Vox Popoli

I had a sneaking suspicion that the salesguy didn’t know what he was talking about, but since his opinion was backed up by the technical information on the company’s web site, I decided to turn off my brain for a moment and for once in my life simply accept what someone who theoretically should know what he was talking about said.

So, I ordered a laptop with a 128-meg video card instead of the 256-meg one I was planning on buying, because I really didn’t want a 17-inch screen. After all, I was assured, there’s no way that the additional memory is needed, even if you’re running a graphics intensive application.

Of course, the guy turns out to be completely wrong. Somewhere between 87 and 99 megs of uncompressed textures, we’re falling off a performance cliff, because the 128-meg card can’t handle the amount of 24-bit textures we’re throwing at it. It’s definitely the textures, because the geometry is the same and dropping down to 16-bit restores the performance. (This reduces the memory requirement by one-third, keeping us on the safe side of the cliff.)

It seems that the company is willing to rectify the error and allow me to swap out machines, but it’s still annoying. First, because I really didn’t want to lug a 17-inch beast around Second, because sometimes I really don’t want to think, I just want someone to accurately tell me what my options are.

Robert Novak writes:

Sen. Arlen Specter, who moved right to stave off a conservative challenge in this year’s Pennsylvania Republican primary, took a sharp left turn in a general election debate last weekend. Noting that he is in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter promised: “I can bring centrist judges to the bench.” This contrasted with his primary campaign promise to back all of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.

Vote for George Bush, because he’s going to nominate centrist judges of whom Arlen approves… that’s got to have loads of appeal to Christian conservatives who still harbor the hope that Bush work to overturn Roe vs Wade. Of course, nearly everyone has forgotten by now that Bush personally interceded in the Republican senatorial nomination to ensure that Specter would stay in office.

Drudge quotes Jonathan Chait:

In a LA TIMES column, Jonathan Chait blasts: “To say that I consider Bush a ‘bad’ president would be a severe understatement. I think he’s bad in a way that redefines my understanding of the word ‘bad.’

“I used to think U.S. history had many bad presidents. Now, my ‘bad’ category consists entirely of George W. Bush, with every previous president redefined as ‘good.’

Now, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m no Bush fan, nor will I be voting for him this November, but I don’t think he’s in the worst five at this point. Worse presidents, in declining order of awfulness, were:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Abraham Lincoln

Ronald Reagan

Woodrow Wilson

Richard Nixon

Relax, I’m totally kidding about the one in the middle. But Jimmy Carter was definitely worse than W, as was Lyndon Baines Johnson. I do think W is worse than Clinton, but only because Bill was hamstrung by the once-Republican Congress and distracted by other matters.

Guerilla Monkey talks with Nick Coleman:

2:10 AM. The phone rings. Before I even answer I know who’s on the other end.

I pick it up and hear a man sobbing. It’s Nick Coleman. Again.

“Nick, do you know what time it is?”

“Yeah, G. and I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s them again. They’re doing it again.”

“Who?”

“THEM! The #$@^% bloggies. They’re doing it again.

Bloggies? What the hell are bloggies?

“I tried to ignore them but the things they say. You wouldn’t believe the things they say about me. They’re so…so hurtful.”

“Listen, Nick, its late…”

Since readers of this blog tend to be a little more broad-based geographically, I should probably explain that Nick Coleman is a columnist for the Star Tribune – which is in Minneapolis – and combines a complete lack of writing talent with an insufferable sense of his own moral superiority. Amusingly, he’s married to another columnist, Laura Billings of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who is more than a bit of a ditz. She once wrote an entire column about how the USA could learn a lot from Britain about gun control, totally clueless with regards to the massive irony of that idea.

VDH meditates on Iraq:

Our eventual aim should be perhaps around 50,000 American troops in the region — or not that many more present than when Saddam was in power. Even if the worst-case scenario were to transpire in January — an elected Islamist government ordering us to leave — we would still have plenty of alternatives. Beside not having to come through with the promised $87 billion in relief, we can also make it clear that an Islamist Iraq is subject to the same conditions as the mullocracy in Iran — veritable ostracism from the world community, prohibition from acquiring nuclear weapons, and internal problems from imposing sharia on a restless youth.

And the next time the United States uses force in the Middle East, we shall not do nation-building but rather serious GPS-ing at 20,000 feet in punitive Roman fashion. Indeed, despite the glum punditry, the sacrifice of blood and treasure to bring freedom to the Iraqis has been a landmark event by virtue of the very attempt.

