The Right Wing News has named Vox Popoli the 37th best conservative blog. I appreciate that Mr. Hawkins thinks well of the blog, but I do find it to be somewhat ironic in that I am not a political conservative. But, I suppose that I am somewhat of a religious reactionary and there are a lot of conservatives who comment here, so it’s not a totally unreasonable inclusion.
Category: Uncategorized
VPFL Week Two
79 Blackmouth Banksters (2-0)
49 Mounds View Meerkats (0-2)
77 Winston Reverends (2-0)
54 Judean Rhyneauxs (1-1)
52 Bane Sidhe (1-1)
36 RR Redbeards (1-1)
85 Valders Quixotes (1-1)
50 MS Swamp Spartans (0-2)
76 Meigs Marauders (1-1)
49 Greenfield Grizzlies (1-1)
It is suddenly beginning to look like my much-ballyhooed first-year starting RBs are worthless. Considering that I picked them up in lieu of two keepers, this appears to have been a very poor decision.
The 10-percent myth
Putting the statistical nail in Kinsey’s coffin:
More than 480,000 people or one per cent of the UK?s adult population regard themselves as gay or lesbian while a further 245,000 or 0.5 percent say they are bisexual, according a study published by the Office for National Statistics. The data has been collected by the new Integrated Household Survey (IHS), which is the largest social report ever produced for the ONS. The 450,000 individual respondents to the survey provided the biggest pool of UK social data after the national census, the statistics service said.
Despite having a) played in a band signed to a gay music label, and b) having a gay fan club, I have never subscribed to the myth that ten percent of the population is gay. First, because I don’t trust round numbers. Second, because of the thousands of people I’ve met over time, far fewer than 10 percent of them were not normally oriented despite the fact that I was acquainted with a lot more gay men and bisexual women than nearly anyone else I knew.
And, of course, no one could ever provide a credible citation. I’ve always assumed the correct number was around 2 percent, which appears to be more in line with the statistical reality. The fact is that gays tend to lead very troubled lives, not because of homophobia or the contempt of the normally-oriented as many would like to believe, but because abnormality of any kind is not easy. Gays do not deserve approval for their inclinations but neither do they merit contempt. I think the correct response to someone announcing they are gay is “I’m sorry”, not because homosexuality is hateful, but because it’s not an easy journey through life.
Sham democracy in Sweden
In case it’s not already sufficiently apparent to you that neither the American nor European political elites actually give a damn about democracy, the Swedes are underlining this observable fact:
Members of several Swedish political parties are calling for a restructuring of the Riksdag [the Swedish parliament] to minimize the influence of the far-right Sweden Democrats. The parties are investigating whether it is possible to shift the make-up of parliamentary committees to reduce the sway of the far-right, anti-immigrant party which was voted into parliament for the first time at the weekend’s general elections, several Swedish dailies reported. Both Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderate [center-right] Party and the main opposition Social Democrats are reportedly involved.
“Democracy” in both Europe and America is a complete sham. It’s nothing more than rhetorical propaganda; countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are invaded in the name of bringing democracy to their peoples even as genuine democracy is routinely crushed through the use of the courts in the United States and parliamentary rules in European countries.
In the USA, it doesn’t matter if you vote for Democrats or Republicans because you’re going to get essentially the same government either way. The differences are only at the margins and it is more accurate to think of them as a single bi-factional ruling party rather than two rival parties that subscribe to different ideologies. As Sweden is demonstrating, if it were possible to significantly transform society against the will of the trans-party political elite through voting, voting would be made irrelevant.
At this point, it is clear that despite all of the genuine dangers of democracy, representative democracy is actually worse. Since the tactic of expanding the franchise has rendered the limits of representation worse than toothless, the best strategy is to support real democracy. Therefore, I am thinking of changing my party identification from Christian Libertarian to Technodemocrat. But not Democrat in the sense of the modern U.S. Democratic Party, I mean a full and open democracy that dispenses with all of the limitations on the will of the people imposed by representative democracy in favor of technodemocracy.
The unfortunate fact is that the idea of protecting the minority against the will of majority has been utilized to impose the will of the corporatist oligarchy on the majority. Therefore, it would be a significant improvement to remove all limits on the will of the majority.
Feminists get their kneepads
Albeit this time they are peace camp rather than presidential:
Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes…. Aloni-Sedovnik cites two specific cases which she has knowledge of – one is a case of rape and another is “severe sexual harassment.” The attackers in both cases, she stresses, were familiar with the victims and knew that they were “peace activists.” The rape occurred several months ago in the village of Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem. The victim, an American activist, wanted to press charges but leftist activists put pressure on her not to do so, so as not to damage the struggle against the ‘occupation.’
With feminism, as with other left-wing movements, the ideology always trumps the individual.
Erik Scott memorial blog
The father of the military veteran shot dead by Las Vegas police addresses the upcoming attempt to assassinate his son’s character:
The Clark County Coroner’s Inquest Hearing into my son’s slaying on July 10th at the Summerlin Costco store will be held in Las Vegas, NV, this week. As a one-sided, unchallenged insult to the tenets of U.S. due process, the hearing promises to be quite a show. And that’s exactly how it should be viewed: As a deadly serious TV reality show. It will be nauseating amateur theater carefully orchestrated and controlled by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and their joined-at-the-hip ally, the District Attorney’s office.
