Vox Popoli

Joseph Farah hits the president hard:

If John Kerry had been elected president, I suspect there would be much more concern being expressed about a Council on Foreign Relations effort to destroy U.S. sovereignty with an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement that analysts agree would effectively eliminate U.S. national borders.

In other words, radical plans are afoot. Radical actions are being taken by the Bush administration. And these insidious plots are progressing almost without criticism under the cover of the Bush administration.

I’m still of the opinion, however, that the time to warn people of the danger’s posed by George Bush is BEFORE the election, not after. Kerry is and was a bad man, but bad men cause good men to react. Those perceived as good men don’t. Based on the Nixon-to-China principle, it’s entirely possible that Bush will prove to be a worse president in his second term than he was in his first. I hope not, but it would be silly to suggest that this is impossible.

“Fannie Mae has already said it will not file its third-quarter financial results report [on time] because its independent auditor has refused to approve it,” the Associated Press reports. “And the company says it’s not requesting a five-day extension allowed under SEC rules because it can’t meet that deadline, either.”

Normally, I’d say that buying gold is a good idea, but I’d hold off at the moment. This is one of those times when my contrarian instincts tells me that because everyone is running one way, a change in direction is nigh.

Blackfive spreads the word:

Here’s why and what they need: At the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, some of the spouses of the deployed Marines put together hundreds of recovery baskets in anticipation of wounded Marines arriving at our military hospitals. The purpose behind these baskets was to provide the wounded with personal items to be used during their hospital stay and to help fill up their days while being confined in the hospitals. However, due to the higher than anticipated numbers of wounded, they are all but out of the supplies to outfit these baskets.

They are in need of the following items: nonperishable food (snacks and candy), DVDs, all sizes of batteries, phone cards, Game Boy games, books and magazines, Domino’s Pizza gift certificates (they deliver on base), towels and wash cloths, and hygiene gear (razors and shaving cream).

These items can be sent to MSgt William Bonney, Office of the Division Inspector, 1st Marine Division Rein FMF, Bldg 1413 Room 200, Box 555380, Camp Pendleton, CA 92055-5380.

As most of you know, I am not a supporter of the Iraqi occupation or the concept of nation-building. But those decisions are not only out of our hands, but out of the hands of the Marines who are charged with executing them. They are still our Marines, they have risked everything they have to do their best to defend you, me and the nation, and I would very much like to encourage everyone who is a regular on this blog send something, even if it is only a phone card or a pack of batteries, to these wounded Marines.

It breaks my heart to read of Captain Sean Sims little boy, who lost his father in the Fallujah fighting. I cannot imagine the pain of Nick Larson’s parents, who lost their only son there.

It is all too easy for we intellectuals to view these things dispassionately, from a safely abstract distance. And there is a time and a place for honest and abstract debate, just as there is a time and a place to set it aside and do what little one can to alleviate a small piece of human suffering. This is that time, Camp Pendleton is the place.

From National Review (of all places):

I was feeling pretty desperate Sunday night because my new favorite TV show Desperate Housewives was preempted by the American Music Awards. (Boo!) Housewives has already become part of my (and millions of other women’s) Sunday-night ritual. And don’t we all have end-of-the-weekend, start-of-the-work-week Sunday-night rituals?

After the dishes are done, the kids are in bed, and the house is quiet, I know that women all over the country collapse on the couch for a fix of gloriously entertaining chick-TV. And who cares if it’s shallow, retro, and anti-feminist? All the women on Desperate Housewives are, after all, “just housewives.” And that’s a major part of its charm.

Last week the show had 22.32 million viewers, its highest rating yet. I would guess roughly 21 million of those tuned in were female, and that the rest were guys whose favorite character is the hunky teenage gardener who is up to no good with Gabrielle….

