More real than the real deal

The combination of unreasonable love for the game and the ability to extricate gems like this from the forgotten mists of sports history is possibly the main reason that I love The Sports Guy.

And if I'm wrong, then Steve Smith can inexplicably beat the crap out of me during the next wide receiver meeting when I'm not looking.

And then there's those timely current events references too: (And we haven't even gotten to Koren Robinson and Shaun Alexander yet -- they were the John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo of fantasy football this year. Let's save them for another time.)

Truer words were never spoken. Who was Hasselbeck throwing all those TDs to anyhow? Itula Tualo or whomever? This season was just brutal. I had Hasselbeck and Manning, and was profitably playing a matchups strategy until deciding to go with the hot hand and ride my big hoss - Manning - into the playoffs since I had Stephen Davis and Domanick Davis, plus Marshall Faulk coming back healthy. I dealt Hasselbeck for Reggie Wayne, acquired Chad Johnson and thought I was good to go, right?

Wrong! Oh, so painfully wrong! Somehow, I managed to run into the worst possible combination of matchups, lose four straight and finish well short of the playoffs while simultaneously amassing the highest point total in the league! I was regularly outscoring the entire point total of two teams combined and losing. But no, I'm not bitter.

Teetering on the edge of insolvency

Mogambo writes: I look at Required Reserves, $41.64 billion, and divide that by Savings/other Deposits of $4084.8 billion. And what happens when you do that? Well, if you are like me, and you have my powerful skills with calculators, then you get some weird series of answers because you did something wrong with all those confusing buttons and then, in desperation, you finally ask someone who is just walking by to please use come over here and figure this damn thing out for me, then we get the surprising answer of 0.01.

This means that for every dollar of deposits , they actually have only one cent of reserves in case people come looking for their money. Okay. Now, taking a look at Total Assets of the US banking system, we find roughly $4,381 billion. And when we compare that to the reserves of $41 billion, it is, likewise, one puny cent of reserves against a dollar's worth of some of those loans going bad. So that one cent in reserves, that one measly penny, is backing up both a growing contingency of souring loans going bad, AND people wanting their money!

As Mogambo points out, every textbook talks about 10 percent reserves. The Bush administration is working feverishly to stimulate the economy - ala Keynes - with the desperate participation of the Federal Reserve, and they have managed to reinflate the Bubble. But if you thought 2000 to 2002 was bad, just wait for the payback on this mini-boom. I was wrong about a decline this spring, mostly because I didn't dream that the powers-that-be would be so stupid as to go into inflation mode in order to try something that never ever works except in the short term. I know, I know, never underestimate the potential for human idiocy. I should have known better, especially when the Fed started talking about deflation and printing presses.

This does have the potential to get ugly. I've been assuming all along that the destruction of the dollar is part of some plan to move the USA to a global currency, maybe even a gold-backed one, but I'm starting to think that for once the incompetence theorists may be right.

"Paper money eventually goes down to its intrinsic value - zero."
- Voltaire, 1729

The wisdom of VDH

This quote from VDH's column today on the current war is profound, and not solely relevant to the war. It also applies, I suspect, to the IRS-court cabal and probably to Microsoft as well.

One final observation: Very rarely in history do any of the belligerents quite realize what stage of the war they are actually in. The slugfest at Zama still followed Hannibal's escape to Carthage. After Gettysburg there was the terrible summer of 1864 to come. The Battle of the Bulge followed both Normandy Beach and Stalingrad. And for much of the 1980s the world was sure that Soviet divisions were going to crush Polish steelworkers as a crumbling empire went out with a bang rather than a whimper.

The horror, the horror

Cappucino made inadvertantly from baby formula. Not so good.

Why are they Catholic?

Priests seek optional celibacy. I don't understand Catholics who want to be Catholic, but disregard the Pope and make their own decisions about everything. You're a Protestant already. Deal with it.