This “Coroner’s Cop-Clearing Circus” is billed as an informal “fact-finding” exercise, but facts will be in short supply. Instead, this abomination of justice has only two objectives: To destroy Erik Scott’s reputation, and to exonerate the three Metro officers who gunned down Erik in a crowd of approximately 50 people, shooting him seven times. At least five of those rounds were fired into Erik’s back, after he was on the ground, convulsing, bleeding profusely, fighting for air, and dying a painful, needless death. His heart and lungs had been destroyed by hollow-point bullets that slammed into his body at high velocity, then mushroomed, ripping his insides to shreds.
Metro officers and the DA will attempt to shift the jury’s and TV audience’s attention far away from the facts of Erik’s horrific, senseless killing. First, we’ll hear that the Costco surveillance video recordings (or the store’s “critical cameras,” if we’re to believe Sheriff Gillespie’s latest comments) were “unusable,” thanks to a mysterious hard-disk “glitch.” Don’t believe it. I don’t. Any digital security-video system deployed by a $73-billion-per-year corporation that ranks Number 25 on the Fortune 500 list will have multiple hard-disk backups onsite. Further, the video will be streamed offsite to a remote storage location. I guarantee there’s an unadulterated copy of that video somewhere, but Metro will not allow it to be seen by the family, our attorney, Ross Goodman, or Las Vegas citizens.
If those videotapes are “lost” or “destroyed”, that will constitute compelling evidence, bordering on absolute proof, that the three officers involved, one of whom has shot three people in his five years as a “law enforcement officer”, murdered Mr. Scott’s son. Lethal abuses of authority, compounded by the criminal coverup, should be punished much more harshly than ordinary first-degree murders by citizens not given badges by the state and local governments. Which reminds me, it is both ironic and pathetic that so many law enforcement officers attempt to portray their occupation as non-civilian and pseudo-military even when they are defending the murder of a real military man by their civilian brother officers.
Reading through the memorial blog, am amazed by Mr. Scott’s restraint and wish him the very best in seeking justice for his slain son. Given the apparent facts, I would find it very difficult to blame him if he instead elected to personally behead those three cops and their family members with a rusty butter knife.
In the meantime, Confederate Yankee adds to his ongoing summation of the shooting.
Review of the year
In which the OC brings to our attention another milestone in the long descent of the publishing industry into the dustbin of history.
n June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity were as a matter of law not as culpable for their acts. Writing eloquently in dissent, Justice Scalia drew a sharp distinction between the severely mentally retarded (who are truly not responsible for their actions), and the merely stupid (the category into which Mr. Atkins undoubtedly fell). Scalia argued forcefully that, with respect to the merely stupid, at least sometimes they deserve to be punished for their antisocial and destructive behavior.
This article, of course, is not about capital punishment. It is a book review of Dirty, Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain. However, the above discussion is relevant because I initially had reservations about writing this book review at all. After all, it is clear to everyone who has read Meghan McCain’s twitter feed, her “articles” on The Daily Beast, or her ill-fated campaign blog that Meghan is not a paragon of clear reasoning, exemplar of familiarity with facts, nor a model of English language expertise. And after subjecting myself to 194 continuous pages of her “writing,” it became clear that none of the above-described works truly plumbed the depths of mental vacuity in which Ms. McCain aimlessly and cluelessly drifts.
Even as an AWCA, I find myself lost in admiration at such a vituperative work of art. Especially since it is so well-merited.
All your income are belong to us
I imagine the IRS will regard this as a brilliant notion.
The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer. The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.
This should suffice to guarantee the complete exit of all mobile capital from the UK.
Anthology appellations
The Original Cyberpunk contemplates anthologizing himself:
Which brings us to the last question: what makes for a good single-author anthology, anyway? What do you like to see? Just the hit singles? Something you haven’t seen before? As many stories as can possibly be fit into a book? Stories focusing on just one particular style or theme, or a good cross-section from the writer’s entire career? And what about the writer’s voice: do you like it when the writer includes a little something about the story? Do you prefer a big something; e.g., longer comments about what the writer thought he was trying to do when he wrote it and what it took to make the story publishable? Or are you happiest when the writer just shuts up and stays the heck out of the way of the stories?
First, I think the idea of an anthology of Mr. Bethke’s work is a great one. And in my opinion, the name is obvious: The Original Cyberpunk. Considering the word is his singular contribution to the English language, it would be a travesty of both marketing and justice were the central collection of his best short fiction not pay homage to it in some way.
As for the actual question posed, I prefer to see a Best Of collection. Unless one is a Major Writer or prolific short story writer who publishes multiple anthologies, the book is likely to become the definitive view of the author’s work for many readers. And I very much enjoy an introductory page preceding each story providing the reader with additional information, either about the idea for the story, the process of writing the story, or deeper aspects of the story that may not be apparent to the average reader.
The aliens will save us!
Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.
All your base are belong to us….