Vox Popoli

Datadave demonstrates his near-complete ignorance of history and economics:

You don’t know your history, The last King of France Louie #? practiced Libertarian market economics to his nation’s disaster.

Oh, you poor, wildly ignorant thing. You openly admit that you don’t know that Louis XVI was the last crowned king of pre-Revolutionary France, while simultaneously claiming that others don’t know history? I strongly suggest you read Andrew Dickson White’s THE HISTORY OF FIAT MONEY IN FRANCE so that you can begin to understand the historical scenario. You can download a free copy here. THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Tocqueville would certainly be in order, though you might wish to start with an easier read, CITIZENS, by Simon Schama, first. Although given your apparent level of ignorance, even a little Dickens and Dumas would likely prove more than a little enlightening.

The irony of conflating monarchical rule with libertarianism is amusing enough, but the ahistorical assertion that the French economy was totally ruined prior to the Revolution* is almost as bad, considering how much worse the National Assembly managed to exacerbate the situation in a matter of months.

As for Krugman, I’ll post an amusing example of his typically disastrous predictions later today. And likely one dealing with his “truthfulness” as well. And no, I am not a fan of Bush’s “privatization” plan either; I predicted this move to pump money into the stock market back in 1998 although I thought Clinton would do it.

*This is not to say that the French economy was in good shape, however. But the reason for the massive, deflationary debts of the French crown were not “libertarian economics” but its precise opposite, namely, government spending. One wonders if the clueless of the future will one day attempt to likewise blame the current U.S. government debts on libertarians. If the governments are still running the schools then, one has to assume that will be the case.

When I see a man cry to me, it is a blessing.
– Celine Dion

I don’t know why, but whenever Celine Dion opens her mouth – as long as she isn’t singing – it makes me laugh. And hearing her pontificate, as she is apparently wont to do on whatever random music show Space Bunny is watching, sent me into hysterics. The fact that we had absolutely no idea in what context she was speaking only made it funnier.

I would pay serious money for a recording of her reading Sartre.

NB highlights a recent discussion about feminism:

Ms. Allen states: “As a successful ideology, it [feminism] has foreclosed debate and debate is the hallmark of the public intellectual.”

Ms. Estrich testily replies: “Usually, it takes an insult — a tough one — to provoke us. But when provoked, watch out. Just ask Harvard President Larry Summers. His days are numbered.”

In other words, “disagree with us, and we’ll have you fired”.

Is there any possible way to get it through Ms. E’s thick feminist skull that this sort of behavior is exactly the problem? Ms. Allen grasps it. Ms. Estrich blows right past it and targets the boss who
picked the story.

Men don’t want to work with women? It MUST be the men! It can’t possibly be the fact that women can’t hack disagreement, and the first sign of it either go for the throat (if they see the chance to destroy) or they go off in a huff.

Yes, it reminds me of the recent Maureen Dowd article in which she finally noticed that since men don’t give a damn about SAT scores, diplomas or resumes, perhaps re-education camps are in order. It’s worth noting that Susan Estrich appears to be completely losing it. Wherever the great women thinkers are, they certainly aren’t signing stupid letters written by Susan Estrich.

As a general rule, never trust anyone who says “we” in place of “I”.

Datadave has some corrupted code clogging up the works:

the writing here stinks. Pretty much CATO Libertarian-Dad-paid-my-way-conservative-crappola, AynRand-inspired-RealityShow-watching-Slacker-non-mentalities. Now, Jesus save me. And ban the First Amendment is the mentality here. Libertarians joining w/ GWBush bible thumpers just proves Libertarians have no honesty nor integrity (which someone like Paul Krugman shows plenty of in his daring investigations of Alan Greenspan’s partianship and right wing attacks upon the working and middle class ….

so why did M. Dowd get denied a press pass when she gave equal harsh criticism of Clinton?

Where to start? One could do worse than to begin with the irony of the author of this little writing sample pronouncing judgment on the literary quality of anything. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to draw attention his incorrect conflation of conservatives and libertarians? And then there’s the false accusations – the only First Amendment banners active lately are the leftists on the Harvard faculty.

As for Paul Krugman, the Keynesian champion is not only theoretically outmoded, he is the most reliably inaccurate columnist I’ve encountered in years. I recently read two of his books and he commits three or four major howlers in almost every chapter. The Krugman Truth Squad has assembled a list of his mistakes, (intentional and otherwise), so large that it is approaching library status.

