The Last Ephor

Eugene Volokh has a post linking to an article in that noted flaming liberal news organ the Wall Street Journal about gay marriage. As noted, a survey of 17 years worth of data shows that disease rates are down, population growth is up and marriage rates have gone up. Contrary to what we're told by gay marriage opponents. Donviti points to this as a wedge issue . Prof. Volokh notes that correlation isn't cause and that's certainly true and something to think about here but moreover the point stands. While you cannot necessarily attribute these positive factor changes to gay marriage it is clear that there is no net negative impact. While I understand the arguments on both sides, ultimately I think the battle is over and gays won. In 10 years this will be a dead issue. Kids that are growing up today are devoid of homophobia. We're entering what some are calling a "post gay" era. That is, gays no longer define themselves primarily as gay. Rather, it...

I wish Republicans knew the difference between a sin and a crime. I wish Democrats knew the difference between a virtue and a requirement I wish Delaware drivers knew that the left lane was for people who drive fast I wish we could elect 535 Ron Paul s and one Barry Goldwater. I wish politics was less acrimonious. I wish we could mandate shorter political seasons. I wish my clients could understand that and emergency on their end != on on mine

You know things are bad when your name is Biden and The News Journal i s beating you like a bongo drum for unethical advertising.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak. Philadelphia The Inland North The Midland Boston The South The West North Central What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes Amazingly accurate. How the heck do people come up with these things? h/t: Hube

Americans should vote for Democrats Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats' talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel "proud." "As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk," he told WND. "Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal." I'll bet that the reason a great many people refuse to vote for Democrats. If they were a party of Joe Liebermans I'd vote for them. Hell, I'd vote for Joe before I'd vote for Castle.

The only thing anyone is submitting as a platform for this election cycle is "We're not them!" Have you heard anyone give any substantive policy statements? Anyone outlining what they're going to do if elected? I'm not talking about the pablum of "safe schools", "helping families", "better education" and all that crap. I mean something akin to the Contract With America. Republicans forget why they won in a landslide in 1994. Any GOPer who put forth anything along those lines would be run out of the party on a rail. Democrats can't possibly really tell people what they want to do. They know that's poison at the voting booth. The actual contract looked like this: On the first day of their majority, the Republicans promised to hold floor votes on eight reforms of government operations: * require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress; * select a major, independent auditing firm to c...

The decline continues apace. Ralph Peters is the staunchest of war supporters and now he throws in the towel. IRAQ'S NEW SECRET POLICE MILITARY GOV'T MAY BE BEST ANSWER It's time to abandon the cops. Let the anti-American elements in the Maliki government have them. Don't continue to strengthen our enemies. Concentrate on developing and expanding the army. Why? Here's where the truth gets still uglier. As dearly as we believe in democracy, Iraq's Arabs are proving that they're incapable of the political, social and moral maturity necessary to run an elected government. Casting ballots alone doesn't make a democracy. The government has to function. And to protect all of its citizens. In the coming months, we may find that the only hope of restoring order is a military government. It sounds repellent, but a U.S.-backed coup may be the only alternative to endless anarchy. Arabs still can't govern themselves democratically. That's the appalling less...

OK, last embedded video, I swear. The 300 is an upcoming film about the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. I've always been fascinated by the story itself not to mention Sparta. When I was a yute there was precious little available on the Spartans let alone Thermopylae. What was available was rather pointy headed and not really what I was looking for. I wanted tales of glory and the texts talked about agrarian policy and Xerxes' diplomacy. I missed Frank Miller's graphic novel about this story and am thrilled to see it on the big screen. Here's the trailer.

I hate commercials. Most of them shout at me and all of them insult me. The exceptions are so rare that when they do happen it's like being poked in the eye. Here's a prime example:

Supporting Our Troops [Mark Steyn] I find the Derb/Jay line, agreeing that Senator Kerry was making a joke about Bush, highly implausible. If you talk to Democrats of the middle-class and upper-middle-class and (in John Heinz Kerry’s case) the neo-Gulf-emir-class, you’ll have heard the same thing a thousand times: these poor fellows in Iraq, they’re only there because they’re too poverty-stricken and ill-educated so they couldn’t become Senators and New York Times reporters and tenured Queer Studies professors like normal Americans do. That is, in fact, what they mean by the claim that they “support our troops”: they want to bring them home and retrain them so they’re not forced into taking jobs as Bush’s torturers and thugs. It’s part of the same condescension as describing soldiers as “our children”. If a 22-year old intern wants to drop to the Oval Office broadloom, she’s a grown woman exercising her freedom of choice. But, if a 28-year old guy wants to serve in Iraq, he’s a poor we...

I think we have an administration today that is dysfunctional," Perle said. Richard. Perle. You know things are going badly when Richard friggin' Pearle is throwing you under the bus.

Friend of the family was feeling run down. He's been tired and had a wet hacking cough. On Saturday he was in bed all day with the flu. His fever spiked on Sunday and he went to the hospital as he was nearly delirious and feeling faint. The ran some tests. It wasn't the flu. It was cancer and it was everywhere. He died this morning. He never regained consciousness after he passed out on Sunday evening. If you have something to say to someone important to you, do it now. You never know. Godspeed Jerry.

