This sounds interesting

Our first smart pop book, for example, was the best-selling Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix. Red Pill includes essays from computer scientist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil, Yale philosopher Nick Bostrom, science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, Buddhist scholar Jay Ford, Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy and other notables. Red Pill has gotten mentions in The New Yorker, Premiere, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and dozens of other publications.

I was invited to contribute to a so-called smart pop book yesterday, and although I missed out on the one on the Matrix, I can't possibly pass up the chance to contribute to one on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's also one in the works for Harry Potter, which could be interesting. The question is, do I actually have anything interesting to say about Hitchhikers? I'm not entirely sure that I do.

Innocent by virtue of indifference

Jonah Goldberg asserts innocence:

Vox Day is frothing at the mouth about Bill O'Reilly and the silence of conservatives about him. Frankly, I don't have a lot of patience with arguments like his which boil down to the suggestion that if I don't write what he wants and when he wants it, then it must be because I sold out. It's a shabby form of argumentation bordering on bullying someone into trying to prove a negative.

As for the substance, the comparison to Bill Clinton is faulty at countless turns, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. As for my motives for not writing about O'Reilly, they're pretty straightforward. I don't care very much about the guy. I'm not a fan of O'Reilly and I've said so countless times in print. I have a contract with CNN so I couldn't appear on O'Reilly's show even if wanted to. Actually, I wouldn't mind appearing on the show for the fun of butting heads with him. But I don't care enough about the guy or the story to spend much time following his shennanigans, sexploits or whatever. However, should he run for president of the United States, I will pay much closer attention.

Yes, I'm sure everyone just happens to be completely disinterested in this whole thing, especially in light of how the publisher-to-be of a certain disrespectfully titled book told me that he would have to run the chapter on The Freaky Factor past a well-known Fox star, (not B'OR), before they could decide if I'd be allowed to write on any perceived right-wing figures.

Perhaps the entire staff of NRO is much holier than this conservative publisher and they have no interest in the opportunities afforded by Fox News. Although the only mention of O'Reilly today came from John J. Miller saying that he'd been on The Factor talking about his book - which is a book on France that actually sounds very interesting - last Friday. I suppose it's possible that the virtual water cooler talk at NRO revolves solely around minimum tax credits and stem-cell research issues; it's just not very plausible.

Still, it was never my intention to single out Jonah, who was and is one of my favorite political writers. His name simply popped into my mind as a conservative commentator who came to prominence as a result of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and was far from silent with regards to it. I never expected him to devote a G-File to loofahs and Scandinavian stewardesses, (although it would seem to be a rich comedic vein worth mining), but the silence on The Corner and other conservative blogs with regards to the matter struck me as very, very uncharacteristic.

In any case, I'm not telling Jonah or anyone what they should write about. I'm simply pointing out the apparent cowardice and seeming hypocrisy of what many conservatives have chosen to avoid writing about. I could be wrong. As Mises writes, only the acting man can give definitive meaning to his actions, or, presumably, nonactions.

Conservative antennae

Jay Nordlinger writes on NRO:

Back to Edwards for a moment. I admit I'm ultra-sensitive to media bias (even while others are dull about it) — but didn't the senator's "Under us, the crippled will stand up and walk" sermon get awfully little play?

Actually, I agree that it got amazingly little play, although it wasn't quite as bad as it seemed at first when read in full. (You have to love ellipses....) I even assume that it got little play precisely because left-liberals didn't want to damage the Edwards campaign.

Of course, this is also why Nordlinger and everyone else at National Review (except for the irrepressible Derbyshire) have been totally silent on the alleged wrongdoings, moral and intellectual, of their friends The Freaky Factor and the Gestapette.

Nordlinger also complains:

So, John Edwards is making fun of George W. Bush for having been a cheerleader in school, while he, Macho John, was on the football field.

Look, if you're going to be a male cheerleader, you're never going to hear the end of it and rightly so. There's no excuse. I don't agree with John Edwards on just about anything, but I'm right there in the trenches with him on this one.

Mailvox: Help, I'm being sexually harassed!

A female newspaper columnist harasses me:

great column! chock-full of richness and complexity. uh, what are you wearing? (just kidding, of course).

And no, it wasn't Me So Michelle....

Mailvox: Three Monkeys howl

CR reveals an inferiority complex:

Honest conservatives earnestly hope -- I believe more than you - that the truth will out -- and, if Bill O'Reilly is guilty he deserves to be thrown off television. However, I think it quite obvious that you are already celebrating -- and hoping. I believe you already do -- and always will -- believe what your biases lead you to believe.

You are no more holy than any other blogger -- however great you may think yourself to be. I do believe if you had any smidgeon of honest humility -- you would never brag about your mensa affiliations to us lesser mortals.

Methinks you just brag too much. Go take a hike.

Yawn... another idiot whose IQ is so low that he thinks the mere mention of MENSA is bragging. I've repeatedly written that O'Reilly is a fraud; if he isn't exposed for one this time, he will be soon enough. And he won't be thrown off Fox News even if Mackris has the tapes and proves her allegations, we'll just see Bill do the tearful apology bit, go on a brief hiatus and quickly return to the cheers of Three Monkey Republicans. They see and hear no evil of their own, that's what makes them what they are. The Rush Limbaugh drug scandal will be the model for this affair, if the allegations are true.

MW revises history:

Are you really equating "l'affaire O'Reilly" with Slick Willy's, ahem, indiscretions? Are you that hard up to prove your "libertarian, anti-establishment" bona fides to whomever?The facts are that we have no facts about the O'Reilly thing, other than that a lawsuit's been filed. In time we may have some, but as of now, we don't ... none. Anyone can file a lawsuit, for any reason, for the cost of the local county's filing fee -- that's the only requirement.

In the case of Clinton, there was quite a bit of evidence adduced as to his culpability -- and, of course, there were MULTIPLE instances, and Clinton's eventual (in the face of overwhelming evidence) mea culpas.... So, based on the record so far, conservatives are supposed to assail O'Reilly so as to appear, if you will, "fair and balanced"? Shouldn't they wait until there's more, uh, evidence of his culpability before tearing him a new one in print?

Gee, that's not how I remember it. Conservatives were all over the media long before there was anything public with regards to Slick Willy, let alone filed in court. They didn't even know Paula Jones name at first, let alone Monica Lewinsky's. In the present case, we have extremely specific allegations which O'Reilly is not denying, detailed transcripts and a timeline that Occam's Razor suggests was a successful attempt to get O'Reilly on tape. Note that conservatives are not DEFENDING O'Reilly, they are instead strangely silent on what is both a matter of public record and a potential scandal involving a major media figure.

I suggest that the conservative media should behave exactly as it did on previous occasions. To do otherwise is to exhibit the same partisan hypocrisy of which they have accused the mainstream media on many, many occasions.

Discuss amongst yourselves

NFL Pix

Last week: 7-7. Overall: 35-25.

Philadelphia Eagles over Carolina Panthers
New York Jets over San Francisco 49ers
Minnesota Vikings over New Orleans Saints
St. Louis Rams over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tennessee Titans over Houston Texans
Denver Broncos over Oakland Raiders
Pittsburgh Steelers over Dallas Cowboys
Chicago Bears over Washington Redskins
San Diego Chargers over Atlanta Falcons
Buffalo Bills over Miami Dolphins
Detroit Lions over Green Bay Packers
Cincinnati Bengals over Cleveland Browns
New England Patriots over Seattle Seahawks
Kansas City Chiefs over Jacksonville Jaguars

Last week was tremendously disappointing. We started off hot and with five games to go, I was feeling quite confident that we'd go 10-4 to top the week. Then Seattle (our 13-point game) and Arizona fell apart and we blew four of the last five to end up with a very mediocre .500 performance. Fortunately, most of our losers were low-point, so it wasn't a complete disaster, but we're well off the leaders' pace right now.

Staggeringly lame

The Washington Post redefines cool:

The mission of D4D (Downtown for Democracy) is to "bring the aesthetics into politics," says Tran, and to bring some of that new aestheticized politics to the heartland. On each trip they go to a college campus, throw one huge "New York-style party" -- meaning open bar, projectors and DJ -- and register voters.

Their bags are packed; the iPods are ready. The last time they had a DJ along, and "I could have driven forever," says Raza.

"This is my third trip and I haven't met anyone I didn't like. People are self-selecting. If you're the kind of person who likes Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, you're more likely to be there."

Right, if you like no-talent frauds who have almost been completely forgotten even before they died and who are older than my parents, you're the epitome of self-professed hipdom. The Baby Boom has to be the lamest generation of all time; they've been out of it for almost three decades now without even realizing it. Just wait for all the "Retirement is cool!" junk in another ten years... they'll be the first generation in human history to die off before finishing adolescence.

I mean, wasn't Bruce Springsteen past his prime TWO FREAKING DECADES ago?

Selfishness and sharing

What is less selfish, I wonder. To actively think about others' desires but regularly refuse to share with them when asked, or to never think about others' desires but readily share with them when asked? I don't have an opinion on this except to admit that my personal bias is probably towards the latter, I was just curious what others thought on the issue.

It seems to me that to be unwilling to share/help/whatever is more of a conscious act than to simply not think about another individual, but perhaps that complete unconsciousness is actually more self-centered. Then again, a constant consciousness of other people and how they relate to one could be considered an extreme self-centeredness in its own right... and so it goes.

