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So, I’m doing a little research preparatory to a chapter devoted to one of the fellows who likes to argue that the media is conservative. Not just the conservative media, mind you, the whole kit and kaboodle. He likes to cite a recent study released by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which found that between 1999 and 2001, conservative foundations gave $254 million to 350 grantees. That’s $725,714 per right-wing grantee, so, case closed, obviously it’s clear that this is how the media is controlled.

Of course, the NCRP, an “an interest group focused on homosexuality and civil rights captured during the 2002 campaign” which features the left-wing lunatic Julianne Malveaux on its board of directors, received $2.66 million in grants over the same period of time, which is 3.67 times more than the average received by these all-controlling conservative institutions.

Clearly, responsive philanthropy means giving money to leftists, since so few of them have any idea how to go about earning it.

EJ Dionne of the Washington Post almost gets it:

As someone who has been arguing for years that liberals should show more respect for people of faith, I’m happy that more Democrats are now saying the same…. What’s required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are “moral values” and that war and peace are “life issues.” As my wife and I prepared our three kids for school the day after the day after, we shared our outrage that we in Blue America are cast as opponents of “family values” simply because we don’t buy the right wing’s agenda. No political faction can be allowed to assert a monopoly on the family.

The reason that the Republicans are able to successfully assert a monopoly on the family is that the Democrats are married – or might be if more of them believed in the concept – to groups that are inherently inimical to the family, to traditional morals and to the Christian and Western heritage.

Social justice is not justice, otherwise it would not need the adjective. Inclusion is not a moral value; Jesus Christ came to divide, not to unite. The progressive agenda, beginning with women’s suffrage, has wreaked havoc on the family, not just in America but across the dying continent of Europe too. On every issue that directly affects the family – abortion, taxes, divorce, gay rights – the Democrats are utterly devoted to destroying most civilizing institution the world has ever known.

Respect is good, and Dionne should be praised for his support for interideological civility. But even respect will do the Democrats no good unless and until they wake up and realize that no one who places special importance on the traditional nuclear family wants anything to do with their cultural suicide.

From the Washington Times:

Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm agreed with comments by other politicians who called Mr. van Gogh’s slaying a declaration of Islamic jihad, or “holy war.” “We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism,” he said. “The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought.” Among measures under consideration is an emergency law to enable authorities to revoke the Dutch nationality of dual citizens suspected of terrorist activity so that they can be deported….

Jozias van Aartsen, parliamentary speaker for the nationalist People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the second-largest party in the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, issued a statement that called Mr. van Gogh’s slaying tantamount to a declaration of war. “The jihad has come to the Netherlands and a small group of jihadist terrorists is attacking the principles of our country,” he said. “I hope the Netherlands will now move beyond denial and do what is fitting in a democracy — take action.

I’ve said for some time that Europe will crack down harder on Islam because of its history and because it is more vulnerable to a Muslim takeover based on its demographics. It’s interesting to note that a single murder by a jihadist already has the Dutch people burning a mosque and prepared to strip citizenship from its Muslim citizens.

America truly is a tertiary front and some of the uglier incidents are probably going to take place in France, Denmark and Holland. It’s customary to talk about the Europeans as paper lions, and in some senses they certainly are. But in two thousand years of history, the Europeans have never been shy about using brutal government force on citizens considered problematic even after World War II.

Tina Brown writes on Salon:

Academy members themselves can’t be solicited to host screenings. That’s why the hunt is on for any other genre of person with a Rolodex to host a preview that might fan the hype. Writers are in particular demand because they add credibility. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein may have been the first moviemaker cum marketing genius to come up with this method of collecting interest on borrowed intellectual capital. When we were in business together at Talk magazine, I always sensed that he was wondering why the hell I couldn’t produce J.D. Salinger for an opening. Now the practice of writer-hosted screenings is so rampant I expect any day to get an invitation from Gabriel Garcéa Marquéz and Thomas Pynchon inviting me to a preview of “Elf.”

The trouble with approaching “real writers,” as Hollywood likes to call them (meaning, I suppose, writers who write books, not “pages”), to host these promotional events is that the more seriously talented they are, the weirder they tend to be. Real writers also are prone to having real opinions. And they become “difficult” when required to suppress them.

The writers you see at parties are not usually the “real” ones. Real writers are usually sitting in a chaotic farmhouse somewhere with a five-day growth of beard and a stained T-shirt in an onanistic trance at their computers, or else trying to kill themselves like Sylvia Plath. They don’t like to be disturbed.

The problem of Oscar screeners making DVD copies was so bad that two years ago Space Bunny’s brother, who has absolutely no connection to Hollywood whatsoever, got his hands on a screener DVD for The Two Towers. Of course, the Academy’s new strategy won’t actually cause any trouble at all for the pirates, who make their copies from digicams set up on tripods in empty movie theaters.

Ms Brown’s comment on writers cracks me up, though. I shaved yesterday and my t-shirt is clean, but there’s no substitute for an Andean cave with a southern exposure that’s been converted into a comfortable bomb shelter with high-speed Internet access. The best thing about the Internet is that combined with an exercise bike, a free weight set, a PlayStation and a really hot blonde, it eliminates the need for any last vestiges of outside human contact.

In case you’re interested, by the way, the nonfiction book is a go. It seems my publisher knows me pretty well; he said the only difficulty he foresaw is that his marketing people will probably expect me to make some form of ritual homage to the media at some point along the way.

Again, from Insty:

UPDATE: A reader notes that the popular-vote gap has widened, too: 52-47, or 56,783,329 to 52,120,230, for a difference over 4.5 million votes.

