument against women's suffrage a perfect example of pragmatism? I would say that every adult who has proved a minimal interest in being a good citizen--namely, not being convicted of a felony and registering to vote--has the right to vote. It is immoral to deny citizens the right to vote for their representatives at all levels of government.

If I had ever stated that I believed voting was a fundamental human right, I would certainly be guilty of sacrificing principle for pragmatism. But I never have, nor do I believe it to be a fundamental human right. Most people should not be permitted a voice in government; they should, on the other hand, be permitted to live their lives in peace without the constant threat of government intervention. History suggests that universal democracy is strongly susceptible to collectivization and thus directly at odds with human liberty and freedom.

I have long been leery of democracy, in part because so many great thinkers that I admired despised it so. The fact that its self-professed champions don't actually trust it either but feel the need to hedge it about with judicial and structural limitations proves that the common equation of freedom and democracy is incorrect. I find it very easy to choose between the two, without any sacrifice of principle required.

I wonder, what morality is it, precisely, that is offended by denying citizens the vote? And if it is a basic human right, why should residents who are not citizens be denied? If the will of the people is the foundation of all authority of government, does this same hypothetical morality not demand that anything that dilutes the will of the people - judicial review, constitutional restrictions or representative bodies - must be considered immoral as well?

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Mailvox: I'm not gay, I'm English

Bartholomew leaps into the arena: Here's my response to your unpalatable idea, as recently posted on my own blog. You will note that I have separated the two questions of a) has allowing women to vote led to harmful results? and b) should a group be banned from voting because its members tend to vote for things that lead to harmful results? I am concerned here mainly with the latter proposition.

Fair enough. We've mostly been dealing with (a). But (b) is another reasonable point for discussion.

Your recent comment about children is not valid: it is not discriminatory to deny them the vote because everyone was once a child and so subject to the same restriction.

No, it is perfectly valid. By this reasoning, we can discriminate freely against the elderly because almost everyone will be old one day. Furthermore, discrimination against children is justified on their inability to make responsible decisions, not the universal nature of childhood.

1. Democracies use constitutions and independent judiciaries to guard against mobocracy, rather than denial of the franchise to particular groups ofadults. While this may not be perfect, there is no evidence that there was less mobocracy in times when women or others were denied the franchise.

Sure there is. The Founders were concerned about a mob voting itself bread and circuses, while Joseph Schumpeter predicted the inevitable devolution of any universal democracy into socialist tyranny. An analysis of federal spending per capita easily illustrates this playing out right now.

Perhaps this is not spelt out in the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, but if Vox Days interpretation of those documents is correct that only means that the USA is not the very best example of democracy after all, and could learn from others (Im British, by the way).

The USA is not a democracy, never was, and was expressly designed not to be. In his first formal point, Bartholomew demonstrates that he has no understanding of the source of American rights and liberties.

2. If women as a whole can be denied the franchise because a majority of them support views of government he dislikes (leading to what he considers the social ills outlined above), then why not apply this rule to other groups should they show the same preferences? Answer: because if such a rule were applied to other groups it would be manifestly unfair, and in many examples would be racist.

First, it would indeed be very good sense to deny those groups who are determined to sabotage their self-interest. Precisely this reasoning is presently being used to deny the Iraqi people the right to self-determination; I don't know any so-called "democrats" who actually favor allowing open elections in Iraq as I do. Are they racist too?

Second, women are a unique group in that they are provably biologically different. These biological differences have a direct effect on their ability to think and reason, as numerous scientific studies have proven that women have measurably different brains than men. There are spiritual (Christian), scientific (evolutionary), and psychosexual reasons that women are inordinately inclined to favor the "security" offered by Big Daddy government intervention. This is not true for any other group, except, possibly, the homosexual community, if one accepts the homosexual argument that their abnormality has a genetic base.

3. His argument is that he has judged certain ideas to be bad, and because a majority of women support those ideas they therefore should not be allowed to vote. So why shouldnt I call for religious conservatives to be disenfranchised on the grounds that they vote for what I consider bad ideas?

What are hate crimes for? I fully expect the openly religious to be disenfranchised in the future. They're already being fined. We'll be fortunate if it stops with only losing the vote.

Well, a) I would be supporting an undesirable principle of exclusion; b) I understand that without the accountability that only comes with a universal franchise even good ideas will not be implemented well; c) I have confidence that as long as democracy endures the good ideas will eventually triumph. Vox Day does not have that confidence about his own ideas, it seems, which is why he wants them imposed by banning people from voting. 4. If women were denied the vote, they would protest,as they did in many countries before they got the vote, and many men would support them. The civil strife would be overwhelming.

He sees exclusion as undesirable; neither I nor the Founding Fathers do. What accountability comes with a universal franchise? I obviously don't have that confidence, as I believe that most people, given the chance to vote themselves largesse from others, will do so every single time. History would seem to support this very strongly. The civil strife would be as nothing as what is going to happen once the present system collapses under the weight of centralization. One of the many nice things about women is that they're not prone to serious violence.

No doubt Vox Day, who is willing to contemplate the mass murder thousands of Palestinians for a greater good, would not shy away from quelling the complainants with brutal force. But thats not libertarianism. Or Christianity.

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 2,233 Palestinians have been killed in the present conflict since mid-2000, more than 1,000 since I wrote the offending article. Apparently Bartholomew was more upset by a suggestion that might actually help bring a final end to the conflict than he is by the actual "mass murder" of thousands of Palestinians. Or perhaps he believes that refraining from the intentional murder of children is hopelessly beyond those dusky savages now that the British Empire has laid down the White Man's Burden. But I don't have to contemplate anything; the world is witnessing it. As for a need for force, I'll take my chances. Generally speaking, the ladies would rather talk than fight.

Universal suffrage is neither libertarian nor Christian. A perusal of either philosophy would demonstrate that, as would the fact that voting is mandatory in many totalitarian states. Even the UN Declaration of Human Rights tempers Article 21 (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. with Article 29 (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

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Mailvox: the Dark Lord knows doubt

JR writes: I wanted to thank you the other day for an article that you wrote that helped me in my personal life. The message was men want respect and support from their mates. I started complimenting my husband more on his hard work, I made a daily effort....and also of my son. I found it worked tremendously in how they treat me now.... Your article works for both sexes. I just naturally assumed that the men were getting it from each other, at the golf course, at work, etc. You showed me a deep secret of truth that has helped me.

Hmmmm. I may have to rethink my mysogynistic master plan to oppress women and make miserable, powerless sex-slaves of them all. They seem to like it too much.

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Mailvox: dodging the answers

Papapete writes: Yours is the affirmative position. You have to prove your case. You have not done anything to credibly explain or describe the relationship.

Papapete is avoiding answering the points I raised previously. A broken clock is right twice a day, and incorrect 1438 times per day; since he can't remember one, much less 2,872 of the anti-suffragists faulty predictions, it's impossible to give any credence to his analogy. I never laid out a perfect chain of causality; as I stated before, there is no mathematical proof possible in matters as nebulous and complex as this.

Now, if women's suffrage has had no effect on society, why would anyone object to it being eliminated? If it has had an effect, then what are those effects? Surely women have made some difference somewhere in 84 years! As for a specific description of the relationship, I thought it was obvious by implication, but apparently some people couldn't follow it.

