Author: VD

This exchange of comments at Rod Dreher’s blog nicely illustrates one aspect of the dark future facing Republicans:

It is staggering that anyone who calls himself pro-life could even remotely consider voting for Obama.
Posted by: RC

True, since the GOP has been so staggeringly successful at getting abortion banned.
Posted by: Derek Copold

When you achieve near-complete political power, as the Republican Party did with its sweep of the White House, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court and you so completely fail to deliver on any of your promises, why on Earth should pro-lifers continue to throw their votes away on you? Given a choice between one party that wants to fund doctors killing children and another party that isn’t interested in preventing doctors from killing children, why should pro-lifers bother taking a party’s position on child-killing into consideration, or for the more single-minded, even bother voting at all?

UPDATE – This exchange was equally illuminating, in this case, of the feminist approach to logic:

I could no more vote for someone who believes that the unborn human has no rights at all and is the completely disposable property of her mother

In that logic, your position in turn imples that the woman is, then, property of the fetus. She can do nothing, yet the fetus is permitted to treat her as disposable, to kill her under some circumstances (e.g. ectopic pregnancy).

Logic is hard!

This isn’t exactly news to anyone who has been paying attention since the dawn of human history.

When Prince & Associates, an American wealth-research firm, asked a sample group of thirtysomething women if they would marry for money, a resounding 75 per cent said yes.

I think my most blatant experience of this basic reality was when I met an extraordinarily attractive model, and after we were introduced, the very first thing she did was check the lapel label of my suit.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with knowing what you prefer in a prospective mate. I’m not exactly secretive about my preference for slender blondes with nicely defined cheekbones who live in the gym. The first problem lies with those who are dishonest with both themselves and others about what they are seeking, the subsequent one is thinking that merely finding someone who meets those preferences is going to be enough to satisfy you over time in a relationship.

There’s a saying that no woman is so hot that there isn’t a man somewhere who is thoroughly sick of her. And there’s no man so wealthy that there isn’t a woman somewhere who can’t stand to be around him – although in the latter case, the divorce settlement may have somewhat ameliorated the loathing.

I did find it amusing that the woman in the article who was interested in applying for the millionaires dating club appeared to be genuinely surprised to discover that these monetary targets of opportunity were inclined her various interests as secondary. But the basic truth is pretty simple and all the fairy tale fantasies in the world won’t ever change the fundamental reality or importance of the propagation equation. Women trade looks and sex for status and security. This is not a bad thing, in fact, this is how the race – species if you prefer – survives.

Give women status and security, they stop breeding. Give men hot women without making them take responsibility for those women, they stop breeding. This is not rocket science, and it is also why any society that bases itself on a principle of sexual equality will fail within in less than five generations.

When they’re votes for Ron Paul:

TOWN OF SUTTON CONFIRMS RON PAUL TOTALS WERE 31, NOT ZERO.

I just got off the phone with Jennifer Call, Town Clerk for Sutton. She confirmed that the Ron Paul totals in Sutton were actually 31, and said that they were “left off the tally sheet” and it was human error.

This needs to be further investigated. I wonder how much more of that accidental-on-purpose human error took place around the state, and in whose –Hillary– favor?

Not only does the responsible Cornerite continue her fascinating and important consideration of the romantic lives of French politicians, but she manages to demonstrate incredible intellectual acumen as well:

According to my 12 year old, a Rabbi who had lost the attention of the class, just last week raised his voice and all but shouted, “people, this happened because Potiphar wanted to have sex with Joseph!”

Yes, the famous Biblical story about that raging queen Potiphar trying to seduce Joseph… he must have found that technicolor dreamcoat irresistible. This reminds me of my favorite game with female writers. From the time their first column appears, count the number of columns they write before mentioning their children, (if they have one), their husband/boyfriend, (if they have one), or their cat (if they lack the aforementioned accoutrements, they’ll DEFINITELY have one).

The Over/Under is usually around four. A woman who can resist referencing her personal life for more than ten columns will often turn to be very good, while you know it’s going to be a short and ugly run when she’s working in references to her “life-partner” with whom she shares Moggsy and Mr. Tiddles, in the very first one.

I always marveled at how some of the Austrian economists had the foresight to depart Austria and Germany so long before the evil of the Nazi regime became apparent to the world at large. Now, I’m wondering how so many Americans can be so blind as to fail to recognize the mutation of their nation into a police terror state:

The mother of an 11-year-old boy abducted by SWAT team members and taken to a hospital after he was bruised while horsing around is warning members of her community of the “Nazi” tactics she endured, including a statement from the officers that her “rights” were “only in the movies.”

The case involves Jon Shiflet, who injured himself while trying to grab the handle of a door on a car his sister was driving. He slipped and fell to the pavement, hitting his head. His parents treated him for the injury and rejected paramedics’ demands that they be allowed to take him to a hospital. “One (officer) grabbed my daughter Beth (18 years), who also had a gun to her face, slammed her down and kneed her in the back and held her in that position… My sons Adam (14) and Noah (only 7) lay down willingly, yet they were still forced to put their hands behind their backs and were yelled at to keep their heads down….

