Vox Popoli

Leo fails to grasp basic addition:

Vox, You miss the point and fall victim to faulty math! For Example, Bush has 40 votes, Kerry has 30 votes, and there are 100 votes out there that haven’t been voted or counted. Assume 30 of these votes are voted for a third party candidate. The reamining votes break 50 break for Kerry, and the remaining 20 for Bush. Kerry wins by 20 votes, BECAUSE, if the 30 voted for the third party were cast for Bush he would have won!

I can’t believe that some people are actually arguing that a vote for candidate Not-Kerry is a vote for Kerry after I demonstrated how it is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to make this case. Leo’s logic here is simply insane. Yes, if the 30 that voted for the third party were cast for Bush he would have won, but then, if the 50 that were cast for Kerry were instead cast for Bush, he would have won too. All Leo has proved here is that a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush. Brilliant.

And if we further examine the logic laid out here, not voting at all is a vote for Bush. Therefore, I recommend that all of you who were going to vote for Bush simply not vote, as you are assured that your non-participation is a vote for Bush by a Bush supporter.

The GOP holds no claim on anyone’s vote. A vote for Michael Badnarik is just that, a vote for the Libertarian Party candidate. The same holds true for votes in favor of the Constitution, Republican and Democratic candidates. Anything else is just twisted and dishonest semantics. If the majority want Kerry, let them have him. They’ll get what they deserve, just as those who supported Bush in 2000 already have.

tz, High King Frog and Dr. Black have all started blogs of late. Scan the Reader Blogroll to your right and check them out. If you can’t figure out which one is High King Frog’s, well, you don’t deserve to get your passport stamped.

craigp wonders:

man, vox don’t like RUsh either? Ever since Rush lost weight he seems to just get better and better as far as I am concerned. A metaphor for the new leaner meaner fitter conservative. Vox besides Coulter and P.J. O ROurke what conservative pundits do you like?

I like plenty of political pundits. I like Jonah Goldberg, Thomas Sowell and Rod Dreher, I like Victor Davis Hanson, John Derbyshire, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jay Nordlinger at NRO. I like Bob Novak, Mike Adams, Doug Giles, Larry Elder and Michael Massie.

If you notice, most of the above names are not TV and radio people, or at least don’t see themselves that way first. TV and radio folks tend to write poorly and to think in rather superficial terms. Neal Cavuto is a nice guy, but I’d rather read the complete works of Mercedes Lacky AND Robert Jordan than one of his dreadful columns, and as for the purple pen of Brave Sir William, well, you already know what I think of that. I suspect that it’s partly a matter of ego and preference for fame over knowledge, and partly that the mediums foster quick but shallow thinking. It’s more important to get a zinger over than actually make an incisive point in a talking-head fest – the White Buffalo would not only rule, but absolutely DOMINATE on a Fox News show.

One thing I absolutely love about the blogs is that I will not only get called on my assertions, but that people have time to prepare their best shot. I can either respond off the top of my head or sit back and think the matter through for a while. And while I can more than hold my own in any verbal slangfest sans intellectual content, when I want to do that I hang out with tha boyz in my fantasy football league.

TS shares a horror story:

Very good article – more like this please! I especially like the Fred Reed quote, as I married a child support bomb who eventually exploded with no visitation, and found out the child wasn’t even mine (that doesn’t matter at all in most states, and not very much in all of them). Tomorrow marks three years since I’ve seen my children, because even though she is a child molester she is still of the superior race, I mean sex, I mean “gender”. The hundred pounds of irrational anger is a bit light though, because once they have a successful child support career locked up, it usually runs more like 150, 160, 175, to 200 pounds.

Sounds like TS picked a real winner. This is the sort of story that causes men to put off proposing marriage even after they’ve bought the ring. Not that TS sounds especially inclined to date these days, but in the future, I would suggest that he have his sister or someone who cares about him do the selecting.

Some people can’t be trusted to handle their own dating decisions, and if something like this ever happens to you, you should probably assume that you’re one of them. In such cases, outsourcing is vastly preferable.

BC writes:

I am a 60 year old female who enjoyed (and agreed with) your column. When I was growing up in the 50’s, women were women and men were men. The feminist movement did more damage than good. Have you noticed that every single TV commercial makes the woman look smart, smug, superior, and sarcastic. Males are portrayed as dumb nitwits that are dependent on woman to make even the simplest decision. Why are men putting up with this? Where’s the outrage? Women in movies and TV shows are portrayed the same way. It’s sickening. Are women taking their queue from this propaganda? I have been disappointed to observe little girls as young as 5 acting the same way. Even the cartoons give little girls the stronger role and the poor helpless little boys are at their mercy.