1. For whatever reason, women are inclined to favor security, (as represented by interventionist government), over freedom, (as represented by limited government.)
2. Women were given the right to vote in the USA in 1920.
3. Since 1920, women have reliably voted for politicians at all levels who are dedicated to increasing government intervention in society.
4. Government intervention in society has increased significantly since 1920.
5. Among the consequences of this increased government intervention is the forcing of women into the workplace and increased stress on the family due to steadily increasing inflation and taxes.
6. The resultant familial stress combined with the increased financial independence of women created an increased desire for divorce, the rate of which began to rise quickly ten years after women began entering the work force en masse. The combination also led to the development of modern feminist ideology, the direct result of which was widespread and legalized abortion and increased illegitimacy as more and more women substituted dependence on the government for dependence on an invididual man and her extended family for food, shelter and childcare.
7. The doubling of women entering the work force finally surpassed the two-thirds of 65+ men leaving the work force, (who were leaving as a result of the Social Security entitlement granted by the interventionist government), leading to the peaking of real wages in 1973. This has only increased the aforementioned stress, as it is now impossible for a single median wage earner to support a family.

Now, it is clear that women's suffrage is not the only factor operative here, but given women's reliable 9-12 percent bias towards increased government intervention and the average margin of victory in presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial elections, they can reasonably be considered a decisive factor.

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Take the long view

D69 writes: What Reagan began was clearly a revolution. He was clearly on the road to re-establish the "founding principles". I believe Eisenhower attempted this as well, but was in no way as successful. "Ike" was simply not the communicator that Reagan was. Our nation has been clearly downhill since Lincoln. There were some bright lights with "Teddy" and "Ike", but Reagan may have been our last hope to restore the republic. I don't think we will ever see anyone like him again. I hope I am wrong, but "everything is cycles" proves to be not the case. The second law of thermodynamics is more aptly applied here I'm afraid...

This is interesting to consider in light of the concept of socionomics. If Elliott is correct and society is broadly driven by waves of human emotion, the Reagan Revolution was a natural reaction to a down wave that brought the country to a cycular low. At such lows, it appears that the country moves in one of two directions - towards more "security" in the form of increased government as in the case of FDR, or towards more freedom in the form of decreased government as in the case of Reagan.

Now, the foremost Elliott wave theorist, Bob Prechter, is standing by 2000 as the beginning of a grand super-cycle wave down. He sees the current conflict as a minor prelude to what is inevitably coming next, which means that the country will be forced to face another opportunity to make its choice between freedom and security. Based on his technical system, Prechter is extremely negative in this regard, but even if he turns out to be correct about the grand super-cycle wave down, that does not necessarily require that people will embrace more of what got them into trouble in the first place. They probably will, but as long as there are those of us who will point to another, better way, the possibility of a third Reaganite revolution remains, the failures of the previous two notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that I think the odds are great, but that doesn't trouble me much. Indeed, I take some reassurance from the helpless flailings of Republicans and Democrats alike, as the failures of their power-hungry ideology lead inevitably to enacting the same concept at the next level up. Hence the starry-eyed hope in the United Nations. The truth always comes out in time, the only difficulty is that it usually requires several generations to remember what was learned the last time around.

What we're seeing with the destruction of the family, the destruction of the currency and societal loss of faith is nothing new. Students of Greece, Rome and China all recognize these things as symptoms of a society in the early stages of decline into Empire. Humanity has always survived such declines; it will survive this as well, and from the ashes of empire freedom and human liberty will rise again.

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There is a difference

The Evangelical Outpost compares the suprisingly similar platforms of the Texas Republican Party and the Libertarian Party.

The primary difference, of course, being that Libertarians mean what they say. The Republican leadership, quite clearly, does not.

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Mailvox: chopping the apple

Discordia writes: Have you ever heard of the phrase "post hoc ergo propter hoc"? It's a fallacy that states that because A happens after B, then it stands to reason that B caused A. I haven't yet seen any actual concrete evidence that women's sufferage actually caused any of the things you claim it did. Do you have any, and if so, can I see it? That's not all. You seem to be arguing that women's sufferage has caused "divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality and falling real wages". How is this possible? You yourself point out that we don't have a pure democracy, but a representative one. No one could selectively vote to relax divorce laws, or vote on a specific series of economic plans to cause a drop in wages.

Furthermore, I don't even know how one would go about voting for illegitimacy or homosexuality. You have fallen prey to another fallacy - confirmation bias. In order to prove that sufferage is bad for America, you selected four things that have (at least in your opinion) worsened since. Again, can you actually prove that any of these things are connected to women's voting rights?

Unlike the Human Pinata, Eris is taking a correct line of argument against my anti-suffragism. Can I prove the connection between the various social ills and women voting with mathematical certainty? No, because the social "sciences" do not permit such precision. But I believe I can make the case to a reasonable individual's satisfaction.

First, a non-causal relationship is non-predictive. If one knows that it is raining in China, this does not help one predict the movement of gasoline prices in Wisconsin. Furthermore, as readers of science fiction know, long-term predictions are extraordinarily difficult. To accurately predict events 80 years in the future is hard enough, to do so based on wholly unrelated factors is massively improbable. One need only peruse predictions made in 1980 about what the world would look like in 2000 to see how difficult future projection is. As the Original Cyberpunk likes to say: "where's my flying car?"

Despite this daunting improbability, the opponents of women's suffrage were able, prior to 1920, to correctly predict the increase in divorce, illegitimacy and even homosexuality that we have seen realized 80 years later. As late as the mid-1980s, newspapers like the Star Tribune were mocking these old anti-suffragist predictions as being Neanderthalian lunacy disproved by subsequent events. (This was around the time of the introduction of the Susan B. Anthony dollar and I remember thinking what a bizarre concept it was, given the obvious increases in divorce and illegitimacy - although clearly we hadn't seen anything yet.) Now, these accurate predictions do not prove the causal relationship, but they either indicate that a) the anti-suffragists were wildly and improbably lucky, or b) there is in fact a relationship of some sort, possibly causal.

Second, Eris appears to suggest that there is no link between voting and social changes This is shallow and silly, so I suspect mild disingenuousness here. No, one seldom votes for no-fault divorce, but one votes for the judges and state politicians who create the institution. The easiest way to demonstrate the probability of a historically causal link is to note who is defending such ills and attempting to perpetuate them. Unilateral divorce is initiated about 80 percent of the time by women and women are 40 percent more likely to live in poverty (and presumably receive welfare - no stats on that). Welfare reform, anti-abortion laws and divorce reform are all bitterly opposed by women's groups and the political party that is primarily dependent on women; it would seem most strange to argue that these groups now defending existing laws did not support enacting them in the first place, and even stranger to suggest those now opposing such laws were originally in favor of them.

However, relevant law is not the only influence. The huge 250 percent jump in American divorce began in 1960, while the first no-fault law was not passed until 1969, halfway through that 20-year period. (The law was signed by Ronald Reagan, ironically enough). The salient factor was the massive entry of women into the workplace that began in 1950 - AFTER the war, before anyone starts up with that misguided line - and the direct connection between women voting and women working was made by both suffragists and anti-suffragists prior to 1920. I've already written on falling real wages, you can read that here if you like.