I don’t take any great exception to the learned VDH’s conclusions, especially the notion of cutting off foreign aid, but I do wonder about one thing. If nation-building in Iraq was the good, wise and proper thing to do, why shouldn’t we dive into the process again next time? After all, if Iraqis deserve democracy, don’t Saudis, Iranians and Syrians too?

It’s Big Week in our fantasy football league, with WB’s Grizzlies going up against the dread Piranha in a cataclysmic battle for, (cough), last place. WB hurled a gauntlet by composing an ode to the upcoming game… it’s obviously going to be up to JamieR to judge the off-the-field winner. This, by the way, may help explain a) why I don’t get terribly worked up about my hate mail considering that it’s usually tamer than what I hear from my best friends, and b) why Crystal need not fear me turning media whore.

Anyhow, if you find NWA to be outside your range of musical tastes, you’d probably do well to skip this post….

Staright outta Greenfield

Crazy motherfu(ker named Lonzelle

Sippin’ gin and takin’ Eurotrash to hell!

VD is sawed off

I got a tall Moss

Roy Williams gettin’ corner backs hauled off

You too Vox if you fu(k wit’ me

Four straight losses makin’ iffy

Right to last

That how you goin’ out

You and the Shimmer

League bitches gettin’ blown out

Carson wants to rumble

He’s gettin’ humbled

Seattle D makes your punk ass fumble

You’d rather see me from more than a mile

Than right from behind doin’ ya Mankato style

Yo weekly monthly yearly

That chick Ahman’s gonna fear me

Deshaun Foster gettin’ picked and peeled

And how we rollin’?

We’re comin’ straight outta Greenfield

Of course, I had no choice but to add a second verse, setting the record straight:

Straight outta Greenfield, crazy pansy ass White Buffalo

Got a team full of jack with a front ho

When he’s called out, he turns about

Running away like a muthafukking girl scout

What you say, cos I can’t hear you

How you like that last-place cellar view?

Loser mumbles, he thinks he rumbles

Giving me 10 DEF points off the fumbles

And he’ll give it up right smooth

Because the Fish are always down for a jack move

That Lonzelle ain’t so much bright

With a win record like Rich Kotite

First-round draft is the devilish tool

Making WB look a muthafukkin fool

Picked Randall C. back in 99

Followed by Warner-n-Holcomb in joint decline

So bad, weekly, monthly and yearly,

He’s a dumb muthafukka, yo, clearly

That’s him with the W-B

Who ever lost to him – nobody!

So when he’s in your neighborhood, you’re in luck

Coz Greenfield is sh!tty like fukk

Jonah Goldberg tries to defend the President on Iraq:

When Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in May 2003 that the administration settled on the WMD issue for bureaucratic reasons, opponents of the war cynically distorted the interview to make it sound like the administration wasn’t convinced about the WMD threat. What Wolfowitz was actually saying, very clearly, was that the WMD threat was the most palpable threat – the one that all the professionals could agree on it.

But that doesn’t mean that Bush didn’t offer numerous other rationales before and after the war. In major speeches he touted the importance of democratizing the Middle East. Administration officials pointed out that Saddam was the only world leader to applaud 9/11, and that he was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel. They argued that removing Saddam would have a positive impact on the peace process. President Bush made a masterful case to the United Nations that, in the post-9/11 world, the world body could not afford to let a dictator – one who had gassed his own people and invaded a neighbor – flout its countless resolutions with impunity.

These rationales don’t add up to 23, but who cares if they do? What important decisions have you ever made in your life that have depended on a single variable. We don’t buy cars for a single reason. (Oh, it’s blue! I’ll take it!) Why should we launch a preemptive war for a single reason?

1. WMD: They haven’t been found, they aren’t in Iraq. There’s no indication that Hussein was planning to use them against anyone, much less somehow strike the USA with them without missiles or long-range bombers. Given that many other countries have them, this is looking more and more ridiculous every day, which is no doubt why the administration is in active retreat on the issue and its defenders are trying desperately to point at other justifications.

2. Democracy in the Middle East: The administration is not advancing the freedom of self-determination, but is actively working to suppress it. It is forcibly keeping a fundamentally divided Iraq together, while attempting to install the same fraudulent system of vote-legitimization that is present in the USA, which is neither democracy nor Constitutional republicanism. Furthermore, the history of Algeria, Indonesia and Turkey demonstrate that even this mutated form of “democracy” has intrinsic conflicts with Islamic law.

3. Hussein was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel: So is Saudi Arabia. The administration itself is funding Yasser Arafat, who sends out the suicide bombers; by this reasoning we should invade Washington DC. Not a bad idea, really, perhaps we could restore Constitutional government.

