Category: Uncategorized

On the environment, anyhow. I caught a few moments of him with Naomi Wolf, and while he did a masterful job of taking her apart with regards to her accusations of “Bush lied” on WMD, he also stated that he was very liberal on the environment, and in favor of big government solutions.

This, I think, goes well beyond what Ann Coulter has accused Brave Sir William in the past, of splitting the difference to land precisely in the middle. I recommend that Mr. O’Reilly visit eastern Europe, where he can see for himself what sort of solution really big government has in store for the environment.

Eugene Volokh calls on Christians to denounce Jimmy Swaggart:

I’m not asking for anything much — I’m simply saying that Christians should be outraged at Swaggart’s essentially slandering their religion, and should denounce his views, to make clear that his views (though purportedly Christian) are not mainstream Christian views. Swaggart calls himself a Christian; was once a very prominent minister; continues apparently to have some influence; and purports to interpret the Bible. His statements are representations of what Christianity is supposed to be about. I would think that Christians would want to denounce those representations, and the closer they are in denomination to him (e.g., Protestants, evangelical Protestants, etc.), the more they would want to do that.

I agree in concept. And what did Swaggart actually say?

I’m trying to find the correct name for it . . . this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. . . . I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.

Yes, I have no problem whatsoever denouncing Swaggart’s statements. They are stupid, they are contrary to both Biblical principle and evangelical Christian teaching, and are particularly outrageous being voiced by someone who is apparently still in a position of church leadership, however minor. It is good that he has apologized for his comments; it would have been much better had he never made them in the first place.

I daresay that I am looked at that way far more often than the delectable Mr. Swaggart, and I have never killed anyone nor felt any need to. I am as vocal in my criticism of the gay agenda as anyone, I am opposed to homogamy,* I believe homosexuality to be a serious spiritual disease and a serious sign of societal decline, and I reserve my right to mock them as viciously as I mock everyone else just because I feel like it. (A community can’t expect to inflict Erasure on the world, among other things, and expect to get away scot-free.) But a homosexual man has the very same rights to life, liberty and property that I do, and is possessed of the same worth in the eyes of God that I am.

God forgives all who repent, no matter what their sin. Repentance comes easily to no one, but it comes to all who ask for it. You cannot be a little bit sinful any more than you can be a little bit dead, and those who take joy in the knowledge that the world regards their sins as more acceptable than those of others would do well to keep that in mind.

*I’m opposed to state-granted heterosexual marriage too, come to think of it.

This is why I’m convinced that socialism is hopeless. I mean, yes, there’s all the historical evidence against it, and, of course, the economic theories that shred its logic all to pieces. But at the end of the day, the primary problem is that it assumes humans are somehow malleable.

The nature versus nurture debate will probably never end, but there are certain things that even the most casual observer can’t help but notice. Four years ago, I first encountered a pretty little girl who lives near us. She was the sort of little girl you’d consider to have the promise of adult prettiness, though she wasn’t a winner of the genetic lottery to the extent of the three blondies of The Couple You Want To Hate But Can’t Because They’re So Doggone Nice or the two china-perfect daughters of our friends Yes, I Used To Model and her husband I’m Very Handsome, If A Bit Cheesy, But You Have To Admit That It Works For Me.

I don’t know how old this girl was, as I don’t pay enough attention to children to be able to distinguish ages very well, but she was probably eight or nine. It was impossible to ignore her, though, as she prevented you from doing so by methodically staring at every male in the vicinity, of all ages, until they looked back at her. She also had an expression while doing this that I can only describe as feline. Now, it’s possible that she was somehow taught this behavior, but I don’t think so as it wasn’t exhibited by any of the other young girls around, most of whom were a year or two older than her and were just going about their young girl business. I distinctly remember thinking: that one’s going to be trouble.

Fast forward to last week. I was walking down the street when I noticed a girl literally sprawled forward on the hood of a motorcycle next to the sidewalk. I didn’t recognize her at first, but it turned out to be the same young girl, apparently talking to the boy on the motorcycle. However, she was looking around almost everywhere except at him; when she glanced at me as I walked by, I had to look away before I burst out laughing. The look on her face was precisely the same semi-cunning, self-satisfied expression that it had been four years before.

We are what we are. It takes a divine force, a higher power, to even allow us to change that somewhat. Socialism, in setting itself against human nature, is a hopeless impossibility. No wonder the attempts to realize it fully inevitably lead to bloodshed.