As I said before, none of this completely proves my point beyond any shadow of a doubt, but should suffice to demonstrate this is not a simple matter of post hoc propter hoc here. Still, the social changes brought about by the 50-year Congressional rule of the Democratic Party could never have happened without the women's vote, for as the Party Chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party said: "“When women vote, Democrats win." And the Center for American Women and Politics states that there is an average nine-point partisan gap in Congressional races, ranging to twelve percent in the previous Presidential election.

Left-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either it makes no difference who wins office - in which case the venom directed at socially conservative Republicans makes no sense - or the boost that women's voting has given the socially progressive Democrats has made a significant impact on society over the last 84 years. "Progress" does not just happen on its own, the accident theory of history notwithstanding.

Finally, a comparison with Switzerland, where women received the right to vote 51 years later than in the USA, is telling. Only 30 percent of women now work outside the home, (59.8% in America), the divorce rate is less than half the American rate, (although it has risen five-fold since 1950), and abortion was only legalized in 2001. This comparison thus tends to support my contention that women's suffrage is indeed a causal factor with relation to three of the four various social ills I mentioned. I'll get to the fourth in my forthcoming response to Bartholomew.

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Mailvox: Conservatives crack up too

BP writes: As usual you liberals try to make a Republican president sound "idiotic". As you know ( because you are in "Mensa") the quote you have taken out of context regarding religion was - CLEARLY - an attempt to say that the barbaric behavior of the Taliban was not part of the spirit of Islam. Meaning, most obviously to all but the most critical observer, that barbaric behavior has nothing to do with religion.

Right, that barbaric behavior has nothing to do with the religion of peace. Now, how about the barbaric behavior in the 34 other wars that are being waged in the Dar-al-Harb by the Taliban's peaceful co-religionists. I'm sure those have nothing to do with religion too.

While I will agree it could have been stated better in THIS particular speech, you wait for one poorly worded sentence out of hundreds of speeches given each month - and use THAT quote to imply the president is an idiot. You go on to say, "all attempts at negotiation and reasonable accommodation are doomed to failure". I say - you are EXACTLY correct. This is why this president has taken out the Taliban, restored some level of order to Afghanistan, taken out Saddam Hussein and his terror regime, began rebuilding and committing political suicide by asking for many more billions of dollars in an election year ( I guess this did not require any leadership on his part either?).

Political courage is spending taxpayer money? Are you sure you're not a liberal? And what is it with people and math this week? Do you really think President Bush gives a minimum of seven speeches every day? Ten, if he takes weekends off.

In the same breath you liberals argue that we should not be there. Am I to assume you are saying that we should let these people continue to operate "status quo"? After we have been attacked AGAIN. Which is it folks? Pick a side, or at the very least pick a position!! As you say negotiating won't work, apparently war is a bad idea too. Must be easy to sit there, wait for a bad quote and also not support ANY solution on the Islamic fundamentalists whatsoever, no matter what it is. You apparently support NOTHING.

If we get attacked again by Saudi-funded Saudi terrorists, what country will we invade next, Venezuela? They're in OPEC too, after all. I have on several occasions suggested two very different alternatives, either of which will work better than the present course of action.

Great job....is what your (not) doing cowardice??

Perhaps, there's a lot of things I'm not doing. Among them, writing to a notoriously illiberal columnist under the wildly mistaken impression that he's a liberal. Are you feeling a little uncomfortable, conservatives? You should. This sort of thing is precisely why some left-liberals have rightly responded to my "Argue like a liberal" column by saying, hey, the right wing does it too.

There are no sacred cows. Passion is no substitute for logic.

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Mailvox: The pinata bursts

JW bids us adieu: Let's recap, shall we? 1) You refuse to seriously address any of the points I raised, particularly that of "original intent", a point which you refuse to either justify or concede,but prefer to accuse me of "randomly blowing hot air". 2) You confuse my letter with someone else's, and then make sarcastic comments about MY reading comprehension skills. 3) You give me the nickname "Ace".

Therefore I see little point in further correspondence discussing your ill-informed, ill-conceived opinions about women's suffrage. You, sir, are nothing but a pompous big mouth--- and you ain't foolin' nobody with that MENSA shit, neither!

For the third and last time, my dear Ace, I never made any argument based on "original intent" nor so much as even mentioned those words. Nor did I confuse your letter with someone else's, I was simply trying to explain to you how you'd originally misconstrued my response to someone else's comment as an original intent argument.

C'est la vie. Run along now.

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Mailvox: the human pinata

JW writes again: I never mentioned a word about "heredity monarchy in Saudi Arabia", Mr. Day. What in heaven's name are you talking about?

My mention of the Founding Fathers and their lack of support for women's suffrage was in response to a comment by Dr BDH, who said, predictably: "At last Vox Day has explained why everything is so great in Saudi Arabia." JW seems to be confused as to who wrote what when, and why.

The case against women's suffrage is by no means limited to original intent. Since you've now abandoned your previous "original intent" argument, may I take it then that you have tacitly conceded that argument as being totally without merit?

No, because I never made any original intent argument. As you admit in your first paragraph, you clearly have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not surprised. Nice try for a quick win on a technicality, though.

You are the one randomly blowing hot air--- first putting forward "original intent" as a justification for opposing female suffrage, and then quickly abandoning that argument as soon as its inherent absurdity is pointed out.

Sigh...he's a slow one, this guy. Even for a libewal.

Anyway, to answer your question, Mr. Day, the women of my family are intensely involved in politics at the federal, state and local levels of government. They have run for office, held office, and supported other women who did so. They have worked on numerous issues and supported various political parties. I would personally be VERY upset if they could not vote or run for office, and I also think that their lack of political participation would be a loss to thenation as a whole.

Well, at least he's honest. Women's suffrage has benefited society because JW would be VERY personally upset if it didn't exist today. A solid 8.5 on the libewal argumentation scale, ladies and gentlemen! The moderate use of all-caps shows a nice flair for the dramatic.

Secondly, the women of my family, like those of the entire nation, pay/have paid literally trillions of dollars in taxes toward the common good. I fail to see why you'd propose taxation without representation for them--- and this is true regardless of the particular type of taxation, whether it be income tax (which you probably oppose as a Libertarian) or sales tax or tariffs on imported goods or whatever type of tax the human mind can devise.

He's a real math whiz, this JW. Who wants to let him know that the annual national economy is all of $10.5 trillion. Since their taxes are in the literal trillions, they must be in the highest bracket and must have had a collective minimum income of at least $4 trillion over the past 40 years since women entered the work force en masse. So, the women of JW's family are collectively pulling in at least $400 billion per year - say, are any of them single?

(Now, this assumes that taxes go towards the common good, not paying interest on the national debt as the Grace Commission found is actually the case.)

The fact that you are obviously irritated by the fact that women do not reliably support your favourite political or religious beliefs is, too be blunt, tough shit for you. Other people's rights are not based upon your personal satisfaction.

I'm not irritated, I'm just observing that women's suffrage has, as far as I can see, made American women more miserable than ever and helped tear apart our society. But perhaps I'm wrong, and we can have more divorce, more abortion, more obese single women on welfare and then society will finally reach that glorious pinnacle of self-satisfied ecstasy towards which universal suffrage is destined to bring it.

I think I'm feeling a little KG today. Anyone else feeling it? Get that weak....

