Vox Popoli

I found this in my inbox:

Due to lack of interest, I have decided to give up the “left vs right” debate blog. There was plenty of interest in debate from the right, but the lefties wanted no part of it – with one exception. A special thank you to David from ISOU, who was the only left-leaning person who was willing to debate. Unfortunately for us, David just didn’t have the time to spare.

There’s a real shocker. A complete avoidance of contact with its enemies is the only way that the Left can maintain its delusional pretense at intellectual superiority.

Not that there’s anything wrong with insult-slinging. It’s good sport. But when that’s all you’ve got, well, that round object below is called the dustbin of history and you’re about to be circular-filed.

You wouldn’t think anyone could make Oakland Raiders fans look genteel, but at the San Siro, the stadium shared by Milan and Inter Milan, with Milan leading 3-0 in the aggregate, an idiot Interista threw something and apparently hit Dida, the Milan goalie, in the face. I wasn’t sure if it was a spark from the nearby flare that hit the ground just before he collapsed or another object too small to see, but either way, he was down and out.

I’m not sure what was going on, as the crowd was already going crazy after Inter had a goal disallowed.

After that, the referee wisely decided to call the game early. It looks as if the game will be awarded to Milan and the rossoneri will rightly advance, but UEFA really has to figure out a way to crack down on this sort of thing. This penchant for throwing things already reached the point of absurdity several years ago, but this is over-the-top insane.

Orac doesn’t know so very much:

I thought the Taliban only existed in Afghanistan, but I was wrong. We apparently have our very own aspiring Taliban wannabes right here in the U.S., even in a state as liberal as Minnesota.

Don’t believe me?

Read this disgusting tidbit from a “conservative” blogger calling himself Vox Popoli. Some of the comments are even scarier.

But don’t read it unless you have a strong stomach.

Let’s see. Christian |= Muslim. Libertarian |= Totalitarian. Anti-death penalty |= pro-death penalty. True, I think women’s suffrage was a tragic mistake for the nation, but then, I don’t recall the Taliban permitting men to vote either. I only hope the poor dear didn’t faint when she encountered the “disgusting tidbit”.

But don’t let a wildly inaccurate analogy slow you down, Cecilia. Keep saying “Taliban” enough and perhaps you’ll be able convince someone that you know something about the world outside your small intestine.

Oh, and it should probably be noted that the Taliban actually began in the madrassas of Pakistan, many of which are still in operation. But let’s not get pedantic….

MW is moved to defend the homemakers:

I’ve never done this before, but VR’s comments caught my attention. You see, I’ve cleaned many toilets in my time and have “popped” ten babies so far. I have many aspirations, but they center around the vision my husband and I have for our family. We are trying to build a foundation that will stand for generations. This is a task that requires a mother who is focused and dedicated to that vision. This requires that a woman even has the foresight to appreciate the impact her mothering can have on future generations when she is dead and gone. Women today are short-sighted. They will do this for a corporation, but they won’t do it for their own family. The working world pays a woman for these things. A mother at home does it for love. Daycare can’t compare with real time mother love. Women are trading their birthright for a mess of pottage.

It saddens me that Christian women have joined the ranks looking to impact the world by means of a paycheck. Thriving families are a thing of the past because feminists have convinced today’s women that a mom at home is worthless, useless, senseless, and ignorant. I reject that drivel! I revel in the results of my decision every day as I see the happy faces around our dinner table and as I lie next to the man I love each night. Jesus said the greatest among us would be servants and that in losing our life we would find it. That is what real womanhood is all about…

She really sounds like a useless, worthless ignorant doormat, doesn’t she….

Captain D tells a horror story:

My first wife planned her leaving for years, and like an idiot I continued to believe that things would work out if I just stayed for the sake of the children. Then she secretly attended a seminar “How to Leave your Man” at the local women and children’s shelter.

This is how I was almost set up.

One day I arrived home from work to find that the children had been sent to a friend’s place for the night. Nancy (the plotter) greated me with a kiss and a hug and said that she had arranged for us to have the evening alone “like old times”. She was cooking my favorite meal and presented me with a glass of wine and a gift of a new Tom Clancy paperback (Red Storm Rising as I recall).

Like a lamb going to slaughter, I sat happily in the living room – reading the novel and enjoying the wine while my sweetie cooked a “special dinner.” Absorbed in the book, I hardly noticed her walk to the front window of the house and look out as if expecting something.

At just the exact moment, she said, “Oh Honey” – and I looked up to see that she had a brick in her hand. She took the brick and smashed the glass in the grandfather clock and then started screaming and advancing towards me with the obvious intent of hitting me.

The front door burst open and there stood her girlfriend with a video camera… but the timing was off.

I was supposed to be caught in some staged physical confrontation – to facilitate spousal abuse charges. The girls were a little too quick, so all the video would have shown was me sitting in the chair, looking up from my novel in a confused and surprised manner.