Among other things, I’ve just wrapped up work on the first comic book – er, that is to say, graphic novel – in the trilogy I mentioned some time ago. I have next to no experience with the genre, except for some creepy Weird Tales that Big Chilly used to have in his bedroom that scared me half to death when I was about eight, but it’s been a lot of fun. I particularly enjoy working with the creator, who has been kind enough to give me co-author credit. We’re going to be writing a novel based on the same series; even though we’re not done with the second and third parts of the trilogy, a ridiculous number have already been pre-sold, which had the effect of creating interest in a related novel.

In other news, it looks as if the three books of the EW series will be soon published by a Christian publishing house, separately from the same three books published by Pocket Books and intended for mainstream bookstores. This will be nice, as my association with a secular publisher has had the unfortunate effect of causing the books to go almost completely unnoticed by its core market. I don’t have a release date for “Wrath” yet, but if you want to check out the first issue of “Archangel: The Fall” you should be able to do so in about six weeks.

Joe Carter has an interesting and characteristically thoughtful post on why the coverage on Rathergate has been non-stop, while few have seen fit to pay attention to Michelle Malkin’s similar attempts to pass off fraudulent history as the truth.

A comparison of these two cases provides an excellent example of how information is disseminated through the various information channels now that the concept of “media” has become more fluid. The rise of blogs has helped open access to media outlets that were previously unavailable and has enabled the coordination between various specialists. It has, as Patrick O’Hannigan writes in The American Spectator, “leveraged the increasing popularity of all things Web to make “asymmetrical warfare” by non-journalists against inaccuracies in Big Media easier than it had been before.”

The creation of new media forms, however, has also produced a new hierarchy that, while allowing a free-flowing mobility, remains sharply distinct. I believe it can be broadly outlined as follows:

Tier 1 – Network and cable news (i.e., CBS, CNN, FOX); newsweeklies (Time, Newsweek); major daily newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post); prominent columnists (David Brooks, Maureen Dowd)

Tier 2 – Talk radio; Political journals (National Review, The New Republic); Web magazines (Salon, Slate, NRO);

Tier 3 – Cross-over bloggers (Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Kos Zuniga);

Tier 4 – High traffic/high linkage bloggers (Captain Ed, Roger Simon); Internet columnist (World Net Daily, Tech Central Station)

Tier 5 — Bloggers

Tier 6 – Blog commenters, lurkers, posters to forums (Free Republic, Democratic Underground)

Most stories in the media start from T1 and move downward through the various tiers What was unique about the CBS memo story was that the discrepancy was picked up by a T6 source (Free Republic poster “Buckethead”), emailed to a T4 blog (Powerline), jumped to a T2 (Drudge), and was then picked up by the Tier 1 media. The dissemination of information downward from T1 is extremely flat, news can reach all the other tiers simultaneously. In contrast, information that moves upward from the lower tiers must be moved up by a higher tier.

Obviously, I’m a combination of T5 (here) and T4 (WND columnist). And while I think this is a solid partial explanation for the failure of the story to achieve any traction – it’s manifestly true that I don’t have the ability to see this, or any other, myth publicly exploded by myself – there’s also other factors at work too. Prof. Ann Althouse sees it this way:

I don’t think the two cases are comparable, because it isn’t possible to engage with a history book without reading it and knowing the actual material well enough to pick it apart…. I have no idea whose facts are true there though. I’m happy to assume you’re right about the scope of military operations in WWII and what is in Malkin’s book, but I’m just not going to feel ashamed of not knowing such things. It’s broadly assumed that the Japanese internment was wrong, and most people don’t feel they need to reconsider it, so we’re just not bothering to get up to speed on the info.

It’s even harder in the case of alternate history novels, I’m learning. Not to go all O’Reilly on you, but I think both Joe’s and Prof. Althouse’s points are relevant here. The inadvertant novelist would never have gotten away with it to the extent that she has if anyone in the media knew anything about military history; as I’ve said before, journalists know nothing by virtue of their fact-free training, where reading Dan Rather’s book passes for an education. The potential problem with the latter perspective, however, is that it’s not necessarily true that most people still assume the internment was wrong. I’d like to think so too, but an awful lot of people seem to be delighted to be provided with the opportunity to reconsider it. No doubt they’ll be the ones cheering on a sequel.

Iraq Guy writes from the desert:

More important (and current) is the thing with Sadr/Syria and Iran. Literally, we’ve pounded Sadr down to the point of submission several times now. You can tell when he’s out of bullets or people when he throws up the “negotiation” flag. So we pull back, the politicians pull up and he escapes and evades. Without getting up to look at something sensitive, I believe he’s in Samara right now, that’s where they secreted him off to. So of course, our reporting shows that Iran is

re-arming him and sending him non Arabic speaking troops.

