The Best of Homespun Bloggers 22 August 2004
Welcome to another week's worth of the best work by our army of talented but underpaid members. With Tom happily away on holidays, relaxing and having a good time (we'll get you, you bastard), it's my great pleasure to present to you today's run-down. So, in a totally random order:
marcland: John Kerry - COLD BLOODED DOVE KILLER!
I noticed this passage in a Washington Post article skillfully dissected by Ace. This is interesting to me primarily because, having worked in the Michigan Legislature for the last year and a half, I happen to know of few issues that get people's panties in a bunch here in Michigan more than the dove hunting issue. People here looove the dove, and any attempt to create a hunting season (such as they have in 38 other states) has been met with outrage. "How can you allow those awful hunters to kill doves?!? Don't they have enough to kill already?" seems to be the common response among many of my tender-hearted fellow citizens.
MuD&PHuD: What Media Bias?
How far into this article do you have to read before you see evidence that does not support Kerry's position? There are 22 paragraphs, take a guess. Here's the article title and subtitle:
The Doggy Diaries: Cows and Illegal Aliens
... Is it just me, or does anyone else find it absolutely amazing that once mad-cow disease threatened us, our government could track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she currently sleeps in the state of Washington, and then determine exactly what the cow ate/eats? They can also track her calves right to their stalls and tell you what kind of feed they ate/eat.
But yet, with all of this technology at their disposal, they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around in our country, including people that are trying to blow up important structures in the U.S.!
My solution is to give every illegal alien a cow as soon as they enter the country.
Musing: Boycotting artists
Consumer boycotts are a simple statement by consumers that they will not support the artists views with their hard earned money. It is after all their status as an artist that is giving them an expanded platform, from which they can publish their views. When you buy their work, you help reinforce the foundations of that platform.
I personally will not allow the work of artists like Jane Fonda, Alex Baldwin, Richard Gere, the Dixie Chicks and several others anywhere near my home, as spending my money on their work gives a tacit consent to the message that they are giving out. If my choice to eschew their work necessitates that my life is somehow less fulfilled, less entertained, or suffering from a lack of emotional drainage, then so be it. I'll go out and listen to a Wagner requiem to make up the difference. ... Simply put, the world is not that artistically imperiled that I need to send money to Sean Penn or his pal Susan Sarandon to ensure my minimum quota of "art" is met.
Considerettes: MoveOn good, Swifties evil
Kerry wants the Swiftie book banned, but MoveOn.org's Hitler ads are fair game? For the love of all that is political, how can you possibly defend this position? Double standards, anyone?
pacetown:
I will admit that the SBVFT are not looking for the truth as an end in itself. Their end is to hurt a man's chances at being elected. So is MoveOn.org, so is Rock against Bush, that's just the way it goes in political campaigns and I would happier if the Swifties called themselves "Swiftboat Veterans who, after having served with and near John Kerry in Vietnam, believe the war service on which he so leans to be grossly exaggerated, highly adulterated and in some cases blatantly false, and therefore believe that he lacks the necessary character required to lead the United States of America". That would be closer to the truth, but it wouldn't be easy to remember.
Tim's Webpage: Ban on Free Speech
Voicing your opinion by spending your own money to buy a domain-name and website hosting is A-OK...but voicing the same opinion with the same money on television or in the newspaper is a felony.
Bunker Mulligan: Which Warrior?
What you are about to read is opinion. I won't even attempt to back it up with quotes or links. Some will believe it, some won't. Some of you may actually look at the past with a different perspective. That's my intent. Whether that means anything to you or not is up to you.
Weapon of Mass Distraction
Oh, Barf
Wonkette makes me lose my lunch:
The Southern Conservative: Wind Power Isn't For The Birds
Opposing the development of a windmill farm in her area of Virginia, local business owner, naturalist and bird watcher Patti Reum says "We're just not industrial out here." My question is, at what point do the concerns of environmentalists cross the line from legitimate to...well, kooky? I'd suggest that making the argument that "We're just not industrial out here" is a bit kooky. If you have electricity, running water, and a computer, you're industrial. Patty Reum and her husband Tom Brody have all these things. I know because I found some of their activity on the internet...
Daniel W. Casey's Blog: Shooting the Messenger
The Kerry campaign has reached a new low, filing a complaint with the SEC about the Swift Boats veterans' ads. The substance of the Kerry complaint, to the extent it has substance, is that the Swift boat vets have been funded by a donor in Texas who is known to be a Republican. Therefore, the reasoning goes, the Swift Boat Vets, like the goddess Athena, must have sprung, fully armed, from the head of Karl Rove.