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The democracy challenge

Franger writes: Vox, I challenge you on what I feel is a flaw in this whole thing about denying women the right to vote. Why stop at women? By your argument - women are more likely to support security over liberty in their voting decisions. This is based on polling data. So why not african americans? They consistently vote for democrats or other leftist groups or parties overwhelmingly. Why not white atheist males? Couldn't it be said that they tend to form a worldview different than that from white christian males? And what makes you worthy of the vote Vox?

I never said anything about stopping at women. Most people should not be permitted to vote in a constitutional republic. Women are simply the largest group that reliably opposes, collectively speaking, individual human liberty and freedom. Let me turn it around for a moment and ask this question: why have any restrictions on democracy at all? Why were such restrictions instituted in the first place?

The reason is that most people are incapable of looking beyond either tomorrow or their own personal interests. We do not permit children to vote because they would make foolish decisions that are not in their best interest. Women, like many other groups taken in the collective, repeatedly demonstrate that they are not interested in accepting responsibility for themselves. This is why they reliably support ideologies designed to concentrate all decision-making power in a very small oligarchy.

One way or another, an elite will be wielding power in every society. The choice is simple. A broad and decentralized elite of independent meritocracy - in historical terms, the rich white men who founded this country - or a very small and vicious elite that has clawed its way to central authority.

So, I challenge "democrats" such as Franger to put their money where their mouths are. Either support a true democracy and abjure this bizarre antidemocratic system designed expressly to thwart the genuine will of the people expressed through the ballot box, or admit that restrictions on voting are necessary and we are simply quibbling about precisely where to draw the line.

I do favor a decentralized constitutional republic where only those who demonstrate a) an understanding of constitutional principles, b) an ability to logically, c) an ability to think beyond their own interests, d) an ability to accept consequences, e) a genuine commitment to individual human liberty and freedom as expressly delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are permitted a voice in government.

But if that is not possible, and at this time I admit that it is not, I would fully support a genuine democracy, wherein the Supreme Court and Congress are disbanded, replaced by national referendums voted on weekly by the entire people. The technology is there. The perfect expression of the will of the people is possible. I'm all for it, seriously, as the history of state referendums proves that the people are more to be trusted than the ruling oligarchy.

So, tell me, outraged supporters of women's suffrage, do you really support the right of women to vote? Or is it necessary to limit it and keep it under the control of those who know what's best for them?

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Mailvox: fun with reading comprehension

JW writes in: You are wrong in so many ways! But let me just limit this posting to your use of the so-called "original intent" of the Founding Fathers as an argument against women's suffrage. The genius of the Fathers was not to bequeath us a granite monument with The Correct Answer for all time! Their genius was to leave us a living, breathing document that would live, grow and change according to the demands of democracy and conscience.

I will begin by admitting straight away that the Framers had no "original intent" to allow women to vote. In turn, YOU must admit that the Framers had no "original intent"to have the seat of government in Washington, DC. There was no "original intent" to have the President live in a building called the White House. There was no "original intent" to have an FBI. There was no "original intent" to have a CIA. There was no "original intent" to have NASA. There was no "original intent" to have the US AirForce. There was no "original intent" to have the US Marines. There was no "original intent"to have the Federal Reserve Bank. There was no "original intent" to have a Smithsonian. There was no "original intent" to free the slaves. There was no "original intent" for the Lousiana Purchase. There was no "original intent" for Texas statehood. There was no "original intent"for Alaskan statehood. There was no "original intent" for Hawaiian statehood. There was no "original intent" to have Thanksgiving. There was no "original intent" to have a national anthem. There was no "original intent" to have a Pledge of Allegiance.

I could go on and on, but these few examples alone reduce your tiresome argument to absurdity. You, and a few of your wacko friends may personally be opposed to female suffrage, but to attribute these warped sentiments to the Founders is completely bogus.

The wonders of the liberal mind never cease to entertain! The most amusing thing is that he doesn't seem to realize that I never once mentioned anything about "original intent" as an argument against women's suffrage. I only mentioned the Founding Fathers to illustrate why it is absurd to equate a lack of support for female voting with support for a hereditary monarchy as in Saudi Arabia.

My favorite part is when he concludes by stating that the Founders did not have the sentiments that he began by admitting they did, in fact, have. This is a lovely exhibit of how to argue like a liberal:

1. Fail to understand the point.
2. Latch onto a phrase the other person mentioned and make naked assertions derived from that.
3. Claim that this completely destroys the other person's argument, even if it has literally nothing to do with said argument.
4. Assert that you have plenty of other equally devastating responses, but you won't bother with them right now.
5. Conclude by contradicting yourself.
6. Walk away thinking you won.

Che bellissimo! Truly, a work of art.

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Mailvox: the co-dependent presidency

AW writes from Mexico: Pretty outrageous of Bush, that speech of his. What with the "crusade" omission and the "not the expression of a religion" absurdity. And another zinger- Bush spoke of the war against the "ideology of terrorism". But terrorism isn't an ideology - it's a method ! It's like FDR saying WWII was a war against the "ideology of blitzkrieg". Amazing, simply amazing. But have you noticed he's still hated by Muslims as an enemy of Islam? The guy panders and it still does him no good. Another example, he's pandered to Mexico more than any president in history. But here in Mexico, the media calls him an illegitimate president and likens him to Hitler. Will the guy ever learn?

I don't know if I'd characterize the speech as outrageous so much as dispiriting. It's been clear for over sixteen months that retreat from financial empire was out, and for nine months that decisive war is also out. I'm hoping that we're not soon going to see another Pearl Harbor that will provide the impetus for kickstarting the latter option, but time will tell. Then again, one can never be too cynical where geopolitics are concerned.

As for the president, more and more he appears to have a relationship with his various foes that resembles a co-dependent battered woman. "Love me, love me," he cries. "See what I do for you?" And all that gets him is another punch in the face. This is not a model of leadership, political courage or strength of character in my view.

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A tribute to Ronald Reagan

Of all the remembrances of Ronald Reagan now being written, I think Joe Carter's is perhaps the most significant.

The most appropos act of tribute to the late president, however, belongs to George W. Bush: "The federal government will be closed Friday in honor of former President Ronald Reagan, the White House announced Sunday."

I can't think of a more fitting way to honor the passing of this great man. Too bad the closure won't be made permanent.

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Mailvox: Caution or cowardice

RD writes: Everyone in the world, who is not in denial, Christian and Muslim alike are holding their breath hoping that the coming World War, that everyone fears, can be delayed or prevented by partial war and appeasement. When it comes, It will be unlike any war in the history of civilization and hundreds of millions will die and it may continue for at least fifty years. Some believe that Armageddon is upon us. Most hope and pray that it is not, including President Bush.

It is a clash of civilizations that is over a thousand years old. And the three major religions all predict an ultimate conflict. The forces at work are beyond the control of anyone. It is not of our choosing and our only choices will be to become Muslim, to fight or to die. Still, there were few who believed that the conflict with the Soviet Union would not ultimately result in a nuclear holocaust. It was the singular courage of Reagan that won that conflict without a war.