Spare us, Merciful Father

George Will scares the children:

When Bush left Austin 45 months ago, planning tax cuts, educational standards and faith-based initiatives, he had no inkling that foreign affairs would dominate his first term as much as they did Woodrow Wilson's second. Wilson's happier first term produced landmark achievements, such as the income tax and the Federal Reserve system. A second Bush term, involving tax as well as welfare reform, might be as creative domestically as was Wilson's first term.

Please, please tell me that he's not floating proposals. I think I'd prefer John Leo's "present" internment debate. How creative? I mean, are we talking outright corporate feudalism here?

Indifference is better

John Derbyshire writes on The Bell Curve and the cognitive elite:

While egalitarianism and the fear of racism fueled most of the Left's hostility to TBC, I don't think it is much of a stretch to assume that self-interest played a part, too. There is a psychological cost to be paid for belonging to an elite that has taken over the commanding heights of a society. That cost is guilt, and the "cognitive elites" who have taken over U.S. society in recent decades are addled with it. Looking down from their lofty heights at the struggling, cognitively non-gifted masses far below them, they cannot help but feel that they have won a sort of lottery. This morphs into guilt, followed by a desire to improve the lives of the non-elite masses via social engineering — sentimental kind-heartedness mixing with cold prudence to produce a heady brew. Imbibing that brew brings on left-orthodox opinions of a traditional kind; and the cognitive elites are, in fact, overwhelmingly left in their political orientation.

But how to improve those lives? Since being cognitively gifted does not necessarily mean you have any advanced powers of imagination (the correlation is, in my experience, actually negative), most of the elites can imagine nothing better than to improve the educational opportunities of the masses so they can all go to law school, just as the elites themselves did. Problem solved! If you now say: "But there are many people who are simply not bookish, aren't very interested in being educated, and don't want to go to law school," you have jabbed a large pin in the elite's bubble, and this makes them angry. Herrnstein and Murray dared to say this, and backed it up with numbers drawn from decades of research. This made the elites very angry indeed.

Perhaps it's easier to be a libertarian if you care, but not that much. I couldn't care less if people go to college or not, as I've never seen the point in trying to make physically mature quasi-adults learn if they don't want to. It would be easier on everyone if we'd just require parents to fork over $500,000 or whatever the going rate is for an Ivy League diploma and the kid would get his ticket punched for jobs at investment banks, newspapers and law schools, saving him four years and allowing those who actually want an extended education to receive one.

I'm not a blue-collar guy by birth, education or inclination but I've never seen anything inherently wrong with a career in fixing cars or whatever. My uncle has an MBA and a small fleet of Jaguars; he may not be a blue-collar guy but he sure seems to wish he was, considering that he spends all his free time underneath leaky old British cars.

In my ideal world, there would be a test for an inclination to tell other people what to do. Those who test positive would be sent to Antarctica, where they could spend their lives trying to run each others' lives, leaving the rest of us in peace for a change.

We apologize for the silence

I was out and about all day, doing what some would consider real work for a change. It went well, which was good, even though Space Bunny and I overdid the margaritas the night before so my brain was operating in slow motion until about 2 PM.

Amazing, how all the tequila sinks to the bottom, and yet you can't taste it....

The Corner finally cracks

MY BOY BILL [John Derbyshire]
Yep, just been reading the woman's deposition in the Bill O'Reilly case. There is all sorts of fishy stuff here. Her lawyer, Benedict Morelli, is said to be a big Dem donor -- but then, what trial lawyer isn't? Result-wise, I suppose the whole thing rests on whether she has tapes. If she has, it's bad for Bill. If she hasn't, I think a fair assumption -- given what a hate figure O'Reilly is to the foam-flecked Left--is that it's all a shakedown.

The thing that strikes me most forcefully, though, is what a silly racket this whole "sexual harassment" business is. The deposition claims that: "Plaintiff sustained conscious pain and suffering, physical injury, great mental distress, shock, fright, and humiliation." "Physical injury"? For goodness' sake! Even if everything in this deposition were true, I can't see why it would rise to the level of a tort. It would just -- and I repeat, this is EVEN IF it were all true -- be a guy behaving obnoxiously. When did women cease to be able to deal with that? The very few times I've been obnoxious to women, they gave as good as they got, and then some. But then, my pockets are barely an inch deep....

RE: DERB'S BILL [KJL]
Derb, I'm far from a fan of sex-harassment suits and I have no idea what the deal is with the O'Reilly suit, but (in general) when it is a boss, that fact does make it a tad more than a guy "behaving obnoxiously." With power comes responsibility...
Posted at 09:55 AM

Only two days late... they're right on top of this one, aren't they!

Bad Sir Billy

From the Drudge Report:

Prior to September 29, 2004, Mackris never complained to anyone in authority at Fox about sexual harassment by O’Reilly, despite having received and being well aware of the clearly written harassment prevention policies and procedures of Fox and its ultimate parent, The News Corporation Limited (“News Corp”). Attached as Exhibit A is a copy of Fox’s harassment policy contained in its Employee Handbook, which Mackris received when hired. Attached as Exhibit B is a copy of the “Equal Employment Opportunity And Unlawful Harassment” section of News Corp’s “Standards of Business Conduct,” which Fox reissued to Mackris and its other employees on or about September 8, 2004.

On September 29, 2004, however, Defendant Morelli, Mackris’s attorney, sent a letter to several executives of Fox and News Corp which is attached as Exhibit C. Morelli stated in his letter that he represented a Fox employee who was allegedly being harassed by “one of Fox’s most prominent on-air personalities.” Although he did not identify O’Reilly or Mackris by name in the letter, Morelli wrote that he and the Fox employee were then prepared to sue Plaintiffs, and therefore a settlement discussion would be in Plaintiffs’ best interests because the lawsuit “would be extremely damaging to both Fox’s reputation and the reputation of the individual involved.”

Fox and News Corp representatives spoke with and met several times with Morelli and his associate, David S. Ratner. Mackris attended one of the meetings. At those meetings and during telephone conversations, Defendants demanded $60 million in hush money to keep quiet and never once lowered this outrageous, extortionate demand. At one of the meetings, Morelli allowed the Fox and News Corp representatives to read a draft of a harassment complaint (“the draft complaint”) that he threatened to file on Mackris’s behalf. The draft complaint contained several lengthy block quotes of statements that O’Reilly allegedly made to Mackris. The length of the quotes and the specific verbiage used made it appear that Mackris was taping O’Reilly during the conversations. Morelli, though, refused to permit the Fox and News Corp representatives to have a copy of the complete draft complaint, providing them only with an excerpt.

The whole thing really depends upon whether Mackris has the tapes of O'Reilly or not. If she does, then he's through as the king of faux conservative media. He'll survive, of course, just like Dick Morris and others have, but he'll lose an awful lot of support from true believing conservatives, even some who are otherwise Three Monkey Republicans. The extortion bit is irrelevant as is the ludicrous demand for $60 million. This is primarily about destroying O'Reilly's credibility by exposing him as the fraud that I, and many others, have always believed him to be.

One thing that strikes me as believable about this is the fact that Mackris is not particularly attractive. I've noticed that the women who get treated like this aren't the delectable Heather Nauert types, they're the plain to slightly attractive kind that men like Bill O'Reilly, Bill Clinton and others think, sometimes accurately, will appreciate the unexpected attention from a big shot.

Note too, the emphasis on non-intercourse sexual activity. This is very remniscent of the Clintonian pyloctomy. It can't possibly be cheating if he's not even touching the woman, right?

Mailvox: The gold thumb

CN feels less alone now:

Much to my surprise, I was leafing through Sports Illustrated's 50th Anniversary issue and in the sports trends timeline section, Intellivision Football was featured to represent sports in the video game era. I was the only kid I knew who had it back then. Everyone else was pretending those Space Invaders on a blinking green and yellow Atari screen were football players.

Obviously, the movers and shakers of tomorrow were Intellivision fans. I was hugely into NFL Football, although I couldn't find anyone to play it with me since I owned my brother and few people had the patience to play the real-time 15-minute quarters. The Sports Guy is an Intellivision guy too, of course.

One of my great video game triumphs was matching up with my cousin Todd about nine years ago. He'd been talking and talking about how good he had been at NFL Football when he moved to town, but he didn't realize we had at least one of everything at the Digital Ghetto. (And I mean everything, Bally, Vectrex, Sega Nomad, you name it. An Intellivision was downright mainstream and we had all the models). Anyhow, we played a quarter and I beat him something like 35-0. Like riding a bike....

However, Big Chilly owns the single most impressive video game moment I've ever seen. We had a massive Christmas party and hooked up game systems all over the house. Big Chilly practically missed the whole thing, however, as he'd been challenged to a game of 1942, which he'd never played before, on the Atari Jaguar. He blew through the entire game without losing a single plane, chuckled, and handed the controller to an awestruck Micron before heading upstairs.

Speaking of media hos

Eric Muller notes that I'm not the only non-left, non-academic, non-ethnic critic of Me So Michelle's race-based lockup advocacy:

This is getting tiresome. Another radical-left, civil-liberties-absolutist, ethnic-grievance-industry-supporting rag rips apart Michelle Malkin's "In Defense of Internment."

This time, it's the Wall Street Journal.

The review is actually pretty soft on the Gestapette, from my perspective, but then I think I've adequately demonstrated how little the media knows about history in general and military history in particular.