Donviti has apparently let Dorian out of the basement but forgot to give him his meds. In a post designed to irritate everyone he flounders about on various topics like atheism, gay marriage with no particular point other than to let everyone know that he's still around. He's like the Eleanor Abernathy of the blog. I fully expect him to start throwing cats about. I, however, have definitive proof that God not only exists, but loves us .

Alec Baldwin the man who suggested we stone Henry Hyde to death, defends Arnold Schwarzenegger against Nazi slurs. He provided voiceover for a documentary about his (Arnold's) run for Governor. Due to the filmmakers attempting to link him to Nazism, Baldwin has returned the fee he was paid for the job and asked that his voice be removed from the film. Good for him.

Ok, I'm guilty of this. Mostly, I'm trying to see if: 1. anyone is reading (I now know the answer is a resounding "NO!") 2. how my posts are received. That is, am I hitting the mark I think I am. However, this train wreck of a blog seems to be predicated entirely on begging for posts. (They get about as many responses as I do) This post is rife with cynicism about men in general. It is a perfect example of the projection so many men find when looking for a woman these days. I don't think the blog itself is a bad idea but I think they need to get reoriented toward a blog mentality rather than simply trying to draw commenters.

"Get married at 20 and by 30 you'll be shocked who you wound up with." -Gregory House, MD

Here's a list of bloggers who have taken the boeing . Interesting that candidates are realizing that bloggers have a better handle on interweb issues than traditional political consultants.

brilliant!

Did John Kerry end his political career? Video here. Philip Klein observes: "What struck me about this comment beyond the obvious fact that it is insulting to our troops, is just how politically incompetent John Kerry is. Here we are, a week before Election Day, Democrats are favored to win back control of the House and possibly the Senate . . . But in this video Kerry, the party's most recent candidate for President and one of its most recognizable figures, is out there calling troops fighting in Iraq a bunch of morons." Kerry's statement is here . The Boston Herald is embarassed. My take is this: I don't know. On one hand, it's hard to believe that Kerry is that stupid. He may be. He's politically hapless. He's worse politically than Bush is at public speaking (if that's possible). On the face, Kerry is clearly saying that only stupid people would go to Iraq. The smart ones will find a way to get out of serving. I do think he believes tha...

Liberals deride regular people who believe in God as ignorant rubes. They, meanwhile, are members of the "reality based community". Right. Like Michael Berg who's *ahem* "Peace Jam" included reiki . Apparently, belief in magical energy includes: Most schools teach that the Reiki energy is an "intelligent" energy, which "knows what to do," or "where it is needed the most." Well, that's pretty convenient. I'd hate to have unintelligent energy headed where it wasn't needed. Apparently, this doesn't include curing people of the belief in quasi-spiritual horse crap.

what Democrats mean by "ruling from the center" Democrats wait in the wings with subpoenas We shall see in short time who holds the gavel. I rather doubt the Democrats want to do more than just rattle the sabre of subpoenas. They're vulnerable to attack on ethics as much as anyone and if they start, they'll find themselves caught in the flood that follows.

Happy Halloween! (I almost forgot) Darkness falls across the land The midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood To terrorize y'all's neighbourhood And whosoever shall be found Without the soul for getting down Must stand and face the hounds of hell And rot inside a corpse's shell. The foulest stench is in the air The funk of 40,000 years And grizzy ghouls from every tomb Are closing in to seal your doom And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the thriller. Points the first reader(s) who can identify them (NO GOOGLE)

This site shows map overlays for terrorism around the globe. It lets you discriminate by type of attack as well as showing major infrastructure nearby. Interesting. First, they came for the gays ... I've experienced similar phenomenon as well. Most readers will note that I typically side with Republicans over Democrats in most issues so my experience may be biased in that direction but I find it nearly impossible to have a discussion of politics with liberals. One close friend is a liberal. Proud of it. However, we cannot discuss politics. She's very bright and I ordinarily love talking to her but when it comes to politics, she goes to pieces. She cannot keep cool. I think her passion over rides any sort of logical ability (which pains me). She seems to get out on a logical (or factual) limb and when I cut that off things go pear shaped. I think this bothers her more than it would otherwise as she's a lawyer so constructing arguments is what she does for a livi...

Cubans Begin to Just Say No Update: Link fixed Update: Bonus commentary added (for free!) Cubans, taking a page from the UAW playbook have decided that rather than fighting the regime face to face, they're going to let sloth do the job of collapsing the regime. How they can get any less productive than they already are is hard to imagine. I've worked with some recovering Communists (the real ones from Eastern Europe and beyond, not the ACLU Wannabe commie types) and they come in two varieties. One the extremely smart and industrious people that are thrilled to have an actual job that produces something and earns them something. Two, extremely smart people thoroughly corrupted by communism and unable to conceive of doing any real work. Sort of like the French in that regard.

