Vox Popoli

Bastardsword answers a typically silly leftist charge of Nazihood: In case you’ve been asleep since WW-II, the modern anti-war movement is an outgrowth of the Nazi Party, after undergoing a constant stream of communist revisions. The people in Berkeley who were protesting Lend-Lease and waving pro-Hitler banners were forced to decide between Hitler and Stalin when the Hitler-Stalin pact was broken. Since Hitler was the aggressor they decided to support Stalin. With America’s entry into WW-II they took conscientious objector status and sat out the war. After the war they founded the Pacifica Radio network, which they ran till the Trotskyites took it over. The Maoists ousted the Trotskyites from control of the network in the 1960’s, and have dominated it ever since, with the exception of constant purges and counter-takeovers. These are not right-wing accusations, this is what the various DJ’s and directors of Pacifica proudly proclaim in their retrospectives on the battles, posted on their own websites….

So to put it bluntly, you’re heir to the goals of the Nazi party, chief of which is the disarmament and defeat of the Anglo-American capitalists, which is requisite for the advancement of the glories of National Socialism, embodied so well in the rule of Saddam Hussein.

I knew that there were huge similarities between American leftists and the goals of the historical National Socialist German Worker’s Party. And I also knew that there were Nazi sympathizers here in the United States as well as in the UK. I did not realize, however, that the kinship was more than merely intellectual, that there was a direct line of descent from those pro-Nazi groups of the 1930s to the hard-left “anti-war” groups of today.

This sort of thing, assuming that Bastardsword has his history correct, demonstrates the absurdity of those who desperately attempt to postulate that Nazis and Communists are some kind of Manichean polar opposites. They’re actually more like half-siblings than cousins, which is obvious to anyone who’s read the theoretical works of both. What’s interesting is that Hitler is more insane and prone to complete fantasies than Marx, but both his analyses and policies are more firmly based in reality than those of his utopian German step-brother.

JM hates to quibble: But the correct attribution of the item you quote in the first line of your article is _not_ Mark Twain, but Benjamin D’israeli…. Prime Minister of England and noted wit and conversationalist… Please, correct this.

Sorry, no can do. I don’t have access to the WND server anymore, so I can no longer correct such inaccuracies. It might as well be a newspaper. It’s a pity, but there’s nothing I can do about it. My apologies for the false attribution of the reference.

After 116,000 words, the first draft of my fourth novel is in the bag. Sure, there’s all the back and forth with the publisher, the revisions, the galleys, the corrections and whatnot, and it’ll probably be a year before it’s on bookshelves anywhere, but this is the point that I consider a book to be pretty much done. I’ve been in a good mood all day with the finish line growing ever closer; now I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself.

– Actual conversation –

VD: Hey, guess what? I’m done. With the book.

SB: So, you now just have to write the epilogue or whatever?

VD: No, I wrote that too. I was on a roll today. Four thousand words.

SB: Wow, that’s great, honey. Are you going to send it in tomorrow?

VD: No, I’m just –

SB: (buries head in hands)

From the Washington Times: A review of state police monitoring of sexually violent predators under Megan’s Law found that community notification about these felons is often “incorrect, late and ineffective,” Pennsylvania’s chief auditor says. The head of the state police says the agency is making efforts to improve the administration of the Megan’s Law registry. Convicted sex offenders classified as sexually violent predators are considered to have a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes them likely to reoffend. They are subject to more stringent monitoring than the wider class of 6,210 sex offenders in Pennsylvania. The review identified shortcomings in notifying the public on the whereabouts of 13 out of 17 sexually violent predators who had home addresses in the state during a nine-month period that ended in January, state Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr. said Friday. Currently, Pennsylvania has 31 sexually violent predators, but 12 of them are in state prisons.

In seven of the 17 cases, the study found that schools and child care centers had not been told a violent predator was living nearby. One predator came to the attention of police only when he contacted them. In another instance, state police told local police about a violent predator only after he had left the area.

So, the Pennsylvania police can’t manage to keep track of only 17 of the worst criminals in the state, but anti-gun liberals believe that everyone should give up their Second Amendment rights because they are so sure that the police will be there to take defend them whenever a criminal decides to go for their life or property. Maybe liberals really are too stupid to be responsible for themselves.

You’d think that with only 17 predators to track, Pennsylvania police would have more than enough manpower to have someone literally holding the bad guys’ hands 24-7. But they’re probably too busy doing important things like sending 12 troopers bursting into the homes of people with suspiciously high electric bills.

Here’s a summary of why everything is peachy keen with the economy. My comments are interspersed below in blue.

The fundamental view is that we have come out of a short recessionary period; the excesses that built up in the late 1990’s have gone through a much needed steep correction complete with corporate wrongdoings that are now under better control with stiffer governance and that now we should be able to move forward in a positive manner. Of course, we have no reason to believe that corporate behavior has changed in the least. I know of no CEO or serious corporate observer who believes they have. Interest rates are low; the Fed is providing sufficient monetary stimulus and they are prepared to maintain the low interest rate environment to ensure that the economy grows if maintaining low interest rates were all that was necessary to maintain growth, why hasn’t it been done before? Answer = inflation and that we eventually move to the next stage of the recovery which will be a return of jobs as we did when we came out of the early 1990’s recession. And how many of those jobs are/will be parasitic government jobs which add nothing to the economy but instead detract from productive capital? (Note: writing this as today’s job numbers were higher than expected).