But where Datadave shows his cluelessness most is readily apparent to everyone here. He’s so ignorant that he not only believes in the reality of the bifactional charade, but he assumes that since the overriding meme here is anti-leftist, it is therefore pro-Bush. Here’s a clue, GIGO: George Delano and Dear Leader are not intended to be complimentary.

First, a correction is in order. My apologies to the two parties involved.

Most Likely To Segue Into Anti-Papism: ET (not EN, who is down with JPII)

Most Likely To Burst Into Song, (aka the Julie Andrews Award): JamieR

Most Annoying Comment Format: Chuck(le) Pelto

Most Likely To Go To Hell: The Atriocities

Best Reliance On Undeserved Divine Grace: Bane

Best Imputation Of Personal Dislike On The Part Of Vox: ajw308

Best Creative Spelling: Nate

Best Creative Grammar: Gregg

Best Reform Program For The Public Schools: Fred

Best Addition To The English Language: The OC

Best Obsession With High School Glory Days: Michael M

Best Negativity Towards A Sitting President: (tie) Ihatedashrub, VD

Most Likely To Get Linked From VP: The OC

Best Battle Cry: PORCUS

Best Imputation Of Sexual Deviancy: Soup

Best Confession Of Ubergeekdom: El Borak

Best Class Warrior: Cedarford

Most Likely To Get Audited: Whose Paranoid

Best Excuse To Take Out A Contract Hit: Digital Cowboy

Best Dramatic Exit: Glick7

Maureen Dowd shows a little Anglophilic ankle:

After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Gobsmacked? That’s the most shameless and out-of-place Anglicism since Madonna first started speaking with an English accent. Now, if she’d only referred to “Jeff Gannon” as a poofter, that would have at least been funny.

Wait a minute, did I just use the term English Rose in relation to Maureen Dowd? I hereby sentence myself to three Elizabeth Hurleys and seven Kate Beckinsales….

I was poking around in historical election statistics the other day and one number happened to leap out at me. In 2000, 81 percent of Jews voted for Al Gore while only 17 percent voted for George Bush. The same study also showed that only 4 percent of the electorate was Jewish. This indicates that only .68 percent of the support for the Republican party in 2000 was Jewish. Even godless atheists, Carthage to the Christian Right’s Roma Mater, proved to be demonstrably more Republican-friendly.

A similar pattern held true for 2004. Despite some pre-election hooplah about how pro-Palestinian Democrats and the War on Method would cause George Delano to become the most popular Republican president among Jews since Reagan , John Kerry still won the Jewish vote with ease, 76 percent to 24 percent.

Since most Jews vote left-liberal and since there aren’t very many of them in the first place, you might think that the Jewish influence in the nominally conservative media would be quite small. You would also be wrong, since a survey of conservative opinion leaders Townhall and National Review indicates that around 20 percent of the conservative commentariat identifies itself as Jewish, which is approximately 21 times more than an affirmative-action style analysis would tend to indicate.

Now, I reject affirmative action in both concept and application, and furthermore, I believe that publishers have the right to publish whoever they want. If the Heritage Foundation wishes to turn Townhall into a sister publication to the Jewish World Review, that’s their business and no one should stop them from doing so, although it might raise some questions about precisely what heritage the foundation has in mind. And yet, I also think it is potentially significant that at a time when a supposedly conservative Republican-dominated government continues to comport itself in a markedly less and less conservative manner, a “conservative” media drawn disproportionately from the least conservative group in America continues to cheer its anti-conservative, left-leaning strong central government policies.

There is no need for right-wing affirmative action. What may be in order, however, is for men and women of the right to consider who does, and who does not, truly share their political ideology of freedom, human rights and small government when they select their standard bearers.

As many of you know, I’m a data junkie. Since one’s data is often incomplete, it is a mistake to assume perfect knowledge and understanding based on interpretations of what one has, but some data is almost always better than none. For example, it would be reasonable to assume that since Ben Shapiro, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt, (just to add a third recognizable name to those mentioned in the previous discussion), are all much more widely distributed and quoted in the legacy media than I am, their WND readerships would be expected to be correspondingly larger.

While one could try to make the precisely opposite case based on that very broader distribution, the fact that the two biggest names on WND, Ann Coulter and Patrick Buchanan, have dependably maintained the two largest column readerships* there for the last three years, tends to indicate that broader exposure should lead to larger readerships on WND.

One of the nice things about hard data, however, is that it exposes the underlying flaws inherent in one’s assumptions. The “explosion” of country music in the early 90’s was no such thing, all that happened was that Musicscan started tracking actual CD sales instead of depending on a few influential music stores to report what was selling well. Bookscan has begun to do the same thing, although the New York Times bestseller list is still a statistically unreliable poll of a surprisingly small number of stores.

