He's so fucking tuff!

''I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did."
- Senator John Kerry, Democratic presidential candidate

I'm really starting to enjoy this election cycle. The Democratic candidates are imploding like frogs with firecrackers inserted inappropriately. It's like Nine Little Indians, except that it's funny instead of frightening. What with Lieberman and the jelly doughnut threat, Kucinich's dating reality show, Dean being Dean and now this, we may get that dream ticket of Dean-Sharpton for which everyone with a sense of humor is hoping. I thought Kerry had hit the height of his absurdity when he went on Leno wearing that stupid leather jacket, but this is even better. We're reaching Perot-Stockton levels of unintended humor here. I just wish that he'd posed for a matching photo sticking his tongue out and making devils horns.

Dude, that would have been too radical! You totally would have gotten the "rock" vote! Of course, the only zeros who a) think it's cool to talk like that, and b) vote, are on the UT Issues Committee - or were on the committee until recently - and are probably Deanie weenies anyhow.

Rock,
Vox

A dissent

The Sports Guy: "it's like comparing Jessica Biel to Jessica Alba. Hey, you're fine with Jessica Biel. She may even appear in a few All-Star Games. But Jessica Alba ... good Lord."

I'm so disappointed in Mr. Simmons. He has it exactly backwards. Clearly, he's still recovering from the Grady Little affair. But this next bit doesn't surprise me at all, since I happen to be on a mailing list of more than a little interest to Mr. Curt Schilling.

"I'm a longtime member of SOSH, a den for diehards that weeds out weaker members and has 250-post threads on subjects like "Does Casey Fossum's delivery point seem different to you?" and "One Man's Thoughts on Nomar's Last 500 At-Bats, In Order."... An admitted internet junkie hoping to get a handle on Sox fans, Schilling couldn't have picked a better place. He stumbled into a SOSH chat room at 2:30 in the morning and found about 20 fans in there, which is my favorite part of the story -- only the guys from SOSH would be chatting about the Sox at 2:30 A.M. on Thanksgiving night. After he introduced himself, they verified his identity with a barrage of questions, then spent the rest of their time pleading for him to come to Boston. He ended up staying in the chat room past 4 o'clock, talking about anything and everything. I'm not making this up."

Hope Curt gets his Cy Young in Boston. The World Series? Well, let's face it. For the rest of the world, the failure to win a World Series is a lot more amusing.

Baptist quota

In reference to increasing discrimination against Christians, David Limbaugh writes: "I continue to encounter liberals who pooh-pooh the idea that it is even possible to discriminate against a majority group."

I imagine the Shiite majority in Iraq would be able to explain the concept to these benighted, unimaginative folk. If they couldn't do it, then I'm sure the Islamic majority in Algeria would be happy to. Perhaps I should put it in terms the Left can understand. Why are there no openly Baptist character on prime time television, despite the fact that there are more Baptists (12%) than blacks (11%) in the United States, much less homosexuals. By every left-liberal standard, this is horrendous discrimination and must be immediately addressed with a proper quota.

How to get your teen out of public school

Just slip an Advil in their bookbag every day. Eventually, someone will find it, and then the school will get the blame, not you.

Delicate Little Flower

"How big is she going to get," I asked Space Bunny. "Oh, around 70 pounds." Okay, a little bigger than her much-loved Rottweiler cross who we lost to a car two years ago, but not too much. I can deal with it. She took her Delicate Little Flower to the vet yesterday - 83 pounds of very athletic muscle.

Fortunately, she's very sweet, though her bark sounds as if it begins somewhere down around the 6th circle of Hell. It's always amusing to answer the doorbell and see the deliverymen standing 15-20 feet from the door. She's pretty, too, for a linebacker of a dog that looks as if it could eat a Doberman for breakfast.

Sounds like they need a new advisor

After the University of Tennessee administration called the cops on the UT College Republicans, check out what their advisor had to say:

"That evening, Michael Combs, the faculty advisor for the College Republicans and a member of the UT Board of Trustees sent an email to their chairman, saying, "I ask that you rescind this call for parents, family, etc., to contact their state representatives. Such action would do far more harm than any good to the university or to your cause. I also sincerely request that you not make direct contact to media outside the campus since this seems to be an internal campus issue at this point. While the media will love to use a good story to sell their papers, going to them with this concern will resolve nothing.