Speaking My Mind: Strengthen the Good
Alan from The Command Post, has started a new network of blogs called Strengthen The Good.
It's aim? "Using the power of weblogs for open-source charity. Don't just fight evil: Strengthen the good."
Red Hunter: And the Winner of the "We told you So" Category is
The Washington Times has obtained a copy of the yet to be officially released report. The National Institute of Justice is part of the federal Department of Justice. They are to the DOJ what the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to the Department of Labor; a non-partisan bureau tasked with data collection.
It's a Matter of Opinion:
And how come fat turds like Michael Moore can rail about their countries and denigrate its leaders with complete impunity, when what he seems to be advocating by virtue of association is regimes such as Castro's Cuba, where he would be shot and probably ripped into a thousand overweight chunks of cellulite quicker than you can say George Bush is Satan for making similar disparaging remarks about Cubas leadership?
Revenge Of the Hamster:
John Kerry is still happy dancing. I bet those North-Vietnamese Americans are happy to hear that.
In response to those pesky Swift Boat Veterans, Kerry has released his own video. It includes some of his war records, but not all (until he is truthful about his war record, his service will always be under scrutiny), and positive testimonials from a handful of Swift Boat Veterans (who he is, coincidentally, shipping around the country on his election campaign).
Unfortunately, there is no Wu Tang Clan to gravel pit the proceedings, so the advertisement is not very interesting...
Chris Berg:
And then I thought...
So here is an example, shamelessly ripped out of my thesis, about AT&T in the 1960s, a monopoly under government protection. In front of the Select Committee on Small Business, Russell B. Long, a Democrat from Louisiana first points out that a short extension cord costs 39 cents to purchase.
"An extension cord of similar quality for a telephone appliance must be leased from AT&T for $4.20 per year, plus 42 cents tax. Over a 10 year period, the consumer would be paying $42 for the use of this extension cord. This is over 100 times what the consumer would have had to pay if he were permitted to buy rather than lease." (No link - its microfiche only.)
Long doesn't point out that even once he has paid that $42 he still doesn't own the bloody cord. If he loses it, then he pays for it. Up until Telstra was partly privatised, we used to be in the same situation for the phones themselves. And until really recently, we were in the same situation with cable modems.
Wandering Mind:
"Societies, cultures and religions are all measured by what they contribute. No society is recognized for what it destroys. It is with that in mind, we need to deal with and answer our adversaries and their apologists.
If we don't deal with that reality, the Terror Tax will only grow."
We now find ourselves paying the Terror Tax in no small measure because of how we reacted-- or didn't react-- to terror in the past. We allowed the Olympics to be fertile ground for 'political' arm of terror because we didn't react to terror in the past. We allowed the 'political' arm of terror to justify the terror. We didn't say 'No' to terror and 'No' to the apologists for terror. We accepted them as equals at the table, and with true Euro/American sensibilities, we tried to 'talk' it through. With a less than full effort on the War on Terror, we're making headway, slowly. While our military is restrained from doing what needs to be done, many in our government are still trying to talk it through-- with the same players we've been talking to for years and with the same results.
The Terriorists: Herdin' The Bull
This John Kerry quagmire 'bout his Vietnam memories versus the Swift Vets' evidence (something Beldar calls the Tar Baby strategy and fisks the new LA Times piece) is remindin' me more 'n more of how you herd a bull. A lot of bull in this case. And believe me, I know a thing or three about herdin' bulls.
Yeah, yeah, I know--I look like I'm just a little guy and I'm supposed to herd sheep (who can be real pissants when they wanna' be) not bulls. But what are ya' gonna' do when you're a half-grown pup on a CA ranch and the next-door-ranch bull gets loose to wander all over the landscape?
There he was--lost and horny in the middle of our yard, lasciviously eyeing the cows in the next rancher's field. AHM could have tried calling the owner (which you should know from previous readin' she wasn't likely to do) but the bull would be in the field (and the cows) by the time he arrived. What to do, what to do...
Send in the cavalry.
The Unmentionables: The Difference Between Them and Us
I've often written about the fact Islam was/is a cult spread across the Middle Eastern map through conquest and coercion. Attaining religious legitimacy through force of arms is an acceptable alternative and stories of brokering a truce until one is strong enough to destroy one's "peace partner" are a part of the Qu'ran.