“I asked if I could make a phone call and was told, ‘no.’ My daughter asked if that wasn’t one of our rights. The reply was made, ‘That’s only in the movies,'” she told WND.

This sort of thing is more common than you think and it’s definitely not going to stop, it’s only going get worse as the definition of “terrorist” is expanded and the economy heads south. Politics won’t stop it, as both major parties strongly favor the expansion of central state power. Home invasions like these simply don’t happen often in most other civilized nations; America may have once been the most free country in the world but that just isn’t the case any longer.

The sheriff says he felt he had no choice: “I was given a court order, and I really don’t feel I have any choice but to comply with that court order.”

Good thing the court didn’t tell him to round up a few Jews instead of kidnapping a little boy from his home. The moral of this tale of two stories: always surreptitiously record the cops.

It looks like I’m not the only one who has noticed Hillary Clinton’s praetorian guard of grim lesbian blackskirts:

Hillary’s willingness to tolerate Bill’s compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause — which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

It’s no coincidence that Hillary’s staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust….

Hillary’s disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip.

I have to admit, I find myself almost anticipating Hillary’s Reign of Grrl Terror. Of course it will be beyond imagining, but I have this little bet with myself that as awful as all of the conventional Republican Clinton-haters think it’s going to be, it will actually be much worse, albeit in ways that no one outside of the Lizard Queen’s twisted reptilian mind can realistically anticipate.

The NYT’s Gail Collins explains the Lizard Queen’s victory in New Hampshire:

My own favorite theory is that this week, Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who’s overdosed on multitasking. They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go back to school/start a business/become a lawyer. But there are days when they can’t meet everybody’s needs and the men in their lives — loved ones and otherwise — make them feel like failures or towers of self-involvement. And the deal is that they can either suck it up or look like a baby.

The women whose heart went out to Hillary knew that it wasn’t rational. She asked for this race, and if she was exhausted, the other candidates were, too. (John McCain is 71 and tired and nobody felt sorry for him.) The front-runner always gets ganged up on in debates. If her campaign was in shambles, it was her job to fix it or take the consequences. But for one moment, women knew just how Hillary felt, and they gave her a sympathy vote

As the OC often points out, fiction can’t keep up with reality and not even my deep cynicism about female voting can manage to run with the self-parody. Have you ever noticed that those who defend women’s suffrage never see fit to mention the importance of things like the sympathy vote? Defenses of women’s suffrage, in the rare case that anyone even attempts to make one rather than simply throwing a hissy fit, are always a vague theoretical defense. This is mostly because there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence, not one iota, to support the idea that universal suffrage – or in the case of the USA, wide but non-universal suffrage – is either synonymous with human liberty or fosters freedom in any significant way.

Moreover, the modern suffrage position makes no sense. If the will of the people is paramount, then what is the grounds for banning direct democracy? And if limits on democracy are justifiable, then what is the rational basis for limiting it in one way but erupting in hysterical fury at the mere suggestion of limiting it in another? There is nothing inherently moral about democracy; more importantly, there is nothing intellectually coherent about the moral case for limited democracy.

As far as the New Hampshire primary goes, I’ve already stated my belief that the ballots were adjusted in favor of the Lizard Queen. This demonstration of the difference between verifiable hand ballots and unverifiable machine ones shows how the chicanery may have been accomplished. As both the ballot data and the media coverage tend to indicate, the Republican elites are far more worried about Huckabee than Paul.

But at the end of the day, the incomparable Aussie may have summed it up best: “A black man tried to take something from a white woman, so they all clutched their purses tighter and voted against this vote rapist.”

A commenter at the Evangelical Outpost corrects the impression that Rudy is only losing because he isn’t trying:

Rudy got 9% of the vote after 126 campaign events in New Hampshire to Huck’s 93. And spent $2.5 million on TV to Huck’s $100K.

Someone had better get that whip cracking on those Diebold programmers! I’m not so sure that the elite is convinced that they really need Rudy to play the fall guy anymore, though. Thanks to his undeniable political skills, Mike Huckabee appears to be the only one besides Ron Paul that might be able to make the Lizard Queen sweat in any way, although one has to assume that there’s no shortage of Arkansas dirt available to be either dug up or manufactured by Team Clinton.

Meanwhile, NRO’s Patrick Basham offers with a pro-Giuliani take on events:

Rudy’s decision to ignore both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries guaranteed poor showings in these still-important first-in-the-nation contests….

Now, I don’t know if the appearance count and money spent is accurate for Giuliani, so perhaps someone can set me straight if the EO commenter is incorrect. But if he’s got the numbers right, then someone really needs to correct Rudy’s Republican propagandists.

