Category: Uncategorized

Is looking increasingly problematic:

Most of the missiles couldn’t be fired, and neither could any of the big guns. The Aegis radars key to the ships’ fighting abilities didn’t work right.

The flight decks were inoperable.

Most of the lifesaving gear failed inspection.

Corrosion was rampant, and lube oil leaked all over.

The verdict: “unfit for sustained combat operations.”

Those results turned up by an inspection by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey — commonly known as an InSurv — would be bad enough if they came from one warship.

But they came from two. In different fleets, in different oceans. Within a week of each other. And each ship represents the Navy’s most sophisticated front-line surface combatants.

Platitudes, swagger and empty gestures are no substitute for proper logistics, maintenance, and strategic coherency.

GPB points out a simple fact:

Let’s get real here. Vox doesn’t give a shit about the kids. This is just another issue for him to complain about with the government.

That’s absolutely right. I really don’t care about the teeming Mormon spawn, and yet I defend their right to live in peace with their families and benefit from equal treatment under the law all the same. I don’t care about the Jews, but I complain about the National Socialist government’s decision to murder them and believe they have an absolute right to defend their nation. I don’t care about the Ukrainian peasants, but I complain about the Soviet government’s decision to starve them. I don’t care about most unborn children, but I argue for their right to life anyhow. What does caring about someone have to do with an acknowledgment of the blatant violation of their unalienable rights as Americans and human beings? The CPS claims to care about those kids even as they violate due process and kidnap them from their parents, just as Janet Reno still claims to care about the kids that she roasted alive at Waco.

Giving a shit and $4.75 will get you a caffeine-infused heated fluid and cylindrical paper container at Starbucks.

And promptly ignored. You already knew my opinion of democracy, right? Anyhow, we’re going with Thucydides and The History of the Peloponnesian War, since my primary purpose in taking the poll was less to pick the book and more to see if there was sufficient interest in the historical classics to bother with this Voxiversity thing. I elected not to do Human Action despite the almost alarming level of interest in it because I’m already elbow-deep in economics with the podcasts and whatnot. (By the way, those are henceforth going to be bi-weekly, since the post-interview audio adjustments take too much time.) Also, I think it would probably be wiser to start out with something more basic if/when we get around to economics. Mises makes a lot less sense if you don’t know the Keynesianism and Marxism that he is criticizing. I was a bit surprised that Clausewitz had so much support and that John Julius Norwich and Mr. Shakespeare had so little. Wilson would be fun, but I didn’t seriously think many would be interested in it.

So, now you’ve got 12 days to pick up a copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War and read through 1.115. That’s page 63 in the paperback version of The Landmark Thucydides, which I highly recommend. It’s only $17, but if you’d rather not spend the money, or would rather spend that $17 on another book of unquestionable merit, you can simply download the text in your favorite format, including audiobook, from ManyBooks. The plain text isn’t marked, so just read down to the point where Sparta and Athens conclude the Thirty Years Peace.

And yes, there will be a quiz….

WND continues to rise in the rankings:

Based on unique visitors, Nielsen breaks down news site traffic rankings as follows: CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, AOL News, New York Times, Gannett Newspapers (USA Today), Google News, Fox News, Washington Post, WorldNow, Heart Newspapers, IB Web Sites, Gannett Broadcasting, Cox Newspapers, Drudge Report, Breitbart, Netscape, Media General Newspapers, Star Tribune, GTGI Network, Townhall, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WorldNetDaily, Zwire, Daily Kos, St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Atlantic, KSL, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tribune-Review.

The three things that suprise me are that people pay so much attention to Kos and National Review when they’re read by fewer people than WND, that the Drudge Report is not number one, and that the Star Tribune is so high. But I have no reason to doubt the relative ratings; I like NRO, but a link from them brings rather less traffic than one from WND.

It’s also slightly amusing because some critics still like to pull the “who is Vox Day” routine because my column appears online instead of on dead tree. They seem to forget that my WND column is far more widely read than the blog, and that it’s read by more people than ever read the nationally syndicated column that appeared in 15 papers around the country, including the Boston, Atlanta, San Jose and St. Paul papers. The unique audience numbers show that WND has a long way to go before it reaches the level of a major national news institution, but it’s already got a bigger readership than most metropolitan newspapers or national news magazines.

John J. Miller on Gaia Day:

The promoter of the event is holding an umbrella as she’s being interviewed. Water is running off its edge. She’s probably standing in a pool of mud. Yet she urges people to come on down for the concert today. “It’s beautiful down here!” she insists.

Uh, no it’s not.

I have some sympathy for those who plan big outdoor events only to have the weather ruin them. But how are we supposed to trust these people on climate change if they can’t even tell the truth about what’s happening right on their own heads?

Beelzebub almost gets his wish:

I can’t hide my intense curiosity to see this blog review a serious work on socialism and then witness the purely biased outrage that would ensue.

I was so tempted to choose Kapital, except that it would be over the heads of the economically handicapped and those who understand it would be bored to death. Now, I’m not saying I’ll abide by the vote – you know my opinion of democracy – but I am interested in getting a general sense for how everyone feels about the book study. I’ll give people a week to get their hands on the selected text one way or another, and we’ll do a chapter per week with discussions beginning on the weekends.

