Vox Popoli

I’m sorry about the bad stream link yesterday; according to Space Bunny, it didn’t work and you had to go directly to the Patriot 1280 site in order to find the correct one. The link posted was the one I was given and I simply passed it along without verifying it.

The show went well and St. Paul even said that he thought it was the best one we’d done yet as there were definitely some differing opinions being discussed this time around. I think I made some coherent points – that or they were simply being polite and pretending to concede that there are genuine threats within as without – and it’s always good to have the chance to chat with genuinely intelligent and informed individuals. Time flies when you’re having fun, though, and we didn’t even manage to get to our second topic despite having an hour to do so. So, the outraged suffragettes will just have to wait to get their knickers in a twist.

As it stands, I’ll be visiting the Northern Alliance again in September, if not sooner, and hopefully I’ll have the correct link for the live streaming next time.

Space Bunny flawlessly put one over on me today. We went to church this morning, as we generally do, and I had no idea anything was going on behind those deceptively guileless blue eyes. After the service was over and we walked out, she told me that the pastor had told her that he needed to see me about something. I went back in and the pastor explained that he wanted me to meet someone.

He led me over to a tall blond man who was standing with his back towards me, and my jaw just about hit the floor when the man turned around, as the Perfect Aryan Male, seeking refuge from the hurricane, had flown in from out of town for an unexpected visit. Space Bunny had arranged the whole surprise of course, and although I’d noticed she’d disappeared for a while during the service, I hadn’t really thought anything of it. It turns out that she’d run out to pick up our friend, who arrived at the airport this morning.

So, the lesson for today is: watch out for the pretty blonde ones. Notice how they always laugh at the dumb blonde jokes? The truth is that they’re not laughing at the jokes, they’re laughing at you, because you’re buying into the picture they’re painting for you.

I made the mistake of turning on Fox News for a few minutes and heard the hostess saying that the Red Cross would prefer that people not donate supplies, just cash, and that donating supplies would be “causing a problem”. What kind of scam are they running there? Based on some of the things I’ve heard of how the Red Cross abuses those it purports to help, I’m wondering if the organization has outlived its usefulness.

Mr. McGreevey was introduced to Mr. Cipel at a reception during a trip to Israel in 2000 when he was running for governor. The married American politician and the young Israeli poet were introduced at a wine-and-cheese reception and hit it off immediately.

Soon, Mr. McGreevey paved the way for Mr. Cipel to come to the United States. Six months later, Mr. Cipel was working on Mr. McGreevey’s campaign, having obtained a visa in which he listed Mr. McGreevey and Mr. Kushner as sponsors on his visa application and then taking up residence in an apartment less than a mile from Mr. McGreevey. Working first in a $30,000-a-year public relations job arranged by Mr. Kushner, Mr. Cipel was named to head the state Office of Homeland Security in February 2002.

Mr. McGreevey said he did not think a background check was necessary for Mr. Cipel, who also had worked as a public relations officer in the Israeli Consulate in New York and achieved the rank of lieutenant in the Israeli Navy.

Emphasis mine. Worked in a consulate, just happened to hit it off with a secretly homosexual politician…. I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually learn that Cipel is an Israeli spy.

From the Washington Times:

Who are the dormant voters? Democrats are looking to Hispanics, unmarried women or people ages 18 to 25, while Republican strategists note that 4 million evangelical Christians — reliable Republican voters — did not vote in the presidential election in 2000.

Those 4 million evangelical Christians who didn’t like Bush enough to vote for him have probably doubled thanks to his presidency. I imagine more than a few of them will be voting Constitution Party. I was one of the non-voters in the last go-round, I’ll be voting Libertarian this time and I won’t be the only one.

Is there anything more annoying that sportswriters who won’t stick to sports? Sports Illustrated has long been populated by squishy left-liberals, but old-timers like Dr. Z and Peter King usually keep their politics to themselves. But the new generation, all feelings and no brain, can’t resist sharing their horror when Terrell Owens essentially calls Jeff Garcia a fag, in one case because his Daddy left his Mommy for another man. Then another new SI-nik idiotically gives “props” to the first guy for condemning Owens’ “Neolithic comments” while simultaneously defending Carlos Delgado’s decision to make a point of not singing God Bless America, apparently during the seventh-inning stretch. (They do that? Why? And who knew?)