Further, the US Administration is, given the War on Terror and in Iraq, providing sufficient fiscal stimulus to the economy and that as the economy grows coupled with the tax cuts the current budget deficits will eventually disappear. That’s an interesting premise given that the deficits are rapidly increasing. Furthermore, the tax cuts have been more than absorbed by concomitant state and local tax hikes. The debt is not a major problem as it has not reached the levels that were seen in the 1980’s fighting the cold war and that the debt as overall percentage of the economy is also not a problem and remains below countries such as Japan and Europe. First, the official debt numbers are too low by 33 percent, second, the cumulative US debt may well be higher than in most countries in Europe, as with the exception of Switzerland, our sub-federal governments carry far more debt than do theirs. At our March 2004 rate of increase, Federal debt-to-GDP will surpass European pacesetter Italy’s levels in 2011.

We are in a low inflationary period which is expected to continue as the cost of goods consumed by society keep coming down and should remain low going forward. The CPI is wholly mythical and commodity prices have been rising for three years. Stock valuations are down from the highs that were seen in the late 1990’s and given the outlook for earnings, valuations in many cases are fair valuations are still absurdly high, in many cases higher than they were before the 1929 crash. and there is room for growth particularly as the high tech sector recovers and new technological innovations increase productivity which will allow stock prices to move higher over time. The productivity-growth calculations are little more than circular logic which mean nothing.

In summary, I’d say that the bull case is very convincing, as long as you take everything in it at face value and ignore the actual facts. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Resispa writes of Republican betrayal: I agree with your sentiment on this one. Moreover, I just love the banner ad for the RNC reelect Bush campaign at the top of the blog page. If libertarians didn’t smoke such a large portion of their political war chest, maybe you could get them to buy ad space. What da ya think?

I don’t sell ad space on this blog, that’s a Blogger thing. I’m just trying to decide if it’s a step up or a step down from the lesbian dating service ads we were getting around here a few months ago.

I had to add them because they’re from Minnesota and aren’t named Franken. And because at least one of them actually knew my video game column. But really it was due to posts like this:

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was interviewed by Fraters Fave Terry Gross a few months back…. The great thing about the interview is that Terry tries to play along and pretend that Triumph is only doing “bits” when he is actually dissing her and NPR in general:

Terry: So you are saying that NPR may not be the target audience for your new CD?

Triumph: Oh, yes, yes, Terry. My target audience is six 50-year-old hippies who listen to this crap!

John Miller reports on NRO’s Corner: The Virginia toad swallowers–Republicans who support tax hikes–may push through their budget on Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. Now the Virginia Club for Growth says it will find primary challengers for GOPers who betray their party’s principles. That’s okay with Delegate James H. Dillard, Republican of Fairfax, who says, “The right-wing crazies may give you a primary, but they don’t get you elected.”

Got that, everyone? If you don’t support tax hikes, you are a right-wing crazy according to elected Republican Party officeholders. I don’t wish to give in to the language leaped immediately to the fore of my mind here, but let’s just say that it involves these politician-prostitutes, the equines on which they rode, and intimate inter-species relations.

I have much respect for conservatives as well as those who love freedom and small government, but I have no time or regard for the Republican Party. They might as well rename it Fredo. I’m starting to feel about them the way I feel about Democratics, only with an added sense of betrayal to boot.

From GameSpy: Here’s the short version of my preview: Star Wars: Battlefront lets you witness and/or participate in the mass genocide of Ewoks and Gungans. That alone is easily worth $50. If it allowed me to lop off Wicket’s and Jar Jar’s heads, impale them on a stick, and go gleefully parading around the galaxy, then I — and many other moviegoers — would gladly pay $500.

Good to know that game reviewers all haven’t gone soft since I stopped writing my review column.

Madison police reported this afternoon that Audrey Seiler admitted to staging her own abduction. “We do not believe there is a suspect at large, period,” said Acting Police Chief Noble Wray about the sketch of the man who Seiler reported had kidnapped her at knifepoint. Seiler, a 20-year-old University of Wisconsin students from Rockford, Minn., told police that the man who abducted her used tape, gum, cold medicine, a rope and a knife “against her,” Wray said. Police found those items in the area Seiler said she had been held captive, but found earlier videotape of Seiler going into a local store and buying the items, Wray said.

And yet when I wrote a column about the FBI-compiled statistics of how many women are forced to admit their own rape accusations are false, it outraged feminists, some of whom parroted the official Sisterhood line that women never lie about such things. Um, okay, whatever. Of course, there are real male predators out there, which is why I recommend that women carry firearms. Then again, I won’t be terribly shocked if the case against Kobe Bryant begins to fall apart soon either.

The boy who cried wolf should have been a girl.