Month: August 2004

  • Intolerance of tolerance

    (Reflections on the great Republican abyss that dare not speak its name….) I guess I’m feeling a little like a flak for the Republican Party. I don’t particularly enjoy that feeling. I don’t like being a flak for anybody. Yes, we’re in a war that’s important.Terribly important. And, yes, I think John Kerry is a…

  • The revolution will not be radicalized!

    Those protesting under the banner of anarchism show no real resemblance to the historical phenomenon of philosophical anarchism and at best may be compared to the syndicalists (who would transfer authority to labor unions), the offshoots who fueled early communism (who would transfer authority to the intellectual elite), or Mussolini’s several Fasci which need little…

  • BEWARE! “Nonviolent activists” could be up to their old dirty tricks!

    Lowell Ponte asks an especially mean-spirited question: How can Senator Kerry be trusted to fight terrorism when he knowingly employs as one of his highest campaign staffers an extremist who has been trained by and facilitated the training of others for the Ruckus Society, which taught radicals ways and means to disrupt the 2000 and…

  • Fear of content?

    I have previously complained about a notorious online content filtering service called SonicWALL. This blog is blocked, as are a number of blogs on a wide variety of subjects. (What that means is that if you enter our URL on a computer “protected” by SonicWALL, you’ll get an ugly black screen displaying only the message,…

  • Smearing off the cuff

    Eugene Volokh is outraged over Dennis Hastert’s comments on FoxNews: Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, “reform,” you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups. You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know…

  • Sports Break

    Adrian Wojnarowski has an excellent piece at ESPN.com on basketball star Allen Iverson and U.S.A. Basketball: The most telling moment of all was in the minutes after the United States’ loss to Argentina in the semifinals, when the possibility for gold and glory were gone. When the coach stayed on his self-serving course of blaming…

  • Stop the Insanity: Rape on the First Date?

    Rumor has it that William Kennedy Smith’s accuser admits to a relationship following the alleged rape. My source tells me that Soulias, the accuser, says she didn’t realize at the time that Kennedy Smith was in a power position and that what he did was abuse. I haven’t been able to substantiate this yet by…

  • No scoop left unpuffed!

    That last remark (by Dennis) about “puffery” reminded me of a few pictures taken over the weekend. Especially this first one; a candid shot of live puffballs in action. It’s tough to take an action macro shot of these mushrooms releasing their spores, as someone has to manually stimulate them! Fortunately, a helper was found,…

  • This is just to say / nice try

    A while back (when I was still posting under the name Varius Contrarius) I was getting tired of my own posts, and wanted to try something new. I dashed out a critique of a critique quoted on a website, and even though at the time I was hesitant to post it, I followed through to…

  • Boos Abound for Kerry Kids at MTV … News at 11 … or not

    No one seems to be reporting the fact that Kerry’s daughters were greeted with boos last night when they appeared at the MTV video music awards, as reported to me by my faithful colleague Jason. No word on how the taped appearance of the Bush girls was received. ABC News notes that the daughters appeared,…

  • “Republican murderers go home and kill your babies!”

    More escalation of tactics, and more Marxist fundamentalist zeal in action. Just as people have no right to run in a Marathon race or live peacably in their own homes when there are more important issues, there’s no right to attend the theater either: ….[I]ndividual protesters kept tensions high, some of them hissing or cursing…

  • Dance to stop the race!

    By now almost everyone knows about the nutcase who disrupted the Olympic Marathon: ATHENS, Greece – A man wearing a brightly colored costume bolted from the crowd and grabbed the leader of the marathon Sunday, about three miles from the finish. The intruder wrestled Vanderlei Lima of Brazil to the curb and into the crowd.…

  • Terror from the top down?

    Things are really getting ugly, and fast. This is a sickening example mob rule, of the sort which I saw in Berkeley, and which typifies the left. Nearly 40 protesters gathered Saturday at the home of the chief financial backer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads criticize Democrat John Kerry’s military record.…

  • Why Kerry’s Pissed

    Could it be that Bush is unfairly undertaxing the poor and working classes, to Kerry’s pampered disadvantage? Here‘s a graph from the Detroit News (courtesy G.R.) showing that while everyone’s taxes went down, the percentage of the tax burden decreased for the bottom 60% of tax payers, while it increased for the top 40%, which…

  • Listen to the Fading Stars!

    Carl Lewis wins this week’s Idiot Award: Criticising Bush for linking his foreign policy with the two countries being allowed to compete here, Lewis said: ‘I felt that was disingenuous. It is funny that we boycotted the 1980 Games [in Moscow] in support of Afghanistan, and now we’re bombing Afghanistan,’ he told the Athens News…

  • Candygram For Mr. Reynolds

    Frequent readers may recall that I have pushed this book, ?The Golden Age?, on you once before. In belated honor of Glenn Reynolds birthday, I feel that one more time wouldn?t be inappropriate. Matter of fact, I?m recommending the whole damn trilogy. The subject matter concerns topics of interest to him. Plus, these may possibly…

  • Hypocritical Mass!

    I’m in upstate New York for the weekend, and it turned out the people I’m staying with have a computer with a DSL connection. So I thought I’d sneak in a quickie post, so Dennis doesn’t have to go it alone on a Saturday night. (Dennis is already proving himself to be one heck of…

  • Baghdad Bob Reborn?

    Reading about Douglas Brinkley (thanks to Glenn Reynolds), I was led to this fascinating bit of revelation: Iraqi Sheikh Mahdi Saleh Al-Sumide’i, identified as a participant in the Battle of Falluja, was interviewed by Syrian television on August 23, as follows: SUMIDE’I: [W]e believe that Allah protects the believers, and indeed, Allah stood beside Falluja,…

  • Ask a direct question, get a direct stare

    Here’s a description of part of Kerry’s appearance on the Daily Show (which I didn’t see because I don’t have cable): As Kerry launched into a monologue about why President Bush avoids talking about issues like the economy, jobs and the environment, the comedian interrupted. “I’m sorry,” Stewart said. “Were you or were you not…

  • Latin is good for something

    Like reading about the crisis in Darfur, which the U.N. would probably like to ignore: Rerum status in Sudania 27.8.2004 In Sudania discrimen gravissimum de provincia Darfur possidenda ortum est. Sunt in illa civitate duae partes rebelles inter se dimicantes, quae ab administratoribus flagitant, ut regioni Darfur amplior autonomia concedatur. Pugnis in Sudania commissis iam…