It's kind of hard to win when your coach is playing for the other team. That's right, CRs, if someone in authority mistreats you, suck it up and hold your tongue. Because that's worked so well for so many people in the past. Funny, but it seems that things only started happening AFTER the CRs went to the media. How on Earth could that possibly be?

VDH gets it, of course

We are not in a war with a crook in Haiti. This is no Grenada or Panama - or even a Kosovo or Bosnia. No, we are in a worldwide struggle the likes of which we have not seen since World War II. The quicker we understand that awful truth, and take measures to defeat rather than ignore or appease our enemies, the quicker we will win. In a war such as this, the alternative to victory is not a brokered peace, but abject Western suicide and all that it entails - a revelation of which we saw on September 11.

And here we all thought that World War III would be fought against the Soviets.

I wouldn't be surprised

I don't have an opinion on the matter, not having enough information, but there sure are far too many unanswered questions about 9/11. I have no doubt that the official histories of TWA 800 and the Oklahoma City bombing are completely false, and I won't be shocked if the same thing turns out to be true here. I will never, ever understand politicians.

I think I'm glad about that.

Owner-equivalent rent

Want to know how the Consumer Price Index is kept so ridiculously low? It's pretty simple, thanks to Mogambo. Housing accounts for 22 percent of the CPI. Home prices are not included in the CPI, although housing rents - which have been declining thanks to historically low mortgage rates and an unusually high percentage of home ownership - are. Furthermore, the CPI assumes that everyone rents, even though 65 percent of households own their own home.

So, you see, if you simply don't count the prices that are increasing rapidly, and you also multiply by three things which are declining in price, you can make it look as if there is only moderate price inflation of around 3 percent, even as $80 billion per month is created, borrowed and pumped into the economy. On an annual basis, that would require 9.23 percent growth of a $10.4 trillion economy just to stay even, but not even the fabulists who concocted the 8.2 percent growth claim were willing to go that far and claim that a mature economy was growing at a rate rivalling the New Asian Tigers during their explosive heyday.

I have said it before. I will say it again. GOVERNMENT STATISTICS ARE FICTION! Ideally, they would be published in the dark fantasy genre.

Vox Popoli: The Mogambo Guru for President in 2004 HQ

I've heard that too

John Curry writes a letter to WND: I've heard homosexuals say, "A person who speaks out most against homosexuality is a person who would really deep down like to share that experience and would probably enjoy it". No one speaks out against that lifestyle more than I. If what they say is true, then their lifestyle must be a choice since I've chosen not to do it in all of my 54 years.

Every single time - okay, both times - I've written a column even tangentially related to homosexuality, I've been accused of being queer myself. As Mr. Curry points out, were this true, it would simply prove that homosexual behavior is a choice, and an easily controlled one at that. Of course, I've yet to hear from an offended group as utterly devoid of logic as the queer crowd. I can't even get offended by the attacks; it's like being mauled by declawed kitten.

Hissy Queer: "How dare you say that being gay is bad! You're bad! Gay is good! You're gay! Homophobe! You're secretly gay!"
Me: "Do you even listen to yourself?"

One of these days I'll dig up an old email from the gentleman who describes himself as the father of the gay rights movement, apparently unaware of the irony, and post it here. His strategy, if you can even call it that, consists of the assertion that homosexuality is a positive good, in all ways. According to him, it is healthier than being normal, more morally pure than being normal, more ethical, etc. Which naturally makes one wonder what color the sky in his world might be. Lavender, most likely.

The other common homosexual response to criticism - aside from the inevitable butchery of language involved in the assertion of "homophobia" - is to assert that the critic is jealous. Jealous, I ask, of what? Disease, a proclivity for suicide and bad dance music? Sounds like a real party, Penelope.

The IRS is a fraud

Devvy Kidd writes: ...according to a September 15, 2003 letter from GAO (General Accounting Office) to Congressman Elton Gallegly regarding W-4’s and reporting, this little nugget of truth stands out: "Under current law, IRS does not have statutory authority to impose a penalty to enforce employer compliance with the reporting requirement. The reporting requirement was promulgated in Treasury regulations."

And yet Dick Simkanin is still in prison for a crime he did not commit and for which he was not convicted. Yes, Virginia, the Federal courts are corrupt and they are in bed with the con artists at the IRS.