I wonder how far over the line you can go before a journalist will notice? I mean, I expect that even the average ABCNNBCBS sort will blink if you relate something to the way Julius Caesar's Xth legion battled Rommel in North Africa. But change Rommel to the Desert Fox, and it might just fly right over their heads.

The Freaky Factor

66. During the course of O'REILLY'S telephone monologue on August 2, 2004, he suggested that Plaintiff ANDREA MACKRIS purchase a vibrator and name it.... It became apparent that Defendant was masturbating as he spoke. After he climaxed, Defendent O'REILLY said to Plaintiff: "I appreciate the fun phone call. You can have fun tonight. I'll appreciate it. I mean it."

I have no idea if Brave Sir Billy has been bad, very bad, or not, but the whole thing is beyond question really, really funny. The cheesy porn talk does sound like something Bad Sir Billy might say, as those who've had the misfortune to run across the purple prose of his fiction will note.

We'll find out soon enough if the whole thing is just the fictional creation of Miss Mackris or not. And if it isn't and The Factor is a superfreak, then I, for one, won't shed a tear. Well, I might, but only because I'm laughing. If you live like a whore, don't be surprised when you find yourself going down like a whore.

Think creatively, people

Ashley Fernandez, a 12-year-old, attends Morgan Village Middle School, in Camden, N.J., a predominantly black and Hispanic school that has been designated as failing under state and federal standards for more than three years. Rotten education is not Ashley's only problem. When her gym teacher, exasperated by his unruly class, put all the girls in the boys' locker room, Ashley was assaulted. Two boys dragged her into the shower, held her down and fondled her for 10 minutes.

The school principal refused to even acknowledge the assault and denied her mother's request for a transfer to another school. Since the assault, Ashley has received numerous threats, and boys frequently grope her and run away. Put yourself in the place of Ashley's mother. The school won't protect her daughter from threats and assault. The school won't permit a transfer. What would you do? Ashley's mother began to keep her home. The response from officials: She received a court summons for allowing truancy.

Then there's Carmen Santana's grandson, Abraham, who attended Camden High School. After two boys hit him in the face, broke his nose and chipped his teeth, Abraham was afraid to go to school. Guess what. His grandmother was charged with allowing truancy when she kept him home while she tried to get permission for him to finish his senior-year studies at home. Lisa Snell reports that "more than 100 parents have removed their children from Camden schools because of safety concerns. The school district's response: a truancy crackdown."

This isn't really that hard to handle. Give the kid a kitchen knife, let him take it to school and quietly place it on his desk during his first-hour class. Thanks to zero tolerance, he'll be home by lunchtime with orders to stay out of school for the rest of the year.

Repeat as needed.

Italians and Englishmen

Mark Steyn writes on the recent murder of an Englishman:

None of us can know for certain how we would behave in his circumstances, and very few of us will ever face them. But, if I had to choose in advance the very last words I’d utter in this life, “Tony Blair has not done enough for me” would not be high up on the list. First, because it’s the all but official slogan of modern Britain, the dull rote whine of the churlish citizen invited to opine on waiting lists or public transport, and thus unworthy of the uniquely grisly situation in which Mr Bigley found himself....

By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.

Even at the very end, there is always freedom. One can choose to die piteously or one can choose to die with valor. Steyn is correct in seeing in Kenneth Bigley's sad fate a metaphorical testimony to the decline of Britain; where is the stiff upper lip and the arrogant courage that built an empire?

I am second to none in poking fun at the Italians, especially their historical military prowess, but no one can question the strength of their national character after having been shown how an Italian chose to die.

Uno spirito indomito;
C'e solo il tuo corpo
Che si hanno rotto.

Gun law follies

From the UK Sun:

Official police figures show gun crime has doubled in the past five years, robbery is up 50 per cent and violent crime is up 83 per cent.

I'm looking foward to the moment when gun crime in Australia and the UK surpass that in the United States. It may take another 10-15 years, but that will be the final nail in the coffin of the gun control lobby.

Jesus-John Kerry

"We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases... When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
- Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards

I knew that Edwards was a snake oil salesman, but this is not only bordering on blasphemy, it is leaping far beyond the borders of ridiculousness. The extent to which imaginative lefties are able to project their desires onto JJ Kerry has astounded me, but I don't think even the most fantasy-prone college girl on Prozac will be able to swallow this one.

The upside is that we now have a new and presumably less offensive phrase to swear by. I think "John F. Kerry on a popsicle stick" has a certain ring to it.

Missing a fine Mississippi ejukayshun

A state education official says she's concerned about the growing popularity of homeschooling in Mississippi. Peggy Peterson, director of compulsory school attendance enforcement with the Mississippi Department of Education, said she fears that some children may not be receiving top quality education instruction from their parents.

Mississippi Department of Education statistics show that the number of families homeschooling in the state has increased since 1999, when officials began monitoring enrollment. A total of 11,063 Mississippi children were homeschooled last year, up from 8,768 in May 1999. Lauderdale County alone had 281 families homeschooling their children in May of this year.

Smart State education rankings: 47. Mississippi

I'm not necessarily proud of this...

but the new Duran Duran album with all five original members back together will almost certainly be on my Christmas list this year.

I'm betting Paul Sebastian has already ordered his from Amazon.

Fred on Therapy

I have sat in on therapy. It is something to see. For starters, the whole routine is a vaguely sadomasochistic power trip. The Therapist is the domme, the patient a humble supplicant who must bare her soul, confess her psychic sins, embarrass herself, and obey. (A few New Age males go in for this stuff. It is overwhelmingly a woman’s racket.)

Therapy reminds me of nothing so much as a castrated religious order. There is the same proselytizing, the same zeal. Therapists see only two classes of people, those who are in therapy and those who ought to be. (“Are you saved?”) They exhibit the smug assurance of those who have seen the light, and have Truth in a half-Nelson. The difference is that, whereas religions usually say that you are responsible for your bad behavior and you ought to stop it, therapy tells you that you are never responsible for anything. No. It was your childhood. Or some chemical imbalance. The Church of Avoided Guilt.

The cult wants to get everybody. Repeatedly therapists assert that ninety-five percent of people suffer from “codependency,” and must go into counseling. See? We are all in a state of sin. The humiliation of baring one’s inmost thoughts to a condescending estrogenated Hitleress is a mix of self-flagellation and the rite of confession. It is the religious impulse de-Godded.

Therapy is nothing but a racket for the credulous. It does no good for anyone. Unlike medicine, one is never cured, but instead an addiction to being told that nothing is your fault is fostered. I'm convinced that 99 percent of the quasi-lunatics in therapy would be better off either a) being sent on a missions trip to an impoverished land where people actually have problems or b) getting a dog.

The only benefit to therapy is in the case of couples, where a third party referee can be helpful. But even then, you'd do just as well - better, probably - simply pulling in a stranger off the street.

Nine NFL points to ponder

1. Michael Vick is massively overrated. The stupid practice of anointing "superstars" before they've accomplished anything - anything at all - simply has to stop. I particularly loathe the idea that a quarterback who is a superior athlete is therefore a superior quarterback. You'd think the Kordell Stewart Experience would have taught those media bozos something. I'd much rather have Drew Brees, (8 TD, 2 INT, 100.0 Rtg), behind center than Michael Vick, (2 TD, 3 INT, 77.7 Rtg) right now.

2. Donovan McNabb has upped his game, without question. But he still can't touch Mr. Culpepper.

3. Any running back can go for 150 combined yards in the Denver or Minnesota offenses. I think I saw Imelda Marcos going for 90 and 90 against Houston on Sunday.

4. I thought the analysts were smoking crack when they picked Green Bay to win the NFC North, but I never dreamed that the Pack would start out 1-4. It's strange to think it, but we may have already seen Brett Favre's last playoff game. At this point, they don't look as if they'll be able to catch Chicago for third in the division and they haven't even played the Vikes yet.

5. The Patriots are unbelievably solid. It's great to see a reminder that team play is more important than unproven "superstars" manufactured by the NFL's marketing department. But you know Tagliabue is pulling for Indy to knock them off this year. I don't see it happening. Peyton Manning may yet learn to win the big game, but as the Sports Guy says, you've never heard anyone say that Tony Dungy outcoached anyone. Belicheck, on the other hand, is fast approaching Pantheon status.

6. Seattle may have ruined its entire season with that fourth-quarter collapse. Everyone was wondering if they were for real after that 4-0 start. Not so much, is apparently the answer.

7. The Saints are impressively dysfunctional. Over the last three years, I've never seen a team perform so erratically. Tampa has looked atrocious this year; I still can't figure out how New Orleans managed to lose to them.

8. Arizona is going to be a good team in two or three years. People forget that Denny built most of his playoff teams around defense prior to the arrival of Randy Moss. He's doing the same thing in Arizona and based on what I've seen of McCown's play, he's likely to be doing the same plug-n-play quarterback thing too.

9. Surprisingly, the Lions don't suck this year. They should not be mistaken for a potential playoff team, however.

Demonstrably false

From the Washington Times:

"Here, ABC's Peter Jennings reluctantly agreed. 'I know we weren't as on the ball as we should have been' about the war, Jennings offered by way of apology. Warming up to this theme, Jennings also admitted that 'we were not quick enough to say [the Swift Boat ads] are demonstrably false.' In other words, the regular network news divisions are, if anything, too favorably disposed towards George W. Bush. And anybody who tells you different is a crazy, right-wing liar. Lay off my friend Dan Rather, Jennings demanded; 'I don't think you ever judge a man by only one event in his career.'