Democracy is overrated anyhow. It certainly doesn't belong in the church, let alone the Church. And before everybody gets all hissy, keep in mind that almost no one actually believes in democracy. They only think they do.

Maybe you need to listen harder

By the way, where the hell is this much-vaunted blogosphere? If three freshman congressmen from Wisconsin hinted that they wanted to regulate the use of umlauts on the internet in honor of Leif Ericson's birthday, bloggers would be on the steps of Congress up-ending cans of gasoline on themselves in protest at such an infringement on free speech. But here we have all three branches of the government severely restricting independent speech outside of the dinosaurs of Old Media and the relative silence — minus a few noble exceptions (The Volokh conspiracy, Instapundit) — is deafening.
- Jonah Goldberg, NRO

Jonah, some of us are speaking out. If you don't hear it, well, that's too bad. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is absolutely an unconstitional abomination, but then, it is only the latest among many Supreme Court abominations. It may suit the professional punditocracy to shout and point fingers to no avail - yes, I probably count as one in a technical sense, but I'm in no way an NYC/Beltway columnist - but we're truly at the beating-a-dead-horse point where the Supreme Court is concerned. From a Constitutional perspective, there is a giant fork sticking out of the back of every justice except Thomas and Scalia. They are done.

So, the issue is a larger one. All three branches of the Federal government have demonstrated in the last three years that they have no respect or regard for the Constitution. WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THIS? Especially considering that champions of the current administration, including Jonah himself, are unwilling to see or hear any evil of it. Republicans gave us this unconstitutional law, and a mostly Republican-appointed Supreme Court upheld it. So we should vote for more Republicans? I don't think so.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act demonstrates, sopratutto, that we need a new party. If you want to oppose it, Jonah, then make the leap. Go Libertarian. You are a conservative, true, but the Republican party is leaving you. As for these terrible laws themselves, civil disobedience is the only answer until we can change them.

This is a defense of rational atheism?

And we hear again from Sugar, who is apparently not only ignorant of history, but also irony. Ladies and gentlemen, once more, the irrational atheist.

Vox Day employs the usual tactic of religious apologists in trying to distract people by attacking atheists for their alleged crimes so people won't focus on the crimes of religion. The fact is, Vox, religion is responsible for most of the wars since the founding of Christianity. (Fascism and Communism are also religions except they worship people on Earth instead of fictitious people in the sky.) And, yes, scholars have estimated that those good Christians killed about 500,000 people during the witch hunts.

Think how many tens of millions had to die and hundreds of millions had to suffer because of Stalin's religious education. Spare me from the dogmatic mind (are you dogmatic, Vox Day or are you a freethinker?)! By the way, Vox, many of the wars the U.S. engaged in has a religious cast, particularly the wars against the Native Americans, the Spanish, the Mexicans and the Germans (World War I only). American presidents like Bush weren't the first to realize that religion is a great way to dull the minds of the people, to whip of a war frenzy, and to hold out the mythical promise of an afterlife for those so stupid as to sacrifice their lives (Bush, Cheney, Pearle, and Wolfowicz were too smart to do that during the Vietnam War).

The Dark Ages, the blood of millions of murdered people (men, women, children) and the destruction of billions of lives is on the bloody hands of your religion, Vox. I hope you can bear up under the strain (and the flaming pit awaits you for promoting the lie of Christianity). May you rest in peace!

JFK on the IRS

"We seek a free flow of information...we are not afraid to entrust the American people with the unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to judge the truth and falsehood of its people in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
- JFK

I noticed this quote while perusing the DMN Daily blog, and I imagine it might have something to do with why neither the IRS nor anyone in the Congress will touch the petition of We The People with a ten-foot pole. It also explains why even the simplest questions either go unanswered, or are met with SWAT-style raids. Most Americans are afraid of the IRS and the Federal government; clearly, the feeling is mutual.

