Homocon

Wow -- when did this start happening?

"After years of ministering to AIDS patients overseas, evangelical Christians are turning attention to the disease in their own back yard -- and one of the nation's largest and best-known megachurches is leading the way."

Last I knew, the Evangelical leadership rarely made mention of HIV and AIDS at all, and if they did, it was as a subtext to God's displeasure with homosexuality -- though, to be fair to Evangelicals, it's not like I sit in any of their churches or subscribe to their newsletters, so I may be way off base with my observation.

But not if you take Kay Warren's word for it.

"The evangelical church has pretty much had fingers in our ears, hands over our eyes and mouths shut completely," said Warren, the wife of megachurch pastor and best-selling Christian author Rick Warren, whose interest in HIV/AIDS led her husband to sponsor the Saddleback AIDS/HIV Conference for senior Evangelical pastors that coincides with World AIDS Day. "We're not comfortable talking about sex in general and certainly not comfortable talking about homosexuality -- and you can't talk about HIV without talking about both of those things," she added.

As Christian relief and missionary organizations in Africa begin to increasingly deal with the AIDS crisis across the vast Dark Continent, some members within the church have begun questioning why they weren't doing more in their own backyard, and why the Church as a whole was not rising up to face one of the modern world's great challenges.

An enormous amount of personal wealth and energy are invested in Christian relief organizations across the globe, so to hear Evangelical Christians holding open conversations about tackling AIDS not only in Africa, but also in the United States, is a wonder to behold. In 2003 alone, it's estimated that 66% of all Baby Boomer donations went to Church organizations, and when you stop to realize that the Baby Boomer population is the largest and arguably wealthiest segment of America's population, then it only stands to reason that Church Aid Organizations have a big financial stick with which to pound away at the problem of AIDS in both Africa and the United States.

I'm sure Bono will take the help wherever he can get it.

Yet even though religious media sources such as Christianity Today insist that celebrities like Bono are "unaware of the aids relief work that has been done in Africa for years, both by missionaries and by indigenous Christians," the PR gap is not solely the fault of ignorance on the part of pop-culture spokesmen.

“The problem today is that the Church is the body of Christ, but the hands and the legs have been amputated, and all that’s left is a big mouth,” stated Rick Warren, quoting almost to a tee the criticism often leveled against Evangelicals by the non-Christian population, and with loudmouths like Falwell and Robertson at the head of the line, it's often an uphill battle for Evangelical Christians to overcome the negative stereotyping that results whenever either of them scares up yet another headline.

“Most of the time we’re known for what (we're) against," continued Warren. "I’m tired of that. I want the church to be known for what it’s for, not for what it’s against.”

I'm hearing that type of argument a lot, lately.

Workshops at this year's Saddleback HIV/AIDS Conference will include such topics as "Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would".

Uhm . . . *giggle*

ADDENDUM:
The picture I used as the centre photo for this post? It's part of a very, erm, unusual French AIDS campaign. Check it out here -- yikes! Ya gotta hand it to the French. The ad campaign is nothing if not attention grabbing.

Posted by at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As if to prove my point about hard-right conservatives and immigration debate, up crops Michelle Malkin again, leading the charge on the "Kick 'Em All Out and Seal the Borders!" approach to immigration policy. She takes to task the President on his latest speech on immigration, but instead of addressing any potential benefits of illegal immigration to America's economy, or why politicians are so clearly loathe to 1. put a strict crackdown on the borders and 2. just boot millions of working people out of the country, she engages in simplistic responses, such as "We want to make it clear that when people violate our immigration laws, they are going to be sent home and stay at home."

Sheesh -- talk about a nanny-state mentality: "All of you illegal immigrants have been bad. Bad bad bad! So now you can just go back to your country and stay there while you think about what you've done!"

Not very realistic as a piece of domestic policy, is it?

Is illegal immigration a problem? Yes. Is illegal immigration a benefit? Well, if you're going to be an honest broker in the debate, then you have to say "yes" to that, as well. Is it more a problem than a benefit? That's as open to interpretation as global warming, and the arguments are just as passionate. How much does illegal immigration cost our society? How much would cracking down on illegal immigration and deporting all illegal immigrants cost our society? Is the reason we have a problem with illegal immigration because our official immigration policies at present are too restrictive? Is the argument against amnesty because every single illegal alien is considered a counter-productive presence in this country? Can our porous borders be better policed while also relaxing the numbers of immigrants we officially allow into this country?

Malkin does make some great points, and is a welcome contributor to the conversation, but immigration policy is, at the end of the day, a conversation. Malkin treats it, unfortunately, like a monologue, addressing concerns of criminality and the cost to society, but adamantly refusing to address the concerns of an economy that operates at a low unemployment rate and continues to grow, therefore needing more and more workers which the native population and our post-1965 immigration policies cannot presently satisfy.