Who said men are putting up with this? They’re not, and the television industry is panicking because the all-important 18-34 segment refuses to watch anything but sports anymore. And why should they, considering the choices are between playing Doom 3 and committing mass virtual mayhem or watching supercilious actresses spouting off unwitty dialogue written by self-loathing homosexuals to mock the poor helpless male characters.

Television is a weird little universe where a man will always lose a sports competition to a woman, where a woman always gets the last word and where she will always be loved for herself no matter what an unpleasant, unbalanced lunatic she is. The bizarre problem is that a young boy reading a Conan novel generally recognizes that it is not real, but a woman watching Allie McBeal, Sex in the City or whatever shows have replaced them in the female pantheon is all too prone to not only take it seriously, but to actually identify herself with and model her behavior on one of these fictional, fantastic characters.

If you ever hear a woman saying “I am SOOO [fill in the blank with fictional TV character here]”, run. I mean, it’s not like women take men who attempt to act like James Bond seriously either.

Okay, not at this down wave, no way. But I do admire Google for their willingness to take on the Wamphyri of Wall Street and their monopoly on access to the markets.

Why Wall Street wants Google to fail…. If Google’s offering works for the company — that is, if it raises money at a good price and at a low commission to boot — then this IPO would legitimize an alternative to the traditional IPO that will diminish the power of Wall Street investment banks. Other companies, companies with lower profiles than Google, will have a new alternative for raising money. Wall Street doesn’t even like to think about that possibility.

If, on the other hand, Google’s IPO fails — if not enough investors bid, or if the price is too low, or if the IPO sinks, leaving hordes of angry individual investors and the company with egg on its face — then the auction model will go back on the shelf and Wall Street investment banking will go back to business as usual.

That’s why I don’t think you can trust anything Wall Street says about the Google IPO: The investment banking establishment has too much at stake and too many institutional conflicts of interest to make them credible on this offering.

It’s the wrong time, an incredibly bad time for this. Google would have had a very successful launch if they’d done it nine months ago, now, it’s probably too late. But if it fails, it won’t be because the concept was faulty, only the timing. It’s a pity, but then, the return of the roaring bear will do more to put Wall Street back in its place than a newfangled IPO possibly could.

Don’t ever make the mistake of confusing Wall Street with capitalism. Wall Street is designed specifically to limit capitalism as per government regulations; it contradicts the activities of a genuinely free market.

“Another vote for Kerry” was one reaction to an ex-Republican writing to say that he’s voting for Badnarik this November. Let’s analyze this from a mathematical perspective.

Bush has zero votes. Kerry has zero votes. Badnarik has zero votes. Voter X votes for Badnarik. How many votes does Kerry have? A) one vote, B) ten votes, C) zero votes?

Let’s try it using some different numbers. Bush has 39,999,999 votes. Kerry has 39,999,999 votes. Voter X votes for Badnarik. How many votes does Kerry have? A) 40,000,000, B) 39,999,999, C) Five.

Alternatively, we can look at it from an ideological perspective. Kerry favors bigger government. Bush favors bigger government. Badnarik favors smaller government. Voter X, who favors smaller government, votes for Badnarik. This is a vote for A) bigger government, or B) smaller government?

There’s simply no reasonable way that you can claim a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for anyone but that third party candidate. To assume that any such votes would have gone to one of the two bifactional candidates is to make the same fallacy that the RIAA makes when people copy a CD – a willingness to copy a CD is not equivalent to a willingness to purchase a CD. If I didn’t vote for Badnarik, (or Peroutka), I simply wouldn’t vote. I would NEVER vote for either Bush or Kerry. If there’s no one to whom you can consent, then withdrawing your consent is the only option.

If you simply want to vote for a winner, then vote for whoever is leading in the polls the day before the election. That’s essentially what the Republican cheerleaders are urging others to do. But don’t pretend you have any principles beyond bandwagon-jumping. And for the love of all that’s good and holy, stop embarrassing yourself with your apparent inability to fathom basic addition.

Michelle Malkin advocates Newspeak:

As for the term “concentration camps,” it is very misleading. It is true that many politicians and public officials, including President Roosevelt himself, used this term to describe the relocation centers. But it wasn’t until the liberation of the Nazi death camps beginning in 1945 that the phrase took on the popular meaning that it retains today–that is, places of barbaric cruelty and torture on the order of what the Jews and others suffered under Hitler. To compare American’s internment and relocation centers to the Third Reich’s extermination camps is to recklessly distort history and to trivialize the experience of Holocaust victims. Even the Commission acknowledged that, “the phrase ‘concentration camps’ summons up images and ideas which are inaccurate and unfair.”

