Vox Popoli

I’m actually quite sympathetic to the Gargler’s anti-voting philosophy. It is a withdrawal of your consent from the system and a refusal to participate in your own destruction. I also largely agree with him that it is, at the very least, extremely unusual for a government to voluntarily give up power; even in the case of the British Empire, at least a nominal amount of force was usually required to convince the Imperialists to go home.

The primary reason that I support third-party voting is that it accomplishes much the same negative function, but does so more visibly. I don’t expect the Libertarians or the Constitutionals to win, but their growing support makes the sickness of the system more obvious to all, whereas lower voting percentages are simply dismissed as stupid and uninterested youth or something equally irrelevant. It is harder for the casual observer to ignore a 5 percent increase in third party support than a 5 percent decline in the overall vote – which most people would never notice anyhow.

The very fact that both Democrats and Republicans get more disturbed by someone supporting a third party candidate than someone announcing that they’ll stay home is testament to this. But does it greatly matter either way? No. Far better to stay home and withhold one’s consent than to support either of the bi-factional ruling party’s candidates.

As I mentioned earlier today, I banned Palooka for ignoring my warning, refusing to argue specifics, and finally, declaring that I was arguing dishonestly. A few minutes ago, an anonymous poster posted the following:

I don’t understand. You banned him becuase you didn’t want to deal with his arguments?

and

It seems to me you have conceded a crucial point of his–that the possibility of sabotage and espionage were relevant. If they were relevant, as you now claim, then why do you claim the case for internment is totally baseless and absurd? It seems to me you banned this Palooka character because he blew your argument to bits.

Palooka IP: 4.240.60.xx

Anonymous IP: 4.240.60.xxx

That’s just sad.

All this past week John F. Kerry has been touring the hinterlands, pounding on his new campaign slogan: “George W. Bush: the W stands for Wrong!” And then, a few seconds ago, it suddenly hit me:

“John F. Kerry: the F stands for Forgery!”

Oh, I feel a big-time backlash a-comin’ on strong.

(After all, CNN, ABC, NBC, and the Washington Post all have their phoneybaloney illusions of objectivity to protect, and if they can do that *and* stick it to CBS in the process…)

John Forgery Kerry. Yes, Volk, there it is, courtesy of the Original Cyberpunk.

From the Washington Times:

The nation’s border czar yesterday said it is “not realistic” to think that law-enforcement authorities can arrest or deport the millions of illegal aliens now in the United States and does not think the American public has the “will … to uproot” those aliens. Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson also said taxpayers “might be afraid” to learn how much it would take in manpower and resources to control the nation’s borders and described as “probably accurate” a statement that no law-enforcement officials are looking for the vast majority of the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens thought to be in the country.

Of course, if there’s a big enough scare, I imagine that missing will will suddenly be hard to ignore. I’m beginning to get a definite impression of “here we go again” from the increased interest with regards to the related matters of national ID cards, internment, deportation and increased terror strikes around the world. I’m simply hoping that Constitutional deportation will be favored over totalitarian internments.

Hutchinson’s statements do, however, appear to fortuitously pull the rug out from under the We Are At War crowd. If you can’t even bother to pay attention to 8 to 12 million aliens running around inside your borders, how serious can it possibly be? Or, alternatively, how massively incompetent is the Commander-in-Chief?

Astro studiously inquires:

What’s the best way for an adult to work on learning other languages on their own time?

Have a torrid affair with a very attractive member of the opposite sex who is a native speaker of that language. Maybe you’ll pick it up, maybe you won’t, but it’s pretty much a win-win situation regardless.

Granted, learning Latin this way is tough and will probably get you arrested, as the authorities take a dim view of extreme intergenerational love, especially when shovels are involved, but the true devotee of continuing intellectual development will not let such petty difficulties get in his way.

The Good: The Prestige Alliance wins its #5 game in the pick-16.

The Bad: I’m playing Chokechain, (my partner in The Prestige Alliance), this week. He’s got Tom Brady. Brady threw for 335 yards and 3 TDs.

The Great: NFL Football is back! I could almost go Bane* over this.

*I mean in the mawkish and weepy sense, not the more commonly used meaning of being a hair-trigger provocation away from going postal on someone’s posterior.

Fresh from their takedown of Jim Boyd and the Star Tribune, the bullies of Powerline are now beating up Dan Rather and CBS:

It isn’t pretty. Over the next few days, we’ll be commenting on the significance of the mainstream media’s frantic effort to drag John Kerry over the finish line. In the meantime, following the 60 Minutes story is like watching a train wreck. Tonight, the Associated Press weighed in:

“The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos. “I am upset because I think it is a mixture of truth and fiction here,” said Gary Killian, son of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

News reports have said the memos, first obtained by CBS’s “60 Minutes,” were found in Jerry Killian’s personal records. Gary Killian said his father wasn’t in the habit of bringing his work home with him, and that the documents didn’t come from the family. The personnel chief in Killian’s unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.

Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software, which wasn’t available when the documents were supposedly written in 1972 and 1973.

Lines, a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, pointed to a superscript – a smaller, raised “th” in “111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron” – as evidence indicating forgery. Microsoft Word automatically inserts superscripts in the same style as the two on the memos obtained by CBS, she said. “I’m virtually certain these were computer-generated,” Lines said after reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer’s Microsoft Word software.”