I agree that we are potentially dealing with a great clash of civilizations here, but I don't believe that the American people are well served by a dissembling leadership. The American people are being lied to about the nature of the enemy, the sacrifices that they may be forced, (not asked), to make as well as the dangers to their liberties that they face, from within and without. Meanwhile, the administration takes steps that actually place the people in more danger, even as they fail to prepare them for the potential conflict.

It is not too late for the West to avoid open war. Pulling back our quasi-imperial outposts and expelling the alien fifth column would likely lead to the collapse of the dollar's global financial hegemony and have a terrible effect on our economy, but far less than full-scale conflict between the Dar-al-Harb and the Dar-al-Islam, and America would remain intact and prepared for decisive action. Those European countries wise enough to follow our example would do well - the Netherlands is already taking steps in this direction - while others, like France, will not do anything until it was too late for anything but the usual European solution, vicious government persecution of the disfavored minority.

This is a subject on which the national debate should begin, but since we live in a land where the people have given up their sovereignty to a cabal of professional bureaucrats and politicians concerned primarily about reelection, that seems unlikely. So, we'll soon find out if George Bush's half-measures will suffice.

But for those who still consider the president to be a great martial leader, ponder this. Both Churchill and Reagan spoke long and loud about the primary danger posed to their respective nations, to such an extent that they were both considered Johnny One-notes, long before either of them were elected to office. And once in office, neither was shy about working towards eliminating the danger.

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The little engines that couldn't

Naturally, some left-liberals have gotten their panties in a bunch about my suggestion that women's suffrage has been disastrous for the nation. And as you'd expect, none of them actually bothered to offer any argument that this is not in fact the case, but consider angry name-calling, senseless sputtering and otherwise affecting the vapors to pass for devastating response.

The expected comparisons to Saudia Arabia and the Taliban popped up; apparently the distinction between limited voting in a constitutional republic and no voting at all in a hereditary monarchy is too fuzzy for these handicapable brains to absorb. In other words, Thomas Jefferson = the House of Saud. Yeah, good luck with that one.

It's a simple question, actually. Is the nation better off or worse off as a result of women's suffrage? If so, how? It's a tough case to make, unless you want to argue that divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality and falling real wages are the historical signs of a healthy society. Of course, these are the same sort of people who, in the past, have tried to argue that masses of women entering the work force had NO POSSIBLE EFFECT on wage rates, so I wouldn't put it past them to give it the old sophmoronic try.

The amusing thing is that these people, presumably small-d democrats, are so clueless that they don't realize that this nation is not and has never been a democracy. We could actually have a real democracy now, as the technology is possible, and yet it never crosses the tiny little minds of these "democrats" to call for one as they support yet another plutocrat in the Bush-Clinton-Bush Yale line.

Voting is not a God-given right as delineated in either the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. Liberty, in fact, denies universal democracy, (or mobocracy as it was known), a fact that anyone who has read the Federalist Papers would know the Founding Fathers understood very well. The dichotomy of a libertarian favoring limited suffrage is only an apparent contradiction to the ideologically and historically ignorant.

E perche "popoli" invece "populi"? Perche parlo italiano, non latina.

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Reading ebooks in Linux

For some time, I've been disappointed that there isn't a good Palmbook reader for Linux. This is strange, since some Palm-equivalents actually run on a Linux OS, but I've finally found a solution to my liking.

WINE, the Windows emulator, is a good program but not the easiest to comprehend or manipulate. In my case, it was almost unusable because every time I ran it, it would take 3-4 minutes to run the fonts through some process or another. After a little digging, I learned that I had to tell WINE how to find a place to load the Windows fonts automatically, which, since I run a dual-boot machine, is in the Windows Fonts directory.

I told it how to find them by going into the WINE configuration file, which is done by using the terminal to go into /home/user/.wine and running GEDIT CONFIG. I only had to change one line, (the italicized line below), and remove the semicolon that commented it out.

; the TrueType font dirs you want to make accessible to wine
[FontDirs]
"dir1" = "/mnt/windows/winnt/Fonts"
;"dir2" = "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
;"dir3" = "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TT"
;"dir4" = "/usr/share/fonts/TT"

Palm Reader then worked without the excruciating delay, but I was getting an error saying that Windows 98 or better was required, so I made one more change, (again italicized below).

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
"Windows" = "win2k"
; DOS version to imitate
;"DOS" = "6.22"

Finally, for ease of use, I created a launcher by first creating a little text file called winpalm, which does nothing more than change the directory to the one containing Palm Reader and call WINE PALM\ READER.EXE. The launcher command is simply SH WINPALM. Pick an icon, and you're reading .pdb files in Linux. I don't do much reading this way, preferring my Dana most of the time, but it's a nice option if you're going to sit down and have a sandwich while you're reading.

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For the occupation equivalency crowd

From WND: Some 80 percent of the 816 GIs killed in Iraq have died since major combat operations were declared over in May 2003.

This is the percentage equivalent of America suffering an additional 1.17 million fatalities after hostilities ceased in WWII. (There were 292,131 American battle deaths from 1941-1945). From this, we can conclude at least one of two things:

1. The current war was never truly about Iraq or Hussein per se and is thus not over.
2. The Japan/Germany post-war model is not relevant to the present situation.

My belief is that both are true. I have no doubt that tomorrow's column is going to infuriate a lot of people, including some regulars here, but I would encourage you to seriously consider what I am saying in light of the established facts, not your instinctive emotional reaction.

There are those who consider George W. Bush to be carrying Ronald Reagan's torch. I find the suggestion laughable. The man who did not fear to demand that the leader of the world's second most powerful military force "tear down this wall!" would never have uttered the infamous "religion of peace" line.

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Mailvox: Why would you think that?

Rhone writes: think it would be very interesting to see WND's response to a column like that. Prediction: they won't like it; moreover, they won't like it Big Time.

Manatee adds: No way will WND allow him to write that piece.

Sure they will. They've only ever refused to publish one column of mine, on the close etymological relationship between a homosexual slur and a political ideology, and they were probably right to do so. I'd be shocked if they demurred or even commented in any way on a column about the voting electorate.

That being said, there's only one way to find out. If someone can email me the results of the post-1920 presidential election results broken down by sex, I'll write it. I bet I can not only make a case for it, but one with which many women will agree as well as presenting an alternative that even outraged feminists will find hard to refute.

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Rest in Peace, Ronald Reagan

May he go with God, into light and glory everlasting.

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Mailvox: good question

Anonymous writes: I'm female, and retired military (which for those of you who never served means at least 20 years in uniform). I cannot abide discussing political issues with most women (there are few exceptions) because they are not willing, and in some cases are not able, to think. So why did you guys give women the right to vote?

I assume our forefathers gave women the right to vote for much the same reason that many men abdicate their position as head of the household. They figure, well, at least they'll finally shut up about everything, and really, how bad can it possibly be?

A few years later, while writing an alimony check that exceeds the rent for his studio apartment that is one-tenth the size of the house in which his ex-wife is living with the kids he hasn't seen for a month, the man dimly begins to realize that somewhere along the way, he went wrong. Most men wrongly place all the blame on the woman at this point, little realizing how they were complicit in their own demise.

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Mailvox: imagining anti-semites

Alex writes: Vox="That's just bizarre. How does this make sense when Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are usually described as neocons, considering that none of them are Jewish?"

