Vox Popoli

… but I’m a little concerned about this Republican plan to get rid of the CIA and replace it with a national intelligence organization. I’m not saying that the Republican leadership is politically tone-deaf or anything, but I heard that Geheime Staatspolizei was one of the names they were considering.

If you just can’t get enough of the madness, stop by the Captain’s Quarters, as Captain Ed shows every sign of beating Krazy John like a Vice City hooker until he cries like a little girl, checks himself into Liars Anonymous and ends his campaign.

Which, judging from the Hero of the Mekong’s reaction to the two little Swift ads, should take about ten days.

Drudge drops some quotes from “Where the Right Went Wrong”:

“There is no conservative party left in Washington. Conservative thinkers and writers who were to be the watchdogs of orthodoxy have been as vigilant in policing party deviations from principle as was Cardinal Law in collaring the predator-priests of the Boston archdiocese.” (Page 9)

“The Beltway Right has entered into a civil union with Big Brother.” (176)

“Under the rubric of conservatism, the Republican party of Bush I and II has been reinventing itself into what conservatives would have once recognized as a Rockefeller party reciting Reaganite rhetoric.” (234)

“[A] civil war is going to break out inside the Republican Party along the old trench lines of the Goldwater-Rockefeller wars of the 1960s, a war for the heart and soul and future of the party for the new century.” (234)

On the Neoconservatives:

“Kristol’s warning that neoconservatives could go to Kerry was an admission of what many have long recognized. The neoconservatives are not really conservatives at all. They are impostors and opportunists.” (250)

“Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals was telling the President of the United States…that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged publicly with a ‘decisive surrender’ to terrorism.” (48)

The man knows what he’s talking about. I’m going to see if he’s amenable to an interview; it’s interesting to see him pointing out what I’ve been writing for the last two years as well. There is no conservative party in Washington.

After the Star and Sickle ran a hit piece defending Krazy John against the Powerline duo of Hindrocket and the Big Trunk, the boys have called BS on Eric Ringham and Jim Boyd.

Jim, this morning you launched a vicious personal attack on Scott Johnson and me, apparently on behalf of the Strib’s editorial board. As usual with those who try to defend the indefensible, your vicious personal tirade was almost completely fact-free, and you didn’t even attempt to deny the central point of our piece, which was that Kerry’s now-retracted Christmas in Cambodia fable was a lie.

As it happens, we have a radio show, and we would like to debate you on this issue so that the public can be advised of all of the relevant facts–not just those that can be squeezed into a 750-word op ed. We hereby invite you to join us for a debate on our show, the Northern Alliance Radio Network, at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, where we will be broadcasting live from the State Fairgrounds. You can present your case before a large live audience, an audience of many thousands on the radio, and an untold world-wide audience that will be listening via our internet stream. If you really think you can sustain the claim that John Kerry undertook secret missions to Cambodia, you will be there. We will debate this issue: “Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia: An Innocent Mistake, or a Decades-long Pattern of Deception?”

Please confirm that we can look forward to debating you at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, at the State Fairgrounds.

This should be fun to follow over the next few weeks, as the Northern Alliance guys pound the helpless paper boys and their failure to respond. Clearly, the Old Media is pulling out its hair at their inability to exercise their former monopoly over what news is permitted to reach the public. McCain-Feingold won’t do them any good now; everyone with half a brain is getting their news from the Internet already.

So, put on the steel-toed boots and kick some ass, gentlemen. But if you ever want to argue invasion probabilities, you know I won’t duck it.

From Rose Lear’s blog:

What an eye awakening day this was. I thought that I had seen it all having been involved from Viet Nam to the beginning of Desert Storm in my military and civilian law enforcement career, but

today I learned about a new part of the shame game.

For those who won’t bother to read all this report, let me spell out the body counts that 6 of us (all retired military and/or law enforcement) went out to confirm today in different areas. These

are confirmed bodies in the trucks, restaurant refers, or refer vans, and they are NOT “missing persons” or animals:

Charlotte Harbor areas – 58 dead as of 5pm today;

Fort Myers & the barrier islands – 21 deaths as of 3pm today;

Punta Gorda – 275+ deaths and escalating each hour;

Desoto County – 36 deaths, expected to increase;

These figures came from our own eyes, medical personnel, various county sheriff’s deputies, and eye witnesses or residents from the worst devastated areas. CNN and the rest of the world biased

and controlled media are fooling none of us who live here. The current CONFIRMED body count in our 3 county area on the west coast of Florida is near 400 as I write this….

