Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Stand up, dammit!

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

He really is that stupid.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

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Archives for 2004

Sullivan Is Right

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Sully nails Jacob Levy (via the Instapundit)has his one thoughts, as well as links to many other opinions regarding Nader. Most damning, this quote from Mark Kleiman:

One of the bitterest lessons I learned as a young and naive liberal staffer on Capitol Hill was that the “public interest research” produced by the Nader groups was systematically fraudulent. Every time I actually got into an issue deeply enough to understand the details — nuclear power, toxic waste, pharmaceutical regulation — I discovered that the Naderites had no more respect for the facts than the industries they were fighting: in some cases, less.

So let’s hear a little less about St. Ralph this time. Someone should ask some pointed questions about how he got to be a multimillionaire. (Hint: What happens to the royalties on the books that the underpaid Public Citizen employees write under Nader’s by-line?)

I must admit that it is nice hearing the left stating what everyone else has known about Nader for years.

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Knock It Off

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Will the asshole owner of b l ackhawktickets.com, r a venstickets.com, and all the other ticket websites stop spamming my comments? I have now blocked two of your ip addresses, and if you keep trying to advertise in my comments section, I will report you to your isp.

If you want to advertise here, email me. I will put your own little ad up here for a small fee.

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Grow Up

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Some are going to claim this is a mean-spirited post, but this needs to be addressed, as many on the left have been praising and propping up Jim Capozzola for a long time. In truth, he is one of the more mean-spirited left of center writers out there (albeit, a good one, IMHO). His posts in the last few days, however, are rather helpful when trying to gauge his mindset.

Jim is an unemployed writer. You don’t have to read too many pages of his blog to recognize that he is exceptionally unemployed. Why this is the case is beyond me, because he uses the language rather well. However, it appears that he has had no luck in his chosen craft, and is nearing (or in the middle of) a financial meltdown:

Believe it or not I don

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The New Canard

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From now on, when you hear a Democrat claiming someone is questioning their patriotism, realize they are hiding something. I have no other way to interpret Ezra’s utter inability to understand the distinction between questioning someone’s military service and patriotism and their voting record on defense and intelligence issues. John Kerry is, as I have asserted frequently, a war hero, but questioning his judegment and his voting record is not attacking his ‘military record.’ It is what the Democrats frequently like to call ‘discussing the issues.’

Ezra does have an interesting post up regarding the capture of Saddam and the impact this might have on the 2004 election:

Dick Morris has a theory that Presidents get beaten for two reasons. The first is for not doing what they promised. The second is for doing what they promised. The latter argues that the people gave their Commander a mandate and, once he’s fulfilled it, his usefulness is pretty much over. Bush’s current argument for his reelection is that he’s a wartime President and the country needs him in the driver’s seat pursuing our enemies. The problem with the rhetorical frame of war is that it isn’t endless, it has heroes and villains. Once Osama is captured the war, in the minds of most, will have been won. People won’t stay afraid forever; if Osama’s capture doesn’t end terrorism (and it won’t), America will just blame Bush. he did all he said he would and failed, time for someone new. If Osama is captured and the terrorism does abate for awhile, the electorate will stop worrying about terrorism and Bush will have to run on the economy. His worst nightmare.

Let’s put aside the Morris theory- most of the time Democrats borrow this argument it is to find a reason for why they have just lost an election. The breathtakingly arrogant argument goes something like this: Bill Clinton balanced the budget and put the fiscal house in order, because of that, more people move into the middle class, thus they don’t need Democrats to watch out for them anymore. The Democrats are being punished at the polls for delivering! Yawn. And you thought it was you who got up every day, worked hard, hired people, paid taxes, etc. Naive fool- you are a bit player- the Democrats and Bill Clinton did the heavy lifting.

However, regarding Osama, I think it will be a wash. While his capture will be great in the short term (check out the polls after Saddam’s capture), it will neither assure Bush’s re-election nor assure his demise. The issue of terrorism is here to stay, and this is why the Democrats are so vicious regarding their lies about Bush’s service in Vietnam. They recognize that the electorate still believes they are weak on national defense, so any canard will do to avoid the issue. How weak are they? Check out this recent Zogby poll (and I apologize in advance for the write-up that includes the increasingly annoying red state/blue state schtick):

– Fifty-percent of voters said Bush would do a better job compared to the 33% of voters who felt John Kerry would do a better job.
– Fifty-eight percent of current military members and 53% of veterans feel that Bush would do a better job while 32% of current military members and 27% of veterans gave the nod to Kerry.