I suspect the same thing will likely happen with regards to political and sports commentary over the next decade. For five years, I wrote a video game column that appeared in as many as 14 newspapers around the country, (including Boston, Atlanta and St. Paul), but the small amount of email I received led me to believe at the time that not very many people were actually reading it. The fact that Craig Westover’s very good blog has only a few more readers than any other random no-name blog despite his holding a regular spot on the St. Paul Pioneer Press op/ed page tends to support my theory that a only fraction of the people who subscribe to the newspaper actually read it, in contradiction to the self-serving theory advanced by newspaper ad sellers that there is a multiple involved.

So, what is the hard data available to us? Well, I can’t give out actual WND numbers since that is confidential to their business, but I can express them in comparative percentages. Over 2004, Ms Malkin averaged a column readership that was 97.8 percent of mine. Mr. Hewitt averaged 57.4 percent, and Mr. Shapiro averaged 48.5 percent.

These figures also hold up for the first six weeks of 2005, except for Mr. Shapiro, who has been declining precipitously, down to 19.7 percent, as his recitation of Bush administration talking points apparently grows tiresome in a post-election environment. The gold standard, as you might expect, is Ann Coulter. You could say that I am her bitch, since my column readership is only 62.1 percent of hers.

Still, the readership numbers are interesting when you consider the fact that my writing has been found to be completely undesirable by the newspaper editors who serve as legacy gatekeepers. This would appear to suggest that if I wished to pursue a career in editorial commentary, I would do well to either convert to Judaism or undergo gender transformation surgery. Needless to say, I’m not considering either.**

Now, keep in mind that none of this proves that I’m not a terrible writer. Popularity is not synonymous with quality. But what it should demonstrate that a proven ability to maintain a respectable readership is only one factor out of many that go into the saleability of a column. Syndication likely is more survival of the fittest than a scam, but the determining factors are not necessarily what you might assume them to be.

*Only WND’s regular weekly columnists were included in this little investigation. Neither Mr. Farah’s daily column nor the occasional one-shot were included.

**While I very much appreciate his gung-ho support for my column, I must reassure BLACKFIVE that WND has no intention of dropping me. It is Universal Press Syndicate that has done so, but since they hadn’t sold the column to anyone, this has precisely zero effect on anything.

The White Buffalo demands blogtime for gay penguins:

A German zoo has scrapped plans to break up homosexual penguin couples following protests from gay rights groups. The Bremerhaven Zoo had earlier flown in four female Humboldt penguins in an attempt to encourage three couples discovered to be all male to reproduce.

The zoo originally defended the experiment, claiming that the birds were an endangered species, but following protests from gay rights groups, director Heike Kueck has said that the zoo is abandoning the plan….

Gay groups had earlier protested against “the organised and forced harassment through female seductresses” in an open letter to Bremerhaven’s Mayor Joerg Schulz.

Forced harassment through female seductresses… it sounds like Big Chilly’s life story. I’m wondering if these penguins will be given honorary VQPF status or if the notorious Party Friends, (who are generally GLBT-friendly), are too speciesist to – ahem – ride the penguin.

We may have to rethink that Linux slogan, gentlemen.

CW has a suggestion:

This awards season got me thinking, “How about some Vox cred for your loyal readership?”. For example, in the catagory of:

Least Likely to Vacation North of the Mason Dixon – Nate

Best Home Arsenal – Nate

Longest Comments – Nick B.

Most Consecutive Comments – Nick B.

Most Layers of Tin-foil in His Hat – Me, maybe Dread

At year end, winners in each catagory would receive a statuette of Michelle Malkin, known as the Vox Daisy.

Statuette? I think blow-up dolls would be more appropriate, considering that rather unfortunate WND picture. And while I appreciate CW’s paranoia for the work of psychosocial art it is, it’s clear that it’s the Dread Pirate who wears the tin foil crown.

Other categories:

Most Likely To Weep During His Acceptance Speech: Bane

Most Likely To Segue Into Anti-Papism: EN

Most Likely To Have Photoshopped Fakes of Vox Sans Clothing: Zink

Most Likely To Have Actual Pictures of Vox Sans Clothing: White Buffalo

Most Likely To Get Banned In A Momentary Fit Of Pique: Bill

Most One-Track Mind: Crystal Lake

Most Intellectually Fearsome: Res Ispa

Best Left-Wing Sport (varsity): Franger

Best Left-Wing Sport (junior varsity): TimF

Miss Congeniality: Dystopia

Best Three Monkey: Craig