This is an impressively inaccurate use of the word "demonstrably". I like to use it myself, but I only use it when I am willing and able to demonstrate the truth of what I'm saying. But for all that Jennings is now insistent that the Swift ads are false, he and the rest of the network news have completely failed to demonstrate that they are so.

White Buffalo Blues

37 Piranha
27 Grizzlies

I'm still only 2-3, I was dumb enough to drop Marcus Robinson for Nate Burleson, (looked like a good move for all of about ten minutes on Sunday), Ahman Green has got the dropsies again, Jerome Bettis is vulturing Duce Staley, (who is otherwise a freaking MACHINE), Chad Johnson is underperforming, Peerless Price is every bit as worthless as I was afraid he'd be and Jerry Porter is so useless I had to drop him. So, basically, I'm relying on Daunte scoring between 15 and 20 points per game, Bubba Franks and his vintage biweekly 2 catch, 2 TD performances, and the S.0.D. coming back strong from suspension in three weeks.

On the other hand, I'm not a large bovine with an L stamped on his head, courtesy of Tha Fish. Life is good....

Freedom and the blonde

Craigp learns not to mess with Space Bunny, the hard way:

Craigp, as I believe I stated earlier, I've not done a country by country study of who does or does not have more personal freedoms and I already established what that meant in the context of your assertation that the US is supposed to be "a shining example of freedom"

It's easy enough to prove that Craig is utterly, totally and hopelessly wrong. First, Space Bunny is correct in saying that her choice of where to live says nothing about where freedom is greatest. And while she has not done a country-by-country study, the Heritage Foundation has. Following are the Index of Economic Freedom's top ten list of most free countries, from most free to least free.

Hong Kong
Singapore
New Zealand
Luxembourg
Ireland
Estonia
United Kingdom
Denmark
Switzerland
United States

Ironic, is it not, that the USA is considered less free now than the country from which it declared independence. The differences can be glaring, for example, the maximum Swiss federal income tax is only 9 percent, compared to 38 percent in the USA, while Ireland's tax on corporate net income, at 16 percent, is less than half the USA's 35 percent.

Petty personal freedoms are also greater, as anyone who has seen Italians smoking anywhere and everywhere can testify. The USA does have the advantage of less imperial bureaucracies than the countries of Western Europe, but to blithely assert that the USA is still a shining example of human freedom to the world requires an almost total avoidance of the relevant facts.

Here come the fascists....

From Drudge:

House and Senate move to set rules for states that would turn driver's license into a national ID card.... Developing....

That should end what little remains of state sovereignty, not that much of it was left anyhow. So, yes, in answer to all that have asked, I'd certainly prefer the unavoidable idiocies of a pure democracy over the new federal feudalism that is being forced upon us by the globalist aristocracy.

This isn't conspiracy theory, it's right out in the open. In fact, it's been predicted for more than 2,000 years. You didn't seriously think world government was going to happen by itself, did you?

One of these days, everyone who has mocked the United Nations as a harmless debate club is going to be very, very shocked when they learn that UN law has supplanted US law. The English have already learned this with the European Union and it hasn't upset them unduly. Unfortunately, most Americans will just shrug and assume that's the way it's supposed to be.

Stock up on bananas

Slashdot collects reports of a new superchimp:

Shelly Williams, a U.S. primatologist affiliated with the Jane Goodall Institute in Maryland, captured the apes on video in 2002 with the help of local people and was once briefly confronted by a group of four of them in dense forest. This, along with other evidence, makes her think that there is a chance the animals could be a new species of great primate — in other words, an undiscovered genetic relative of humans.

Other possibilities are that it is gorilla-chimp hybrid, or a new sub-species of chimp that would be 50 percent bigger than its largest cousins. Anecdotal evidence about the unusual apes dates back to photos taken by European hunters in 1898, when the region was the Belgian Congo.

The trail was then picked up in 1996 by Karl Ammann, a Kenyan-based Swiss photographer, who was intrigued by local tales that the forests were inhabited by large ferocious apes that could kill lions.

The best part about Slashdot, however, is always the comments. "I for one welcome our new hitherto unknown giant congolese ape overlords." Damn dirty apes! Where's Mr. Heston when we need him?

Random thoughts on media coverage

As vociferous as my opposition to the Bush administration is, even the supporters of the Kerry campaign give me the willies. I watched about two minutes of Forbes on Fox, and this little androgynous quasi-male was lying so badly about how Kerry and Edwards would take on the trial lawyers that he couldn't even look at the camera. Not only that, but he went out of his way to sneak in a reference to Halliburton, which just sounded desparate and stupid in the context of the conversation.

Talking points are good, but not when you are completely ignoring the subject at hand when asked a direct question. Combining that behavior with a visually disturbing sexual persona makes you wonder who on Earth wanted to put this little lump on television.

Nobody wants to see that. Nobody.

By the way, one reason that the media is blacking out Badnarik's campaign is because he does not pay his Federal income tax. One writer on NRO's Corner wondered why Badnarik's failure to file hasn't been hammered on by the press; it's because allowing a man who teaches classes on the Constitution to speak publicly on the subject would demolish the grand charade. Just to give one example, if you file a Freedom of Information Act request to get your IRS Master File and have it decoded, you'll find that you are classified as a corporation engaged in taxable activity.

For example, one acquaintance of mine just learned to his surprise that he is, according to the IRS records, a corporation manufacturing trucks for export.

Mailvox: more and less democracy

Nate nearly blows a gasket:

Hey, I thought you didn't advocate democracy, much less digital anarchy.... What in the blue Hell were you thinking when wrote that? For crying out loud, one may be a good thing but the latter is Abomination!

Like Nate, I don't have much regard for democracy. But I never miss an opportunity to hammer it into people's heads that what we have in the United States, (and what we are exporting to the Middle East), does not even come close to approximating genuine democracy.

Second, if constitutional republicanism with limited suffrage is not an option, I'd prefer pure democracy over the current charade, that is neither constitutional republicanism nor democracy but claims to be both simultaneously.

Discuss amongst yourselves

On fantasy

This brings us to what we might consider modern literature and two of the earliest exponents of early romance or fantasy are H. Rider Haggard and William Morris* who both developed the template for quest fantasy as we are familiar with it today. William Morris' fantasies owe something to Malory and medieval romance and Lin Carter calls The Wood Beyond the World (1894) with its sea voyage to a magical kingdom "the first great fantasy novel ever written". However, Morris' magnum opus is The Well At the World's End (1896), which clearly influenced Tolkien. This novel is set in a completely imaginary world and tells of a prince's quest to find the fountain of youth.

Morris defined what we now know as genre fantasy. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom sequence, begun in 1912, started the heroic fantasy genre that was continued by Robert E. Howard in Conan the Conqueror (1935) whose hero was violent and barbaric. Far more mannered was The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (1924) which was a direct descendent of William Morris and an inspiration to both E.R. Eddison and J.R.R. Tolkien.

One thing I always find interesting is how George MacDonald always goes unmentioned when it comes to discussions of modern fantasy literature. His first fantasy novel, Phantastes, was published in 1858, long before William Morris or Lord Dunsany, and his work was a far greater influence on seminal fantasy writers CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein than either Morris or Dunsany. In fact, the beginning of The Princess and the Goblin will be almost disturbingly familiar to anyone who has read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, as it involves a little girl wandering around a large house....

MacDonald clearly deserves far more credit than he is given, as he was publishing long before Jules Verne had first seen print and before HG Wells was even born. The fact that he was a minister and a prolific author of sermons may be one reason that the notoriously secular writers of fantasy are somewhat reluctant to recognize that their genre was first created by Christians.

*Morris was clearly familiar with MacDonald; he later acquired MacDonald's house and lived there.

Sometimes I hate being right

I had a sneaking suspicion that the salesguy didn't know what he was talking about, but since his opinion was backed up by the technical information on the company's web site, I decided to turn off my brain for a moment and for once in my life simply accept what someone who theoretically should know what he was talking about said.

So, I ordered a laptop with a 128-meg video card instead of the 256-meg one I was planning on buying, because I really didn't want a 17-inch screen. After all, I was assured, there's no way that the additional memory is needed, even if you're running a graphics intensive application.

Of course, the guy turns out to be completely wrong. Somewhere between 87 and 99 megs of uncompressed textures, we're falling off a performance cliff, because the 128-meg card can't handle the amount of 24-bit textures we're throwing at it. It's definitely the textures, because the geometry is the same and dropping down to 16-bit restores the performance. (This reduces the memory requirement by one-third, keeping us on the safe side of the cliff.)

It seems that the company is willing to rectify the error and allow me to swap out machines, but it's still annoying. First, because I really didn't want to lug a 17-inch beast around Second, because sometimes I really don't want to think, I just want someone to accurately tell me what my options are.

What George hath wrought

Robert Novak writes:

Sen. Arlen Specter, who moved right to stave off a conservative challenge in this year's Pennsylvania Republican primary, took a sharp left turn in a general election debate last weekend. Noting that he is in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter promised: "I can bring centrist judges to the bench." This contrasted with his primary campaign promise to back all of George W. Bush's judicial nominees.

Vote for George Bush, because he's going to nominate centrist judges of whom Arlen approves... that's got to have loads of appeal to Christian conservatives who still harbor the hope that Bush work to overturn Roe vs Wade. Of course, nearly everyone has forgotten by now that Bush personally interceded in the Republican senatorial nomination to ensure that Specter would stay in office.