But what is most winning about the show is the relationships the women have with one another. And that’s why you like the housewives, even straying Gabrielle and obsessive-compulsive Bree. In the soap operas of the ’80s women were rivals, circling each other and trying to outwit each other to gain the attention of the men who were in the starring roles. But in this show and in the chick-lit books that are now so popular, women care about each other. The men on Wisteria Lane most often tend to be irritating problems, not solutions…. Are these desperate housewives a reflection of American women? Not really, of course, but they’re close enough so that viewers are entertained by them and not offended by their flaws.

I have not seen this show, but it sure sounds like exactly the sort of behavior affirmation that most women, housewives and otherwise, don’t need. The thing I find incredibly bizarre about this is the way women love to publicly identify themselves with characters from shows like this and Sex in the City, (its obvious spiritual predecessor). And yet, if men were to make a point of identifying themselves with equally fictional characters such as James Bond or Conan – and start imitating their behavior and sartorial style, no less – women would think they were not only crazy, but more than a little bit pathetic.

Glad I am that Space Bunny doesn’t watch this nonsense, much less take it seriously.

The New York Times on the passive-aggressive:

A 45-year-old college instructor in Hawaii recently broke off a long relationship with a man she said was a “wonderful, devoted listener, an extremely sensitive person.” But in time, she said, it was apparent that he was also passive-aggressive. On one occasion, she said, he gave away her seat on an airplane while she was finding a storage compartment for her luggage, saying he thought she had taken another seat. On others, he would arrive home early from work and finish off meals they normally shared, without explanation. And when he was in one of his moods, the listening ceased; she may as well not have been in the room. “The challenging thing was, you never know what you did wrong,” she said. “That’s the difficulty, all these scenarios, I could not point to what I did. I never knew.”

The person who has become hostile may not know exactly why, either. In some cases, psychologists say, people unable to recognize or express their annoyance often don’t feel entitled to it; they instinctually let the “little things” pass without taking the time to find out why they are so angry about them. Unsure of themselves, they take care not to offend a spouse, a co-worker or friend. The anger remains.

When the behavior pattern is deeply ingrained and compulsive, it is neither adaptive nor merely bewildering, but can be dangerous, some experts say. At her clinic in Salt Lake City, Dr. Benjamin treats many people with multiple diagnoses, from attention deficit disorder to obsessive-compulsive disorder to intractable depression, many of them with other problems, like substance abuse or multiple suicide attempts. “And I would say that in close to half of them this passive-aggressive behavior is running the whole show,” she said.

I think most people, Italians and Latins aside, are somewhat oriented this way. But what I found vastly amusing was that I spotted this at the top of the NYT’s most-emailed list.

Stephen Norwood, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, spoke of his findings, published in a research paper titled “Legitimating Nazism: Harvard University and the Hitler Regime,” at a Boston University conference on the Holocaust, the Boston Globe reported Sunday.

Harvard’s official records portray the school as anti-Nazi, but Norwood said Harvard had an ambiguous relationship with Germany in the mid-1930s. Norwood said Harvard welcomed one of Hitler’s closest deputies to campus for his reunion in 1934, sent delegates to celebrate the University of Heidelberg’s anniversary in 1936 — after the German university had purged all its Jewish professors and students — and declined numerous opportunities to help Jewish refugees.

“Harvard was involved in active steps that helped legitimate the Nazi regime in the West,” Norwood said. “Harvard was among the worst [universities], and its record was shameful and unjustifiable.”

However, Harvard officials dispute Norwood’s conclusions. “The university was then and is now repulsed by everything that Hitler represents,” a Harvard spokesman said in a statement.

It looks as if Harvard has the Goebbelsian concept of the Big Lie down. The truth is that the university wasn’t repulsed then and it isn’t now, because the current Harvard faculty supports more than two-thirds of the National Socialist program, being socialists themselves. Their hatred for Israelis may not have quite risen to the level of their ideological cousins’ feelings about Jews, but give them enough time and they’ll get there.

Runner is running out of time:

For example, I have faith that Queen Elizabeth I existed. I have never seen her, heard her voice, or anything like that. Yet, rationally speaking, I have to believe that she did exist.

faith is an irrational belief in the unseen. Your lack of logic is so profound I feel I can no longer respond to it. You have knowledge that the Queen exists. Not faith.

