Vox Popoli

GM writes: I can only find one thing to disagree with in your column, “A Legacy of Betrayal.” Power used badly is not useless, it is evil. Otherwise, you have hit the nail on the head. I’ve tried explaining Republican behavior to conservatives by using the analogy of “boiling the frog”. The Democrats always try to drop the frog into boiling water, as in the first two years of the Clinton administration when they raised taxes, passed the Brady Bill and attempted to instantly socialize our medical care system, all at once. Came 1994 and the frog jumped out of the pot. The Republicans picked the little fella up and slipped him into a pot of nice, cool Republican water. Then they began to increase the temperature gradually with bills like Kennedy-Kassebaum and Kennedy-Hatch, passing Hillary’s health care plan piecemeal, so’s the frog didn’t notice. George Delano has gotten the frog up to about medium rare, and the frog thinks everything’s fine. If you want Socialism done right, vote GOP.

I actually get far more of these sorts of emails from Republicans and conservatives than the previous sort. Nor am I the only one, as even the whore doggies are getting a little nervous about the marked lack of enthusiasm for George Delano. I don’t think it will be enough for Kerry to win, but it might help the Libertarians and Constitutionals to hit new records. And if it is enough for Kerry to win, so be it, perhaps the frog will be galvanized to leap out of the pot. In any case, sacrificing principles for pragmatism deserves to be punished.

JN writes: We have the chance to reform the judiciary in the next four years: replace federal judgeships, Supreme Court appointments etc.. By having a temper tantrum you are playing right into the hand of Sen Kennedy and Leheay’s. You are also jeopardizing the lives of the unborn innocents, it is unconscionable you could do this! If unborn children mean anything to you you will button your lip.

Gee, maybe if I just shut my mouth and quietly accept the long march towards global socialism, everything will turn out peachy keen! It’s interesting, too, to see how a call to stand by one’s principles is equated with a temper tantrum. JN has to open his eyes and realize that George Delano and the Republican Party have no intention of abiding by their publicly professed principles. “But he said he loved me,” he’ll sob one day, like a girl who’s just been deflowered and abandoned by her smooth-talking lover. “He said he loved me!” See, the thing is, George Delano doesn’t mean what he says. Nor does the Republican Party leadership. That’s kind of the entire point.

Of course, if we just vote Republican, we’ll get great Supreme Court judges who will fight for the unborn like Earl Warren, Warren Burger, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Conner… hmmm, wait a minute!

RL writes: Okay, so GWB is bad news. So we take him down and find out that the rest of the country wants an unbelievable idiot like John Kerry. What will the country look like after eight years of his rule? Remember Bill [I didn’t have sex with that women] Clinton? Remember the dragging of American soldiers in Somalia, the bombing of the USS Cole, the attacks on our embassies in Africa, Waco…etc. Do we want this repeated?!

This argument doesn’t hold any water anymore. Bill Clinton actually gave us less government spending, less government intrusion than George Delano has. The question is no longer about who will create less of a problem, it’s a question of not supporting anyone who is not interested in solutions. This hoary old Republican defense is akin to asking if you’d rather support Trotsky or Stalin. Even if Trotsky isn’t quite as bad, are you seriously going to support him? He’s not going to free you.

Never sacrifice your principles for power. Never, never, never. All you do is cut your own throat. The Green party has far more power as a result of leaving the Democratic party and pulling it to the left than it would if it obediently followed the DNC. Are Republicans truly less principled than left-wing Greens? Judging by my email, some certainly are. If you cannot stand by your most cherished principles, you stand for nothing and will be defeated easily and repeatedly. This is why the Republican Party has failed and why conservatives and others who believe in freedom, liberty and justice must leave it.

Valley Forge wasn’t fun. The Boston Tea Party wasn’t pragmatic. Things got worse before they got better. Significant change rarely comes quickly or easily. If the people have to immerse themselves in idiocy for another eight years before they wake up, so be it. One could argue that they have been for the last sixteen years anyhow. Look around you – this is no longer Ronald Reagan’s America.

Congratulations, Mr. Carl Eller.

You can safely write off any self-styled conservative columnist who labled the last State of the Union address a “home run”. As Robert Novak, no lef-liberal ideologue, writes: These setbacks for Bush followed the most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years by a president whose previous efforts were able to utilize that event. He submitted to the bureaucratic methods that turned the speech into a laundry list. His staff permitted the former baseball team owner to further clutter the speech with an irrelevant discourse about players using steroids.

“The most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years”. Considering that this includes annual performances by Bill “Midnight Basketball” Clinton, it’s an impressive achievement. Those columnists who fear to write the truth about their own side should keep in mind that whether they do or not, someone will.

1-0 Super Bowl, 7-4 playoffs. I don’t think too many NFL team owners are pulling out their hair about their decisions to pass up the opportunity to hire Charlie Weis or Romeo Crennel. They’re both very good coordinators, but their play-calling is by no means flawless. The Patriots should have sewn up the game much earlier, but for Weis’ usual habit of getting whacky at inopportune times. This led to the direct loss of 6 probable points, with a poorly-timed reverse that knocked them out of field goal range and the interception in the end zone at a time when three points would have hurt the Panthers badly.