This is a concept largely unthinkable to those with roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition whose leaders (for the most part) will still accept a peace plan with the sincere belief in its veracity. That misguided notion has been at the bottom of all the conflict between the so-called Palestinians and Israel, and I still labor under the misapprehension our leaders will eventually figure out the scam.
chiasm: DEATH TO THE SCENE
Jihadis are often described as the rock stars of the young Islamic world ( Osama = Beatles, Zarqawi = Stones... ), which is of course deeply worrying when you consider how many young men (and women, sometimes) in the US have been drawn towards wasting their lives and talent in shitty pointless rock bands over the past forty years or so. Square old Sistani supporters may be more concerned with the well-being of their families/community/country, but that's hardly the kind of galvanizing, anti-establishment rhetoric (like boring, borrowed classic rock riffs) that is gonna play with the kinds of young men with nothing to lose that are Sadr's notional 'base' amongst Iraqis as well as foreign jihadis...
Patterico
takes apart the New York Times hit piece on the Swift Boat Vets, complete with a description of his own "web of connections" to Democrats.
New England Republican: "Chill Wind Blowing" - Part 3
...Tim Robbins liked to say there was a "chill wind blowing", implying that celebrities like himself were not being allowed to speak out against the war. Of course that was complete crap as we have heard celebrity after celebrity attack the president. They are now even organizing a Bush-bashing concert tour. I think we now see where that chill wind is actually blowing in from. Straight in from Kerry's campaign headquarters.
Chrenkoff: Good News from Iraq, Part 8
As "Boston Globe" columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, "The press tends to emphasize what's going wrong in Iraq because of an inbuilt bias for the negative - only the plane that crashes, not the 999 that land safely, make news. The result is that while the bad news in Iraq gets reported everywhere, the reports of good news you have to look for." For the sake of fairness, one might add that in Iraq it's perhaps 10 or 20 planes that crash, yet even with that caveat the mainstream media coverage often gives ones the impression that the whole Iraqi air fleet has gone down in flames.
That's all folks. Until next week!
marcland: John Kerry - COLD BLOODED DOVE KILLER!
I noticed this passage in a Washington Post article skillfully dissected by Ace. This is interesting to me primarily because, having worked in the Michigan Legislature for the last year and a half, I happen to know of few issues that get people's panties in a bunch here in Michigan more than the dove hunting issue. People here looove the dove, and any attempt to create a hunting season (such as they have in 38 other states) has been met with outrage. "How can you allow those awful hunters to kill doves?!? Don't they have enough to kill already?" seems to be the common response among many of my tender-hearted fellow citizens.
MuD&PHuD: What Media Bias?
How far into this article do you have to read before you see evidence that does not support Kerry's position? There are 22 paragraphs, take a guess. Here's the article title and subtitle:
Military records counter a Kerry critic. Fellow skipper's citation refers to enemy fireHere's how the story opens:
The Doggy Diaries: Cows and Illegal Aliens
... Is it just me, or does anyone else find it absolutely amazing that once mad-cow disease threatened us, our government could track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she currently sleeps in the state of Washington, and then determine exactly what the cow ate/eats? They can also track her calves right to their stalls and tell you what kind of feed they ate/eat.
But yet, with all of this technology at their disposal, they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around in our country, including people that are trying to blow up important structures in the U.S.!
My solution is to give every illegal alien a cow as soon as they enter the country.
Musing: Boycotting artists
Consumer boycotts are a simple statement by consumers that they will not support the artists views with their hard earned money. It is after all their status as an artist that is giving them an expanded platform, from which they can publish their views. When you buy their work, you help reinforce the foundations of that platform.
I personally will not allow the work of artists like Jane Fonda, Alex Baldwin, Richard Gere, the Dixie Chicks and several others anywhere near my home, as spending my money on their work gives a tacit consent to the message that they are giving out. If my choice to eschew their work necessitates that my life is somehow less fulfilled, less entertained, or suffering from a lack of emotional drainage, then so be it. I'll go out and listen to a Wagner requiem to make up the difference. ... Simply put, the world is not that artistically imperiled that I need to send money to Sean Penn or his pal Susan Sarandon to ensure my minimum quota of "art" is met.