For a different perspective on immigration policy, and why it may not be in America's best interest to approach immigration policy like a hostile invasion, please visit:

Close Up Foundation for U.S. Immigration Policy: "Before 1965, the United States had been a safe haven from poverty and civil war for masses of people in neighboring countries, such as Mexico. By limiting the number of immigrants from Latin America, the Immigration Act of 1965 touched off a serious illegal immigration problem."

The Manhattan Institute links to a 2002 Wall Street Journal editorial which states: "Existing law articulates no clear argument about how we choose among the millions who want to come to live in the U.S. The INS code contains a mind-boggling array of categories under which a newcomer can apply, yet a full 75% of the 650,000 or so admitted every year are let in on the basis of family ties . . . the lion's share of the 300,000 foreigners who now sneak across the border every year (...) come illegally because, unless they have family here, there is virtually no viable entry category for unskilled worker."

This is not the "Illegal Immigration is bad!" scenario that some would have you believe. We have a problem with illegal immigration for many reasons -- lack of proper enforcement plays a role in this, but so does our presently overly restrictive immigration policy and the fact that our Central American neighbors under-educate and poorly serve their populations. But if the United States economy could afford to simply kick out every single illegal immigrant, because, you know, "who needs that kind of lawbreaking scum in the country!" -- well, don't you think we would? Perhaps we don't take this type of action precisely because it's a bad piece of policy and it would do more to damage our long-term productivity than alleviate any long-term costs, no matter which way you cut it.

This does not have to be an either/or situation -- "Either we deport all the illegals or we collapse as a nation!" And while I appreciate Michelle Malkin's efforts at keeping the topic of immigration reform on the table, she's far more extreme with her solutions than the real world can bear.

Posted by at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

When it comes to the issue of illegal immigration, President Bush is between a rock and a hard place. I'm not certain that there's any pricklier a "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't" item of domestic policy that he has yet to face, and it doesn't make matters any easier when pundits refer to "tightening the borders" as casually as they might approach tightening a loose screw, or the lid on a jar of mayonnaise.

"Mrmph -- there, got it."

Red State smartly observes that "if the President continues to push for a guest worker program it must require that illegal aliens return to their homeland to participate. The idea of a fine being sufficient punishment for coming to the U.S. illegally is simply a nonstarter among conservatives" -- ah, but there's the rub. Conservative after Conservative revels in publishing economic data which shows that the American economy is chugging along at a growth pace, yet almost every single one of these same Conservatives turns away from the cold, hard fact that this economic growth has to at least be partially fueled by the continued influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border.

The accusation, or insinuation, on the part of political critics is that the President could only be talking about an amnesty program, or a guest worker program that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country as their applications are processed, as a cynical attempt to buy off the Hispanic vote for upcoming elections.

Yet both the Democrats and Republicans presented virtually the same policy on illegal immigration reform during the run-up to the 2004 elections: increase the level of legal immigration to the U.S. each year while also supporting policy that would give illegal immigrants presently in the country a path to citizenship.

Prairie Sociology notes that "What is more interesting . . . is that this stance is not necessarily supported by the American public; at least not if we focus our attention on the opinion of non-Hispanic Americans. The apparent disconnect between the policy advocated by politicians and the policy advocated by public opinion makes an interesting subject of study for public sociology."

Interesting indeed. While Prairie Sociology falls into the popular trap of assuming that support for higher levels of legal immigration and/or a type of amnesty program for illegal immigrants is based merely upon the greed for Hispanic votes, could it be possible that there are facets to this conversation which our politicians are talking about but that the rest of us are ignoring, the most important being that even as we're experiencing an influx of millions of illegal immigrants, economic growth continues nonetheless, and often in spite of catastrophic events and global trends?

The Center for Immigration Studies published a paper which noted that the problem with illegal immigration across our southern border is not an unwillingness to work or participate in American society, but rather the lack of skill sets as a result of coming from countries with inferior educational systems -- this prohibits their rapid assimilation into American middle-class culture, while also driving up the costs associated with their presence in this country, costs in the form of low-income assistance, public housing, subsidized health care and food stamps.

While Steven Camarota, the Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies believes that an amnesty will only increase the net costs to society rather than offset them, particularly due to the educational disparity, as, he says, "In other words, if we gave illegal aliens legal status, they would become basically unskilled, for the most part, legal immigrants. And as a consequence, the costs, the net fiscal deficit, would nearly triple."