I was surprised that New England’s secondary broke down so badly in the second half. They weren’t hitting very hard compared to the game in Miami, and both Muhammed and Proehl were so open on their touchdowns that it looked as if Delhomme was playing Madden on the Rookie setting. Then again, it’s possible that New England was willing to let Carolina score quickly in order to get the ball back, as Green Bay did with Denver a few years ago, although they were rushing pretty hard for that to have been the case. Regardless, Carolina scored too soon.

It was a good game, to be sure, but it shouldn’t have been. And was Vinatieri pulling a Kobe Bryant to make things more exciting for himself, or is Reliant just a house of voodoo for him? Four indoor misses and they’re all there? What are the odds? But the biggest surprise had to be the bargain bin New England offensive line, which delivered its third consecutive sackless performance, this time against a front-four widely considered the best in the league. They, not Brady, should have been the MVP.

I also thought it was strange that Fox was considered to have been aggressive in going for two. I didn’t see it that way at all. I thought it was what TMQ calls a fraidy-cat move, telling your defense that you don’t trust them to get the ball back or at least hold New England to a field goal. That decision may not have made any difference as they lost by more than two in the end, but it’s impossible to say for certain. Unless you’re a total psycho who goes for two automatically, save it for when it’s necessary and then have a play ready. That direct snap to Kevin Faulk, for example, was brilliant.

As much as I think it was New England’s breakdowns that kept the Panthers in it, I was very impressed by Jake Delhomme’s cool and ability to bounce back from a bad start, the Panthers’ stubborn defense and John Fox’s patience with the run. I expect them to be in the playoff hunt next year as well. Another great NFL season comes to an end… sigh. Only six months until we start talking fantasy drafts….

Are MTV’s program directors 12 years-old or what? I’m no prude and I am as big a fan of breast augmentation as Kid Rock, but how on Earth was any of that ridiculous halftime show appropriate for children watching the game? When Kid Rock is the performer with the most class and musical talent, you know you’ve got some serious problems.

It was the worst judgment I’ve seen since Coolio was lip-syncing on Nickelodeon. And the post-game lies are less believable than a two year-old’s. You can’t promise to “shock” people ahead of time, then claim that it was unplanned once it goes over like a lead balloon. What a bunch of losers.

I haven’t seen anything to make me change my mind about my original call. The New England coaching staff obviously prepared well, but are a little shaky on the situational play calling. Vinatieri’s shank and the blocked FG are part of the game, but you’d think Romeo Crennel would know better than to big blitz on 3rd and 10 in that situation. As TMQ always says: “stop me before I blitz again!” I called TD on that before the ball was snapped as soon as I saw them bringing six or seven. The strange thing is that they’ve been getting plenty of pressure from the three down plus one. The squib kick was just stupid. He Hate Me isn’t exactly Dante Hall.

Delhomme is playing tough, but the Patriots’ pressure is heavier than anticipated and Davis is looking to have one of those games where he can’t get untracked. Brady looks good; Carolina’s pressure isn’t ruffling him at all. I expect New England to pull away in the second half.

This guy is seriously dedicated to transparency. It’s pretty brave to post your weekly caloric intake, exercise calories – presumably treadmill or the like – and weekly weight loss/gain on his blog, and all in graphic format. That’s graphic as in graphs, not explicit nude photos, by the way, in case you were wondering. I don’t, however, buy into BMI. Mine is 25.2, and I’m pretty sure no one would call me overweight. Meanwhile, Space Bunny’s is officially underweight, and she is in perfect fitness model shape. But in any event, good luck to him.

My only advice would be to throw some weightlifting in there, or if that’s just not an option to jack up the exercise calories. I usually hit around 385-425 kcal in a single session on the tread, which I do once a week in the offseason. Don’t be afraid to punch in the harder programs, as it’s amazing how much harder and faster you can run if you’re following a variable program instead of simply trundling along on a flat manual setting.

Of course, a perverse need to beat the machine helps tremendously. It’s strange, but I’ll run twice as fast on a six-degree incline if a program is making me do it than I will on a flat gradient if I select the settings myself. Perhaps there’s a video game theory of exercise waiting to be developed.

The Washington Times: Leaders in the legal arena even have signaled that they would like to see divorce expanded to include unmarried couples who break up. In 2002, the American Law Institute (ALI) said in a report that domestic partners often live together for a long time and share parenting duties, a residence and other assets. When such relationships end, they should be treated like a divorce, with alimony assigned to one ex-partner and property divided the same as marital assets, said authors of the ALI report, “Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations.” The new policy should apply to unmarried heterosexual couples and homosexual couples, the ALI said.

Why on Earth would non-marital relationships be treated like a marriage upon dissolution? Unlike a marriage, there’s no inherent contract that’s been broken, and therefore no claims to be made. Which is quite often the entire point of not getting married in the first place. Of course, non-marital divorce would generate a lot of work for lawyers….