This is made clear in the very next sentence written by VDH... really, Im surprised at this kneejerk blog. VDH makes strong arguments and has done the research to back them up. You jump too quickly to damn when things don't make sense to you, perhaps b/c they rub brusquely against your assumptions.

VDH="Cabal" and "Nazi-like" are also used by others and with increasing frequency to promote the old idea of crafty, sneaky people pulling the wool over honest naifs (no doubt aw-shucks, unsophisticated folks such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice)."

Alex, surely you're not so poorly read that you don't realize VDH simply made that up wholesale, echoing fellow NROniks Mowbray, Frum and Goldberg. No one thinks anyone is pulling the wool over Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice. Name one person who does - VDH certainly doesn't. Indeed, it flies directly in the face of the usual caricature of Cheney pulling Bush's strings from behind the scenes. The vast majority who oppose Rumfeldian neoconservativism have never heard of Wolfowitz, Perle or Feith, much less Leo Strauss.

In fact, VDH goes so far as to specifically disavow the two primary definitions of neoconservative used by the neocons themselves - a particularly stupid thing to do - and echoes Mowbray's silly hit piece that tried to pin anti-semitism on General Zinni, who, as I pointed out in a previous column, never identified a single neocon in the interview with the Washington Post that so riled the neocons and their friends. A strong argument? VDH's uncharacteristically lightweight assertion doesn't even rise to the level of an argument at all!

What we're seeing here is the neocons clumsily attempting to silence their critics in the same manner that the ADL attempted to shut down The Passion of the Christ. I expect the tactic to work about as well, too.

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The pursuit of equity

According to an Associated Press story today Wal-Mart “facing lawsuits for alleged gender bias and unfair treatment of workers, will cut top executives’ bonuses if the company does not meet its diversity goals.” The article says that the pay cuts will be made “if the company does not promote women and minorities in proportion to the number that apply for management positions.” It then quotes company chief executive Lee Scott: “If 50 percent of the people applying for the job of store manager are women, we will work to make sure that 50 percent of the people receiving those jobs are women.”

If I was a lawyer, I'd bring a bias suit against the NBA. Clearly, the number of white men are shockingly underrepresented there, as no team should have more than 13 percent black players. Let's nick David Stern's salary if he can't get some more white boys suited up next season.

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Freud didn't know the half of it

This has got to be a parody. I think my favorite bit is the notion that "women have been kept in the dark about this for a reason." How thoroughly and psychotically self-obssessed do you have to be to believe that the powers-that-be have a particular interest in your various excretionary options, which one would assume to be reasonably self-evident to any creature with more synaptic connections than a rotted stump?

Thanks a lot, Desert Cat.

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Speaking of women in politics

Nancy Pelosi spoke on Meet The Press: "I made that statement that I did, and I think with great courage, if I might say about myself, because I am worried about the troops on the ground in Iraq or wherever our troops serve."

The most powerful woman in American politics thinks she's got great courage criticizing the other party's foreign policy because she is vaguely worried about the troops, wherever they might happen to be. (It's too bad Russert didn't ask her where else she thought they were; that could have been funny.) She probably couldn't face the obstacle course at boot camp without crying, forget the nasty, irregular guerilla warfare the troops are currently facing in Iraq. Great courage, mm hmmmm....

It's strange, but women in front of a microphone cannot seem to resist the urge to talk about themselves. I, I, I, I, I. Margaret Thatcher, one of the few public women I admire, was a notable exception to this, as she discussed ideas, not how she felt about ideas.

Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton. The prosecution could easily rest on that evidence alone.

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Why women shouldn't vote

An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 70% of men favored smaller government, but only 48% of women believed the same way. So men are far more likely to view big government as part of the problem, not the solution.

PJ O'Rourke once said: "Advocating the expansion of central government is a crime against humanity!" It's pretty clear to me that one of the most destructive forces in our society has been women's suffrage. Women consistently and reliably turn towards government as a solution for perceived problems, which creates more intractable problems, which then is used to justify more government intervention. This process is unlikely to stop until the entire edifice collapses of its own weight.

It's too bad that the concept of the states as laboratories of democracy has been abandoned, because I'd love to see the difference between two neighboring states, one of which permitted women to vote and the other that did not. It would be particularly interesting to see in which state women would prefer to live. I suspect the answer might surprise a lot of people.

The fact that the Kerry campaign would run these canards reveals an unsettling truth - that in order to win the female vote, Kerry believes that he needs to continually nurture women's sense of grievance and victimization.

He has no other choice. Feminist women believe that they exist for no other reason than to be aggrieved. "I am a victim, therefore I am" could serve as the motto for the entire movement. I'm not advocating some sort of sharia here - as far as I'm concerned, women can work wherever and wear whatever they want. But allowing them a voice in government and politics is disastrous, if not suicidal, and has led directly to the loss of more American lives in three decades than in every war since the Revolution.

Someone had to say it. I just did.

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VERY disappointed in VDH

VDH gets his history wrong: Neoconservatives? Let us be frank. This appellation is no longer a descriptive term of so-called "new conservatives," those members of the eastern intelligentsia who were rather liberal on some domestic hot-button issues (tolerant of open borders, quiet about abortion, indifferent to gay marriage, etc.), but promoted a proactive neo-Wilsonian idealism in foreign policy (whether in the Balkans in taking out Milosevic or in trying to replace Saddam Hussein with democracy rather than a Shah-like proconsul).

Instead, face the ugly fact: "Neocon" is now a slur for "Jew." General Zinni (who once boasted that 600 to 2,000 Iraqis were eliminated from the air in his Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign) is now ubiquitous on television hawking his new book, criticizing the war (on Memorial Day, no less), and being praised in the Arab news as he talks about "Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith" and all those who purportedly got us into Iraq.

That's just bizarre. How does this make sense when Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are usually described as neocons, considering that none of them are Jewish? As for Zinni, he never made any reference to the ethnic or religious backgrounds of those he was criticizing. First Mowbray, now Goldberg and Hanson... National Review is running a serious risk of making itself a laughingstock on this issue.

Neocon is a slur for a fake conservative, Victor.

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The sign of the null set

L writes on Nate's blog: women who have the same credentials and the same responsibilities as the men in their fields are often paid less than their male colleagues. women are often denied promotions and tenure. women are often denied the opportunity to attend school. women are often subjected to the decisions of the male figures in their lives without ever being given a chance to think or to speak or to express their own opinion.

Ah yes, the whiny meanderings of a self-professed feminist are always amusing. Since they're all afraid to post here, or even email me anymore, I'm forced to make do with the leavings of others.

I should mention that the above is just a selection of her stream-of-barely-consciousness, but it is nicely representative. As to her complaints: 1) Women are paid less when they work less. 2) So are men. 3) 56 percent of U.S. college students are female, so clearly we need to deny even more women the opportunity to advanced education if we're going to have gender equity. 4) It's impossible to deny anyone the chance to think, although Nate's visitor seems to have passed on her opportunity to do so before writing.

Bah - this is child's play.

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June 6th, 1944

The price of war does not stop being paid when the guns fall silent. This was driven home to me when I bought my first house from an older couple who had lived there for many years. My grandfather, a Marine who'd fought on Guadacanal and Tarawa, recognized the home seller as an Army veteran and asked where he'd served.