I wonder how the IRS apologists manage to put any serious stock in the fact that the IRS has numerous court decisions on their side. Forget Dred Scott, recently the Massachusetts Supreme Court tried to redefine the Western concept of marriage while the 9th Circuit Court denied that the Bill of Rights applies to individuals. If your reality is defined by the courts, then I suggest that you go right ahead and get your man-slave back, marry him, and file a joint return.

How homosexuality destroys the church

Homosexuality is more than an Apollonian death cult; I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that it is, sopratutto, a spiritual disease. This chronicle of a dying church is a fractal image of the death of the Episcopalian church in America.

It's intriguing to see how homosexual hatred for Christianity is becoming more overt and intense even as it is increasingly embraced by the secular mainstream. Was it this bitter back in the old days of the closet? I don't know, but I have the impression that it wasn't that way. All sin is sin, of course, but there appears to be something deeper going on here as well. I note that homosexuals don't harbor nearly as much hate for Islam, despite the fact that Islamic society is far harsher on homosexuality than is Christian society, which only asks that homosexuals repent of their sin - as every other sinner is expected to do.

I also find the hysterical denial of the ex-gay movement to be interesting. Let me get this straight. We're to take a man's word for it that he has always been a certain way. But we are not to take his word for it if he says that he has been changed by the power of God in his life. Why, that's logic worthy of Andrew Sullivan whenever he writes on anything having remotely to do with his sexual preference. I often like his writing, but his contortions over the oxymoronic concept of "gay marriage" are almost embarrassing.

By the way, if you don't believe in God or sin, all of this is irrelevant. Regardless of the subject, I'm not interested in hearing anyone's opinion on how something in which they don't believe operates.

Inflation

From Mogambo: I keep looking at a chart of the growth in federal debt, and it is now increasing at the rate of almost $80 billion per month. Per month! Just how valuable IS a currency that is being inflated at that rate?... Mr. van Eeden writes, "The dollar is likely to fall approximately 50% from its current level. That would free the dollar denominated gold price to find its way back towards its true value of $699 an ounce (as of 2002). Given the mounting pressure on the dollar, there is virtually no chance that it will not collapse." Remember those currency crises of those foreign nations, and how Clinton and Robert Rubin and Greenspan and the IMF and all those guys, which is everybody, decided to establish the principle of moral hazard, and so they bailed everybody out by sticking the American taxpayers with the bill? You do? I knew it! I could tell by the way you grind your teeth that you remember perfectly!

Anyway, I know what you are dying to ask me: "Hey! Mogambo! Yo! What did gold do during those trying times?" I am glad you asked that question, because Mr. van Eeden, in a stroke of coincidence, provides the answer to that very question, and thus saves me trouble of getting up off of my lazy butt and actually trying to find out, and maybe end up doing actual work for a change, and then I remember how tiring that is, and I lose all interest. Anyway, he writes "The gold price in Japanese yen however, increased by 34% between 1995 and 1996. The next year the gold price jumped more than 40% in both Philippine pesos and Malaysian ringgit, and 67% in Korean won. Indonesia suffered the most during the South East Asian Crisis and the gold price, accordingly, increased more than 400%."

Remember, I was recommending buying gold at $300. Now it's at $404. Of course, I also thought the markets would go down this summer. There's one scenario that explains both going up - inflation. Don't believe the CPI. Like all government stats, it's fiction.

Top ten games

J writes: Enough of this talk of the ten best books you recommend. How about your top ten video game recommendations? You seem to be something of an expert on this subject. So let's have it, eh? This would be killer info to post on your blog, amigo. Video games are almost more important than books these days. Video game made more money than every movie studio in the world. It is video game insanity!

Most movies based on books suck. Even classics like The Fountainhead bit the proverbial big one. Lord of the Rings worked surprisingly. Your Rebel Moon book would be great high concept action movie fodder. So like I said before, don't be surprised when Hollywood comes calling. And hey, Ilana Mercer, hot or not?

Ilana hot, in my book. As far as my top ten games go, this will reveal what an Old Skool gamer I am, but there you go. I'm rating them according to how much fun they were at the time they came out, not how they'd rate today. Interesting, to see how Origin and Richard Garriot crop up so often.