Remember when I said that you always add five points to the Republican. Add five to 49-49 and what do you get? 52-47, among others. It doesn’t always work, but it works a lot better than taking the polls literally.

Keep your eyes open for a forthcoming blitz on a big Republican figure. I can’t say much more than that right now, but rest assured that the mainstream media is pissed about the election and has its knives out. So much for its “the country must unite” theme, which didn’t even last until the weekend after the election. It doesn’t look like the bloggers vs. media fact-checking war is going to settle down anytime soon.

It will interesting to see if the ABCNNBCBS cabal has learned to be more careful or if they’ll continue to play fast and loose with the truth, hoping that no one will call them on it.

Insty quotes the Backseat Philosopher:

Many Democrats think that our patience and understanding are our weakness. “We don’t know how to fight like the Republicans,” we all told ourselves after Florida 2000. “We have to be more like them: tougher, meaner.” “We have to energize our base more.”

Actually, no. Our error is that we Democrats actually are far less understanding than we think we are. Our version of understanding the other side is to look at them from a psychological point of view while being completely unwilling to take their arguments seriously. “Well, he can’t help himself, he’s a right-wing religious zealot, so of course he’s going to think like that.” “Republicans who never served in war are hypocrites to send young men to die. ” “Republicans are homophobes, probably because they can’t deal with their secret desires.” Anything but actually listening and responding to the arguments being made.

’tis true. I’ve encountered precisely five Democrats who have been willing to engage openly and directly on matters political in the first year of this blog, Hank, Strange, AbleArt, Ihatedashrub and one other whose name I am forgetting. This, despite the fact that I’m not even a Republican – though admittedly a right wing extremist by an reasonable definition of the political spectrum. There hasn’t exactly been a shortage of hysterical Three Monkey Republicans hurling invective and getting their panties in a bunch over my series of attacks on George Delano, but that’s been a distinct minority whereas in my experience with Democrats, that sort of behavior has been the norm.

That is the behavior of a weak idealogue who has little confidence or understanding of his own ideas, not an intellectual. But regardless, no matter how intelligent you are, bad data will sink you every single time. When someone who does not strike you as a lunatic says something that sounds whacked-out crazy to you, that should be your sign to investigate the matter more thoroughly. Sure, sometimes it will turn out to be the nonsensical blather of a high-functioning lunatic, but occasionally you’ll find out that you simply didn’t know or understand what the salient points were and your original position must be modified accordingly.

Oh, and RED states are DEMOCRATIC states. I’m no Republican, but I do not accept this hide-the-socialist nonsense that the mainstream media is trying to foist upon us.

RED the blood of angry men

BLUE the Bush family bloodlines

RED the eyes of Michael Moore

BLUE cigars, women and wines

Oh, George Soros, what’s wrong with you today? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost….

A ghost you say? A ghost maybe. He was just like a ghost, Kerry. One exit poll and he was gone!

RED the leftist rage burns higher

BLUE the youth vote wasn’t there

RED McAuliffe was a liar

BLUE the world is so unfair!

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times:

Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn’t be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.

Except, of course, they don’t, because the majority of them believe such things are relative. As soon as I read that, I was sure Krugman was being disingenuous with the numbers. And my suspicions proved to be correct, because Massachusetts residents are simply not as likely to be spouses of any kind; MA may be TIED for the SECOND-lowest divorce rate at 2.5 per thousand according to a report released by the CDC this August, (DC is counted as a state by the CDC and has the lowest, GA is tied with MA) but this low divorce rate is because MA has the fourth-lowest marriage rate in the country at 5.9 per thousand. You can’t get divorced if you don’t get married in the first place.

For both divorce and marriage rates, MA is at 63% of the national average, 2.5/4.0 divorce (62.5%) and 5.9/9.3 marriage (63.4%). In other words, this citation of the divorce rate proves little except that a) people who don’t get married don’t get divorced, and, b) Paul Krugman is a deceptive ass who believes his audience is too stupid to look up even the most easily researched facts. Furthermore, of 10 of the 12 states with the lowest marriage rates, (and the top seven), are all states that went for Kerry on Tuesday. So, there would seem to be something to the godless heathen Democrats being anti-marriage in practice as well as theory.

NRO’s KLO is on the rampage:

Conservatives, as we have seen, won this election. Many of you personally played no small role in that. Why should Republicans stifle their conservative base by putting Arlen Specter in as judiciary chair? There is no reason. If there was some deal cut that he would be judiciary chair, it seems to me he broke it yesterday. Some might want to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Not me.) Maybe Specter just wanted to keep the liberals who supported his reelection bid off his case, so he issued his warning to the president on the day of his victory (and a very conservative victory across the nation, at that). Fact is, we only know what he says. And I, for one, will take him on his word.

So, simply put, Arlen Specter cannot be judiciary chair.

If you agree—if you agree that good men and women cannot be kept off the Supreme Court because they are against abortion (disqualifying, for starters, any faithful Catholic, many evangelicals, Muslims, automatically…)—call and e-mail Bill Frist (and your Republican senators, if applicable) today. I’m pretty certain an overwhelming outcry from conservatives in the next few days is the only way Arlen Specter can be kept from becoming a huge obstacle.

So get to work. [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist’s number is 202-224-3344.

I can’t stand Arlen Spector and I’m not even a Republican. But for those of you who are, I’d encourage you to let Sen. Frist know that seniority or no seniority, Arlen Spector is not an acceptable chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This is his email contact and his email address is: bill_frist@frist.senate.gov.