In Europe, the man answered, and his eyes filled unexpectedly with tears. He turned away for a moment, and then, composed again, he apologized and explained that he'd lost his brother in Normandy. This conversation was taking place 53 years later, but it was clear that the pain still lingered.

It is almost impossible for us, sixty years later, to understand the grim realities of D-Day. Yes, we are unfortunate enough to live in what a Chinese sage described as the curse of interesting times, and yet, we do not yet live in a real state of war. Most of us know a few soldiers who are involved in the present conflict - I was relieved to receive an email yesterday from my Italian cousin in Baghdad, telling me that he was fine after the embassy attack - but it is not the vast majority of young men of our acquaintance who are in uniform and in danger as was the case back then.

A few years ago, I took part in a massive simulation of Gold Beach, using the Advanced Squad Leader system. Each player was responsible for a section of the beach; I was commanding three companies of British troops plus 12 Shermans and a few funnies. The experience drove home how a relatively small number of defending German troops were able to inflict terrible casualties on the landing Allies, and it was sobering to see the pile of cardboard casualties grow and realize that each piece represented the lives of ten men.

To the left, I lost an entire company, and only a lucky shot and a wildly aggressive charge by one Sherman commander allowed me to take out the two AT-guns and get the two surviving companies off the beach. It was only a game, and yet, it is true that the valiant action of a single brave man can make all the difference in the world to the rest of the men involved.

In the end, after many hours, the Allies triumphed on the table just as they had many years before on the real beaches. But there was no celebration by the winners, instead we found ourselves standing quietly around the massive array of maps, contemplating those who had fought and died so long ago. Some may think that it is strange and silly, if not downright disrespectful, to view the tragic loss of human life through the lens of a wargame. But, sixty years later, this is the only lens that many of us have.

Soon, all the young men who stormed Normandy will be gone. But as long as there are other young men who are curious about history, who want to know what happened when, where and why, neither they nor their sacrifice will ever be forgotten.

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Down in the bizness

The Paratrooper of Love emailed me a recommendation yesterday: The Gunner Palace, which is a milblog chronicling some of the challenges, frustrations and absurdities of war. It features, among other things, freestyle rap from Baghdad and a Hendrix goes to Iraq version of the Star-Spangled Banner.

The blog makes for fascinating reading: Over the weeks, a rhythm developed: sleep late to avoid the heat. Try to eat an MRE-anything without pork in it. Drink water, lots of water. Smoke fake Marlboros from the Haji stand and wait for something to happen-anything: a patrol. An escort. An OP. Most of my time was spent talking to the younger soldiers. I enjoyed being with them. For such a violent place, there was a lot of laughter-much of it from a very dark strain of humor.... After seeing this war firsthand, I don't have any easy answers. In fact, I may have no answers. You try to find good in something like this; you try to find a reason. You try to explain death. I asked soldiers what they thought and their answers were simple. After nearly a year, it wasn't about Iraq, the Iraqis, democracy, Donald Rumsfeld or oil. It was about them. They just wanted to finish the job they were sent to do so they could go home.

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Abiogenic oil

Larry writes:Furthermore, if more recently developed theories of oil formation are correct, and oil is not of biological origin, we may have used only a fraction of the total oil that is available.

I've never believed that oil was a byproduct of dead dinosaurs or whatever the common understanding is. For one thing, unless there was a secret dinosaur graveyard to which all dinosaurs in a 1,000 mile radius went to die, the non-random placement of oil fields made no sense. I know literally nothing about the subject, but the usual layman's notion never made any sense to me.

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So sprach Firestarter

As you know, I had the benefit of a dinner with Cheney some years ago. He was refreshingly honest about his motivations. With your forebearance, I'll tell you what he told me:

1. The stability of the US economy is critically dependent upon the ready availability and supply of cheap oil.
2. Within ten years the US will be primarily dependent upon foreign suppliers, the majority of whom are muslim arab nations.
3. One of the major sources of oil is Iraq, which controls 11% of the world's known economically viable reserves.
4. Hostility to the US had resulted in Iraq contracting its oil extraction to European nations, principally France, Russia and Germany.
5. The US response to these contracts was to impose an embargo on these contracts through the mechanism of the UN.
6. A stalemate ensued between these European nations and the US. (At the time of our dinner we were less than a quarter of the way through the stalemate that would cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children who were starved or denied medical treatment by the UN sanctions and a corrupt Iraqi regime for over ten years).
7. At the time of the first Gulf war, Iraq's capacity to conduct an offensive strike against its neighbours was eliminated. The coalition flew several thousand subsequent bombing runs over Iraq taking out all possible military targets over the ensuing years without the loss of a single plane to ground fire.
8. And yet the Iraqi intention to sell their oil to the Europeans in Euros remained firm.
9. In order to secure US control of supply, it was envisaged that a sequenceo f military conquests was nece ssary. For some time (in 1993) Russia had been attempting to control Afghanistan. The primary purpose was to secure theregion in order to pipe newly discovered Russian oil across Afghanistan to the (Caspian?) sea. If the US could control Afghanistan, it could control the supply of this Russian oil. (Since the invasion of Afghanistan, it has been realised that the Russian oil is of much inferior quality and less economically accessible than was previously thought - hence the loss of interest in this region since).
10. The next cab off the rank was to be Iraq, followed by Syria and eventually Iran.
11. However, the stumbling block for these excursions remained US public opinion. Cheney was frustrated that the average American would never endorse such a substantial and long term military strategy until there was an oil crisis, by which time it would be too late. In the meantime, the Russians and Europeans would have seized the advantage and there was a real risk theUS would end up having to pay Euro for their oil which would be an economic disaster and end the US dominance of global finances.
12. He remained bitterly disappointed in Bush (Senior) who had squandered the opportunity to unseat Hussein in Gulf War I.

I have stated on numerous occasions that I find the notion of war to defend the imperial dollar more credible than the notion of "blood for oil". While this is likely only one of several factors, I don't think that it's an accident that the Arab countries, as well as some Islamic allies such as Indonesia, have chosen this moment to begin bruiting about the gold dinar.

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Live-blogging Miss Universe

The Trunk and I were talking the other day about finding opportunities for live-blogging. Tonight I remembered that the finale of the Miss Universe pageant is televised--inspiration struck!

9:14 -- Just in time! They all came out in swimsuits. Hard to pick a favorite at this point.

9:16 -- Somehow the swimsuits don't seem to be as big as they used to be.

9:17 -- Miss USA just came out. She's one of the favorites, but somehow doesn't quite do it for me.

9:18 -- Miss Paraguay is clearly a contender.

9:20 -- No offense to our Australian friends, but Miss Australia looks as though she's hoping to pick up some tips along the runway.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I've met some lovely sheilas here and there, but they do often seem to have just a touch of the trailer park, if not the prison ship, about them. While Puerto Rico and Colombia offered some serious competition, I would have voted for Miss Estonia.

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Mailvox: yes, it is

TH questions my logic: That's logic? First, the notion that American doesn’t have to pay blood for oil when it can just print money is daft. Printing money at will by America would only make the dollar worthless. Of course, in Mr. Day’s view, paper money is worthless anyway because America has been taken off the gold standard. This completely misses the point that neither green paper nor gold have any inherent value other than what humans place on them. Sure, gold can be made into pretty things and is difficult to find. That wouldn’t matter if people hadn’t already accepted it as a measure of wealth and currency of exchange. As long as paper money is commonly accepted as legal tender for the payment of goods and services, its value relies on the same laws of supply and demand that govern the ‘price’ of gold. Print money at will, and soon people are carting wheelbarrows of cash to buy their daily bread. It wouldn’t be any different if all exchanges were handled in gold coin and the Himalayas were suddenly discovered to have a solid gold core covered by a thin layer of granite.