Considerettes: MoveOn good, Swifties evil
Kerry wants the Swiftie book banned, but MoveOn.org's Hitler ads are fair game? For the love of all that is political, how can you possibly defend this position? Double standards, anyone?
pacetown:
I will admit that the SBVFT are not looking for the truth as an end in itself. Their end is to hurt a man's chances at being elected. So is MoveOn.org, so is Rock against Bush, that's just the way it goes in political campaigns and I would happier if the Swifties called themselves "Swiftboat Veterans who, after having served with and near John Kerry in Vietnam, believe the war service on which he so leans to be grossly exaggerated, highly adulterated and in some cases blatantly false, and therefore believe that he lacks the necessary character required to lead the United States of America". That would be closer to the truth, but it wouldn't be easy to remember.
Tim's Webpage: Ban on Free Speech
Voicing your opinion by spending your own money to buy a domain-name and website hosting is A-OK...but voicing the same opinion with the same money on television or in the newspaper is a felony.
Bunker Mulligan: Which Warrior?
What you are about to read is opinion. I won't even attempt to back it up with quotes or links. Some will believe it, some won't. Some of you may actually look at the past with a different perspective. That's my intent. Whether that means anything to you or not is up to you.
Weapon of Mass Distraction
Oh, Barf
Wonkette makes me lose my lunch:
Excuse the expression, but screw Obama. This was the speech of the year. The most high-profile outing, well, ever, and [New Jersey Governor James] McGreevey handled it with grace and dignity. He sort of makes me want to go gay, too.Clueless postmodern thinking like this is why I don't read too many self-professed pundits, even the ones who are a bit clever, like Wonkette. Excuse me while I rinse and spit.
The Southern Conservative: Wind Power Isn't For The Birds
Opposing the development of a windmill farm in her area of Virginia, local business owner, naturalist and bird watcher Patti Reum says "We're just not industrial out here." My question is, at what point do the concerns of environmentalists cross the line from legitimate to...well, kooky? I'd suggest that making the argument that "We're just not industrial out here" is a bit kooky. If you have electricity, running water, and a computer, you're industrial. Patty Reum and her husband Tom Brody have all these things. I know because I found some of their activity on the internet...
Daniel W. Casey's Blog: Shooting the Messenger
The Kerry campaign has reached a new low, filing a complaint with the SEC about the Swift Boats veterans' ads. The substance of the Kerry complaint, to the extent it has substance, is that the Swift boat vets have been funded by a donor in Texas who is known to be a Republican. Therefore, the reasoning goes, the Swift Boat Vets, like the goddess Athena, must have sprung, fully armed, from the head of Karl Rove.
Speaking My Mind: Strengthen the Good
Alan from The Command Post, has started a new network of blogs called Strengthen The Good.
It's aim? "Using the power of weblogs for open-source charity. Don't just fight evil: Strengthen the good."
Red Hunter: And the Winner of the "We told you So" Category is
The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation's steady decline in gun-related violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).Told you so. Or rather, gun owners like me have been saying this for years. We know perfectly well that "assault weapons" are hardly the weapons of choice for criminals.
The Washington Times has obtained a copy of the yet to be officially released report. The National Institute of Justice is part of the federal Department of Justice. They are to the DOJ what the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to the Department of Labor; a non-partisan bureau tasked with data collection.
It's a Matter of Opinion:
And how come fat turds like Michael Moore can rail about their countries and denigrate its leaders with complete impunity, when what he seems to be advocating by virtue of association is regimes such as Castro's Cuba, where he would be shot and probably ripped into a thousand overweight chunks of cellulite quicker than you can say George Bush is Satan for making similar disparaging remarks about Cubas leadership?
Revenge Of the Hamster:
John Kerry is still happy dancing. I bet those North-Vietnamese Americans are happy to hear that.
In response to those pesky Swift Boat Veterans, Kerry has released his own video. It includes some of his war records, but not all (until he is truthful about his war record, his service will always be under scrutiny), and positive testimonials from a handful of Swift Boat Veterans (who he is, coincidentally, shipping around the country on his election campaign).
Unfortunately, there is no Wu Tang Clan to gravel pit the proceedings, so the advertisement is not very interesting...
Chris Berg:
And then I thought...
So here is an example, shamelessly ripped out of my thesis, about AT&T in the 1960s, a monopoly under government protection. In front of the Select Committee on Small Business, Russell B. Long, a Democrat from Louisiana first points out that a short extension cord costs 39 cents to purchase.
"An extension cord of similar quality for a telephone appliance must be leased from AT&T for $4.20 per year, plus 42 cents tax. Over a 10 year period, the consumer would be paying $42 for the use of this extension cord. This is over 100 times what the consumer would have had to pay if he were permitted to buy rather than lease." (No link - its microfiche only.)