You can go see Queen Elizabeth. Pictures of her exist. Tapes of her voice exist. You have solid evidence.

Anyone who considers this to be sufficient evidence has to be technologically illiterate. The digital age is slowly but surely destroying the notion that you can trust what your eyes and ears tell you. Within fifteen years, we’ll be able to push so many polygons that you’ll be able to produce an animated audio-visual image of Hillary Clinton having sex with George W. Bush that would convince anyone who saw it that it happened.

Even if it never did. Time is running out on your argument, Runner, assuming it hasn’t already.

Andy laments:

I’ve not done an actual analysis, but, in subsequent topics/comments to this thread, I have perceived an increase in the use of words/phrases which were (IMHO) better left unsaid.

That’s always the case, and someone goes too far, and then I’ll tell them to knock it off, and then things will clean up for a while. It’s the norm. But considering that I’ve been absolutely steeped in the Hitchhikers’ Trilogy for the last week, the chances that I was going to let that Rory reference go were essentially nil.

So, to those inclined to more earthy speech, I say, that’s enough. The humor depends on the rarity factor, thus spake Vox. To those who are inclined to take it overly seriously, I encourage you to unwind that Gordian knot and deal with it; it may not happen often but it will happen from time to time. And on a gratuitous basis, I do hope.

And to anyone who happens to be interested, I say that I have completed The Dichotomous Subversive: Douglas Adams and the Rule of Unreason and sent it in. Hopefully the good people at Benbella will find it to their liking and it will appear in the collection of essays devoted to the work of the late and much-lamented Mr. Adams.

TMQ delves back into the annals of history:

The entire country had missed the best part! And the deciding play of the Heidi Game was a wild fumble that was booted, botched and muffed by numerous gentlemen until fallen on in the end zone by the most important player in NFL history, Raiders third-string tailback Preston Ridlehuber.

Preston Ridlehuber has Heidi to thank for his place in NFL history.

Within mere hours of the Heidi Game, all networks had announced that henceforth they would never cut away from pro football for other programming. This established a vital premise: Nothing is more important than football. The president might be giving a news conference to declare plans to invade Canada; the Pope might be reading a homily at which he announces his conversion to Zoroastrianism; Ashlee Simpson might actually be singing instead of lip-syncing; regardless, there is no chance any network would cut away from any NFL game.

Preston Ridlehuber’s heroics paved the way for the modern era of Sunday NFL doubleheaders, Sunday and Monday night games, Saturday games in December, college football on television nearly round-the-clock. As you ease back into your couch with the remote, say a word of thanks to the man who made all this possible.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I will surely include the heroics of Preston Ridlehuber in the long list of many things for which I am grateful to God. I don’t know if God is an NFL fan, but I certainly hope He is.

A U.S. Marine shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, according to dramatic pool television pictures broadcast Monday. A Marine spokesman in Washington said the shooting was under investigation. The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque….

The Marines had treated the wounded, he reported, left them behind and continued on Friday with their drive to retake the city from insurgents who have been battling U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq with increasing ferocity and violence in recent months. On the video as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner laying on the floor of the mosque but neither NBC nor CNN showed the bullet hitting the man. At that moment the video was blacked out but the report of the rifle could be heard. Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

Sorry, but if you’re booby-trapping your own dead and using suicide bombers as a primary weapon, you’re clearly not operating by the Geneva Convention and the Marines are more than justified in blowing away any enemy combatant at any time, prisoner or not. I’m not a supporter of this nation-building quasi-war, but it is disgusting for civilians sitting in the safety of their air-conditioned offices try to pass judgment on young men operating in extreme peril against an enemy that openly spurns what few rules exist in wartime.

I’m not sure to what degree these “insurgents”, as the Marines call them, can be classified as terrorists. The foreign jihadists clearly are, while many of those belonging to the Iraqi resistance probably are not. The problem is that the history of terrorism strongly suggests that taking terrorists captive is short-sighted and ineffective, as the next hostage situation will demand their release.