Strange defense

You always know that an atheist has run out of arguments when they start complaining that you're showing insufficient Christian love by methodically destroying their assertions and conclusions. But what does one party's failure to lead a perfect Christian life have to do with the strength or weakness of a third party's intellectual position?

The Right Reverend AtheiStar complains: "The brotherly Christian love you bathed [Sugar] in was spectacular and made me feel warm and fuzzy all over. I'm glad to see that you love your neighbor as you would yourself."

In the very same email, the Right Reverend also complains that I have not responded to his little sophistry on the definition of faith. Yet, I accused Sugar of nothing except historical ignorance - which he had already demonstrated - and pointed out that his chosen examples indicated that he was more interested in haphazardly attacking Christianity than defending his godlessness. Not only did I grant him the benefit of the doubt with regards to his two best examples, but I even protected his privacy, which the Right Reverend did not bother to do. The truth is that I treated Sugar more gently than I would treat my brother or my friends were they to make a similarly shaky argument, and far more kindly then I ever expect to be treated myself.

Condescension is not love. If you want my intellectual respect, then you'd better be ready to earn it through a ruthless willingness to have your assumptions challenged, questioned and even ridiculed. Can anyone seriously argue that I am not willing to undergo the same treatment myself?

When (2) goes, (1) follows

More on this soon, but it's interesting to see how the Supreme Court has erased the 1st Amendment rights of Americans not long after affirming by abdication the erasure of our 2nd Amendment rights. One wonders how long it will be before Americans have to turn to exercising (2) again in order to restore (1).

I am increasingly doubtful that this Constitution will see its 300th birthday. Mr. President, honor your oath of office. Throw these judicial charlatans in jail for treason against the American people.

Here we go again

Sugar writes: This is the usual claptrap from an apologist. Let's consider some of the "humane" actions of the religious:

1. Thirty Years' War (in which at least one-third of the German population was murdered in the name of religion)
2. The Inquisition
3. The witch trials (hundreds of thousands of innocent people murdered)
4. The Holocaust (Hitler was a Catholic)
5. The Soviet atrocities (Stalin was raised and trained in a Russian Orthodox school)
6. 2,000 years of hell in which billions of lives were ruined.

It's no wonder that millions have been sent screaming to their deaths in the name of religion.

And this is yet another feeble attempt of a historically-challenged atheist to hide the responsibility of his fellow godless for the worst evils of mankind. Let's consider the points:

1. Yes, I'll give him the Thirty Year's War. Numbers too high, but okay. The politics of the Habsburg empire had more than a little to do with it as well, of course. But a valid point, although he seems to want to include ancillary deaths, which is never done in the case of WWII etc.
2. Historians estimate around 6,000 people were killed in the 356 years of the Inquisition. This is half the number slain by Turks in the event which prompted Queen Isabella - the State, in other words, not the Church - to instigate the Inquisition. And this is number two on his list?
3. Witch trials - I'll give him but not the "hundreds of thousands". Around 65,000 in 250 years is the current consensus estimate. Rather less than the 3.3 million slain in four years by Kampuchean atheists 28 years ago.
4. Most atheists were raised in some religion or another. To what diocese did Mr. Hitler belong? Why did he write to the Nazi heirarchy that the Church had to be destroyed? Why did he describe Christianity as a pathology? Strange behavior for a Catholic, don't you think? One wonders in what religion Sugar was raised. Shall we number him as one of them for the rest of his life?
5. This conveniently skates over the atheism written into Soviet law, as well as the inherent godlessness of Marxism itself. And, of course, it leaves out Lenin and Trotsky, who only happened to be the architects of the Soviet Union and world revolution. One marvels that Sugar does not assert that Chairman Mao was a Baptist minister. Surely he must have attended a missionary school somewhere.
6. Whatever. Read the Chronicles of the Assyrian Kings if you believe that mass slaughter has anything to do with religion. It can; it usually doesn't.

