Category: Uncategorized

The NYT considers a genuine Conservative meltdown:

At a time when American conservatives are ascendant, the British Conservative Party is adrift, troubled by internal feuding, casting about for a defining theme and struggling to defeat a relatively unpopular incumbent, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an election nine days away.

Most polls and analysts say the Conservative Party, led by Michael Howard, is heading for a historic third consecutive defeat against Labor on May 5. This prospect is all the more noteworthy given how vulnerable Mr. Blair is on issues of trust and leadership after his insistent assertions that prohibited weapons would be found in Iraq in the American-led war that he so strongly supported and that remains unpopular in Britain.

Putting aside the ridiculous idea that conservatives – as opposed to Republicans – are ascendant, the Conservative party’s problems seem likely foreshadow the Republican Party’s problems in the coming decade, because what is killing the Tories is their allegience of their politicians to the European Union. While there is a Euroskeptical majority in England, both major parties as well as the Liberal Democrats are officially EU-enthusiasts, leaving the majorit with no one to support on the issue except the marginal parties dismissed by the media as neo-nazi right-wing extremists.

Sound familiar? Because once the American Union is unveiled, this is precisely where the Republican party is likely to find itself, especially if a popular Democrat willing to triangulate to the center and co-opt Republican cultural issues is elected in 2008.

When considering the future, most people tend to extrapolate current conditions ad infinitum, which is why most people lose money in the stock markets. The point of maximum apparent power is the very turning point at which that power begins to recede, for after Margaret Thatcher’s economic revival and a victorious war, who would have thought to find the Conservative Party in such complete disarray only eight years later?

but VD runs the show.* Two more tendrils reach out into the cold, cruel realm of the Blogosphere with the hirsute circus of ZZ’s Big Top

and a card-carrying member of VP’s left-wing varsity, the chunder from Down Under, Sharpening Stones, Walking on Coals.

*I estimate the chances of anyone but Jaime hitting that without resorting to a search engine at approximately a Googleplex to one.

craigp spends too much time under the blow dryer:

Like Bill O’reilly Vox feels that it is somehow a good thing that the left emails him.

That is fine

BUt…

if that is the case, if like Bill Oreilly, Vox feels that he is more “fair and balanced” becuase he has an audeicen from both the left and the right. Vox cannot then attack Delay and any republicans for not coming out with more ferocity agaiinst the left, many of whom are apparently Vox’s email buddies.

It is true that I have friends across the political spectrum. It is also true that I have friendly relationships with individuals in the media that many people would probably find surprising, including editors at major newspapers, left-wing columnists and even NPR reporters. Many of them enjoy my writing style and take-no-prisoners approach even though they believe my ideology is frighteningly alien.

But unlike Bill O’Reilly, my commentary is not constrained by these relationships because I am not building a media career and because I am not likely to waste much time with anyone who is incapable of understanding the difference between an attack on an idea to which they subscribe and a personal attack. And unlike most people, my relationships are not constrained by my ideology because I am more rationally than emotionally attached to it.

Most leftists are truly misguided. They are blind and almost always fail to follow the logic of their beliefs to the inevitable end. Thus, they are often horrified when the evils that those more clear-eyed predict come to pass. This is why I stated even before George Delano’s reelection that I felt a modicum of pity for craigp and other Three Monkey Republicans, because I was pretty sure that by the end of President Bush’s second term, their faith in the Republican party would be shaken, if not shattered entirely.

Shall I have nothing to do with my many Republican friends as well, because they are complicit in destroying the nation, repeatedly violating the Constitution and building the neo-socialist American Union? I don’t think so. Nor do I disown my more openly socialist friends simply because they are incapable of understanding even the most basic applications of the Law of Supply and Demand. You can like someone without respecting their ability to think clearly… just ask any engineer.

Finally, I have never made any claim of being fair and balanced. And my criticism of cowardly Republicans was not directed at Tom DeLay, who is a big boy and can defend himself, but at Republicans like Rich Lowry, who prefer to cry about the left-wing media’s name-calling in the futile hope that they’ll stop instead of forcing them to knock it off by hitting back harder.