Yet B. Lindsay Lowell, the Director of Policy Studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University has a slightly more pragmatic view. While Lowell agrees that the educational disparity is a problem, and that the costs associated with the presence of illegal immigration must be addressed, Lowell also asks that we remember that illegal immigrants come to this country, for the most part, to work. And if the cost of having them here is high, then what is the cost of keeping them out? As he stated, "suppose all unauthorized aliens were to leave tomorrow, wouldn't you still need border enforcement?" The costs associated with the presence of a large influx of illegal aliens into the United States wouldn't necessarily decrease to level zero, and yet we'd have a large gain in expenditures as we increased patrolling of the borders, increased funding for the INS and jacked up funding for other policing and enforcement measures, while entirely losing the benefit of an influx of workers willing to take their part in the economic engine.

If the problem is a lack of educational training, is the cost to educate the illegal immigrants greater than the cost to toss them all out and increase funding for greater border security? And if the costs are relatively equal, then which is the wiser choice for a nation which relies on productivity and innovation to retain its place as one of the premier economic engines of the world?

Unfortunately, the culture-wide problem of inadequate education throughout much of Central America brings with it an incidence of higher crime, and the presence of a disproportionate amount of illegal immigrants among our prison population has people justifiably alarmed, and not just over the fiscal costs of clothing, housing and feeding the prisoners, but also over the social costs involved in allowing an influx of criminally oriented individuals across our borders. Yet, instead of pouring billions into increased border security overall, what if we poured those same billions into federal enforcement assistance to only those areas hard hit by an increase in criminal immigrant behavior? We'd still have the benefit of an increased labor force everywhere else, and we could educate future workers in our educational system while successfully containing the elements that don't wish to participate in legitimate business and social opportunities.

The American Immigration Law Foundation suggest that "expansion of the workforce is crucial to sustained growth in the labor-intensive industries that generate the greatest number of less-skilled jobs . . . Immigration fills this gap between native labor supply and domestic labor demand," which, said another way, means that immigration is an essential element in the recipe for a thriving nation. While swelling the welfare rolls is not what any country has in mind as its ultimate goal, if the majority of illegal immigrants are willing to work (as suggested by the Center for Immigration Studies), it's the lack of education that's the largest obstacle to their full participation in American society. So if we take a look at the hard numbers required to fully enforce immigration policies and make our borders increasingly secure against an influx of millions of Central American immigrants, how do those numbers compare to the hard costs involved in legalizing, educating and providing basic services for this same influx?

If what we want, and arguably need, are hard-working educated immigrants, willing to participate in the American system, then are we best served by spending our tax monies on border enforcement to keep immigrants out, especially considering the depressed birth rates of our native population, or are we better served by semi-open borders and an educational system that's been streamlined for the rapid assimilation of an undereducated immigrant population?

If under-education is the biggest problem we face with illegal immigrants, why are we not talking more forcefully about what seems to be the potential system-wide failure of our present educational system to adequately train an incoming immigrant population for rapid entry into the American system? It's one thing to say, "Hey, you're in America, speak the language and get with the program," yet entirely something else to offer a way for the individual to do just that.

While the talking heads theorize over the net costs involved with illegal immigration, it doesn't change the fact that the American economy continues to experience consistent growth, and demands an expanding labor force which the native population is unable to satisfy. This concern is underlined with another quote from the American Immigration Law Foundation's published paper titled, "Economic Growth & Immigration: Bridging the Demographic Divide".

"Labor force growth is the product of two factors: labor force participation and population increase. Given that labor force participation rates in the United States are unlikely to increase, population growth will be the primary source of labor force growth in the years to come. Population growth, in turn, can come from two possible sources: rising birth rates or immigration. In light of the demographic trends of the native-born workforce, immigration will continue to play a critical role in providing the workers needed to sustain overall economic growth."

Talking big about containing and controlling the flow of immigration in lieu of encouraging a systemwide process for rapid assimilation into the American workforce can only breed an American version of the Paris is Burning syndrome we witnessed last month as Muslim immigrants across France indulged themselves in a cultural confrontation fueled by Islamic radicalism combined with economic dissatisfaction. If we're to avoid the same fate in the future, our discussions of how our educational system fails even members of our own native population should expand to include how it may better serve all under-skilled members of the population, including illegal immigrants.

Posted by at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Danjel Bout's blog, 365 and A Wakeup, is probably one of the best blogs I've ever read, and hands down the best military blog I've stumbled across. It's difficult to make war comprehensible, or to explain the grind of war to those of us who are so removed from its simultaneous tediums and emotional devastations and/or triumphs, but somehow Blout manages to cut right through to the core.