We know Iran is doing this!

Even beyond that, the high Ayatola in Iran ordered Sadr to resume insurgent operations against the coalition. Sadr has also ordered a hit on Sistani….

So, yeah, I guess your assertion that we aren’t taking it seriously is somewhat correct… mainly because I think Syria and Iran have demonstrably committed acts of war against us already, but nobody seems to want to do anything about it, and nobody has the stomach to take out Sadr, crush Falujah/Najaf, etc.

What really baffles me is Rumsfeld and the rest of them saying we don’t need more troops. Obviously we do – if we want to close off the borders and cut off some of the arms and external terrorists ….and…. do a smack down on Syria and Iran…

One reason we might not be taking it seriously is that we’re planning to do the wise thing and withdraw. Though neocons like Michael Ledeen are frothing at the mouth for expanding the war into Syria and Iran, that’s pointless unless we’re also going to occupy Saudi Arabia and stay there for the next 100 years. At which point, the curtain has come down and we might as well get it out in the open and elevate George Bush to the purple.

I don’t see that being the plan, though. This information from the field makes more sense in light of a forthcoming withdrawal.

Here’s an interesting dichotomy on how the right’s own biases can come into play. Because, let’s face it, we have our own biases, just as the left does and it’s foolish to make the same mistake they do by trying to deny it. When Robert Novak wrote about how the Bush administration is planning to withdraw from Iraq immediately after winning re-election earlier this week, it was dismissed by many right-wing commentators who are fans of the war as the mere floating of a proposal. In light of that, consider Eric Muller’s recent point about John Leo’s support of “In Defense of Internment”:

John Leo read Michelle Malkin’s book “In Defense of Internment” and concluded that it’s time to open debate on internment “past and present.”

Malkin has expressed frustration when I (and others) have read her book as endorsing the internment of Arabs and Muslims. How could we make such a mistake, she has wondered, when she says in her book (in one sentence) that she’s “not advocating rounding up all Arabs of Muslims and tossing them into camps?”

So you’d think that when Leo uses her book to call for a debate on “present” internments, Malkin would say it’s a misunderstanding of her views.

Nope. She calls it a favorable review.

Regardless of whether you agree with the notion of interning Muslims without regard for civil liberties or not, the conclusion you cannot escape is that Malkin’s logic in defense of the historical internments REQUIRES support for modern internments, because America is at more verifiable danger from Koreans, Iraqis, Iranians, Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, Afghanis and Chechens than we ever were from ethnic Japanese.

If it is deemed not only possible, but even likely, for Robert Novak to float policy proposals, is it so improbable that Michelle Malkin is being used to do the same? Perhaps Prof. Muller, the anti-internment left-winger liberal japonicus and I are the only ones who hear this ominous drumbeat beginning, but the extent to which Malkin, Leo and others are willing to lie and warp history in defense of this newly declared debate on “present” internments should seriously trouble any of you who claim to believe in the supremacy of the individual over the collective.

Zekedood sends an email informing us that, as expected, Michelle Malkin can’t defend herself. Furthermore, I recommend having a look at her direct quote shown in bold below. Tell me if you think she’s telling the truth.

Yesterday Michelle Malkin was a guest on the Ron Smith show on WBAL in Baltimore. Ron Smith is something of a small-l libertarian. He came out very early (in 2002) on the anti-Iraq war side, citing the non-threat Saddam Hussein posed to the US, WMD or not. So when he teased Mrs. Malkin’s appearance by saying that he was going to ask about your challenge to debate her, I was certain that it was going to lead to something good.

However, he pretty much gave “me-so-Michelle” a free pass. He started the interview by referring to the opposition her book had received from various parties, particularly “Vox Day, the WorldNetDaily columnist”, and asked if she was going to take you up on your challenge to debate the issue on radio. Her answer: “I won’t be doing that. I have already addressed those

questions on my blog.” “Me-so” was then given a free pass to restate the case laid out in her book (without challenge) before the interview changed direction to discuss the Rathergate fiasco.

I decided to double check “Me-so”‘s contention that she had addressed your questions on her blog. Shock and awe! No mention of you or your questions. Not a peep. There was, in the August archive of the blog, a small section where she “took on” other bloggers who had questioned her premise. But there was no mention of you, your questions, or your contention that she whiffed badly on her research. More shock and awe!