In other words, in five examples, Sugar lists two godless atrocities and is forced to go back to 1481, 1618 and 1428 just to find three examples of atrocities he can blame on Christians, amounting to around 375,000 homicides committed over 636 years. Evil, to be sure, but no thinking individual apprised of the historical facts would consider them to be worthy of being numbered among mankind's greatest tragedies, considering that they cumulatively represent only 75 percent of the number of American children killed every year in bicycle accidents. The total is also less than ANY of the 23 major massacres committed by legally atheist governments in the past 70 years alone. That does not even include the massive Molochian holocaust of global abortion, which can be laid at the feet of secularism if not atheism per se.

If Sugar was seriously interested in attacking religion, he would have brought up many valid Islamic examples ranging from India to the Sudan, but he is more of an anti-Christian bigot than a defender of atheism. At least he was smart enough to avoid bringing up the old atheist lunacy about all wars being caused by religion, which is very easily dismissed. So, give him that, but nothing else.

Automatic update insanity

Ridgelift writes [on Slashdot] "Even though Microsoft's recently announce they would not be issuing any new patches for the month of December, the boys at Redmond were scrambling today to figure out why some systems are being patched. The reason? They haven't got a clue."


It's bad enough to turn your computer over to a third party. It's worse to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party. It is totally reprehensible to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party without your knowledge or consent. But it is utterly insane to be forced to turn your computer over to a third party who has no idea what they are doing to it!

Speaking of speaking

I seem to have misplaced an email from someone enquiring about speaking engagments a week or two ago. I've been filled in on the procedure by my syndicate, so if you're still interested, shoot me an email.

[Random absurdity about impersonating Ann Coulter on Fox News deleted upon further reflection. It was funny to me and two of my best friends, but what do they know? Leave Big Chilly alone for ten minutes, and the next thing you know he's wearing pink chiffon, rolling around onstage in front of 800 people singing Like A Virgin in a deep bass. And as for the White Buffalo, let's just say that anyone who features a poetry reading accompanied by freeform interpretive dance at their own wedding has some seriously questionable judgment.]

Gravitas: Anywhere But Here

Speaking of Ann

JG gushes: For the record currently you are my second favourite columnist after ann coulter . I will provide a list of your excellent qualities below: Funny, passionate, erudite, challenging, moral, good writing style, got-fighting-spirit, well rounded, follows the heart of the scriptures (mostly), up to the minute topical analysis, indepth analyst... must stop list, starting to sound gay....

I think we're okay, as long as you don't tell me I have pretty eyes. And, of course, assuming that "well-rounded" doesn't refer to any part of my anatomy. Actually, the fan mail that is my personal favorite also mentioned Ann Coulter; the writer started off by stating that I was her favorite columnist and then proceeded to list a vast panoply of ways in which Ann's writing was superior to mine. Most of which I agreed with. I haven't imported my old email into Evolution yet, but if I do I'll probably have to post it here. It was pretty funny.

Speaking of gravitas

I imagine that last post should have erased whatever remnants of it were left to me. Which is fine, since I wasn't expecting to be named to the Roman Senate anyhow. I never seriously considered stopping the blog, although the point HL made was not frivolous and I think that it is always worthwhile to step back from time to time and ask yourself why you're doing something. I don't know if the vast majority of WND readers are unaware of the blog or are simply uninterested in it, but it's true that only a very small percentage of the Monday readers make it over here on a daily basis. It will also be interesting to see if the column's kickoff in the Dallas Morning News and the UT Daily Beacon next month will follow this pattern, although I won't have very good information on how many people are reading it there.

In case anyone's interested, of all the weekly or twice-weekly columnists, I tend to run number three on WND over the course of the week. I can't divulge the actual numbers - that's WND business, not mine - but it should surprise no one to learn that Ann Coulter is blonde head-and-shoulders above the rest of us. Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan and I trade off running a distant second, although Pat usually has the advantage as he hits more home runs, so to speak, than I do. I've learned that technology columns like yesterday's tend to run below average, while the perfect storm would be writing about Rush Limbaugh accusing Hillary Clinton of being a gay Nazi feminist while on a college campus.