– Gun owners and investors by overwhelming margins of 63% to 23% and 58% to 28% respectively, feel Bush would do a better job in dealing with rogue states and leaders.

– Non-investors also thought Bush would do a better job in dealing with rogue states and leaders by a margin of 48% to 35%. Church-goers and non-church-goers alike thought Bush would do a better job.

– Daily church-goers and weekly church-goers favored Bush by margins of 57% to 22% and 62% to 21% respectively. Non-church goers also favored Bush to deal with rogue nations and leaders by a 42% to 36% margin.

– Forty-nine percent of NASCAR, high school sports and little league sports fans think Bush would do a better job of dealing with rogue states and leaders and 33% felt that Kerry was the better choice.

– Forty-eight percent of non-NASCAR fans also thought Bush would be better to deal with rogue states and leaders while 32% favored Kerry.

There is no breakdown for chocolate lovers vs. vanilla lovers, South Park vs. Simpsons fans, or red vs. white wine drinkers, but it appears that on the issue, every discernable group trends towards Bush.

You can see the entire report here.

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The PETA Folks

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One of the most annoying things about the outrageous and unethical tactics from the folks at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is that their chicanery, IMHO, has an adverse effect on the cause they are trying to advance. As someone who generally likes animals more than people (at least most of the people I have met), this is somewhat irritating.

Most recently, their jihad against meat has led them to illegally obtain the medical records of Dr. Robert Atkins, distort the findings therein, and claim that this was somehow evidence that the Atkins diet is bad for you. Here is some info on the front group they used to level the charges:

Physicians for Responsible Medicine, the group that released the report and promotes a vegetarian diet, acknowledged that fluid retention may have been responsible for some of Atkins’ weight gain, but probably not all of it. The group maintains that the Atkins diet poses weight and health risks to the millions who follow it.

According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants and food companies, Physicians for Responsible Medicine has taken in more than $1 million from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the animal rights movement. It said the group and PETA also share office space, board members and staff.

At any rate, I have little tolerance for this type of nonsense, and while I will not go ballistic over the government’s illegal war on drugs or the nasty antics of the folks trying to ban all guns (and don’t tell me they just want sensible laws), but they will pry my steak knife from my cold dead hands, to borrow a phrase.

At any rate, I believe the behavior of the folks aty PETA can have a polarizing effect- to make those who, like me, enjoy eating meat, become more callous and indifferent towards animals. I know at least once a week I argue with some idiot who makes the ridiculous claim that animals don’t have feelings or can not think. As someone who has worked on farms, had pets my entire life, and currently has two very personable and often times emotional cats, this is one of the more irritating things I have to argue about frequently.

That brings us to this article, which I heard about last night on the radio:

A parrot with a 950-word vocabulary, a sense of humour and alleged telepathic powers is forcing a rethink of the scope for animals and humans to communicate.

The six-year-old captive-bred African grey called N’kisi is one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world. The bird uses words in context, with past, present and future verb tenses.

And, like small children, it resorts to creativity to describe new ideas – for instance saying “flied” for flew and inventing the phrase “pretty smell medicine” to indicate the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, a New York-based artist.

He can also associate photographs with the real person or object – when he first met primatologist Dr Jane Goodall, after seeing her in a picture with apes, his greeting was: “Got a chimp?”

He also displays dry humour. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: “You got to put this bird on the camera.”

Dr Goodall judges N’kisi’s eagerness to learn how to converse with his owner as an “outstanding example of interspecies communication,” but new evidence suggests the parrot’s skills may not stop with the verbal.

Animals think, feel, remember, emote, and communicate. Their communication skills may be limited, the depth of their thinking is in no way comparable to most human thought, and their memory may be tied to fight or flight instincts (last night the folks on Mythbusters even demonstrated that goldfish have memory), but they possess all of those capabilities, and anyone who argues otherwise is simply a fool. It is a shame that PETA’s tactics might betray the animals they should be working to protect.

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