From Yahoo:

For a growing number of students, the easiest way to make a couple of hundred dollars has nothing to do with chores or after-school jobs, and everything to do with informing on classmates.

Tragedies like last month’s deadly shooting at a Red Lake, Minn., school have prompted more schools to offer cash and other prizes — including pizza and premium parking spots — to students who report classmates who carry guns, drugs or alcohol, commit vandalism or otherwise break school rules.

Everyone considers me a political pessimist, and yet even my blacker than black shades can’t completely foresee the myriad of ways in which the nation is being vivisected. You’d think state spies and internal travel documents would be as unacceptably unamerican as the Holocaust combined with the mythologized form of the Spanish Inquisition, and yet the American people are being prepared for them today.

Nor does it escape my notice that, again, the public schools are the vehicle through which this schoolyard Stasi is being trained. The likely tattlers will be noted, hired, and continue their ways, only they’ll be spying on neighbors for the IRS, potsmokers for the DEA and Christians for whatever the Department of Religious Persecution will be called.

I’m beginning to hope that plans for US-Mexican integration fall through… for the Mexicans’ sake.

Another sad, socially challenged individual thinks women get turned on by voting:

Yeah … you’re really persuading people with your half-assed immature polemics preached to the choir there, Vox. I’m sure you get all the girls with that haircut. Nothing turns a girl on like telling her she shouldn’t vote.

I have to be honest, when I first saw this exchange, I was tempted to tell Orac to ignore this moron. But then I decided, screw it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about free speech, but do we really have to suffer fools like this by taking the polite high road? I, for one, have decided to take a stand by describing how unbelievably stupid this sort of trash-talk is. If they have the freedom to criticize others for criticizing them, then I should well have the right to criticize him as well.

In that spirit, I’d like to leave this message for Vox Day: You can rant and justify and justify it all you want, the fact is you will never be a journalist. You will never have the intelligence, ethics, and above all veracity to make it as anything more than vile bile-spewing columnist in a fringe ultra-religious right-wing website, so enjoy this moment because this is as good as it’s ever going to get for you.

I certainly hope I’ll never be a journalist, because I’d have to take a serious paycut. And given that I have the respect of both right- and left-wing journalists who exchange email with me on a regular basis, I’m not exactly concerned about the advice of a low-wattage slug on a Snickers-and-Pepsi diet on how to score chicks.

You see, mon cher Natalie, as you should know, women like the following things, in order: 1) Fame. 2) Power. 3) Money. 4) Looks. 5) Charm. You’ll note that politically correct opinions are nowhere on the list. I could walk into Saint Kate’s, give a speech on how women should not be allowed to vote and exit with a fistful of phone numbers from starry-eyed liberal women, although the lovely Spacebunny is unlikely to grant me permission to do so simply to prove a point.

If WorldNetDaily is fringe, then what does that make Salon? WND has far more readers and, interestingly enough, doesn’t go bankrupt every six months. And when has any left-liberal, anywhere, EVER taken the high road. I’ve got hundreds of emails proving rather conclusively that they don’t.

So, my dear Atkins candidate, go hit the weight room. Go on a few dates. Learn how to interact with worthwhile women, not the ugly, incipient lesbian fag-hags that inhabit collegiate activist circles. Then, get back to me and tell me where you went so horribly wrong.

From NRO:

“FORMER TOP-NOTCH PEST EXTERMINATOR” [Rich Lowry ]
Eugene Robinson manages two snotty exterminator references in his DeLay column today.

Boo-freaking-hoo. If DeLay had serious stones, he’d show up for a press conference with whatever flamethrower contraption it is that exterminators carry and announce something like:

“I’ve taken down bigger cockroaches than Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean in my day.” Then blast Wolf Blitzer or whoever in the face with whipped cream or whatever.

The media would never dare give him a hard time about it again, because people would think it was awesome.

Then again, thinking like this may be why I’m not a campaign advisor or a politician….