His writing style is riveting (seriously -- it reminds me of the contemporary literature I was assigned in college), the content is engaging and often gripping, and his photo albums of life as a soldier in Iraq, as well as snapshots of the Iraqi population and the Iraq landscape in general, are illuminating, to say the least.

You should get yourself familiar with Bout's writing before he lands himself a big fat book deal upon his return to the United States. That way you can say, "I was reading him back when . . . "

Visit Danjel Bout's blog here. To those of you who are already well aquainted with Blout's blog, I can only apologize that it's taken me so long to see the light . . . and why didn't any of you tell me sooner!

Posted by at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, it's one thing to say you want to be the liberal version of the Drudge Report, but it's something else entirely when you simply rip off the look, feel and function of the Drudge Report lock, stock and barrel while presenting it entirely as your own creation.

Can you imagine if a high-profile Conservative website had done this to a high-traffic Liberal internet news destination? There'd be screams of plagiarism, cries of copyright infringement and nasty insinuations that the opposing political side so lacks for ideas of its own that it can't even develop a website without carbon-copying the competition.

Hmmm, now that you mention it . . .

Perhaps this has something to do with Huffington's "somebody else's old is our new" look:

If you can't beat 'em, copy 'em.

Posted by at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A photographic series of four sisters by Nicholas Nixon, a portrait photographer married to the eldest of the four sisters, is now in its 31st year of chronicling the passage of time and its effects upon both the physical and psychological shape of Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie Brown. The idea for the series, titled, simply, "The Brown Sisters", began when Nixon took the first group photo in 1975 upon his marriage to Bebe Brown, then another the next year to commemorate the college graduation of another of the Brown sisters. The collection took on a life of its own from there.

Nixon now has a fascinating photographic visual study on the nature of time and its impersonal influences spanning just over 3 decades. The series of 31 photographs are still on-going ("I intend to keep this one up until I drop, or all of them are gone," he said"), and have been featured in exhibitions from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to its present home in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

"All the photos are the same size -- a little less than 9x10 inches -- and have simple wooden frames. They show the women side-by-side, usually wearing informal clothes, looking straight ahead . . . The sisters are lined up in the same order from left to right: Heather, Mimi, Bebe, Laurie. With few exceptions, the setting is outdoors on a lawn or a beach, and in natural light . . . No matter how many exposures he makes, Nixon selects only one to represent the women each year."

Art critics point out that the series is more than just a gimmick -- it's a glimpse into shifting cultural trends and the quiet maturation of sibling bonds. In some shots, the sisters are physically stiff with one another, while in subsequent photos, they're holding each other close. One curiously striking photo from 1992 shows one of the sisters pregnant, while another lays her hand carefully upon her womb, and all of the photos show the women moving toward less differentiated stylistic definitions.

Michael O'Sullivan at The Washington Post had this to say about Nixon's series: "The temperature of Nixon's photos of the Brown sisters straddles the documentarian's detachment and the emotional intimacy of a family member. They are neither entirely cool nor entirely hot, but somewhere in between . . . in the end, it is not the Brown sisters we end up seeing on the wall, but ourselves."

You can find selected images from Nixon's "The Brown Sisters" here at the Zabriskie Gallery online.

OFF TOPIC:
I think it's time to buy some stock: "Shares of the biotech company (Palatin Technologies Inc.) jumped 20 percent earlier this week after word got out about (their) new sex drug for women."

OFF TOPIC 2:
Thanks to Ala at Blonde Sagacity for nominating Homocon.com for Best LGBT Blog at Wizbang's 2005 Weblog Awards. But, uhm, she forgot to include my URL in her nomination . . . *sigh*

I'll never be Prom King, now.

Posted by at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

What am I thankful for this glorious day in November? I'm thankful that, after receiving the dismal excuse for paperwork that Pajamas Media first sent out when trying to recruit bloggers to their venture, I took one look, said, "Uhm, no" and tossed it into the trash.

Seriously, there's something the matter with OSM Pajamas Media, and it's not just their lack of a business plan. If you announce on your Main Page that you'll have people covering an event "live", well, shouldn't they actually be there, like, LIVE -- at the event?

Case in Point: "BLOGJAM: Thanksgiving Day Coverage, Live!", where a phalanx of bloggers attempt their best Mystery Science Theater 30000 impression of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (though Mystery Science Theater 3000 managed to distinguish itself by being clever, witty and fun, three words I would hesitate to employ in description of PJM). I know it probably seems gauche to point out the obvious, but while they may be "a"-live as they're tapping away at their keyboards, they're certainly not "live" on any scene, or in any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, wait . . . imagination. I see -- it's "live" in the sense that all the little words get posted to the PJM site the absolute moment that they flow, uh, "live" from the minds of such luminaries as Jeff Goldstein (the self-described Andy Kaufmann of bloggers . . . *giggle*). Hmmm, isn't he the one that not-so-live blogged the Republican National Convention? And also not-so-live blogged the OSMtm Launch Party? Ah, it all becomes clear now. It's his schtick, like Carrot Top and Gallagher, or the guy that plays the guitar in his underwear in Times Square.