First, as the financial expert Firestarter points out: "The vast majority of the cost of foreign oil is paid in US government bonds. Essentially an IOU for billions with a coupon (interest) rate of just 1% p.a. Since these bonds can literally be printed by the US government at no immediate cost beyond the coupon rate, oil can essentially be bought for next to nothing. The long term costs of such a policy are price inflation and/or the deflation of the $US, proportional to the value of money supply "created" by such a policy. We have already seen the devaluation of the US$ by some 35% and the escalation of asset values world-wide as a consequence."

Following on to this, I note that the Fed created $48 billion last week, which is enough to pay cash for 1.12 billion barrels of oil at $42.50/barrel, significantly more than the 70 million barrels we use every week. Since January 20, 2004, the M3 money stock has increased by 3.3 percent to $9.1 trillion. That's $300 billion dollars printed in four months.

In other words, the situation is precisely as I described it. Unsurprisingly, TH went on to try arguing that the 10 billion barrels in ANWR will only allow the US to go without importing oil for 2.5 years, of course, he ignores the tiny little fact that the whole point is to allow us to go without importing any ARAB oil, which drilling in ANWR would let us do for around 15 years, 30 if we were content to reduce our Arab imports by half.

So, thank you, TH, for underlining my point about the ignorance of American left-liberals.

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Mailvox: Run away, run away!

DY writes: "Spiting Their Pretty Faces". I agree with you 100%. Keep up the excellent work. We need more men like you..... I've always argued that today's women are unrealistic in their criteria for men. The problem isn't a shortage of good men (as Oprah preaches), but today's women's failure to recognize good men and give them a shot. Like your article points out, most intelligent men avoid today's feminist-indoctrinated women like the Black death of the middle ages.

Have you noticed Hollywood's latest obsession. It's the older woman/younger man relationship. Case in point, Demi Moore/Aston Kirchner. Talk shows, women's magazines, and websites flaunt it with the usual in your face so popular with feminists.... Here's something I've noticed more and more as I'm out and about:

1. Older women dressing like kids. They look ridiculous.
2. Older women trying to pick up much younger men. I've talked to 20-something guys being hit on by women in their 40s-50s.
3. Mother/daughter tag teams. The 20 something daughter lures men to their table then pawns them of on her middle age mother.

I tend to agree with this, as I'm frequently astonished by the failure of many women to appreciate the countless good qualities of the Perfect Aryan Male, who is a gentleman, wealthy and intelligent to boot. He has told me several times of being aggressively hit on by women 10 to 15 years older, towards whom he has never sent the slightest signal of interest. I think this smacks of a sad desperation, more to be pitied than mocked, except that they are being held out as role models for the 20- and 30-something crowds, some of whom appear to be headed for precisely the same fate.

The first time around, it's tragedy. The second, it's just farce.

Another thing I've noticed is that a number of the women of my acquaintance who married in their late-20s and early 30s married men of superficially lower quality than the men they were dating, (and in many cases rejecting), in previous years. This isn't uniformly true, and my memories are too hazy to make a strong assertion in this regard, but that's the general impression I have.

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Too bad he didn't get a picture

"Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, 'Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here.' "At that point, a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt," NewsMax reported. "Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, 'Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam.' "Just then, Kerry — in front of the schoolchildren, other visitors and Secret Service agents — brazenly 'flashed the bird' at Sampley....

Sure, the networks would have spiked it, but you can't tell me that wouldn't have led on Drudge. The more I see of Kerry, the more I am convinced that he's an unlikeable jerk. I wonder if they'll even let him speak at the Democratic convention.

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You'd think it would be simple

Eclipsed by the furor over foreign policy, Congress' debate over the federal budget has slipped quietly into an impasse that is no garden-variety partisan standoff. It is a battle among Republicans over what their party stands for, analysts say. At issue is whether this year's budget should put the brakes on the tax-cut drive that has been a hallmark of the Bush presidency, and instead put more muscle behind an old GOP orthodoxy: reducing the deficit.

The dispute has kept Congress from completing one of its most basic annual functions: writing a budget to guide the year's tax and spending decisions. And it has opened an unusually bitter and personal dispute among prominent Republicans. A small but powerful faction of Senate Republicans is insisting that the fiscal 2005 budget include rules that require any future tax cuts to be offset so their effect on the deficit would be neutralized; that would mean either cutting spending or raising taxes in other areas. The proposal would strike at the core of President Bush's domestic agenda if he is reelected by making it much more difficult to cut taxes.

But House Republican leaders have vehemently opposed the pay-as-you-go requirement as an affront to their party's credo that, when it comes to taxes, the lower the better. They have kept the requirement out of the budget resolution passed by the House — and have openly questioned the loyalty of Republicans who disagree. "It is a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party: Is it a party about deficit reduction or a party about tax cuts?" said Stanley Collender, a budget expert at Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington.

Let's see... cut taxes or reduce the deficit. Gee, why not simply cut spending and do both?

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Boycott Pizza Hut

A pizza deliveryman won't face charges for fatally shooting a would-be robber several times when he was approached in a high-crime area, but his employer, Pizza Hut, has fired him for violating a company policy against carrying firearms. Ronald B. Honeycutt, 38, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, says he's been delivering pizzas for 20 years and has always packed heat on the job. "It's a clear case of self-defense," Deputy Prosecutor Barb Crawford said. "He did what the law allows him to do to protect himself."Jerome Brown-Dancler approached Honeycutt at around 11 p.m. on May 17 just after he had made a pizza delivery in Indianapolis. According to the report, Brown-Dancler pointed a 9 mm handgun at the Pizza Hut employee as he was entering his van.

Brown-Dancler's gun carried a loaded 14-round clip but had no bullet in the chamber, Crawford told the Star. When confronted, Honeycutt pulled his own 9 mm from the back of his pants and fired until it was empty. He says he fired 15 times in about eight seconds. An autopsy revealed Brown-Dancler was hit at least 10 times.

If Pizza Hut will not recognize the single most important American right, I suggest that Americans refuse to patronize their pizza. I'm quite happy to make do with Domino's.

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Vox Tox: the second whack

I'm not planning on doing a daily Vox Tox or anything - once a week is most likely - but I didn't think the Libertarian nomination should pass without comment. I also had some interesting email that called for addressing and I wanted to see if using a different recording method might help a bit.

For those who are interested, I'm using an Open Source recording program called Audacity. I record with that, run the Amplify effect on my voice, then paste the music into the beginning, middle and end. I then export it as an MP3. Unfortunately, the program gives me no control over whether the MP3 is exported at 128, 96 or 64. I did try exporting it as an .OGG, but that reduced the size of the 17 meg file by less than one meg.

Anyhow, let me know if you think the quality is better or worse than last time. I also had an idea... there's a number of different bloggers out there audioblogging, and someone with more time to devote to this than me could pull them together, do a little mixing and stream them using Pirate Radio.

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