1. Wing Commander - I used to take my monster 386/25 to my friend's cabin for the weekend just to play it.
2. Wizardry - still play the DOS conversion of this from time to time
3. Akallabeth - burned on my brain's retina
4. Doom - we spent two days straight learning about Novell networking so we could deathmatch. It was worth it.
5. Maddens - after recovering an onside kick on the first try in 1992, I finally did it again in 2004. 12 frickin' years!
6. Ultima III - the best of a good lot
7. Ms Pac-man - wocka wocka wocka
8. US Ski Team Racing (Intellivision)
9. Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin - best of the current generation
10. Castle Wolfenstein (Muse, not id) - Schweinhund! bang! Aeigh#(*$&kk#*!

Honorable Mention: Autoduel, Joust, Moon Patrol, Lunar Lander, Demon Attack, Roadblasters, Warcraft, Aztec, Warlords II, Descent, Drol, Asteroids, 1942, Pooyan, Tron: Deadly Discs, Star Raiders, Mario 64
Overrated: Mortal Kombat, all post-Warcraft RTS, most current 3D shooters, Galaga
Just didn't get into it: Tetris, Falcon 3.0, Command & Conquer, Civilization
Best Performance: Big Chilly, 1942 on the Atari Lynx, December 1995. Flew the circuit, didn't lose a plane. The man was simply on fire.
Best Performance by a Chick: Space Bunny's Internet high score on Pooyan, 1997. A brief, but shining moment.

Back when we were in the game biz, about ten years ago, my friend and I actually designed a game concept that is eerily similar to Grand Theft Auto as a joke. At the time, the editors of Computer Gaming World thought it was far too outrageous for any publisher to even consider. Now, it's clear that we were simply ahead of our time. I suppose I should give my friend Big Kahuna-san a call with regards to my latest far-too-outrageous game concept, which, at this point, shall remain unarticulated.

By the way, here's why Space Bunny is the perfect woman: she's not only a beautiful, NFL-tolerant blonde, she also gave me a full-size Ms Pac-man machine for my birthday. And, she's the house high score holder, female division.

Fatty foibles

The problem with the rabbi's theory - that husbands are to blame for their wives getting fat - is that it offers no explanation for why so many single women do the same. It also shows a level of ignorance with regards to gym culture and its mentality. Working out, for the most part, requires desire that comes from within. Most of the men and women that I know at the gym have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive element to their nature and don't really care what anyone else thinks of it one way or another. It really bothers them to not work out, in a way that is not entirely rational. I'm informed that I approach full psychotic if I miss three days in a row.

This may have something to do with endorphin release, or the simple familiarity of habit, I don't know. But to ignore it and say that it all stems from insufficient attention strikes me as misguided. Are women such children that they can't even be held responsible for what goes in their mouth? Sure, I know that many women are allergic to responsibility, and I have no doubt that the rabbi's theory will be most welcome to them. The whole thing reminds me of sitting in a stairwell with a friend in college one day and watching a little chunker waddle down the stairs past us, lamenting that she just couldn't lose weight, while alternately taking bites from the doughnuts she was carrying in either hand. Gee, I wonder why?

I mentioned this to Space Bunny - who works out as if she might to be forced to pose for a centerfold at any moment - and she pointed out that women are a lot more concerned about what other women think of their appearance than what their husbands think anyway. Which must be true, because let's face it, otherwise she'd never wear anything but a little black dress or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders outfit every day of the year. It's all about social expectations. All the women of our extended Bible study are married, with anywhere from one to five children apiece, and every single one of them is slender and attractive. They don't all have the flawless genetics of the Gorgeous Couple Too Nice to Hate (as much as you might wish you could)TM, but they maintain themselves in such a way that more than one friend, invited to a party or a barbecue, has wondered if there was some sort of factory where these lovely Christian women were made. And, could they place an order, please?

If she's correct and the problem is social, then I don't know what the answer is, except to choose your friends carefully. But then, that doesn't seem right either. In any case, no one but the individual herself can actually do anything about her weight, so to try placing the blame elsewhere is unlikely to solve the problem.

Some pigs more equal than others

Go ahead, make fun of the fact that several City Council members introduced a bill Wednesday to have more restrooms set aside for women. Why? Because females take longer, explained Yvette Clarke, who dubbed the legislation the "Restroom Equity Bill." "Every woman and little girl can recall a situation were they waited in a long line to use the bathroom," said Clarke, an East Flatbush Democrat and one of the main sponsors of the bill.