What has four letters, begins with E and is slowly killing half of Europe? Is the Euro the doom of Europe? I'd argue that they have more than just one thing pointing toward their doom. Unassimilated (and growing minorities), Multiculturalism, declining birthrate, heavy social spending combined with aging population, political fecklessness, weak military, protectionism, etc. Loss of control of the currency is a dangerous thing. It's hard enough to control your currency with the global markets being what they are. The holding of debt by foreign nations is something that makes me queasy but ceding control to a supranational body with different interests than your own is a recipe for disaster. Key excerpts: The Iraq invasion, disastrous though it has been, may not go down in history as the greatest political blunder of the past decade. That dubious honour will probably belong to an event most people still regard as a triumph: the creation of the euro. What we see in Eastern and...

History almost forgotten. How many high school kids know about that incident? How many adults would recognize the scene? Dead voters continue to cast ballots in New York A new statewide database of registered voters contains as many as 77,000 dead people on its rolls, and as many as 2,600 of them have cast votes from the grave, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal computer-assisted analysis. Democrats who cast votes after they died outnumbered Republicans by more than 4 to 1. The reason: Most of them came from Democrat-dominated New York City, where the higher population produced more matches. Perhaps the GOP could get some tips on post-mortem voting. Karl Rove is good at mind control but he's got nothing on the Democrats who can raise the dead from their graves to vote! (Personally, I think the people in question aren't dead, they're just the standard brain dead democrats. The difference is even more difficult to spot when they're hippies because then they smell ...

The Volokh Conspiracy points to a USSC decision that vacates the 9th Circuit (yay!) decision that struck down the requirement of a picture ID for voting. That means, any state that passes a similar law will not even be challenged in court. I've been told that supporting such a measure is "racist" and unfair to poor people. Personally, I fail to see how anyone can get anything done w/o a picture ID. Would critics make the same complaint against Blockbuster Video or your local beer store?

This article talks about the upcoming war in Gaza as all but inevitable. Key excerpts: "We are going to make a massive ground operation in Gaza," warns Yuval Steinitz, until recently chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in a recent interview. Underlying the remark is the sense that the IDF will not allow itself to be surprised again by events, much less humiliated twice by ostensibly weaker foes. The rise of Hamas, with ties to Iran and potentially a secure territorial base of its own, is an even greater long-term threat to the brittle regime of Hosni Mubarak than it is to Israel. The political heat between the two sides was noticeably raised last week when Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar reportedly warned Egypt that if it failed to open its border with Gaza "there will be no border." Equally extraordinary was that the statement was widely reprinted in the Egyptian state media, playing into the broad suspicion that the Brotherh...

Hot on the heels (if you'll pardon the pun) of the NJSC ruling vis a vis gay marriage, uber-blogger Stephen Den Beste has some thoughts about law and the social compact Violating the social compact Irrespective of the merits of individual decisions, the basic problem with this is that it cheats the electorate by forbidding them from participating in the process of collectively making those decisions. And the "losers" don't concede defeat, because they never got their chance to participate in the decision. He makes the case for his argument by citing Roe as a horrible means of making the right decision. He agrees with the ruling but not the way it was forced upon the plebiscite without their voice. A very dangerous thing to do. Previously, we've had civil wars over such matters. Had the slaves been emancipated by the electorate as in England, we wouldn't have suffered a devastating civil war that set us back generations in both economic and social measures...

Both conservative, on pro and one con. Noted paleocon and longtime war critic, George Will Has an article called Togetherness In Baghdad where he outlines why Iraq is an abject failure. Key quote: A surreal facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco's architects acknowledge it. On the other hand is Amir Taheri with a more optimistic take: IRAQ: UNITING AGAINST THE JIHADIS BUT WORRIED THE AMERICANS WILL SPLIT He cites the following reasons to be optimistic: Recent events highlight the growing isolation of the jihadists and their Saddamite allies: * A tribal alliance has joined together all Arab Sunni clans of western Iraq in a united front to "chase al Qaeda out of Iraq." This was partly a response to a split inside al Qaeda's Iraq branch. Members of the terror group recently published an appeal to Osama bin Laden to dismiss Abu-Ayyub al-Masri, the group's " commander" in Iraq. Why? Al-Masri, an Egyptian...

"Do you want America to win?" asks Lynne Cheney. Wolf balks and insists that yes, of course , he wants America to win. She then nails him for running terrorist propaganda and he goes to pieces. He denies that videos obtained by terrorists that show Americans being shot and killed might be terrorist propaganda. I ask one question: When has CNN ever aired videos of US forces killing enemy insurgents?

The Straw That Broke the Multi-Culti Camel's Back . This is related to my previous post which was predicated upon this post. Read the whole thing. Will a PC backlash finally hit England?

It's just so doggone enlightening : "The broader point, one feels, is that in a certain sense the foot-of-page-37 item is the real story. What gives you a better grasp of the realities of Europe today? The front-page reports on the G8 and the U.S.-EU summit? The in-depth profile of Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin? Or the small space-filler about a French police lieutenant promoted to captain despite spending 12 of the last 18 years on 'paternity leave,' in the course of which he wrote three books about the Beatles."

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