Month: November 2006

I predict that no matter what happens tomorrow, everyone will be sore. The Democrats have been acting like sore winners for some time, and if they win tomorrow, I think they can be depended upon to continue to be sore winners. But if the Democrats lose, then they’ll be really sore, and I mean so…

Via Glenn Reynolds, Donald Sensing quotes American Thinker on a very important distinction between Vietnam and Iraq: It doesn’t matter how we got there. It doesn’t matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn’t matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al-Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is…

This week the RINOs are raging at Don Surber’s blog. Great posts all — so don’t miss them! I especially agree with Don’s conclusion: We’re RINOs. We do not agree with everything the Republicans do. But we are Republicans. The national party did not abandon Lincoln Chafee — or Rick Santorum. Big tent. Vote. Agree.…

While I don’t know whether it’s more offensive than professors who believe in 911 conspiracy theories, I was amused to see that Idaho State University has a tenured professor who believes quite seriously in “Bigfoot.” Apparently, though, he pays the price — which is not being invited for coffee: “Do I cringe when I see…

John Beck has been AWOL for too long, not only from this blog, but from his own blog. Sorry John, but saying “I’m not dead yet” just doesn’t cut it. I saw John last night, and from the way he was acting, I think he might be hiding something from his readers. Here’s a picture…

If the smell of defeat isn’t disturbing, how disturbing is the smell of burning flesh? Like many things, it all depends on the audience: Gestures must express some deep but unexpressed emotion to be effective. Roland gave the performance of his life but the gallery was empty. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) Roland was a Lutheran vicar…

WARNING: This post is no fun. For that I apologize in advance. I’ll try harder to be funnier in future posts just as soon as I can. There’s an election Tuesday and I really, passionately hate elections. Yet despite this hatred, because I write this blog, I feel some sort of obligation to disclose my…

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Frank Wilson (whose blog Books, Inq. is wonderful) has a review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion which touches on something I can’t resist: Dawkins is well aware that many believers object to a curriculum that presents, as one person he quotes put it, “all faiths as equally valid.” Only one doesn’t…

Andrew Sullivan believes that “the closet” is responsible for many evils. First it was Mark Foley: the news about Mark Foley has a kind of grim inevitability to it. I don’t know Foley, although, like any other gay man in D.C., I was told he was gay, closeted, afraid and therefore also screwed up. What…

One of the things we tend to forget is what’s two days old in the blogosphere can be big news. Like today’s front page (photographed from the Philadelphia Inquirer): According to The Inquirer, President Gutmann says she was offended: Gutmann, a noted political scientist and philosopher who became Penn’s president in 2004, said, “The costume…

In an update to Glenn Reynolds’ post about Ted Haggard, a Neal Stephenson character is quoted thusly: That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code […] does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code. Whatever the moral code might be, I think it’s worth asking whether violating it is necessarily seen…

Here’s a picture I took last week of chickens and ducks. While the chickens did not group together, the ducks moved about in a tight group, almost as if they were controlled by a single brain. Initially, this moving-around-together business struck me as more “stupid” than the randomized movement of the chickens. But then, we…

Is Ted Haggard the latest to be “outed”? I don’t think so. I don’t think the word “outed” really applies, because despite the rather gay looking picture (obvious enough for Glenn Reynolds to notice) I seriously doubt Haggard will ever say he’s “out.” From the perspective of his supporters, it is understandable that they would…

I don’t know whether this is a barometer of anything, but a front page headline in today’s Inquirer proclaims that “Distrust of voting machines is running high,” and “activists” are described as “particularly suspicious” of computerized voting machines: In about 20 precincts in the Philadelphia suburbs, teams from a group called Election Integrity are preparing…

After what Coco did today, I’m beginning to think she’s becoming a Republican tyrant like the mean-spirited thugs who trample on the rights of all peace-loving Americans. My carefully carved Halloween pumpkin had been sitting atop an old milk can, when suddenly, without any warning at all, Coco jumped up and put her front paws…

One of these days I’ll have to decide which candidate will get my vote for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat. I have to say that I’m not terribly impressed with either Rick Santorum or Bob Casey, Jr. Neither one of them is aligned with my thinking on all issues. It’s a tweedle dee/tweedle dum situation, and…

Not long ago, I visited the Neue Museum and saw Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which (at $135 million) had broken all previous records for paintings. I love Klimt, and I loved the painting. Today I see that the record has been broken again — this time for Jackson Pollock’s “Number 5, 1948”: Hollywood…

The Kerry bumper stickers are still on and passions are high. — Paul Krugman, speaking at Princeton recently. Well, he’s right — at least in my neck of the woods. While there’s a lot of distancing from Kerry going on right now, I don’t expect to see much scraping off of the ubiquitous Kerry bumperstickers…

Via Clayton Cramer, I read this account of the self defense shooting of a mentally ill arsonist who had previously served time for dousing his mother’s day care center with gasoline and setting it on fire: A 25-year-old man who was fatally shot while attacking a stranger Saturday at Westlake Plaza had previously served time…

I’m way too cynical. Even to read ordinary news reports. Reading about a shooting in San Francisco’s largely gay Castro district, my identity politics paranoia was immediately raised: Violence marred the annual Halloween celebration in San Francisco’s Castro district Tuesday when seven people were shot in the 2200 block of Market Street just as the…