A Voice From the Herd moos about the end justifying the means… because it’s for the children, of course:

I went at Vox Day for his inhuman attitude towards a phone call from an abused teenager. It appears that the call could be a hoax, even so I think the authorities had to err on the side of caution and Vox’s “christian” attitude still sucked ass…. Once more if that is what libertarianism is.. fuck it, if that is what your christian god deems moral fuck him too.

The idea that the authorities “had to err on the side of caution” by kidnapping 416 children on the basis of a single anonymous phone call that increasingly appears to be a hoax is a clear demonstration of how most women and not a few men really do want to be slaves. Freedom always comes at a price. If you’re not willing to pay it, then you will sell yourself into slavery. Hareball doesn’t realize that it is not libertarianism or the Christian God that she is rejecting here, but the freedom offered by both. The shame is that so many like her are so willing to force others into the same fearful servitude that they themselves crave.

One wonders what my religious faith has to do with the obvious violations of due process and the rule of law on the part of the Texas CPS agents responsible for kidnapping the children. As for the terrible “horror” that the women and children have supposedly endured prior to the kidnappings, I note that every single woman has preferred to return to her “abusers” than remain safe in the supposedly protective arms of the Texas government. The children, on the other hand, have been permitted no such freedom of choice by those who claim to have “rescued” them.

UPDATE – The evidence mounts and the self-proclaimed “child protection” advocates are “stunned”:

Texas authorities say Swinton is a person of interest in their search for the girl whose call prompted them to raid the Yearning for Zion Ranch. Department of Public Safety officials declined to discuss the case as part of an ongoing investigation, but issued a statement Friday saying the Rangers accompanied Colorado Springs police to search Swinton’s home for items related to previous false reports to authorities. Officers found several items indicating a possible connection between Swinton and calls regarding FLDS compounds in Colorado City, Arizona, and the one near Eldorado. The Rangers are “actively pursuing Rozita Swinton as a person of interest regarding telephone calls placed to a crisis center hotline in San Angelo,” the DPS said…

“The Texas Rangers told us she was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton’s home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people.”

If you don’t see a very serious problem with this system, which supporters of the kidnappings claim worked precisely as it was supposed to, well, just send me your address and we’ll arrange to have some children make a few frightened phone calls. Perhaps you’ll feel differently about it then. And would you be just as fine with the mass kidnapping if she’d been a black woman obsessed with Jews instead of Mormons?

UPDATE II – Now they’re taking the little kids away too:

Adult mothers who have been allowed to stay with their young children since they were taken from a polygamous sect will be separated from them after DNA sampling is completed next week, a child welfare official said Saturday.

I wonder how long this judge and the responsible investigators will survive taking 416 children away from their parents:

Hundreds of children who were taken from a polygamist ranch by Texas child welfare authorities will remain in state custody, a judge ruled Friday night…. Walther made her ruling after two days of testimony at a hearing to determine whether the children were properly removed by child welfare authorities. Walther said she found sufficient evidence for Texas Child Protective Services to keep custody of the children.

History shows that religious people will tolerate an awful lot of persecution, but I find it hard to believe that a group of Texans will meekly accept the loss of their children because a few women in positions of government power don’t like their religious beliefs. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that incidents of government abuse justified by “for the children” claims are usually directed by someone named Janet, Barbara, or Angie?

I have criticized David Frum numerous times in the past, but he definitely nails it here:

Surging prices, collapsing returns, ending in a crash — housing? Yes, but the pattern may equally apply to another area of middle-class aspiration — college education. And as high school seniors receive their fat or thin acceptance or rejection letters this month, maybe we should all take a closer look at what their money buys.

Over the past decade the cost of college tuition has approximately doubled, faster at private colleges. This rapidly inflating investment is yielding a declining return. The earnings of bachelor-degree holders have been dropping this decade. After inflation, B.A. holders earned more than $54,000 in 2000. That dropped 5 percent over the next four years.

This is not a sustainable situation; politicians and parents have long mistaken the mere possession of a degree with a genuinely valuable education. As those of us with degrees from expensive universities well know, they simply aren’t worth anywhere near the price that was charged for them.

One can learn far more from reading on one’s own than sitting in a crowded room being talked at. Frum’s Bookshelf is a good example of this, although I’m interested in the idea of taking his concept even further by making use of the Web 2.0 user-generated aspects of this blog. What would you make of a regularly scheduled Voxiversity feature in which I’ll select a serious book related to a particular subject and those interested will go methodically through it with weekly discussions of each chapter? I could invite various experts to lead the discussions; those who aren’t regulars already might be willing to participate if they knew that people were buying their books for this purpose. For example, I am currently reading The Landmark Thucydides to which VDH contributed the forward and perhaps he would be interested in participating, particularly if he knew that a certain number of people had bought the book for this purpose. Actually, he’d probably be more interested if we chose A War Like No Other, but you get the point.

Anyhow, let me know if this might be of enough interest for you to participate and what would be the first books you’d be interested in reading and discussing. History, literature, economics and military classics are the subjects I’m interested in; please don’t even THINK about suggesting anything related to atheism, theology, evolution, biology or intelligent design.

MDS explodes the oft-heard draft legend:

Mike Mamula’s name is thrown around every year at draft time as the simple shorthand for a player whom N.F.L. general managers fall in love with based solely on the athleticism he displays at the scouting combine, and who then goes on to have a terrible N.F.L. career.

There are just two problems with that perception of Mamula:
1. The Eagles didn’t make him the seventh pick in the 1995 draft based solely on his combine performance.
2. His N.F.L. career wasn’t terrible.