The worst president ever

Drudge quotes Jonathan Chait:

In a LA TIMES column, Jonathan Chait blasts: "To say that I consider Bush a 'bad' president would be a severe understatement. I think he's bad in a way that redefines my understanding of the word 'bad.'

"I used to think U.S. history had many bad presidents. Now, my 'bad' category consists entirely of George W. Bush, with every previous president redefined as 'good.'

Now, I think it's pretty clear that I'm no Bush fan, nor will I be voting for him this November, but I don't think he's in the worst five at this point. Worse presidents, in declining order of awfulness, were:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
Woodrow Wilson
Richard Nixon

Relax, I'm totally kidding about the one in the middle. But Jimmy Carter was definitely worse than W, as was Lyndon Baines Johnson. I do think W is worse than Clinton, but only because Bill was hamstrung by the once-Republican Congress and distracted by other matters.

The questionable lineage of St. Paul

Guerilla Monkey talks with Nick Coleman:

2:10 AM. The phone rings. Before I even answer I know who’s on the other end.

I pick it up and hear a man sobbing. It’s Nick Coleman. Again.

“Nick, do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah, G. and I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s them again. They're doing it again.”
“Who?”
“THEM! The #$@^% bloggies. They’re doing it again.
Bloggies? What the hell are bloggies?
“I tried to ignore them but the things they say. You wouldn’t believe the things they say about me. They’re so...so hurtful.”
“Listen, Nick, its late…”

Since readers of this blog tend to be a little more broad-based geographically, I should probably explain that Nick Coleman is a columnist for the Star Tribune - which is in Minneapolis - and combines a complete lack of writing talent with an insufferable sense of his own moral superiority. Amusingly, he's married to another columnist, Laura Billings of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who is more than a bit of a ditz. She once wrote an entire column about how the USA could learn a lot from Britain about gun control, totally clueless with regards to the massive irony of that idea.

Why not?

VDH meditates on Iraq:

Our eventual aim should be perhaps around 50,000 American troops in the region — or not that many more present than when Saddam was in power. Even if the worst-case scenario were to transpire in January — an elected Islamist government ordering us to leave — we would still have plenty of alternatives. Beside not having to come through with the promised $87 billion in relief, we can also make it clear that an Islamist Iraq is subject to the same conditions as the mullocracy in Iran — veritable ostracism from the world community, prohibition from acquiring nuclear weapons, and internal problems from imposing sharia on a restless youth.

And the next time the United States uses force in the Middle East, we shall not do nation-building but rather serious GPS-ing at 20,000 feet in punitive Roman fashion. Indeed, despite the glum punditry, the sacrifice of blood and treasure to bring freedom to the Iraqis has been a landmark event by virtue of the very attempt.

I don't take any great exception to the learned VDH's conclusions, especially the notion of cutting off foreign aid, but I do wonder about one thing. If nation-building in Iraq was the good, wise and proper thing to do, why shouldn't we dive into the process again next time? After all, if Iraqis deserve democracy, don't Saudis, Iranians and Syrians too?

We apologize for the rampant colloquialisms

It's Big Week in our fantasy football league, with WB's Grizzlies going up against the dread Piranha in a cataclysmic battle for, (cough), last place. WB hurled a gauntlet by composing an ode to the upcoming game... it's obviously going to be up to JamieR to judge the off-the-field winner. This, by the way, may help explain a) why I don't get terribly worked up about my hate mail considering that it's usually tamer than what I hear from my best friends, and b) why Crystal need not fear me turning media whore.

Anyhow, if you find NWA to be outside your range of musical tastes, you'd probably do well to skip this post....

Staright outta Greenfield
Crazy motherfu(ker named Lonzelle
Sippin' gin and takin' Eurotrash to hell!
VD is sawed off
I got a tall Moss
Roy Williams gettin' corner backs hauled off

You too Vox if you fu(k wit' me
Four straight losses makin' iffy
Right to last
That how you goin' out
You and the Shimmer
League bitches gettin' blown out

Carson wants to rumble
He's gettin' humbled
Seattle D makes your punk ass fumble

You'd rather see me from more than a mile
Than right from behind doin' ya Mankato style

Yo weekly monthly yearly
That chick Ahman's gonna fear me
Deshaun Foster gettin' picked and peeled
And how we rollin'?
We're comin' straight outta Greenfield

Of course, I had no choice but to add a second verse, setting the record straight:

Straight outta Greenfield, crazy pansy ass White Buffalo
Got a team full of jack with a front ho
When he's called out, he turns about
Running away like a muthafukking girl scout
What you say, cos I can't hear you
How you like that last-place cellar view?
Loser mumbles, he thinks he rumbles
Giving me 10 DEF points off the fumbles
And he'll give it up right smooth
Because the Fish are always down for a jack move

That Lonzelle ain't so much bright
With a win record like Rich Kotite
First-round draft is the devilish tool
Making WB look a muthafukkin fool
Picked Randall C. back in 99
Followed by Warner-n-Holcomb in joint decline
So bad, weekly, monthly and yearly,
He's a dumb muthafukka, yo, clearly
That's him with the W-B
Who ever lost to him - nobody!
So when he's in your neighborhood, you're in luck
Coz Greenfield is sh!tty like fukk

Woof woof

Jonah Goldberg tries to defend the President on Iraq:

When Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in May 2003 that the administration settled on the WMD issue for bureaucratic reasons, opponents of the war cynically distorted the interview to make it sound like the administration wasn't convinced about the WMD threat. What Wolfowitz was actually saying, very clearly, was that the WMD threat was the most palpable threat - the one that all the professionals could agree on it.

But that doesn't mean that Bush didn't offer numerous other rationales before and after the war. In major speeches he touted the importance of democratizing the Middle East. Administration officials pointed out that Saddam was the only world leader to applaud 9/11, and that he was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel. They argued that removing Saddam would have a positive impact on the peace process. President Bush made a masterful case to the United Nations that, in the post-9/11 world, the world body could not afford to let a dictator - one who had gassed his own people and invaded a neighbor - flout its countless resolutions with impunity.

These rationales don't add up to 23, but who cares if they do? What important decisions have you ever made in your life that have depended on a single variable. We don't buy cars for a single reason. (Oh, it's blue! I'll take it!) Why should we launch a preemptive war for a single reason?

1. WMD: They haven't been found, they aren't in Iraq. There's no indication that Hussein was planning to use them against anyone, much less somehow strike the USA with them without missiles or long-range bombers. Given that many other countries have them, this is looking more and more ridiculous every day, which is no doubt why the administration is in active retreat on the issue and its defenders are trying desperately to point at other justifications.

2. Democracy in the Middle East: The administration is not advancing the freedom of self-determination, but is actively working to suppress it. It is forcibly keeping a fundamentally divided Iraq together, while attempting to install the same fraudulent system of vote-legitimization that is present in the USA, which is neither democracy nor Constitutional republicanism. Furthermore, the history of Algeria, Indonesia and Turkey demonstrate that even this mutated form of "democracy" has intrinsic conflicts with Islamic law.

3. Hussein was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel: So is Saudi Arabia. The administration itself is funding Yasser Arafat, who sends out the suicide bombers; by this reasoning we should invade Washington DC. Not a bad idea, really, perhaps we could restore Constitutional government.

4. Removing Hussein would have a positive impact on the peace process: Yes, Israel and the Palestinians appear to be closer to peace than ever, don't they. That's just stupid.

5. The UN could not permit a dictator to flout its resolutions: So much for the notion that Bush is not a globalist lackey. This is not only a terrible justification that has nothing to do with America's national interest, but is in fact directly contrary to the long-term interest of American national sovereignty. To hear this expressed by a so-called conservative is troubling indeed.

There is only one reason that justifies preemptive action. A serious, imminent and direct threat to American national security. Iraq didn't even come close to meeting that requirement; one could have made a far better case for Saudi Arabia, Iran or North Korea. Interestingly enough, Goldberg says that those who criticize this president must also assert that Lincoln was wrong... with great pleasure, Jonah, with great pleasure.

Goldberg is one of my favorite writers on NRO, but it's been disappointing to see that he is more interested in defending a Republican president than sticking to the principles he expounded while Bill Clinton was in office.

Mailvox: tinfoil and the truth

BLS senses suspicion:

Vox, I'm confused by your posts. Your comments that Bush grounded the Air Force and that NORAD should have known what was going on in US airspace sound as if you believe Bush had prior knowledge of the attack but chose not to act.

Are you advancing a Coventry theory of 9/11? That Bush knew of the plan to use airliners as bombs but decided not to act in order to preserve some intel asset? Are you advancing a Psychopath theory? That Bush knew of the plan to use airliners as bombs but decided not to act because he's just plain evil?

What theory are you implying?

I'm implying nothing, simply stating some obvious facts and raising obvious questions. I don't know precisely what happened, nor with whom the responsibility lies. Bush did not ground the Air Force as far as I am aware, but the Air Force was grounded nevertheless, apparently due to the drill that NORAD was running. NORAD and the FAA almost certainly knew that something unusual was going on in US airspace, especially after the first plane turned off its transponder. Given that NORAD's system of radars and satellites can pick up very small objects and are designed to track very fast-moving missiles, it's the height of folly to insist they couldn't find four lumbering airliners whose maximum speed, takeoff time and takeoff location were known.

