Vox Popoli

RR worries too much:

Vox, You were right about what Ann Coulter said, and Farah is wrong in his column today…. Please don’t back down. Please don’t apologise. Please.

Yeah, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that Joseph Farah and I disagree on something. It happens, in fact, it’s bound to happen. He’s criticizing me, he’s not asking for an apology on behalf of anyone. I doubt he believes one is necessary, and in any event, he definitely knows me well enough to know that one isn’t forthcoming.

And as the fantasy football players here know, I have no problem with taking the occasional friendly fire.

This is what passes for the New York Times’s idea of rational debate:

Let’s concede an indisputable point: people should not be in the country illegally. But forget about the border for a moment — let’s talk about the 12 million who are already here. What should be done about them?

A. Deport them all.

B. Find out who they are. Distinguish between criminals and people who just want to work. Get them on the books. Make them pay what they owe — not just the income, Social Security, sales and property taxes they already pay, but all their taxes, and a fine. Get a smooth legal flow of immigrants going, and then concentrate on catching and deporting bad people.

C. Catch the few you can, and harass and frighten the rest. Treat the entire group as a de facto class of criminals, and disrupt or shout down anyone or any plan seen as abetting their evildoing.

Forget A. Congress tried a version of B, but it was flattened by outrage.

And so here we are at C. It’s a policy that can’t work; it’s too small-bore, too petty, too narrow. And all the while it’s not working, it can only lead to the festering of hate.

Oh, okay. Just “Forget A”. That’s all, don’t talk about it, don’t think about it, don’t even mention it except to dismiss it… just forget it. Never mind the fact that there have been dozens of successful mass deportations that did not occasion mass violence throughout history, or that there are more than 20 million illegal immigrants currently invading the USA, not 12 million. The NYT is very eager to avoid discussing deportation because a sizable minority of Americans already support it; within five years, that sizable minority will become a majority and by that time, the deportation debate will have moved on to include a portion of the legal immigrant population, a development that has already taken place in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.

What “ain’t America” is Mexico. This is not only true in the political and national senses, (if not the continentally geographical), it is downright tautological.

From Profootballtalk:

The talk in league circles after yet another subpar performance from Vikings quarterback Tarvaris Jackson is that the franchise plans to target another starting quarterback for 2008.

Yes, QB does tend to strike one as being a rather obvious need, followed by WRs who can hang onto the ball. In fact, the QB position struck most Vikings fans as a rather obvious need last year, although I can’t say I’m unhappy with either the Adrian Peterson or Sydney Rice picks.

I finally became convinced that Tarvaris simply won’t cut it after seeing him miss on two passes to Wade. It wasn’t his inaccuracy that was the problem, although that is certainly an issue, but the fact that he was seen trying to argue the throws after the fact with Childress and then Wade. In the latter case, there was absolutely nothing to argue about; Jackson just threw it too late and too far behind an open receiver slanting deep across the middle.

UPDATE: Aaron Schatz reaches the same conclusion:

One more note: Tarvaris Jackson is awful, just awful. He’s a walking, talking advertisement for the Lewin Career Forecast. No accuracy, awful decision-making, constantly flustered by pressure.

I, too, like and admire Joseph Farah. But like many, he doesn’t always quite understand my somewhat dry sense of humor:

In his enthusiasm, he goes astray here, contending, “Vanity Fair has recently announced that a remarkable 51 percent of the Vanity Fair 100 Power List are Jewish in a country in which Jews make up approximately 2 percent of the population. Jews also make up 7 percent of the current House of Representatives, 13 percent of the Senate, and, according to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of ‘The Israel Lobby,’ roughly 100 percent of George W. Bush’s foreign policy advisers.”

But does Vox Day really believe roughly 100 percent of George W. Bush’s foreign policy advisers are Jewish?