Sweet William F. Buckley on a popsicle stick! What’s next, home-made holiday decorations with John Derbyshire? Are Ramesh Ponnuru, Rich Lowry and David Freddoso going to cooperate on a team knitting project? Can we anticipate a special Bloggingheads video featuring Jonah and Peter braiding each other’s hair? Will Kathryn Jean advise girls just when to let that special boy reach second base? It’s ESPN’s Page 2 all over again:

So, Sarkozy wins election as prime minister of France, pretends to live with his second wife who had previously left him, and apparently did so again, secretly divorces said wife and announces it as a fait accompli, then starts ostentatiously dating Carla Bruni, a former model who is now a singer. He makes sure to be photographed in bathing suits on a beach in Egypt, thereby offending the Muslim natives, but very effectively showing off his girlfriend’s fabulous figure. Now he announces that the relationship is “serious,” and floats rumors of marriage.

The question is, does marrying the trophy girlfriend five minutes after the ex-wife dumped him make him look better or worse.

I think I speak for a sizeable percentage of current and former National Review subscribers when I say: WHO GIVES A FLYING, FORNICATING RODENT’S POSTERIOR about who, or what, a French politician is dating in his spare time!

I seem to recall a historical epoch when conservatives didn’t give a damn about cheese-eating surrender monkeys, period. Yes, this is just National Review’s Corner, not the magazine proper, but seriously, it’s hardly a wonder that today’s conservatism is mutating into big government liberalism lite with ideological champions like this standing atop history, pondering where European politicos are placing their penises. Silver lining: if you didn’t understand where that scathing contempt for the current state of conservative punditry which may have peeked through just a little bit during the Liberal Fascism interview came from, well, perhaps this insightful and important post on the current state of French politics may explain a part of it.

On a tangential and largely unrelated note – I’m hardly a Frum fan, but say what you will about the man, at least he’s a political pundit who still harbors an interest in actual American politics – I found this comment about his new book to be somewhat amusing:

I’m delighted by the media attention. But I have to confess, it’s becoming clear to me: Republicans and conservatives are very resistant to the message of Comeback.

I haven’t read it, so I don’t have an opinion on it. But if it’s anything like An End to Evil, one can only conclude Republicans and conservatives probably SHOULD be very resistant to its message, which based on the publisher’s Amazon description apparently includes the following:

A conservative commitment to make private-sector health insurance available to every American – NO

Lower taxes on savings and investment financed by higher taxes on energy and pollution – NO

Federal policies to encourage larger families – DEPENDS

Major reductions in unskilled immigration – YES, DEFINITELY

A genuinely compassionate conservatism, including a conservative campaign for prison reform and government action against the public health disaster of obesity – FINE… HOLY CATS, YOU DIDN’T SAY THIS WAS A COMEDY, MR. FRUM!

A new conservative environmentalism that promotes nuclear power in place of coal and oil – WHATVER

Higher ethical standards inside the conservative movement and the Republican party – YES, LONG OVERDUE

A renewed commitment to expand and rebuild the armed forces of the United States—to crush terrorism—and get ready for the coming challenge from China – MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE GOALS

Again, I can’t speak for the book proper, but as for this little list of ideological cross-dressing, it’s an incoherent and self-contradictory platform that has no chance of either being adopted by the Republican party or being meaningful in any significant fashion. Frum’s may have a point about the limited appeal of genuine conservatism today, but what’s the point of killing conservatism to save the party brand?

So notes Casey, in the note accompanying this post at Reason:

“It was the debate,” said a female voice. This male group of pundits looked over and saw Rachel Sklar of the Huffington Post. “The likeability question.” She was talking about the moment in the debate when Charlie Gibson suggested Clinton had a likeability problem, Clinton parried (“That hurts my feelings!”) and Obama leaned into the mic and said “You’re likeable enough.” The camera caught him the second he closed his mouth, looking down, unsmiling, writing notes.

The guys in the room sort of just stood there. I can’t read their minds, but mine was swirling. You know, I’d noticed women at one of the debate-watching parties biting their lips when Obama said that. If Obama had said something like “Well, I like you” or if he’d just kept his mouth shut, Hillary’s Monday tears wouldn’t have had the same impact. “That set up the emotional moment,” Sklar said.

So I’m pretty convinced now: That one-liner swung the primary.

For the record, I don’t buy it. I think it had far more to do with all those reports of ballots running short. While women are far too easily manipulated to be permitted to vote in any rational society* that values human liberty, I think it’s far more likely that the emergency ballots arrived with Team Clinton-approved votes cast on them than buy into the notion that a meaningless exchange not seen by most of those voting somehow managed to cause a seismic shift in political allegiances.

* Do relax, my dear suffrage enthusiasts, as American society is not the least bit rational nor does it value human liberty. Rest assured that your sacred vote will remain unmolested until everything collapses around your ears and voting is the very least of your concerns.