There are staging areas for FEMA (with their red and white signs to let you know they are “there”), et al, that we could not openly enter into with photo and movie cameras having been

“discovered” in our vehicles… our cars and pick-ups were searched in the “sensitive” areas where the worst devastation took place and where we were then refused entry. None-the-less, we still walked into most of these “off limits” areas at waterfront motels, I-75 restaurant/commercial areas, destroyed mobile home parks, and the temporary Charlotte morgue… to name a few. This is how we came up with the above figures for body counts. We spoke with

medical personnel who have come from Miami to work triage and other temporary facilities, ambulance drivers (a special thanks to the Ambutrans people), homeless residents, and deputies from many different counties.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing if this is true. It could be a self-dramatizing hoax, or it could be the truth. But if the official body count suddenly changes dramatically sometime down the road after everyone has forgotten about the hurricane, it will be one more piece of evidence to keep in mind.

Paul Jacobs demonstrates that we live in a hereditary oligarchy:

Here’s how it works. Bill Lipinski, the 22-year career congressman, faces no competition. That’s par for the course with incumbents in Congress, 98 percent of whom are re-elected cycle after cycle. Lipinski was unopposed in both the primary and general election in 2002. In 2000, his challenger raised less than $20,000 and Lipinski won with 76 percent of the vote.

At least a year ago, Lipinski decides that he wants to retire. However, he does not announce that this will be his last term, which would truly open up the seat and allow the election process to take place in a manner available to all candidates and voters. He keeps his intentions to himself, and to his favored replacement.

Lipinski also does not resign his seat and trigger a special election, even though in so doing he would still be able to time his departure to allow his favored replacement a head start in organizing a campaign. Instead, Lipinski runs unopposed, yet again, for the Democratic nomination in this rock-solid Democratic district.

Then, a mere two months before this November’s general election, Congressman Bill Lipinski [of Illinois] suddenly withdraws and orchestrates the awarding of the Democratic Party’s nomination for Congress, like a crown on a royal pillow, to . . . guess who?

This coronation is for Bill Lipinski’s son, Daniel.

Perhaps Daniel Lipinski would make a fine congressman. But even if he would, shouldn’t he represent Knoxville, Tennessee, where he has lived for the last 15 years? But no, that’s not how the divine right of hereditary succession works in modern times. And besides, Pop has no power of incumbency in Tennessee. (You know, like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz had no power in the East. If only voters could click their heels together and say three times, “There’s nothing like term limits.”)

Now, after 22 years of his father, third district citizens have 38-year-old Daniel Lipinski to look forward to term after term for how many more decades? This is “representative government”? These are “free elections”?

And you think the Presidential primary selections are any more open? The American people don’t select a President, they are simply permitted to choose between the two men the oligarchy has selected for them. Perhaps people will begin to wake up to this reality when George Bush IV is running against yet another Massachusetts Democrat in 2040.

Hindrocket writes on Powerline:

On our show this afternoon, Michelle referred admiringly to Deacon’s post. My sense is that she generally agrees with Deacon’s conclusion, as do I. I would only add that it is easy for us to see, with hindsight, that there wasn’t much danger of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. This wasn’t obvious in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. And while there is no doubt that the vast majority of Japanese Americans were loyal, there is equally no doubt that some were not. It is impossible to know what injury to our war effort may have been prevented by the relocation. Having said that, I don’t think the evidence of danger was sufficient to justify the measures taken. But that is a judgment call on which reasonable minds can differ.

With all due respect to Hindrocket and Deacon, that’s a massive, stinking load of elephant dung worthy of a knowledge-free moral relativist at university. It is not only obvious now, it was obvious at the time that there was ZERO danger of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. The facts and the actions of the US military at the time entirel support this. Would Hindrocket also say that it was “a judgment call” to say that reasonable minds could differ on the possibility of a German invasion of the East Coast?