I’m not sure with whom I’m more disgusted — “Me-so” for dissembling, or Ron Smith for being such a patsy.

I’m not surprised in the least. She can’t afford to have it known how little she knows about the military situation, so she’s hoping everyone will quietly ignore this until it passes over. The blogosphere can give her a free pass if it wants, but they had better realize that in doing so, they are imitating the mainstream media over which they are currently affecting such superiority. But why they’d want to sacrifice their own integrity to cover for someone who’s now proven herself to be a charlatan, a coward and a liar is beyond me.

In any event, I’ll be precisely delineating the many differences between her alternate history fantasy and the history of our space-time continuum on the Northern Alliance show this Saturday.

In college, WB had some friends from home who went to other colleges and were in a band. They were musically talented, although unfortunately none of them could sing worth a darn. He would come back from break with tapes of their recordings, one of which, the immortal “Who’s Gonna Buy the Beer” actually made it to vinyl on an independent label somehow.

The best thing about the Groundhogs, as they were called, was their magnificently offensive lyrics, which snuck up on you, disguised as they were by nice melodic guitar lines and sung in what would have been a pleasant manner if the singer’s voice hadn’t been complete crap. My personal favorite was the beginning to “Web of Love”.

Oh, I was searching

For a certain

Kind of girl to f—“

Or the wandering, almost Sultans of Swing-like “Bass Ale” which chronicled a weary working man’s night out at his local bar.

The other day, me and a couple buddies decided,

We’d go have a couple brews at the local bar.

We didn’t realize,

That it was going to be homos, all around us.

Yeah, the homos were coming in, they were getting ready,

For a big dance party, on Saturday night.

Oh, Saturday night….

It always amused me to put the tape in the car when I’d be out on a date or something, and it would take a couple songs before whoever was with me would realize what they were singing. Nine times out of ten, male or female, they’d burst out laughing. It got to the point that we couldn’t have a party without a mass demand for the Groundhogs tape, usually, of course, after everyone was adequately refreshed and in the mood for a riotous sing-along culminating in “Snorklehead”, which was either a Blyesque assertion of masculine independence from female oppression or an ode to lethal interspecies affection. I know all the words and I’m still not sure.

Groundhogs….

Since there’s no chance Malkin will show on Saturday, I’ve been passing some of the information I’d been retaining onto other blogs who are interested in continuing to strip the charlatan, along with the credulous sorts who are still taking her seriously. Was “most of the U.S. fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor,” John Leo?* I’ve saved some of the best bits for the Northern Alliance, of course, and I’ll arrange to post a transcript here in the week following the show.

1. I find it strange that many people have been urging me, one not very widely read columnist, to “move on” while simultaneously reveling in the all-Rather, all the time coverage of the conservative columnists and the right-leaning blogosphere.

2. I also find it ironic that the Guard memos are portrayed as a bigger deal than the beginning drumbeat to build support for internment. Considering the many empty, but staffed FEMA “detention centers”, I think it is improbable that this will remain an entirely academic debate for long. I don’t claim to know for whom those centers are intended, but one has to presume that they exist for a reason.

3. The total lack of interest in conservative fraud expressed by people at places like NRO, compared to their rabid Pavlovian reaction to the smallest sign of inaccuracy in all things Democratic, is disheartening, though not all that surprising. I see little reason to believe that professional Republicans are any better or more intellectually honest than professional Democrats, the illusions of their honest, church-going fans notwithstanding. It’s not so much that neither side has a monopoly on the truth as neither side has any interest in it, if it does not serve their immediate purposes.

4. I am very, very glad that I decided against pursuing a media career after I was signed by Universal Press Syndicate. I’d rather work for the Porn King. He has more integrity and the money is significantly better. And Heather Naeurt notwithstanding, the women are much hotter too. Not that Space Bunny is likely to go for either option, you understand.

5. It is intriguing to discover what some self-identified Christian conservatives believe will see you damned to eternal Hellfire. I was aware that some people believe it is necessary to vote for George Bush in order to pass into the Kingdom of Heaven, I did not know that accepting Michelle Malkin’s revisionist fantasy of WWII military history was also a requirement. Presumably that’s from the Book of Vulpes.

*And before someone starts arguing that it was the big important ships that were destroyed, please note that even if we count the beached Nevada as destroyed, that is still only 5 out of the 17 battleships that the US Navy possessed at the time. And, of course, 0 of 9 carriers, 0 of 18 heavy cruisers, 0 of 20 light cruisers, etc.