I’ll not go on for much longer, but in the end I traded the house and my pension for my children – and Nancy ended up going from man to man looking for a yacht owner. She finally found a sucker in Mexico, and I raised my three children alone. But if their timing had of been a little better, I might have been doing some jail time.

All thanks to an evil woman, and a seminar provided by an institution supported with public tax dollars. If I were 25 years old again, I don’t think I’d ever get married.

I’m just amazed that Nancy darling didn’t end up having someone go AT&T on her. If not on behalf of Captain D, then on behalf of someone else further down the victim chain.

Der Ursprunglich Kunstlichzunder presents a few predictions:

EUROPE: While it’s tempting to look upon Europe as the land of quiche-eating metrosexuals, if you do that you’re forgetting that the continent that gave us vichy water, brie, and Vidkun Quisling also gave us vikings, nazis, and Attila the Hun. Right now Europe is about 20 years overdue for the sort of convulsive mass slaughter that we generally refer to as “history,” and while the Balkan adventures of the 1990s vented the pressure somewhat, we’re still but a few more Theo van Gogh’s away from Götterdämmerung Time. If the E.U. succeeds in uniting it may be able to stall or suppress ethnic and religious tensions for a few decades, in much the same way (and by using much the same methods) as the Soviet Union kept the lid on things from 1945 to 1990, but this will only make the anti-immigrant eruption that much worse when it finally breaks out. The eventual breakup of the E.U. will kill millions.

DOMESTIC TRAVEL: A few days ago the U.S. government announced that American citizens returning from Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean will henceforth be required to show their passports before reentering the country. Many frequent flyers are already in the habit of carrying their passports whenever they take domestic flights, just because it makes it so much easier to get through airport security. Further, with all the concern over illegal immigration, there is now loud and persistent talk in government circles of creating and mandating the carrying of a national I.D. card.

In the end I don’t know whether it will be in the name of homeland security, immigration control, or energy and transportation policy, but I figure we have at least 10 and at most 15 years left before it will no longer be possible for American citizens to move freely around their own country without government permission. “Show us your papers, comrade!” But more on this in a future column.

Hint: Your own car will be the snitch that rats you out.

My only thought is that empires usually begin to die when they reach too far. With that in mind, the event that might bring about the violent implosion of the EU would be an attempt to swallow an unwilling Switzerland.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof doesn’t like what he sees:

Since 1973, the National Opinion Research Center has measured public confidence in 13 institutions, including the press. All of the other institutions have generally retained a good measure of public respect, but confidence in the press has fallen sharply since 1990.

Those of us in the press tend to get defensive about our dwindling credibility. We protest that we’ve been made scapegoats by partisan demagogues, particularly on the right, and I think that’s true. But distrust for the news media, even if it’s unfair, is the new reality – and we will have to work much, much harder to win back our credibility with the public.

In any case, it’s not just right-wingers who distrust the media these days. The Pew Research Center found that while only 14 percent of Republicans believe all or most of what they read in The New York Times, even among Democrats the figure is only 31 percent. Other major news organizations face the same challenge. The Fox News Channel is considered credible by fewer than one-third of the Republicans – and an even smaller number of Democrats. Indeed, it’s a rare news organization that is trusted by more than one-third of the people in either party: the one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the news media are not trustworthy.

The main reason is that they’re not. The news media is largely a bunch of undereducated pseudointellectuals who regularly confuse having heard of something with expertise in it. Being educated in journalism instead of an actual discipline, they tend to have a very small smattering of general knowledge and no depth of knowledge in anything.

Internet technology is the curse of the legacy media in more ways than one, because the men and women behind the curtain are now so easily revealed as the intellectual frauds they have usually been.

For example, when concealed carry laws were first passed, the newspapers in Florida and later Texas predicted bloodbaths soon to follow. But the significant fact was not that these newspapers were completely wrong, (although they were), but that newspapers in Minnesota and other states REPEATED EXACTLY THE SAME INACCURATE PREDICTIONS when similar carry laws were being debated ten years later. The same thing applies for the inability to recognize the farce of static revenue models when reporting on the expected impact of changes in tax rates.

It used to take a good memory and a newspaper addiction to notice this sort of thing. Now, even a casual news junkie may well read ten or twelve different papers online by the time he finishes his morning coffee, and should he notice something suspicious, he can check it out in seconds.

The blog phenomenon has merely magnified this new ability of the public to fact-check newspapers and other media, and since many journalists know very little about anything specific, it’s no surprise that their fraudulent credibility has finally been exploded.

TW shares some real world experience:

As a Christian having just gone through a unilateral divorce initiated by my wife I can honestly say I had no idea how corrupt the system was, people just really have no idea what kind of mess they can get into with a divorce.

When I found out my wife was cheating it was devastating, when she filed for divorce it was heart breaking, then the court ordered me to pay her boyfriend’s rent ( we have no children, and she works ) … I cannot begin to describe the negative emotions and anger it generated, it’s as if the court was trying to get me to go postal.