The Original Cyberpunk makes use of his Hollywood connections:

As April gives way to May and the final days tick down, one question preoccupies millions of highly trained technical minds around the globe: does George Lucas still have it, or will Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith be yet another example of beautiful cinematography and brilliant special effects in the service of an infantile story line? While I realize I’m in danger of jeopardizing decades of close personal friendship here, I also believe that in time George will thank me for telling you all today that the answer to this question is an absolute, unqualified, and resounding, YES!

Er, that is, yes, George Lucas does still have it.

Really, I can’t say enough about how impressed I am that he has saved the biggest and best surprise for last. This is no ordinary story-teller’s feat: for 28 years he has kept one essential piece of misdirection going and one utterly mind-blowing surprise under wraps. I am speaking, of course, of the one critical question that underpins the entire evolution of the whole storyline; that of the true identity of the evil Galactic Emperor.

I don’t care. Star Wars is dead to me. After the abomination that passed for Episode I, I refuse to see II or III. II was on one night and I saw just enough of it to confirm my decision.

The Fraters Libertas draw our attention to the Star and Sickle’s new Reporter’s Defender making use of a sock puppet or two:

“Along with many other readers, I continue to be frustrated with the needless attacks, negativity, name-calling, lying/deceit and general hypocrisy. Your article serves to focus on the cause of our frustration and the importance of supporting a free press. Well done! Please continue to speak out. The public hears the negative messages over and over until they become almost believable. The positive messages need to be repeated just as often. It is so important for the media to speak up and not be afraid to challenge. Our society needs a free press, and it is an honorable profession.” – Nina Buzzell, Blaine

Print media have their own way of undercutting themselves. Time and again print journalists, in their efforts to be “fair and balanced,” present stories as if there were two equal sides. Mostly, however, the world is much more complex and interesting than to present itself in neat, bilateral symmetry on all occasions. Perhaps the most dangerous manifestation of this problem has been the coverage of global warming, which has long been recognized by a very large preponderance of evidence from scientists all over the globe to be a significant, and now rapidly growing, problem. But still we find stories that bend over backward to suggest that it’s still in doubt. – James McKenzie, St. Paul

What’s funny about these two quotes isn’t their high content of equine excretia – for when has the Red Star ever presented two sides of anything – but the fact that the first note is almost surely written by my fourth-grade public school teacher! There’s something more than a little satisfying in the knowledge that one of her very own students is one of the many voices repeating that negative message over and over, and one of the louder voices at that.

Prostitution is a more honorable profession than journalism. Not only are the call girls prettier, but they’re nicer and more intellectually honest.

Here are three new additions to what was formerly known as the reader blogroll. Outside the Box, Anti-Buffoonshevik Thoughtcrime, Difster. A recent email from the notorious Franger indicates that he, too, will soon be numbered – or perhaps listed would be the more accurate term – among the Elect.

A few things. One, there’s five new additions to the Reader Blogroll, (on the right, scroll down), so check them out if you’re so inclined. They are: Bulletproof Pimp, The Psyclop’s Lair, Exile From Hillary’s Village, Liberal Quicksand and the upcoming Guest Blogger of the Week, Animate Matters.

Two, Reader Blogroll is boring, and I’m thinking of changing it to a term I noticed on Desert Cat’s blog, namely, the Voxosphere, except that sounds a bit too possessive, even bordering on demi-derigence. Since, as a good libertarian, I exert as little control as possible over anyone, EVEN, NAY, ESPECIALLY INCLUDING MY ROBOT, this may not be the optimal term.

Share your feelings….

Also, I’m contemplating putting out a collection of short stories. Rowena has been kind enough to provide me with another very pretty cover if I do so, and I’m interested in getting a rough idea of how many people would theoretically be interested in buying a 250-300 page trade paperback for $15. The OC has turned me onto some of the new publishing technologies and so there’s really no concern about being stuck with cartons of books any longer. Two-thirds of the stories would be from the PDB, the other third would be new.

Share your feelings….

And finally, the good news. The new keyboard did the trick and my ubermachine is back in full E-F-F-E-C-T otherwise known as effect. The bad news, however, is that I somehow managed to lose a new short story I’d written recently in my previous attempts to access the partition.

Probably not a bad trade, actually, when you think about it.