Well, no, he doesn’t. I wasn’t under the impression that Condoleeza Rice was related to Sammy Davis Jr. or anything like that. While the rest of the statistics are accurate as cited, the last one was a joke, which escaped more than a few people despite its obvious absurdity. That’s fine, it happens all the time because I find few things more amusing than talking over people’s heads right to their face. Farah, meanwhile, showed his own dry sense of humor in lauding my “selfless act of chivalry”. That was funny.

As for the Israel Lobby, Mr. Farah and I shall simply have to agree to disagree, as there are many people insisting that the USA fight Israel’s battles against Iran and other enemies. Israel’s wars, it is often asserted, are the USA’s wars, even though there is no formal military alliance between the two countries. Regarding history and the fact that Jews were welcomed in a number of places prior to not being welcome, I am, of course, verifiably correct.

When I wished to make a city out of the village of Speyer, I Rüdiger, surnamed Huotzmann, bishop of Speyer, thought that the glory of our town would be augmented a thousandfold if I were to bring in Jews.

Still, I quite like Joseph’s open way of handling these disagreements, as you’ll note that despite his labling my “nonsense” as “Buchananesque”, he doesn’t hesitate to publish Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan either. This is one of the many reasons I enjoy writing for WND instead of for other, more conventional publications.

And in other news, Tarvaris Jackson really does not look as if he’s going to cut it. I’m getting definite Quincy Clark vibe from him. And I’m still pretty dubious about Childress as well. Why does he keep having Jackson drop back and throw when he’s only completed two passes over three quarters and a sack will take them out of FG range?

The Lizard Queen has no time for past pets:

AS THE “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?

Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary….

That’s pretty cold. Not as cold as swallowing Socks whole, as I assumed she had, but nevertheless, cold. Unfortunately, the fact that she is pure evil won’t prevent her from winning in November 2008, thanks to George Bush, the former Republican Congress and the Republican Party leadership.

I can’t say I’m shocked, considering how often he liked to invite young Harry to his office, alone:

Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love.”

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.

Even so, it’s probably just as well that she left out the scenes where Dumbledore is rubbing Harry’s shoulders and asking him if he ever feels lonely and in need of a friend at Hogwarts.

Jason Whitlock about hip-hopping blacks in a team game:

You get one NFL Truth today. Watching Chad Johnson and Larry Johnson undermine their respective head coaches, Marvin Lewis and Herm Edwards, on Sunday gave me a singular focus, forced me to contemplate an uncomfortable truth.

African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. That will be the legacy left by Chad, Larry and Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and all the other football bojanglers.

It’s already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots — the league’s model franchises — are two of the whitest teams in the NFL.

Wait, you mean that a gang-banging, look-at-me, self-centered individual isn’t conducive to team success? Really? The thing that’s funny about Whitlock’s recognition of the obvious is that it’s not actually about the hip hop, the race or the culture, it’s simply about the willingness and the ability of an individual to fit the role his team needs him to play.

(Yes, the Ray Lewis-led Ravens were an obvious exception, but then, they were also an exception to the rule that you need your offense to be able to score more than one touchdown a month in order to be compete in the NFL.)

Real Madrid’s famous galacticos strategy was a complete failure, not because the players were self-centered would-be rappers, but because the team composed entirely of world-class stars had no one to do the dirty work for them. Starting both Zizou and Figo in the midfield was rather like trying to play Peyton Manning and Tom Brady at the same time. The legendary club didn’t win a single championship or cup until after they gave up on the superlative skill uber alles strategy and let a few of the galactics go in favor of some (relatively) blue collar players.

To fully appreciate the irony of this post, you have to understand two things. First, I play soccer with a pretty good Italian veterans team, (our next regional cup game is postponed because our opponent is a team of former professionals that is playing in the national cup), second, Italians don’t believe that Americans are capable of either understanding or playing the sport.

I’m not the very worst player on the team, but my technical skills are definitely rock-bottom so I’ve started only two games in three years, both times because the only other option was playing with ten men. And while we’ve done very well the two previous seasons, winning promotion two years ago and nearly winning it again, to the highest level, last year – we collapsed in the last two games and finished third – this year we’ve gotten off to a horrific start in the campionato. Six games, eight goals, one win.