$65,000 in legal fee’s later, financially ruined and more than a little bitter I learned a lesson that all men in the United States need to understand: The family court is nothing more and nothing less than a social engineering laboratory where every crackpot liberal idea that would never see the light of day if voted on by the people is carried out AGAINST the laws of the state and country.

There is too much money in this as an industry for the Government to ever let it go. The liberals love the dictatorial powers, the lawyers love the money, and the Judges love the power and the money. In WA state you are forced to use a mediator (after 1 year of legal battling) before you go to “Trial” to “help you settle out of court, that costs $600 per hour which is paid to retired judges (what a surprise) and if no agreement is reached then off to “Trial” for another 10K you go.

It seems to me that if a man is to have any chance of financially surviving a situation like this, he has to file for a fault-based divorce immediately. You can always forgive her and reconcile later, but you won’t get the opportunity to pin the blame on her cheating once she files for no-fault.

This is where men, unaccustomed to viewing women as the enemy, are at a severe disadvantage. Women plot their divorces for months, if not years in advance; you need only check out a few women’s forums to find numerous examples of this preparation. My father once overheard a woman on a plane instructing her married daughter to make nice with her estranged husband in order to get her name added to the house title before filing for divorce. It makes you wonder why these women were so hot and bothered to get married in the first place!

Another option, of course, is to simply ignore the whole process altogether and expatriate. Join Fred and company down in Mexico, drinking margaritas and dating signoritas. Sure, you won’t be rich, but you won’t be paying any alimony either and the chances are you’ll be a good deal happier.

In any event, these are things men need to know before marrying. Go ahead and take the leap if you wish, but know precisely what you are risking before you do so. Men and women do their sons no favors when they hide these bitter possibilities from them prior to marriage.

VR vents her bitter spleen:

Nice. So you’re going to find some woman who will shack up with you. It’s a good thing, too, that you’re looking for a woman with no aspirations beyond scrubbing the toilet and popping out kids. It would take someone pretty stupid both to a.) believe shacking up is marriage and b.) to look to you as her leader.

Have you forgotten that if your shacking up arrangement lasts, said woman is going to eventually become your common-law wife who will be legally entitled to half your Star Wars toys? What are you planning to do, Vox? Dump her after six-and-a-half years for an upgrade? Having no job of her own, she’d be hard pressed to get her share of what any emotional support and maid service may have entitled to, let alone custody of the kids. I have to hand it to you. You really laid out a blueprint for any misogynistic “Christian” knucklehead out there who sees protecting his stuff as the most important goal of a marriage.

And I don’t know how to break this to you, but women can have careers and raise kids at the same time. A lot of women today are doing just that. Some of us even make as much or more than our husbands. Go figure, huh? Personally, I like to contribute to the household income. And I appreciate being married to a guy strong and wise enough to trust his own judgement – and me – enough to enter the same legal agreement that you see as a trap.

I don’t know what happened between you and your mother, but it must have been bad. You really seem to hate women. I don’t know if you write the headlines for you column, but in the case of the one on Worldnet Daily, it’s appropriate. You should most definitely stay single, especially if it keeps you from reproducing.

Apparently men and women were doing nothing more than shacking up for six thousand years until the government began issuing marriage certificates 150 years ago. And while a lot of women are having careers and raising kids at the same time, they are demonstrably doing a shoddy job at both. The anger here is particularly interesting because this is clearly a married woman, and yet the mere notion that men might swear off marriage is enough to send her into a hissy fit. I checked out a Canadian forum while preparing to write today’s column and it was very telling how these successful men who date regularly were labled losers by women simply because they stated that they had no intention of getting married. Of course, any man who is dumb enough to get married because he’s afraid of women calling him names deserves precisely what he’s going to get, namely, a woman calling him names.

In my recent contribution to THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE, I highlighted how Douglas Adams showed how government interference causes people to behave in otherwise irrational ways. If the law forces men to trade in their women every six years in order to avoid being subject to unjust forfeiture of their property, then that’s precisely what you can expect them to eventually do. Perhaps the government will then propose prosecuting men who show a suspicious pattern of serial monogamy, just as they do with those who regularly withdraw sums of cash from their bank account.

I also enjoy the pop psychology that inevitably surfaces anytime one fails to sufficiently prostrate oneself before female dogma. It seems clear to me that VR is subject to a terrible case of penis envy and her anger is rooted in her sexual frustration with her husband.

UPDATE – It’s interesting, but the BLS actually excludes all mention of married couples wherein the husband works and the wife does not in order to jack up the percentage of wives who make more than their husbands do. But since I am approximately 8x smarter than the average government bureaucrat, I took the liberty of dividing the number of wives who earn more than their husbands – 11,329,000 – by the number of married couples, 56,747,000. This gives a more accurate figure of 19.6 percent instead of the 30.7 percent reported by the BLS.

So this means that there are still 19,883,000 traditional wives who remain outside the labor force, but they are now outnumbered almost two-to-one.