The truth will eventually come out, just as it has about Pearl Harbor and as it is in the process of doing with regards to OK City and TWA-800. And the official story will prove to be wrong in some significant manner, though precisely how I cannot say.

The frequently heard cry of "tinfoil" is nothing but the fearful cry of those who are afraid to look directly at the facts as they are. Governments have not only killed their own people before when they find it to be in their interest, but they do so with great regularity. In fact, 40 percent of the member states of the United Nations have killed a statistically significant percentage of their population in the last century, including "civilized" countries such as Spain, France, Germany and Mexico, as have the majority of the UN Security Council.

It is only the argument that the possibility of what is quite normal behavior for governments the world over is somehow unimaginable here that is crazy.

Homeschool or else...

The Department of Education engages in some petty fear-mongering:

The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia. The warning follows an analysis by the FBI (news - web sites) and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.

"The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members," Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups.

The safety advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia incident. But there is "no specific information indicating that there is a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States," Hickok said. Federal law enforcement officials also have encouraged local police to stay in contact with school officials and have encouraged reporting of suspicious activities, the letter says.

In particular, schools were told to watch for activities that may be legitimate on their own — but may suggest a heightened terrorist threat if many of them occur. Among those activities:

Interest in obtaining site plans for schools, bus routes and attendance lists;

Indeed. I'm not exactly surprised....

Mailvox: 100 percent unrecommended

Porcus holds back the tears

I was sad to see Vox Popoli didn't make the NR 2004 Recommended Blog list.

I didn't even know that National Review had such a thing, but considering that only Ramesh responds to my emails these days, I wouldn't exactly have been holding my breath anyhow. I think, as did Ann Coulter and Joe Sobran before me, I've rendered myself beyond the pale in their eyes. So be it.

It would be difficult for me to be less concerned about it. I'd already ended up letting my subscription lapse since I wasn't even bothering to read the magazine anymore. I enjoy Goldberg, Nordlinger and Derbyshire, and I also like Ponnuru and VDH, but that's about it. They've turned into complete Republican lapdogs, for the most part, as capable of turning on a dime in response to their master's voice as their Democratic counterparts. I stopped by NRO today, as I usually do, and didn't see what looked like a single article worth reading.

Instead of standing athwart history shouting stop, they've been transformed into Three Monkey Republicans echoing Michael Ledeen. "Faster, please!"

Is he losing it?

Thomas Sowell writes:

Polarization is a high price to pay for high voter turnout. But efforts are already underway to scare old people that their Social Security is threatened, in order to get out their vote, when in fact nobody in his right mind is going to touch their Social Security....

That is an enormous responsibility at a time when Americans are in greater peril than even during the nuclear stand-off of the Cold War. After all, the Soviet Union could be deterred by our nuclear weapons but suicide bombers cannot be deterred by anything. And it may be only a matter of a few years before they have nuclear weapons....

Those who vote on the basis of what the government can do for them are especially short-sighted during a war against worldwide terror networks. What good would it do to get free prescription drugs forever if your forever is likely to be cut short by more attacks like those on September 11, 2001?

So, scare tactics about Social Security - which is mathematically doomed anyhow - are off-limits, but scare tactics about suicide bombers who don't possess nuclear weapons and aren't presently active in the United States are appropriate? The average American's odds of being killed by terrorists over the last three years run at about 0.00033 percent, or 3.3 per million, including 9/11. Those are odds that not even the most inveterate purchaser of lottery tickets would consider "likely". Moreover, the notion that nuclear armed suicide bombers are more dangerous than the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal ever was simply asinine.

I like Dr. Sowell and I own several of his books, but he has been on a very feeble streak of late. An intellectual with his grasp of history should immediately recognize the old, old scare tactic of tyranny through safety, not further it.

Mailvox: the red flag of punctuation

Liam the Obscure breaks his silence:

"I think taking a jab at punctuation or spelling always weakens your arguement."

I don't. I think systematically using improper punctuation and spelling brings the author's ability to think and breadth of knowledge into question. The occasional typo or habitual error - I always want to write judgement, judgment just looks wrong to me - is a complete non-issue, but serial and simple mistakes are another matter.

This doesn't necessarily discredit the author entirely, but it does serve to raise a red flag. One can be wise and ignorant, especially with the benefit of age and experience, but the two don't generally go hand-in-hand.

In any event, I loathe all these "weakens your argument" assertions. An argument is as strong as it is, all the rest is just window dressing. If someone seriously thinks my case against socialized health care is weakened by my prediliction for calling Hillary Clinton "the Lizard Queen", I have zero regard for their ability to reason. I've noticed that this school of thought often expresses the notion that Ann Coulter would be more "effective" if she would tone down her rhetoric, which is, of course, the height of idiocy given that it is Ann's rhetoric and style which have made her the most successful political writer in the nation.

It's a Vox thing, you wouldn't understand

Anonymous fails to penetrate the veil:

I will never understand why Vox takes such pleasure in twisting someone's hind most hairs. It's perverse. heaven forbid that someone should accuse him of being inconsistent. You might as well say he lied.

That's an interesting metaphor, and no doubt a Freudian would make great hay of it, but if you can't understand the pleasures of literary sadism, well, then you're probably not a writer. And considering that the column was fundamentally nothing but more homeschooling advocacy, inconsistency is a strange charge to level given my past record on the issue, unless one is focusing solely on the petty bits. Which Rat Spleen was, of course, doing.

The world is full of people that are going to misinterpret what you said no matter how clearly you say it. And there are some that are going to think you're just plain wrong. Get over it. Reality bites.

Now, this is ironic. As Rat Spleen himself writes: "Here's the neat part Vox, it was perfectly obvious only to someone with a good grasp of your personality and your viewpoints." Like, perhaps, the regular readers of my column? You see, I not only am not surprised that many people will misinterpret my writing, but I have learned to expect it. After three years, it doesn't even bother me anymore.

You're so defensive. Did Ratspleen have a point maybe? Could you be wrong? Could you be inconsistent? Heaven forbid...that would make you human. We wouldn't want that now would we? We'd all be terribly crushed.

Wrong about what? That children in public schools are at greater risk of terrorist attack than those being homeschooled? That the possession of the San Diego school district plans by an Iraqi in Iraq supposedly linked with terrorists is highly suspicious? I certainly CAN be inconsistent and incorrect, I just don't see any explanation of HOW I was either, except in utilizing the fear-mongering tactics of the other side, which I certainly did in sarcasm.

As for being "defensive", I am simply defending myself against Rat Spleen's charges, as it would be both inconsistent and hypocritical to fail to do so in light of the way in which I have deplored Mrs. Malkin's ostrich imitation.

Petty fearmongering-R-US

Rat Spleen's attempted fisking goes horribly awry:

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Vox has abandoned his principles and partaken of the koolaid quagmire of fearmongering and situational ethics. To wit:

Then again, if one considers how TV shows such as "Law and Order" see fit to preach that homeschooled children are malnourished and abused little freaks, it seems only reasonable to point out in like manner that public schooled children are brainwashed, quasi-illiterate savages, with targets painted on their chests to boot.

The finest situational ethics one could hope to uphold, and perfect delivery to boot. In no uncertain terms Vox should quit his luvrative writing career and pursue career advancement as a political advisor (truth and sarcasm at once). Look at the impeccable logic. The nuance. The spin. Because a TV show makes fautuos accusations, I will to... Nice glass house there Vox, perfect for nurutring the indoor greenery.

Of course, if my column was facetious, which its over-the-top language from beginning to end should have made perfectly obvious, Rat Spleen's entire point about my abandonment of principle is incorrect. I was simply mocking the other side's typical argumentation by using its methods. A tad below the belt? Probably. I found the whole thing quite amusing, myself.

The terrorists have raised the stakes once again, targeting children to demonstrate how much they envy our freedom or whatever highly implausible motivation the Bush administration is imputing to the enemy today.

Hi, ho Silver! Away! The Religion of Peace (TM) has only ever had one target - the most emotionally expedient. No stakes were raised. The world didn't change on 9/11. It is as it always has been. Without a doubt, as someone with Vox's impeccable knowledge of history and current affairs, knows children have always been on the buffet table. It is truly a shame to watch this great luminary of Truth fall afoul of his own damnations.

Nothing changed on 9/11? You'd better tell the entire punditocracy that, not to mention the "we are at war" crowd. Have we been giving up our civil liberties for nothing, then? The possibility of children being targeted has always been there, but the reality was that only Jewish children had hitherto been actively targeted. Breslan and the South Baghdad bombings demonstrated that this possibility had become an actuality. There is a difference.

I'm just curious to know what the FBI has concluded that an Iraqi man was doing with the information in the first place, given that it is so sure that the thought of attacking a school had not even begun to consider the merest possibility of thinking about the prospect of crossing the man's mind. Perhaps it was an innocent coincidence, the gentleman simply happens to be in charge of crisis planning for the local madrassah and only wanted to be sure that its emergency plans were up to date and in line with those belonging to schools run by the Great Satan.

The final nail. (I believe this makes three - for the symmetry) This was public information you feckless dolt. What the heck were you doing with information on the wonders of war time production so recently? If you want to cry foul, cry foul at the fact that this information was public in the first place. In other words, suck it up and plainly state that the government should censor this information from the parents themselves - relieving them of full disclosure and input on the State's for the children - or stuff it.