Long doesn't point out that even once he has paid that $42 he still doesn't own the bloody cord. If he loses it, then he pays for it. Up until Telstra was partly privatised, we used to be in the same situation for the phones themselves. And until really recently, we were in the same situation with cable modems.
Wandering Mind:
"Societies, cultures and religions are all measured by what they contribute. No society is recognized for what it destroys. It is with that in mind, we need to deal with and answer our adversaries and their apologists.
If we don't deal with that reality, the Terror Tax will only grow."
We now find ourselves paying the Terror Tax in no small measure because of how we reacted-- or didn't react-- to terror in the past. We allowed the Olympics to be fertile ground for 'political' arm of terror because we didn't react to terror in the past. We allowed the 'political' arm of terror to justify the terror. We didn't say 'No' to terror and 'No' to the apologists for terror. We accepted them as equals at the table, and with true Euro/American sensibilities, we tried to 'talk' it through. With a less than full effort on the War on Terror, we're making headway, slowly. While our military is restrained from doing what needs to be done, many in our government are still trying to talk it through-- with the same players we've been talking to for years and with the same results.
The Terriorists: Herdin' The Bull
This John Kerry quagmire 'bout his Vietnam memories versus the Swift Vets' evidence (something Beldar calls the Tar Baby strategy and fisks the new LA Times piece) is remindin' me more 'n more of how you herd a bull. A lot of bull in this case. And believe me, I know a thing or three about herdin' bulls.
Yeah, yeah, I know--I look like I'm just a little guy and I'm supposed to herd sheep (who can be real pissants when they wanna' be) not bulls. But what are ya' gonna' do when you're a half-grown pup on a CA ranch and the next-door-ranch bull gets loose to wander all over the landscape?
There he was--lost and horny in the middle of our yard, lasciviously eyeing the cows in the next rancher's field. AHM could have tried calling the owner (which you should know from previous readin' she wasn't likely to do) but the bull would be in the field (and the cows) by the time he arrived. What to do, what to do...
Send in the cavalry.
The Unmentionables: The Difference Between Them and Us
I've often written about the fact Islam was/is a cult spread across the Middle Eastern map through conquest and coercion. Attaining religious legitimacy through force of arms is an acceptable alternative and stories of brokering a truce until one is strong enough to destroy one's "peace partner" are a part of the Qu'ran.
This is a concept largely unthinkable to those with roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition whose leaders (for the most part) will still accept a peace plan with the sincere belief in its veracity. That misguided notion has been at the bottom of all the conflict between the so-called Palestinians and Israel, and I still labor under the misapprehension our leaders will eventually figure out the scam.
chiasm: DEATH TO THE SCENE
Jihadis are often described as the rock stars of the young Islamic world ( Osama = Beatles, Zarqawi = Stones... ), which is of course deeply worrying when you consider how many young men (and women, sometimes) in the US have been drawn towards wasting their lives and talent in shitty pointless rock bands over the past forty years or so. Square old Sistani supporters may be more concerned with the well-being of their families/community/country, but that's hardly the kind of galvanizing, anti-establishment rhetoric (like boring, borrowed classic rock riffs) that is gonna play with the kinds of young men with nothing to lose that are Sadr's notional 'base' amongst Iraqis as well as foreign jihadis...
Patterico
takes apart the New York Times hit piece on the Swift Boat Vets, complete with a description of his own "web of connections" to Democrats.
New England Republican: "Chill Wind Blowing" - Part 3
...Tim Robbins liked to say there was a "chill wind blowing", implying that celebrities like himself were not being allowed to speak out against the war. Of course that was complete crap as we have heard celebrity after celebrity attack the president. They are now even organizing a Bush-bashing concert tour. I think we now see where that chill wind is actually blowing in from. Straight in from Kerry's campaign headquarters.
Chrenkoff: Good News from Iraq, Part 8
As "Boston Globe" columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, "The press tends to emphasize what's going wrong in Iraq because of an inbuilt bias for the negative - only the plane that crashes, not the 999 that land safely, make news. The result is that while the bad news in Iraq gets reported everywhere, the reports of good news you have to look for." For the sake of fairness, one might add that in Iraq it's perhaps 10 or 20 planes that crash, yet even with that caveat the mainstream media coverage often gives ones the impression that the whole Iraqi air fleet has gone down in flames.
That's all folks. Until next week!
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