Still, as much as I appreciate people reading the column and the blog, I'm really not interested in chasing readership. That way lies boredom and burnout, so I hope you'll just keep in mind that for every boring treatise on operating systems or economics arcana, there will surely be a scathing piece on the vagaries and idiocies of the Left following soon. Variety is the spice of life, for the writer as well as the reader. I don't usually publish fan mail here - let's face it, it's a lot more fun responding to hate mail - but some of the things people wrote about the blog were interesting.

TO writes: I'm more interested in reading your blog then I am in reading your column though I do venture over to your columns once in a while. Your blogs are a lot more thought provoking because it's more like a running conversation I get to listen into.

TS writes: I appreciate the writer whose views of you change when he gets a chance to see your less polished work, but I believe that's actually a good thing. Getting a fuller picture of your views and stances on myriad subjects allows people to read your stuff with more understanding. For instance, if the guy that railed at you about the suicide column knew you better, he would have recognized the angst and the loss that dominated that column rather than getting lost in the Christian portion of it.

JS writes: I enjoy your writings not just because you so eloquently defend positions I agree with, but because in some cases you've also challenged me and have changed my mind on some things. I've always had some sympathy for libertarian positions, but maybe I'll officially join the club soon. The Republicans aren't doing much to keep me.

JU writes: About six months ago, I was delighted to discover your column. As a twenty-three year old catholic libertarian I enjoyed your, in my experience unique,ability to stylishly expound alternately on liberty, God, and Wing Commander tremendously. Your written words resonated in erie, sympathetic harmony with my own thoughts, views, and values to a degree far beyond that of any commentator I had ever come across. By the end of that first day I had devoured the entirety of your World-Net-Daily archive, and it thereafter became a weekly ritual for me to enjoy your column first thing each Monday morning. However, as much of a treat as it was for me to discover your column, the discovery, about one month ago of your weblog, was if anything more delightful by an order of magnitude.

DB writes: KEEP THE BLOG!!!! When I get up with my morning cup of brew, do I sit down to catch up on things by first heading to fox news? Heading to cnn??? EEK! Heading to MSNBC??? EEK! Do I grab the remote control and turn on the TV for the Today Show??? NEVER! What do I do???? I sit right down in front of my lap top and head over to VOX POPOLI of course!!!!! I love the blog and I don't think it takes anything away from the weekly column in World Net Daily. I think if anything the blog reinforces the column. I've written you before telling of how I'm working on an M.D. and consider myself a pretty bright guy! With the blog, I can feel like a total idiot every day of the week instead of just on Monday!!

And more in that vein.... By the way, don't be so hard on HR. In the same email, he also wrote: Let me state the obvious. You're the writing expert here. I'm just a guy who owns a software company and enjoys reading what you write. Of course you'll do what you think is best, and you'll probably be right. No offense meant. I really do hope you stick around.

I certainly took no offense. HR was just pointing out that if I wanted to be a serious journalist, I should probably rethink the blog. But I'm not a journalist, much less a serious one, I'm simply a writer expressing my views, take them or leave them. If they can't stand on their own, then they're worthless anyhow. In any case, if we couldn't question ourselves, we wouldn't be libertarians and conservatives. We'd be ur-Stalinist hive-minders like the Democratic Left.

My favorite Spice Girl

I always liked Posh best. I like her even better after seeing the video for Let Your Head Go. It's utterly forgettable Brit dance pop, but the scene in which realizing that someone has tried on her favorite little black dress reduces her to a shaken, scarf-and-sunglass-wearing caricature of Greta Garbo made me laugh out loud. There's also the fact that in this amoral age of celebritism, she and her husband are noteworthy by virtue of being an openly married couple with children.

In any case, it's hard not to like a beautiful woman who isn't afraid to laugh at herself.