That's nonsense, which Rat Spleen admits in the very next sentence that he does not believe. You have a perfect right to possess a butcher knife, but if you happen to possess a butcher knife while sneaking in your neighbor's window, you will likely be charged with far more than simple breaking-and-entering, especially if you have previously announced that you want to kill him.

In truth, I believe in my paranoid core that this cavedweller had purchase of the information for nefarious purpose, but it is the height of ignorance to condemn him for perusing public documents. It is no less the equivalent than supposing that an Iraqi with a copy of the Bill of Rights in his possession was looking for ways to undermine it to his advantage in overthrowing the Great Satan.

It doesn't mean you have to like the circumstance, but you have to acknowledge it with honesty. Doubly so, if you set yourself up as the paragon of The Truth and then engage in petty hysterical fearmongering. Three nails it is - the gauntlet is thrown - and your up on your cross, Pal. I hope you have enough integrity to state your position clearly - whether it be that of reason or of situational ethics.

My position on the public schools is quite clear. Liberate the students, demolish the buildings and send the teachers to Cuba. Perhaps if Rat Spleen's ability to identify sarcasm and black humor was not as limited as his ability to utilize proper punctuation, he would have realized that my column last week was nothing more than a wake-up jab at public school parents in the vein of the notorious ode to the Yellow Bus of Doom.

Blinded by love

Jay Nordlinger, when not confessing to extreme homoerotic affection for Dick Cheney and George Bush, complains:

Over and over, Edwards said that the administration had not told the truth. Basically, he called them liars, all night long. I was hoping Cheney would respond to that even once — with a little indignation, with a "How dare you?" But no.

I find it interesting that Three Monkey Republicans of Mr. Nordlinger's stripe never manage to even contemplate the possibility that the administration's representatives don't deny such charges because they are fully aware that they have, in numerous ways and with regards to numerous matters, failed to tell the truth.

Because they have to

...since Wife Swap and Trading Spouses focus on how each mom performs on the cooking/cleaning/childcare front, it's no surprise the stay-at-home moms look like wizards, while the working (or shopping) moms bumble around like Abbott and Costello. This is, of course, hilarious, but it ignores the fact that most women work because they have to. Turning those women into villains moves the feminist debate sideways, rather than forward.

The surprise in both shows is that some people actually do change. When Jodi simply offloads all the cleaning and cooking onto Lynn's husband, Brad, he does it. And suddenly realizes what his wife has endured for years. He recognizes what a jerk he's been in expecting either Jodi, or his wife, to do all the housework alone. Even Jodi has a tender moment with the Bradley girls and some cookie batter—generously recognizing that both cooking and children are not just for poor people anymore.

Steve Spolansky has no such revelation—not even when his young son's face lights up like heartbreak in Yankee Stadium on learning his dad might actually be dining at home for a week. Steve dismisses Lynn and her values as "hillbilly." He's worked hard for the right to neglect his kids and disparage his bride. Confronted with a "good mom," he writes her off as an anachronism. Steve's failure to learn anything from the swap stands in stark contrast to Brad's realization that he treated Lynn like a doormat, to Lynn's realization that she allowed herself to be treated like a doormat, and to Jodi's realization that her kids aren't short houseplants.

This is all a vaguely interesting form of social experiment as long as I don't have to watch any of it. But what I found interesting about this article on Slate was the admission that "most women work because they have to." And why is that?

Because inflation and taxes have dramatically increased the family cost of living. Why have inflation and taxes increased?

Because the government is creating and spending more money. Why is the government creating and spending more money?

Because the voting populace demands it. Why does the voting populace demand it? I'll answer in the form of a question. What is the single greatest change in the voting populace in the time that government spending per capita has increased 250-fold and the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value after remaining essentially stable over its first 120 years?

I leave it to you to figure it out.

Moloch rising

Chuck Colson writes:

According to Wesley J. Smith in the Daily Standard, Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands now officially allows doctors to euthanize children under twelve, “if doctors believe their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness.” That includes non-fatal illnesses and disabilities. Whether or not the child can consent is irrelevant—what child under twelve would have a clear idea of what he or she was consenting to?

As Smith writes, “For anyone paying attention to the continuing collapse of medical ethics in the Netherlands, this isn’t at all shocking. . . . Doctors were [already] killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. That amounts to approximately eighty to ninety per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least ten to fifteen of these killings involved infants who did not require life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.” Smith adds that at least a fifth of the killings were performed without parental consent.

There are those who still believe that the United States is a blessed nation, that it is somehow a morally superior country. They believe this mostly because the USA is materially prosperous. They should keep in mind that so are the appropriately named Netherlands.

George Lucas hates you

THE 1997 SPECIAL EDITION release of Star Wars included a new scene where Han Solo encounters Jabba the Hut on Tatooine. Solo owes Jabba money, and has just killed a bounty hunter sent after him by the Hut. Running into one another in a hangar, Solo and Jabba banter and eventually reach an agreement whereby Jabba lets him go on the condition that Solo repay him with hefty interest.

This seems like a small change, but it sets off a chain reaction which undermines the basic arc of Han Solo's character: Throughout the Star Wars series, Solo is on the run from an implacable gangster who wants him dead. This deathmark influences his decisions and is what makes him a skittish, mercenary scoundrel. Solo is the type of guy who has to look around every corner. But now that he has a deal with Jabba the Hut, none of that makes sense. Han isn't being chased by bounty hunters and can go square with Jabba any time he likes. As a result, his character loses a good bit of danger and romance.

(As an aside, it's worth noting that this new scene also manages to confuse the character of Jabba himself. When the great Hut made his first appearance in 1983 in Return of the Jedi, he
is a crass, stupid bully. In the Special Edition scene grafted onto the original Star Wars, he's a smooth-talking, genial Mafioso. Will the real Jabba please stand up?)

...it is a measure of the deleterious effects of Lucas's tinkering (and the awfulness of the prequels) that it is difficult to care about Star Wars anymore. Twenty years ago that would have sounded like heresy. People growing up in the 1970s and '80s committed Star Wars to memory and developed a cult around the movies (for instance, the band which performs the theme song to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is called "Nerf Herder," an epithet Leia uses to describe Han in Empire). Strangely enough, the cultural space Star Wars occupies has shrunk in recent years. People who were weaned on the originals have become disenchanted, and Lucas's revised versions aren't minting many new fans.

Count me as one of those burying their heads in the sand, pretending that the "prequels" never happened. I loathed the first prequel and have so blocked it out of my memory that I can't even tell you what it's called off the top of my head. I didn't bother seeing the second one. As a matter of fact, I thought that Jedi pretty much sucked when it came out too. The Ewoks throwing rocks at Storm Troopers was just too stupid for words, even if the jet bikes were pretty cool. (Perhaps a bigger problem was that I was old enough to realize that Princess Leia was not, in fact, attractive in any way, shape or form except perhaps to stocky female softball players.

I don't think there's any question that the faithfulness Peter Jackson showed to The Lord of the Rings - even his errors must be excused as the sort made in good faith - make the LOTR movies far superior to even the original Star Wars trilogy. I will always love those first two movies, but it would have been better if Lucas had left us bereft and wishing for more instead of revealing that there was, after all, no magician behind the curtain.

Hack on Rumsfeld and the coming draft

Recently, when John Kerry brought up the possibility of a return to the draft, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was quick to respond that Kerry was full of it. But my take is that Kerry is right on the mark. Not only because Rummy has been flat wrong on every major military call regarding Iraq, but because this is a war that won't be won by smart weapons or the sledgehammer firepower we see every night on the tube....

Rumsfeld, in fact, has already kicked off the anti-draft campaign by denigrating the draftees who fought in Vietnam. The SecDef, who prefers sycophants who don't ask questions, recently stated that Vietnam-era draftees added "No value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ... because ... it took an enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

Wrong once again. I led draftees for almost four years in Vietnam and for several years during the Korean War. If well-led, there are no finer soldiers. Ask the Nazis, the Japanese and the Reds in Korea and in Vietnam, where "no value" draftees cleaned their clocks in fight after fight. Israel, a country that has lived under the barrel of the Islamic terrorist gun for decades, has the most combat-experienced counterinsurgent force in the world – and boy and girl draftees are its major resource.

Count on it. We will follow their lead.

I've already written volumes on internment, but a draft is an equally unconscionable violation of life and property rights. If a society will not defend itself voluntarily, it deserves to fall. I suspect that unless the "war" is dialed down, and soon, Hackworth's logic will become undeniable. But it's not a Democrat vs Republican thing; both parties will join forces in declaring that it is necessary and cram it down America's throat while the sheep on both sides bleat their approval because their masters have spoken.

By the way, I've noticed in the past that some knee-jerk Republicans who pride themselves on their "support for the troops" don't hesitate to sully themselves by slinging mud at Hackworth for doing what he has always done, standing up for the enlisted whose lives are on the line, even in the face of the military and civilian leadership. Take a good close look at his record and examine his well-documented expertise before embarrassing yourself by criticizing him rather than his arguments.

In defense of the UN

Rumsfeld on Iraq, on Monday:

On whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war, Rumsfeld said flatly Monday that intelligence about such weapons before the invasion was faulty - a markedly different statement than what he told a television interviewer just a day earlier. "It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said Monday in the speech to the foreign affairs group. "Why the intelligence proved wrong I'm not in a position to say, but the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail."