The law would apply to arenas, auditoriums, drinking places, meeting halls, theaters, dance halls and stadiums. Other buildings would be required to adhere to the 2:1 ratio as best as possible, with details yet to be worked out in full. "I think the courts are recognizing that restroom facilities are an essential, important service," he told the Associated Press in an interview. According to Clarke, similar bills have been adopted in at least 12 states and cities like Pittsburgh and St. Paul, Minn.

She said that the potty parity law could easily be accommodated at some facilities by the change of signs on the restroom doors. "We have fought for equal rights in employment, leadership and society," said Brooklyn Councilwoman Leticia James. "The next logical step would be to have parity when it comes to using the restroom. That is such a basic right."

A 2-1 ratio is parity? This is what left-liberal thinking has come to. They're not even embarrased to publicly make moronic statements like this anymore. This is like saying that if the Vikings and Packers finish at 11-5 and 10-6 while the Bears and Lions finish at 6-10 and 5-11, there is parity in the NFC North. Of course, considering the childish thinking of the left, I'm only surprised that the insane and unjust courts haven't proclaimed restroom facilities to be a Constitutional right instead of only an "essential, important service."

I dub thee, SuperGeek

I love this sort of thing. Because he can, that's why!

Definitely don't buy Dell

I was already down on Dell, since both my Dell laptops are falling apart despite uncommonly gentle treatment - I have an Alphasmart Dana for my portability needs, so my Dells never go anywhere. But this indicates that Dell is likely to be a card-carrying member of the Totalitarian Control Group, about which you'll read more on Monday.

As seen in the latest newsletter from SpyWareInfo, Dell sent an internal memo to its tech support minions which says in part: 'NOTICE: Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system. Please consult your user license agreements for further information. Dell does not endorse the use of spyware removal software and cannot provide support on these products.'

Dell isn't putting the spyware on there, as far as we know, but it is actively resisting efforts to remove spyware. Why? Because Microsoft has some technology on the horizon which will make present-day spyware look downright friendly in comparison, and Dell wants to be one of the primary delivery vehicles.

Walter Williams, to the point again

One might be tempted to think that if owners were free to reject customers by race, segregation would be widespread. But that's nonsense because there's a difference between what people can do and what they'll find in their interests to do. Think about it. During the United States' Jim Crow era and South Africa's apartheid era, there was an elaborate legal structure mandating and enforcing racial segregation. Whenever you see a law on the books, your best guess is that the law is on the books because not everyone left to their own devices would behave according to the specifications of the law. After all, why would there be a need for a law saying bars or theaters cannot admit blacks if no white bar or theater owner would admit blacks in the first place?

As usual, the GOVERNMENT is needed in order to enforce something negative. Let people be free to discriminate if they wish. If you don't want to serve blacks, you should be free not to. If you don't want to serve whites, you shouldn't have to do that either. That is freedom of association, yet another Constitutional right that has been legislated away. As Walter Williams points out, most people won't find it in their interest to do so - because if they had, there would have been no need for Jim Crow or apartheid in the first place!

No good comes out of government. None. The more you think about it, the deeper you consider it, the more this becomes obvious in every circumstance. The only thing a national government is really good for is protecting against other national governments - hardly a strong case for the positive good of the concept. Fine, let's limit it to that and nothing else.

It already lost me

William F. Buckley writes: There are of course shoals out there. They are economic realities. They drain the value of the dollar and the vat of human enterprise. But there is something else to look out for, which is the credibility of democratic practice. If everybody preaches A while condoning B, you get not only inflated costs, but deflated confidence in democratic government.

Mine is pretty much at zero anyhow. I don't believe in democracy. Neither, for that matter, do you. I will take a self-professed democrat's claims of belief in democracy seriously when he advocates replacing Congress with e-voting. The technology is already here. Come on, democrats, it's time to practice what you preach.

ADDENDA: NB writes "Replace Congress and Constitutional questions before the federal judiciary with e-voting. No sense circumventing the demagogues only to leave the oligarchs in charge."

Right, good point. Let's get rid of both branches while we're at it. Since the Constitution is meaningless now, what is the point of checks and balances on the perfectly realized will of the people? We'll probably need to keep a President, just for signing treaties and declaring whatever it is we call war now, but the Imperial Judiciary is, with Congress, officially relegated to the dustbin of history.