But this is really funny!

An attempt by Democrats to provide an alternative to what they consider is conservative-dominated talk radio flopped after just two days when the show's host quit. Jeff Gerbino, a comedian who hosted "High Ground" on Minneapolis' WMNN for the first two days of the show's existence said the former Democratic candidate who created the show was forcing him to make it a "shameless plug for the DFL," according to the Star Tribune newspaper.

Turning the show into an "infomercial for the Democratic Party" would ring hollow for the audience and he couldn't be funny or provocative in such a format, Gerbino told the paper.

Democratic talk radio will never work. There are plenty of funny people who are left wing, but the problem is that their humor is unrelated to their politics. Al Franken has little to work with except the personalities of his targets, whereas the right can point to the policies themselves as being incoherent, utterly illogical and risible. I've seldom found that young left wing activists have a sense of humor, whereas most young right wing activists do. They have to, in dealing with their college administrations.

Zero - aren't you paying attention?

After making some solid points about the flaws of Linux on the desktop, TS writes: You’re worried about privacy I’m sure. But too much privacy in and of itself is dangerous. The scourge of internet pornography and gambling is brought about precisely because people feel like what they are doing is, at least, mildly anonymous. How many kid touching priests would be found out rather quickly if law enforcement were allowed to monitor their electronic communications 24/7. People hide behind their precious privacy and claim they have the right to steal copyrighted works or corrupt young kids. It’s time we shined a spotlight in the dark corners and run these people out of Dodge.

I totally disagree. Freedom always comes at a price. I prefer a million homosexual pedophile priests instead of a single government with the power TS would like to give them. It will use it to do one thing: kill large numbers of people. This is ALWAYS the result, and usually within ten years of obtaining totalitarian power. Those uncorrupted young kids TS hopes to protect will be dead in prison camps because the sort of people who are seeking this unmitigated power have a very different set of values than TS. Nor will giving them this power even prevent what TS hopes to prevent, because once granted that power, they will not deign to use it for the approved ends, but their own instead. It's pretty clear that at least one branch of our government is more likely to invent a constitutional right to touch kids at this point than to make use of totalitarian powers to stop such evil.


I’m not quite sure why you hate Microsoft either. Where does this hatred come from? They are successful because they give people what they want. You may not like that but that’s your problem not Microsoft’s. Sure, they are a monopoly but since when is that in and of itself immoral or illegal. Only when Microsoft steps over the line and hurts customers is being a monopoly a bad thing.

Microsoft is not a monopoly. However, they have chosen to use their market power to get in bed with the totalitarian and would-be totalitarian governments of the world instead of using it to further human freedom. If MS used their market share to encourage financial privacy, built PGP into Outlook and pursued a general philosophy of protecting and defending individual privacy instead of violating it, I'd be their biggest fan. Unfortunately, they're going directly the other way. I have no doubt they will find many fans on this path. Humanity has never lacked those who lick the boots of their oppressors.

A good start

One congressman heads to jail, only a few hundred to go. Then it will be time to start on the Senate. This conviction is particularly satisfying to see, as the effrontery of Janklow in thinking that he could get away with recklessly killing another man simply because he held electoral office was disgusting.

About time

The latest Eurobarometer to be released this week found that just 48 per cent of EU citizens viewed membership as a "good thing", down from 54 per cent last spring. Britain was by far the most negative state, with positive feelings tumbling to 28 per cent, but even the French were below half for the first time after months of battles with Brussels over tax cuts and illegal aid to ailing firms.

Next to the UN, the European Union is the most dangerous ur-governmental entity on the planet. I'm glad that the people of Europe are finally beginning to wake up to the neo-fascist monster that is devouring them. Better late than never.

When the sole East European member dared to raise a dissenting voice he was told his vote "didn't count".

That's what you get when you deal with intellectual heirs of Jacobins and Nazis, who dream of reviving the Carolingian empire. He was probably surprised. I'm not.