...In Monday's speech, Rumsfeld said President Bush had taken the position that "it was unwise for the civilized world to allow Iraq to continue rejecting" U.N. resolutions demanding that Saddam's "vicious regime," which previously had used weapons of mass destruction on its own people, to give them up.... Asked to describe the connection between Saddam and al-Qaida, the Pentagon chief first refused to answer, then said: "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Rumsfeld on Iraq, later that same day:

The CIA conclusions in that paper, which I discussed in a news conference as far back as September, 2002, note that:

* We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
* We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training.
* We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven opportunities in Iraq.
* We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
* We do have one report indicating that Iraq provided unspecified training relating to chemical and/or biological matters for al Qaeda members.

I should also note that the 9/11 Commission report described linkages between Al Qaeda and Iraq as well.

It's interesting to note that if you read both statements closely, there's no serious contradiction between the two. There may be "links", after all, there are plenty of "links" between France and the USA. But the evidence is neither strong nor hard. There are far too many weasel words, "could" "what we believe" "what we consider" and so forth. After all, al-Qaeda members were also in Germany, among many other countries, but we have not yet bombed the Bundesrepublik.

I've always liked Rumsfeld, to a certain extent. He's beginning to strike me as a man who is distinctly uncomfortable with what he has done and on whose behalf he has done it.

But... but... internment is good!

From NRO's Corner

"The government of Charles de Gaulle held hundreds of foreigners, including at least three Britons, in an internment camp near Toulouse for up to four years after the second world war, according to secret documents. The papers, part of a cache of 12,000 photocopied illegally by an Austrian-born Jew, reveal the extent to which French officials collaborated with their fleeing Nazi occupiers even as their country was being liberated. They also show that, when the war was over, France went to extraordinary lengths to hide as much evidence of that collaboration as possible."

Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Mailvox: 1 of 1 principals surveyed agree

MP writes:

As a school principal in a small community with easy on and off access to Interstate 70, I read with great interest your article. I feel that the only way to deal with the possibility of terrorism in schools is to allow all teachers and administrators to be armed; just like the Israeli’s did after Arab terrorists shot up their schools. Thanks to our treasonous federal and state governments, we are sitting ducks. I only hope that I can get to the weapon locked in my truck in the event of such an attack, like the principal in Pearl, Mississippi! If nothing else, I will continue to try to get my wife to let me send my children to private school or homeschool them.

If 9/11 is any indication, even a Breslan in the suburbs won't be enough to permit armed teachers in the public schools. I was fully expecting to read a full-on rant when I read the first words of this email; parents convinced of the adequacy of the public system might want to rethink the issue if even school principals want to homeschool their kids.

Wisdom and age

From NRO's Corner:

I was golfing with my brother once and the starter was a nasty old retired man. Just a real jerk. Anyway, as we walked away from him my brother offered true words of wisdom. He said, "You know, everyone reaches a point in their life when they know they're old. They know they don't have that much time left. And at that point, they face a decision. I've seen it time and time again. Some seem to make a conscious decision to be happy for the rest of their lives, and the rest become increasingly bitter. That guy chose to be bitter."

This is true. I've been disappointed to see some of the elders of my acquaintance choose the bitter path, especially since it seems so unnecessary and self-destructive. In a world where the poorest American is better off than 99.99 percent of everyone who has ever lived throughout history, I fail to understand how and why this sort of behavior is so ensnaringly addictive.

Now, I am about as cynical and skeptical as they come. But I'm not bitter. There is too much that I love, too much in which I am interested and too much hope and joy to be found in the world to leave much room for bitterness. There are things that I dislike with which I am forced to deal with and/or accept, some of them quite intensely. But they are what they are, and allowing those things to mar one's enjoyment of everything else is simply foolish.

The evil of Disney

I loathe Disney. I won't go to Disneyworld, I have no trouble avoiding their increasingly awful children's films and I think they are the poster child for the way in which corporate evil invades and destroys entrepeneurial creations like a cancer. Harvey Weinstein is not someone I hold in high regard, but it's interesting to catch a glimpse into the deceitful operation of the most pernicious of the evil corporate empires.

When came the epic dustup over Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. On May 12, 2003, a Disney executive sent Harvey Wein-stein a letter saying, “You cannot release this movie.” Four days later, another letter was sent. This one outlined why Miramax would not be allowed to release the film—it was a “restrictive picture” under the Miramax-Disney contract, it was politically partisan, etc.—and instructed Miramax to divest itself of its interest in the project.

Weinstein, all sides agree, went ahead and funded the movie anyway. And, according to Disney, Weinstein hid the $6 million budget in other projects. In this version, Eisner found out about Miramax’s continued involvement only when Weinstein casually mentioned that he’d like his boss to take a look at the film as the two men were strolling toward an elevator bank in Disney’s California headquarters.

The problem is, it’s not true. Costs associated with the movie weren’t hidden; indeed, quarterly budget reports sent from Miramax to Disney in 2003 include a line item for “FAHRENHEIT 911” complete with a film code (“M1621”), a date of first cost (“FY03 Q3”), and a tentative release date (“Oct-04”). Moore even said publicly the checks came from Burbank. (Disney never produced for me the reports where Fahrenheit 9/11 supposedly should have appeared but didn’t; a spokeswoman told me I was “naïve” and “in the tank” when I explained I’d need to see the reports myself.)

I would have thought it was naive to take Disney's word for it, in light of how it contradicts the evidence. But Black is white in the new Disney. Keep that in mind the next time your child wants to see the latest talking animal film. They think of the children all the time, though not exactly in the manner in which a parent would wish.

Deeper Democratic depths

From the Washington Times:

Perhaps the most comical moment in the liberal-media after-party Thursday night came on PBS' 'Charlie Rose,' when Newsweek's chief Democratic spinner, Jonathan Alter, mourned that Republicans have a 'huge advantage' after the debates because conservatives 'control all of talk radio' (sorry, Al Franken) and because there won't be many on Fox News Channel speaking well of Kerry. By contrast, CNN and MSNBC and PBS all have the disadvantage of attempting to be balanced.

But it seemed from flipping past Fox after the debate that they had several Kerry fans on — from aspiring secretary of state Richard Holbrooke to Sen. Bob Graham. And what made Alter's statement so comical was that he was sitting on a PBS round table with Charlie Rose, Walter Isaacson, Karen Tumulty, Mark Halperin and Michael Kinsley — all credentialed members of the liberal media elite who liked Kerry's performance.

One of the things I despised about the blogosphere's defense-by-silence of Michelle Malkin's contemptible tome was that it was a direct imitation of a much-used mainstream media tactic. But in fairness, statements like this hallucinatory one of Alter's demonstrate that there's an awful lot of corrupting and self-deceiving to be done before King Log can hope to reach the depths of King Stork.

Discuss amongst yourselves

Time to ride the tank

From Slashdot:

Before I worked at Microsoft as an intern last summer (I'm a college student), I was under the same impression about the amount of brainpower they had. I worked specifically for MSN Ads, and everywhere I looked (I also talked to my friends in other departments) I found sloppy coding practices, FUD, and general CYA-motivated B.S.

9/10 people I met didn't know what they were doing, but they were too good at political maneuvering for it to matter. The people that knew what they were doing were extremely cynical and didn't think things could change. Oh how I wish I could comment on specifics. Damn NDA.

I was really hoping Microsoft would be a cool place to work, but I was severely disappointed. Behind closed doors, I couldn't find a SINGLE person who would actually recommend taking a job there. When they made me an offer to join after my senior year (this year), I turned it down.

This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that it is a comment made subsequent to a Bill Gates statement: "fast forward 10 years, the two leading OS technologies will be Linux and Windows."

I know who my money would be on if it was necessary to spend it on an open source OS. Linux. Learn it now or learn it later....

Week 4 picks

Last week: 8-6. Overall: 28-18.

New York Jets over Miami Dolphins
Philadelphia Eagles over Chicago Bears
New England Patriots over Buffalo Bills
Baltimore Ravens over Kansas City Chiefs
Tennessee Titans over San Diego Chargers
Indianapolis Colts over Jacksonville Jaguars
Green Bay Packers over New York Giants
Denver Broncos over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Oakland Raiders over Houston Texans
Washington Redskins over Cleveland Browns
New Orleans Saints over Arizona Cardinals
Pittsburgh Steelers over Cincinnati Bengals
Carolina Panthers over Atlanta Falcons
St. Louis Rams over San Francisco 49ers

When drunks drive

It turns out Bill Gross and Steve Roach were swapping notes on the global economy. The candid exchange took place over email during late August and early September and was posted at Morgan Stanley's website. A reader forwarded us the thread...

"Bill, I don't know about you, but I've lost confidence in the world's fiscal authorities." Roach is almost desperate. "[B]y fuelling the debt-driven super-liquidity cycle of the past several
years, they, too, have now become part of the problem, I fear."

The bond man's response: "While I would concur that monetary authorities have been drinking with reckless abandon without turning over the keys to a designated driver, there's only so much I can do. What? Sell my bonds and accept their penal yield of 1.5% in short-term paper?"

"Central bankers used to be the tough guys," retorts Roach, "and you used to be one of the world's leading bond market vigilantes who held them accountable for doing the right thing. Where are the vigilantes now that we really need them?"

"So the world's on my shoulders now?" retorts Gross, in an email back to Morgan Stanley's chief economist. "My first obligation is to my clients."

And meanwhile, gold has quietly increased from 250 to 420 in the last four years. Hmmmm....