4. Removing Hussein would have a positive impact on the peace process: Yes, Israel and the Palestinians appear to be closer to peace than ever, don’t they. That’s just stupid.

5. The UN could not permit a dictator to flout its resolutions: So much for the notion that Bush is not a globalist lackey. This is not only a terrible justification that has nothing to do with America’s national interest, but is in fact directly contrary to the long-term interest of American national sovereignty. To hear this expressed by a so-called conservative is troubling indeed.

There is only one reason that justifies preemptive action. A serious, imminent and direct threat to American national security. Iraq didn’t even come close to meeting that requirement; one could have made a far better case for Saudi Arabia, Iran or North Korea. Interestingly enough, Goldberg says that those who criticize this president must also assert that Lincoln was wrong… with great pleasure, Jonah, with great pleasure.

Goldberg is one of my favorite writers on NRO, but it’s been disappointing to see that he is more interested in defending a Republican president than sticking to the principles he expounded while Bill Clinton was in office.

BLS senses suspicion:

Vox, I’m confused by your posts. Your comments that Bush grounded the Air Force and that NORAD should have known what was going on in US airspace sound as if you believe Bush had prior knowledge of the attack but chose not to act.

Are you advancing a Coventry theory of 9/11? That Bush knew of the plan to use airliners as bombs but decided not to act in order to preserve some intel asset? Are you advancing a Psychopath theory? That Bush knew of the plan to use airliners as bombs but decided not to act because he’s just plain evil?

What theory are you implying?

I’m implying nothing, simply stating some obvious facts and raising obvious questions. I don’t know precisely what happened, nor with whom the responsibility lies. Bush did not ground the Air Force as far as I am aware, but the Air Force was grounded nevertheless, apparently due to the drill that NORAD was running. NORAD and the FAA almost certainly knew that something unusual was going on in US airspace, especially after the first plane turned off its transponder. Given that NORAD’s system of radars and satellites can pick up very small objects and are designed to track very fast-moving missiles, it’s the height of folly to insist they couldn’t find four lumbering airliners whose maximum speed, takeoff time and takeoff location were known.

The truth will eventually come out, just as it has about Pearl Harbor and as it is in the process of doing with regards to OK City and TWA-800. And the official story will prove to be wrong in some significant manner, though precisely how I cannot say.

The frequently heard cry of “tinfoil” is nothing but the fearful cry of those who are afraid to look directly at the facts as they are. Governments have not only killed their own people before when they find it to be in their interest, but they do so with great regularity. In fact, 40 percent of the member states of the United Nations have killed a statistically significant percentage of their population in the last century, including “civilized” countries such as Spain, France, Germany and Mexico, as have the majority of the UN Security Council.

It is only the argument that the possibility of what is quite normal behavior for governments the world over is somehow unimaginable here that is crazy.

The Department of Education engages in some petty fear-mongering:

The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia. The warning follows an analysis by the FBI (news – web sites) and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.

“The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members,” Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups.

The safety advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia incident. But there is “no specific information indicating that there is a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States,” Hickok said. Federal law enforcement officials also have encouraged local police to stay in contact with school officials and have encouraged reporting of suspicious activities, the letter says.

In particular, schools were told to watch for activities that may be legitimate on their own — but may suggest a heightened terrorist threat if many of them occur. Among those activities:

Interest in obtaining site plans for schools, bus routes and attendance lists;

Indeed. I’m not exactly surprised….

Porcus holds back the tears

I was sad to see Vox Popoli didn’t make the NR 2004 Recommended Blog list.

I didn’t even know that National Review had such a thing, but considering that only Ramesh responds to my emails these days, I wouldn’t exactly have been holding my breath anyhow. I think, as did Ann Coulter and Joe Sobran before me, I’ve rendered myself beyond the pale in their eyes. So be it.

It would be difficult for me to be less concerned about it. I’d already ended up letting my subscription lapse since I wasn’t even bothering to read the magazine anymore. I enjoy Goldberg, Nordlinger and Derbyshire, and I also like Ponnuru and VDH, but that’s about it. They’ve turned into complete Republican lapdogs, for the most part, as capable of turning on a dime in response to their master’s voice as their Democratic counterparts. I stopped by NRO today, as I usually do, and didn’t see what looked like a single article worth reading.

Instead of standing athwart history shouting stop, they’ve been transformed into Three Monkey Republicans echoing Michael Ledeen. “Faster, please!”