When another sportswriter points out that the fans booing Delgado have the same right to get on his case that Delgado has to make his little protest, the loser considers this an “overly generous” interpretation of the First Amendment. So it’s good for Delgado to stand up for his beliefs, but bad for Owens to do so? And I can’t help but notice that Owens’ belief in the undesirability of homosexuality is not only Neolithic, but Victorian, Edwardian, medieval, feudal, Renaissance, Enlightenment, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Stone Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age and Information Age, spanning every time and culture with the exception of the media elite during our own little corner of the early 21st century and a few creaky historical societies nearing the final stages of collapse.

Gentlemen, for the love of the NFL, please stick to sports. You are embarrassing yourselves to the point that if it weren’t for the old school, I wouldn’t even bother reading.

RM learns not to put his trust in Microsoft:

I thought you might be interested to hear my little incident with Microsoft’s new SP2 for Windows XP…

SP2 seemed to be working fine for the last 2 days since I installed it on my home computer running Windows XP Professional . Then came Friday the 13th. I started up my computer after getting home from being out, and Windows froze on startup, apparently while loading the latest edition of Zone Alarm. (Remember now. I am an IT Technician. I keep a lean, mean computer free of viruses, spyware, and the like.) This was the first time that Windows XP has ever frozen on my home computer to the point where I had to shut down with the power button.

Upon restart, the new Windows Firewall came up with a warning telling me that Messenger was trying to access the Internet and asked if I wanted to give it permission. Thinking this was odd, considering that I had the Messenger service disabled and had opted to turn the Windows Firewall off since I am running Zone Alarm, I went ahead and clicked yes. Once everything loaded, I checked the Services under Administrative Tools in the Control Panel too see Messenger’s status, thinking that Microsoft must have turned these services back on. Lo and behold! Messenger was disabled. I then checked on the status of the Windows Firewall, and it said that it was turned off!! #$*@^(#!!!!!

Microsoft said that they spent $1 billion on SP2!!! What the hell is this? Some big prank that they are playing on the public and the business communities? Is this sheer incompetence, or has Microsoft totally lied to the public and “upgraded” XP into some Big Brother tool that runs processes despite the fact that the user completely disables them as services? If things continue in this direction, I can expect to be a Linux expert in about 4 years.

Never trust anyone who always insist that they know what’s best for you. The main impetus for my switch to Linux was an early version of Microsoft Messenger, which kept popping up messages giving me the option to (a) upgrade now, or (b) upgrade later. There was no option for (c) shut the hell up and leave me alone. I saw the writing on the wall, and now I barely use any Microsoft product at all. I’m forced to run a dual-boot system just to run our new software – yes, of course we’ll be porting it to Linux in the future – and to sync my Alphasmart Dana, but that’s about it.

You can always count on Microsoft to screw things up. Always. Big Chilly and I once made over a million dollars precisely because we knew that. We were developing a program for a very large technology company, but as small and insignificant fish, we were the last and least-important backup for a diamond-hard delivery date on a major project. It was the sort where if you miss by an hour, you’re out. All of our competitors were banking on Microsoft’s release of a certain toolkit, but when Big Chilly and I discussed whether we should trust their cross-my-heart-thrice promised delivery date or make use of an older, less flashy but still-usable DOS toolkit, this was the entirety of our high level technical discussion:

BC: “The Windows stuff is much better, but waiting for them would make the timeline so tight it worries me. I’m thinking it’s safer to go with DOS. What do you think?”

Vox: “When has Microsoft ever not been full of shit on their dates?”

BC: “Never… okay, it’s definitely DOS.

