Because I've been spending too much time in my car.
1.Berzerker: Like father, like son: a reader of half silicone, half AIPAC lobbyist Pamela takes approving notes at a Victor Davis Scipio Africanus Frederick Barbarossa Jan Sobieski And Winged Hussars At The Gates Of Vienna Hanson lecture. Aside the Iraq shit which is little different from that in his diatribes in NRO, what's interesting is Davis's confirmation that he came by his heroically genocidal attitude honestly:
He said his father often complained about America's decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan: "It was a terrible mistake, we should have dropped it earlier."
2.You Are In My Vision: Nude In Venezuela! Attention wingnuts and "sensible liberals": either Maxwell Smart failed his last mission or this is more proof that Chavez is exactly like Adolf Hitler! Everybody go Pat Robertson in three..two..one...
3.Are 'Friends' Electric?: Powertools for standard and metric wingnuts.
4.We Have a Technical: FCC.com???
5.This Wreckage: John J. Miller, perhaps especially moved out of sympathy of fellow-Cornertard Jonah Goldberg's childhood experiences, objects to a plan that would give "weight grades" to K-12 students. In order, Miller opposes the measure because of his hostility to the "nanny state", fat kids already know they're fat, and -- get this -- because there are already too many appearance-based pressures on kids. Why, that sounds almost liberal!
But seriously, Miller's objection is most probably based on the fact that he, like most wingnut pundits, was a socially-inept fucktard and wreck-of-a-biped in school, likely to have been discussing over a fresh box of Twinkies the merits and demerits of Captain Picard. The topic brings back painful memories, and his stated objections are a tissue of rationalisations.
Anyway, here in Arkansas this has been law for a while, as our formerly fat Southern Baptist preacher of a Governor has gone the health-nut route, and no one is more pious than the convert. I don't mind the measure. But I'm in a minority from what I can tell. I've heard many complaints from parents who, believing obesity is a relative thing, insist that their children aren't fat. And no, they aren't compared to most of the other kids -- because Americans, and Southerners in particular, are fat as a group. Tell them that there are objective standards for obesity and, rather like Jonah Goldberg beholding an unlocked Frito-Lay warehouse, their eyes glaze over, nothing gets through.
6.A Game Called Echo: John Derbyshire is nostalgic:
[Derb] Topic for discussion: American civilization peaked sometime in the 1950s.
This is not like when Nietzsche "listened for an echo but heard only praise." Derbyshire expects, and should expect, nothing but nodding here -- not much in the way of discussion, or echo. Fivehead Lileks could offer matchbooks, while Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, Jr. could dig out the old "whites only" signs. Ahh, the good old wonderbread days before busing, hippies, MLK, a feminist movement, postmodernism, realistic television programs, punk, etc.
But as reactionary as Derbyshire is, he sometimes provides corrective sense to the unhinged hackery at The Cornhole:
Lots of play for Rumsfeld's Wa-Po comment that pulling out now would be like handing post-WW2 Germany back to the Nazis. Dr. K (also on CNN), who was actually **in** post-WW2 Germany, interpreting for the US army, shot that one down. It's astonishing to see these Germany-Japan analogies still being bandied around by people who really should know better. (a) As Dr. K said, Germany was out for the count, there was no insurgency. They were beaten, and knew it. (b) Japan even more so--we dropped tow nukes on them for goodness' sake. (c) Both Germany and Japan are ethnostates, with zero potential for civil war.
Amen especially to reason "c".
7.This Is New Love: While I certainly have no sympathy for either Foreign Policy or the Moonies at UPI, I still fail to see how the passage Capozzola quotes is so egregious (I have not RTFA). I may be dense here, but the Chinese government's decision here in relation to the demographical crisis seems anthropologically sound.
I hope Chinese men take advantage of their government's changed attitude. Otherwise, you have the potential for millions of Chinese Ben Shapiros and Adam Yoshidas when the original articles themselves are far too much to bear.
8.In A Dark Place: John "Wookiee Shoulders" Podhoretz is all about chutzpah. Knowing that Perpetual War (which is good for business, is a great excuse to bash the outsiders in society, and gives the Executive all sorts of special powers) has always been a general wingnut aim, the Junior Pod retorts that the Let's Quit Now conservatives like Buckley and Will (who are merely misguided) as well as "defeatist Democrats" (who are, naturally, hopeless and tantamount to a fifth column) actually support a prescription for Perpetual War! JPod has resorted to the Pee Wee Herman standard: "I know you are now what am I?"
No, really, to oppose the continued war and occupation in and of Iraq is, according to JPod, to be for Perpetual War. You don't understand, he argues, how Bush's plan of Perpetual War for the democritization of the Middle East is the only way to conclude the War On Terra!
Bonus wingnuttery: He paints Buckley and similar conservatives as such:
People are trying to murder Americans, and such people ought to die. Kill as many of the bad guys as you can abroad. Strike Iran from the air if you have to. Do whatever you must to secure the homeland. Don't let Arabs run the ports. Racially profile Muslims and Arabs out the wazoo. No crocodile tears for the excesses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
And he doesn't mean it as criticism! No, his only criticism is that they don't understand the Great Neocon Plan.
9. Absolution: Steve Hayward has a remedy for environmental problems; it's the typical Chamber of Commerce remedy, but with that special National Review polish:
A more fruitful discussion with Gore would be to discuss climate change policy strategies that don't involve rationing and/or taxing energy, or giving the government more power. This is where the greens lack either imagination or good faith.
In other words, sure, we'll stop polluting if you pay us and it's purely voluntary.
10.The Pleasure Skin: Oh, riiight. In the middle of one of her "eew, icky Latinos!" posts, Cathy Seipp lets this fly:
my 16-year-old daughter Maia attends a big urban public high school that, like most schools in L.A. now, is mostly Latino. They even had a walkout there a few months ago, ostensibly to protest the war in Iraq, although I heard that many kids who participated were actually attracted by the fliers distributed by outside organizers promoting free flavored condoms. So some things haven’t changed, but some things have.
This is the polemical equivalent of a MIRV, a formidable weapon in a decent writer's arsenal but one easily slapped away if launched by a writer as dishonest as Seipp. Desperate to hit the target at all costs, she deploys this missive-missile with shoddy aim (via anecdote) to strike at Latinos (as the school system's population is "mostly Latino" it necessarily follows that they staged a walkout -- because they're contrary and lazy), the Left (forever trying to coopt Latino political power), and sexually active teenagers (evil and corrupted in of themselves, but here shown as the lesser -- or more understandable -- of evils). All in one shot, as it were. But there are no direct hits; as is common with wingnut multi-targeted smears, all Seipp's blast accomplishes is collateral damage and casualties from friendly fire. Her innocent daughter is sooted from being included in the anecdote; Latinos, the school system, liberalism, and flavored condoms all seem better than ever; and Seipp, oblivious, has drinks with Luke Ford to discuss who next to backstab among C-list LA journalists and how best to condescend to blacks, latinos and poor WASPs.
posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 11:43 PM
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