Please, the term not only isn’t misleading at all, it is entirely accurate! No one has ever claimed that the US WWII-era concentration camps – camps designed to concentrate a group of individuals ill-favored by the federal government – were labor and death camps such as Auschwitz. But since Ms Malkin wants to convince us that these concentration camps were good, right and proper, it doesn’t serve her purpose to call these camps by their linguistically precise and historically accurate name. It’s fitting that she should be so indifferent as to history, considering her inability to learn from it.

Historically, civil rights have often yielded to security in times of crisis. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, which enabled him to detain thousands of rebels and subversives without access to judges. In defying a Supreme Court order to restore habeas corpus, Lincoln refused to let “the government itself go to pieces” for the sake of a single law.

Order out of chaos. There’s a new one. Malkin is tearing down her own case here by appealing to the example of Lincoln. Malkin may still be under the illusion that she values freedom, but she is simply attempting to rationalize the female instinct of Sicherheit uber alles. This is why the Fascist Party made the women’s right to vote a priority in its manifesto. Scare a woman enough, and she’ll enthusiastically embrace disarming the populace, martial law and death camps.

It’s always interesting to see a media whore transform into a big government whore. The camera lovers just can’t seem to keep themselves from “growing”, as they call it in Washington. Rush Limbaugh’s done it, but it took him years to devolve from a conservative into a Republican. I don’t know if anyone keeps track of these things, but Ms Malkin may now hold the speed record.

RT laments:

I am very feminine. I never have any luck with guys. I wear pink a lot. I wear skirts a lot. I wear heels a lot. I never say I don’t like fishing or camping, but I actually have guys say I’m “high-maintenance” and they are sure I would never go fishing or camping or something. Well, they never asked me. I don’t have a problem with either. They are always going out with women who ask them out or asking out women who put out so much they could make a fortune if they charged. I am always careful never to say ANYTHING negative around a guy now ABOUT ANYTHING, especially about him. I never hardly even get asked out. And I’m definitely not ugly or fat. Definitely not. However, I am told I don’t talk enough. I talk to my friends. I just don’t go up to guys and ask them out. I was told by one guy I’m not confident enough to date him. Well, I never spend any time thinking about what other people think about me anymore, and I’m confident enought that I’ve delivered Shakespeare on stage and gotten after show compliments. Men ought to work on keeping their pants zipped and being interested in quiet, nice women. Because they’re not. They’re just not. They act like jackasses, like Scott Peterson.

Let’s see. In the course of a single paragraph – okay, in fairness it really should be two – RT manages to expose that she’s a high-maintenance women and thinks that men act like jackasses, are unfaithful and probably murderers to boot. Men may not be complex, but neither are we stupid, and we’re surprisingly good at picking up on this sort of hatred bubbling under the surface.

It is true that many young men without much experience of women think that they want a confident, independent woman who doesn’t need them, but these are mostly younger guys who just want to make sure a girlfriend won’t interfere with playing Doom 3 for six hours a night. That sort of guy usually isn’t looking for a long-term relationship, he’s looking for someone to provide friendship with favors and will otherwise stay out of his life.

One thing women who don’t get asked out might want to consider is to try to be more responsive. If a man looks at you, then don’t immediately look away if you want him to approach you. You don’t have to ask him out or run up to him and start humping his leg like a dog – although I’ve seen that work with a guy who’s got a sense of humor – but the usual routine is this:

1. Man looks.

2. Woman looks back.

3. Man smiles.

4. Woman smiles back.

This informs the man that he has the woman’s approval to approach her. Non-verbal communication is often more important than verbal communication at this stage. And whatever you do, don’t pull your friends into the conversation, as men know that women use their friends as a shield against those they aren’t interested in. If you start doing that, a man might easily conclude you’ve got no interest and that he might as well look elsewhere.

A very good friend of mine had a philosophy to go out once with everyone who asked her out. She doesn’t do that anymore, now being married with child – but some of her good male friends are men that she knew from the beginning weren’t terribly interesting to her from a romantic point of view, but that she took the time to get to know anyhow. She met some real losers too, but that’s the risk you take, because no one can always tell the difference between a winner and a loser at first glance.

This is for the early birds to hop in and start making comments, as per Res’s request.