Powerline is doing excellent work. It’s too bad that they’re too gaga over Michelle Malkin to turn their guns on her shoddy work justifying internment as well. But then, they are Republicans and one cannot serously fault them for adhering to Reagan’s 11th Commandment: thou shalt not criticize fellow Republicans.

Dick Morris sees it coming:

How big is Bush’s lead? Don’t believe the surveys that show it in the 5- to 7-point range. Believe the surveys of Time and Newsweek, which show a lead in excess of 10 points.

The difference is because pollsters disagree about whether or not to weight their results to keep constant the ratio of Republicans, Democrats and Independents in their sample. Some polling firms treat party affiliation as a demographic constant and, when they find that their sample has too many Republicans, they weight down each Republican interview and assign an extra weight to each Democratic response.

I’ve changed parties, I know many people who have changed parties in their lifetime. Even those who don’t change parties, like Zell Miller, are capable of crossing party lines to vote. A static political model is as short-sighted as a static revenue model for predicting the results of tax changes, and is as unlikely to be accurate.

However, a huge victory for Bush does not mean the country has become more conservative, it simply means he has picked up more support from the Left than he has lost from the Right. Which is hardly surprising, given his consistent drift away from conservative and Constitutional principles. I won’t be surprised if the Libertarian and Constitution parties more than double their votes from the 2000 election, even as George Bush crushes the hapless John Kerry.

Umberto Eco is one of my favorite novelists, despite being notoriously difficult to read. He’s also considered very difficult by native Italian speakers, as in addition to his unusually long, complex sentences, he makes frequent use of a verb form that is not used in modern Italian speech. For my birthday, Space Bunny was kind enough to call me on my possibly overoptimistic confidence in my linguistic abilities and obtain a copy of his latest novel, La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana, which I began tackling last week.

It’s rough sledding, as you might expect, but I’m rather pleased with the progress that I’m making so far. I decided not to use a dictionary while I’m reading as I’d be looking up every sixth word otherwise, but to attempt to grok the fullness via context instead. I’m a natural speed reader, so I tend to do a degree of word-skipping anyhow; what’s been a surprising discovery for me is that reading slowly is actually more pleasurable.

Big Chilly discovered this many years ago – he was also a natural speed reader – and actually trained himself to read slowly, in order to better savor the Piers Anthony novels he was devouring at the time. (Relax, Sarah, I’m talking about the Xanth and Adept series.) I don’t think I could bring myself to do that, as I find the utility of reading quickly to outweigh any lost pleasure, but I very much doubt I’ll ever have the facility in Italian. Nor would I want to take the risk, as Big Chilly would like to be able to speed read again, but for some reason, he can’t do it now.

Anyhow, I’m only nine pages in, so it’s entirely possible that I’ll give up in despair at some point, but it’s nice to be forced to stretch the little gray cells in the meantime. My goal is to finish it before the English translation is published and the temptation to cheat becomes overwhelming.

Palooka posts, for the last time:

Notice how Vox is emphasizing a point I made about the nature of World War II warefare to obscure his own weak argument.

This point, typically inaccurate and tangential, weirdly insisted that World War II was bound to be short because of “mobile blitzkrieg-type warfare”. When I noted that it would be rather difficult to mount a blitzkrieg on the ocean, he then stated that submarines and aircraft carriers were the equivalent of blitzkrieg. This not only reveals a complete ignorance of what blitzkrieg was – driving tank columns deep behind enemy lines and encircling the hapless enemy to create a pocket and force surrender – but is possibly the strangest statement with regards to military history and theory I have ever heard. Aircraft carriers are used for hit-and-run raids, anti-submarine warfare and mobile air support. Submarines are used for raiding and blockade/siege purposes. None of this has anything to do with “blitzkrieg” or WWII ending quickly, a point Palooka was making to escape the ominous implications of his argument for the current War on Terror.

He has dismissed espionage and sabotage as irrelevant. Let them spy, let them destroy our industrial capacity! We kick ass!

I did not say they were completely irrelevant. I mathematically proved that no amount of espionage or sabotage that could have conceivably been performed by the 112,000 Japanese-Americans interned could have reduced our production to the point that it would have slowed the war effort, much less crippled it as Malkin suggests. Nor did I state that we should leave our production facilities unguarded. Malkin’s book claims that the internment was militarily necessary due to the potential sabotage, and I was responding specifically to that erroneous claim.

He has presented a false dichotomy. He presents an argument which justfies internment only if internment, taken in isolation, swings the balance of the war. No single decision can do that. Victory is a cumulation of decisions which collectively result in victory. Vox has framed the debate dishonestly, and he has done nothing–absolutely nothing–to respond to this criticism.

Again, Palooka demonstrates that he has serious reading comprehension problems My argument does not justify internment in any way, and I have not presented any false dichotomy but have instead responded, directly and specifically, to the issues that Michelle Malkin raised in her book. It is Malkin that framed the debate, not me. Finally, I had already warned Palooka once; as he has now seen fit to falsely accuse me of dishonesty, he can find somewhere else to post and is henceforth banned.