The Germans had 2,000 fewer ocean miles to cross. The Kriegsmarine was of similar size to the Japanese Navy. (It may have lacked aircraft carriers, but its 1,170 U-boats alone could have landed more troops than Japan’s entire 176-ship Imperial navy) And yet the notion is entirely absurd! How much more ludicrous is the idea of a 5,500 mile trans-Pacific invasion?

The Germans couldn’t cross 21 miles of the English Channel with air equivalence. The Allies required air supremacy and 4,600 ships to invade Normandy, on a French coastline that is not, as one of the Northern Alliance gang weirdly asserted last week, smaller than the American West Coast. (France’s Atlantic coastline alone is 1875 miles compared to the 1359 miles of the American West Coast, and if we’re dealing in unlikely hypotheticals here, the Germans would also have had to worry about guarding against an invasion from the Mediterranean or the North Sea as well. The entire French coastline is 3437 miles in all, 2.5 times larger than the American West Coast.) An invasion isn’t a simple matter of landing troops, it’s also about arranging for supply, support and reinforcement, none of which was even remotely possible for Japan.

To highlight the absurdity of the pro-internment case, Germany was not only far more active on the East Coast – 27 merchant ships were sunk on the West Coast, compared to 397 on the East Coast Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean – but furthermore, as Japan was wholly dependent on raw materials imported by sea, any invasion would have been nothing but a large-scale suicide mission, with no possibility of reinforcement or supply, that would have instantly doomed the island empire.

One cannot be an expert on everything. But any defense of internment based on the notion of genuine military danger to the United States of America requires a combination of logical failure and near-complete ignorance of military history and strategic realities.

In fact, if we were to accept this very poor reasoning, then Malkin and her ilk would be more than justified in calling for throwing out the Constitution and locking up every American of Arab descent or Islamic creed, as the danger from them and their nations of origin, however slight, is far more serious than that posed by the Nisei and Imperial Japan. The fact that she denies any intent to make such a case only shows that she is either a) full of it, b) clueless, or c) disingenuous.

In any case, color me seriously unimpressed. I’m a Powerline fan and I think they’re doing fantastic work on the ongoing rout that is the Kerry campaign v. Swift Vet clash, but I suspect they’ll look back on this apology for Ms Malkin’s absurd case with more than a little embarassment.

Blogger has done a rather decent thing, in replacing the ads at the top with a search toolbar. Enter a word or two, click search, and it will find the most recent entry containing those words. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well, as if you happen to know, for example, how many times I’ve mentioned Daunte Culpepper over the last ten months, it’s quite clear that the search tool is not finding all of them.

Still, it beats ads for Bill Clinton’s book or whatever. And I’m sure they’ll improve it soon; Blogger has been very good about continuing to improve its product.

Chris Adamo passes on an email from a Canadian acquaintance:

Thought I’d let you know that the battle lines are drawn even here in Canada for U.S. Presidential elections.. A local paper had a article by a Dual citizen pushing liberal agenda and was eager to sign up other dual citizens for absentee ballots and the Democratic party. There are approximately 700,000 Americans living in Canada.

I sent him a short and sweet reply saying that Mr. Kerry was not fit to be a commander in Chief of anything. You can smell how desperate the liberals are to get to power, and God help us and others if they do. I got my absentee ballot card and will be voting accordingly in November.

While I rather doubt that his idea of “accordingly” would parallel mine, it’s interesting to note that the election campaign appears to be active outside American borders. You’d think that there’d be rampant opportunity for voter fraud here as well.

PRG gang agley:

For someone who’s current kick is pointing fingers at “media whores”, Vox sure enjoys name-dropping and career-pimping (the rest of us aren’t exactly boasting of hanging out with rock stars while authoring best-selling novels and creating million-dollar software).

Career-pimping? Name-dropping? Okay, PRG, what do I do? What industry am I in? There would seem to be a shocking lack of information out there; if I’m doing as you say, I appear to be doing a terrible job of it.

As for best-selling novels, I certainly haven’t boasted of that, seeing as I haven’t written any. It would sure be nice to have the ability to do so, though. Maybe one day.