Six months later, Microsoft still hadn’t delivered, all of our competitors missed and we got the big check. Know who to trust, and more importantly, know who not to trust. I have a largely unused partition of XP Pro sitting on my new MTech machine – review to come shortly – and I never considered upgrading to SP2 for a second. I mean, it literally never even crossed my mind. Live free or else! Ride the tank. Be the Penguin.

Powerline sums up Chris Matthews’ questioning of a Swift boat vet:

Matthews’ main arguments were that the Navy gave Kerry medals, the people on his boat backed Kerry, and Kerry showed more courage than most. The first argument was not responsive to O’Neill’s central thesis that Kerry obtained the medals fraudulently by making false claims. The second argument was irrelevant with respect to those medals awarded to Kerry based on events that did not occur on his swift boat. The third argument was irrelevant to the central issue of Kerry’s credibility, a point that Matthews willingfully refused to grasp. Matthews seemed to become particularly upset when, in response to his browbeating style questions, O’Neill calmly conceded that Kerry had shown some courage in shooting “the Viet Cong kid in the back,” but not enough to deserve a medal. At that point, Matthews resorted to accusing O’Neill of being a Republican. But he couldn’t even make that stick. In response to questions about his past voting, O’Neill said he voted for Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Gore in 2000, and supported a Democrat for mayor of Houston, Texas, his hometown.

How stupid do you have to be to make an assumption about someone with whom you are going to be arguing on national television when it’s a matter of asking a simple question before taking the risk of making an ass of yourself. One of the reasons that the media is so bad is that people continue to watch, follow and believe them even after they’ve repeatedly demonstrated that they can’t be trusted in any way, shape or form. This summation of Hardball also summarizes why I don’t watch the mainstream news anymore, as it simply has no credibility with me.

The bulldozer style of debate is so difficult to defend against; I had it ground into my brain from years of living with two devil’s advocates, Big Chilly and the White Buffalo. Seriously, you couldn’t say that the sky is blue without finding yourself launched into a discussion of light, color, perception and ancient linguistics. As a result, I will seldom open my mouth to express an opinion on a subject without having at least a few solid supporting facts or intellectual references at my immediate recall. Assumptions and tangential hypotheses only get you in trouble. This doesn’t mean you’ll always be right, of course, as there may be facts of which you are unaware or complications you cannot unravel, but you’ll seldom make a fool out of yourself and your case will always be perceived as reasonable and defensible, even if other’s privately consider it to be outrageous.

I think at this point, I can safely say that Kerry is the worst candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime. The real race now is between John Kerry and the stock market, and the fate of the president’s reelection will rest upon whether Kerry or the social mood self-destruct faster.

Star Wars, in ASCII.

Freaks.

AFP: The unspoken issues of the 2004 presidential elections are the antiquated and useless policies of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Most Americans believe both major political parties are pandering for future Hispanic votes while avoiding the politically sensitive issues of immigration. If homeland security and the threat of foreign terrorists are such a major concern, why can’t we control immigration on the Mexican-U.S. border?

Badnarik: “Let’s be realistic: The U.S. has more than 95,000 miles of border and coastline, and the current immigration regime encourages people to slip through without the formalities. With millions of immigrants dodging our Border Patrol every year, it’s time to say ‘enough – this isn’t working.’

“My goal is to encourage legitimate immigration – people coming to the United States to live free and work hard – while defending the nation against enemies who come here to harm it and parasites who come here to live on government largesse.

“I advocate open immigration for individuals who are willing to enter at a Customs and Immigration station and submit to a quick background check to ensure that they aren’t criminals or terrorists. And except for extreme cases such as Cuban and Haitian boat refugees who don’t have much control over where they land, I advocate treating people who cross the borders elsewhere as what they are: invaders.

“A more open immigration regime, coupled with the elimination of welfare incentives, would greatly reduce the resources needed to provide real border security. And the proper agency for that security is the armed forces – once we’ve brought them home from Japan, Korea, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan …”

Interesting. The Libertarian Party presidential candidate is for harsher border control than either the Republican or the Democratic candidate, neither of whom dare to mention the issue, still less do anything about it. Badnarik’s position is certainly not what most people imagine when they hear that libertarians support open borders.