Part of the problem is that we have only one new midfielder while losing three defensive starters. Another part of it is that we’ve gotten older and our midfielders on the wings can’t run well enough to support our 4-4-2 tactics. And, at the risk of sounding self-serving, our manager doesn’t make much use of his substitutes; I might have played a total of one game’s worth in those first six games.

Last night, we were facing the top-ranked team, we were missing two starters and our manager, in a half-hearted pep talk, made the case that if we played hard and with discipline, we’d be able to manage a tie. He then promptly cut out the legs from his own argument and alarmed most of the squad, including me, by handing me the number 11 jersey, which meant that I was starting at striker. He also changed the formation to a 3-5-2. You know it’s bad when everyone is patting you on the back in warmups and insisting that everything is going to be okay, except, of course, for two of the better players who are so disgusted with the manager’s decision that they can’t even look at you.

We actually started off okay, putting their defense under some mild pressure and winning a corner kick or two. Then the guy who by rights should have been starting at striker but was playing right wing instead was taken down hard and sprained his ankle badly. He came out for the night, which left us with three subs, two of whom are worse than me and one guy who has a cannon for a shot and passes well but can’t really run. Had anyone cared enough about the game to bet on it, the odds against us would have lengthened again.

In the meantime, I was under instructions to not worry about scoring or get overly involved in the action, but to focus on disrupting the defenders when they were building their attack, so a few minutes later I was chasing the ball from defender to defender, blocking the angle that would let them pass the ball up the field. Basically, they play keepaway and you burn yourself out with little hope of even touching the ball, but at least it keeps the pressure off your defense. After three passes, the last defender passed it back to the keeper, who tried to boot the ball downfield but shanked it instead. Fortunately, I’d continued with the suddenly-not-so-futile chase, which gave me the chance to beat him to the ball and put it in the net. 1-0.

This seemed to inspire my fellow striker – one of the guys who couldn’t even bear to look at me before – to actually start passing the ball to me once in a while. I returned the favor and we managed to keep the pressure up and put a few shots on goal before he beat two defenders and put the ball in the net himself. 2-0.

I was about to collapse at that point, so I took myself out of the game, which led to an amusing exchange wherein the other striker actually ran by the bench and screamed at the manager to get me back in the game. This NEVER happens, believe me. Even the manager cracked up. After ten minutes, I’d recovered enough to go back in and we closed out the half up 2-0.

They had the wind in the second half and put us under some pressure, but didn’t create any serious chances while we came pretty close on one or two of our counterattacks. Finally, one of our subs put a nice ball past the defense when they were up at midfield, I ran onto it, limited myself to two touches, and then took an early shot from about 25 meters out. It was, as one of them said later, “un gol di Madonna”, sailing over the onrushing goalie’s arms before dipping into the corner of the net. 3-0 and the game was iced. It all occasioned much amusement at the subsequent team dinner, as the guys all raised their glasses, shouted MVP, and nearly collapsed laughing at the sheer absurdity of upsetting the best team in the league thanks to the least skilled player on the squad.

It’s not my first goal this season and I scored three times that many goals in one game in the long-distant past, but I don’t know if I’ve ever played a better game. And considering that there was a time last winter when I thought I might never be able to play again, I’m very thankful to have had the opportunity. I’m not likely to start again this season, although I’ve probably earned a little more playing time, but it’s really nice to be confident that I’m not bound to let the team down if I do.

A bankrupt radio network decides that it can’t lose money fast enough:

The liberal talk radio network Air America announced this week it will launch a nationwide show focusing on atheism. The first national show will feature Christopher Hitchens, author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

The Freethought Radio Program, hosted by the co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has been airing on Air America’s Madison, Wis., affiliate since April 2006.

I think I’ll send them a copy of TIA. I’m not sure which would be more amusing, to go on the show or to discover they’re afraid to have me on the show.

This news is strangely remniscent of when a game parody news site announced that “Sega reveals secret plans to sink Dreamcast”.