Yeah, that kind of schtick.

No wonder Matt Drudge never links to bloggers.

I guess this is what the mainstream media is alleged to have been dreading all along -- the launch of a bunch of Conan O'Brien benchwarmers who sit in front of their televisions and rely on MSM news coverage to provide them with enough material to eventually compete with and ultimately replace MSM news coverage.

*scratches head*

Even one of the participating "live" bloggers, Madeleine Simon, stated that the imagination quotient emanating from various quarters of the PJM-isphere's "Thanksgiving Day Live!" blogging event was, well, read it for yourself: "Yayy, it's the real parade. You guys are boring." She then beat a hasty exit.

Smart move, Madeleine.

UPDATE:
As usual, Laurence Simon gets right to the point.

UPDATE 2:
I never thought I'd be linking Laurence Simon and Professor Bainbridge one right after the other, but here's another opinion of the portal formerly knows as OSMtm: "At the risk of descending to a level of crudeness to which this blog rarely goes, the only phrase that comes to mind is 'circle jerk.'"

Ouch! That sizzles.

UPDATE 3:
OMG! Pajamas has their new logo up. I burst out laughing when I saw it.

As one fellow blogger said to me: "Have they made a good move, even by mistake?"

Uhm, no.

P.S.: Wizbang had a much better idea for the new logo.

OFF TOPIC:
And speaking of Jews (well, at least our own lovable Laurence Simon), I offer for your holiday entertainment this amusing account of "Forbidden Love", featuring two young Israeli school girls, a wayward pigeon and Avian Flu at Jewlicious, one of the tastiest blogs on my blogroll.

OFF TOPIC 2:
Okay, like, this is genuinely funny (a smart skewering of Fahrenheit 9/11). Pajamas Media? Who needs them?

Posted by at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I've been listening to the HarperAudio "Chronicles of Narnia" audiobooks on my iPod as a I trundle along on a treadmill at the local gym. My parents read the entire series to us (me and my rather extensive list of siblings, and no, I didn't grow up Catholic or Mormon) when I was a child, and since the upcoming release of a big budget film version of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is just around the corner, my curiosity was piqued as to whether C.S. Lewis' Narnian series would hold up to scrutiny from my now much more critical, adult perspective.

I'm presently on the final book of the series, "The Last Battle", read aloud by Patrick Stewart, and I have to say, in all honesty, that this revisit to the land of Narnia has been just as enjoyable, if not more so, than when I was a child and drifting off into sleep as tales of giants, witches, magic trees, talking animals, a godlike Lion and human children called upon to fulfill complicated destinies which required perseverance, loyalty and inner strength drifted through my consciousness.

I know I keep repeating this (probably to the annoyance of a number of people who read this blog), but while I grew up in a Christian household, I consider myself a firm atheist and don't harbor any secret mystical beliefs that make me consider there might be a god or a heaven or a whatever/whomever out there directing the fate of the cosmos. That said, I nonetheless find it tiresome when I read criticisms of the Chronicles of Narnia for allegedly being "too Christian", as if the opening book in the series, the aforementioned "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is some subterfuge on the part of C.S. Lewis to trick young minds into falling into the trap of the Western world's most powerful spiritual symbols by disguising the whole thing as a children's fantasy.

Steven Den Beste (one of my new regular stops in the blogosphere) makes this observation regarding "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and those who are already complaining that its spiritual themes are a bit too Western for their comfort: "'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe' is the scandalously politically incorrect story of four British children who discover that a magical wardrobe opens up into an entirely new world, where they meet Jesus. OMGWTF! . . . This film doesn't have to be "secular enough for" those who are politically correct in order to make money. In fact, I can think of no better way to destroy this series and make sure it loses money than to make it "secular enough" for the politically correct Hollywood elite."

I mean, I didn't hear anyone in the New York Times complaining about the spiritual content of "Seven Years in Tibet" or "Little Buddha" or even "The Matrix", and yet dare to introduce into the theaters a talking lion that sacrifices its life in order to save a young boy who has unwittingly betrayed his brother and sisters into the hands of an evil witch, well -- run for your lives! The Christians are coming!

I think it's terrific that the Chronicles of Narnia are finally going to receive their big budget due. They're all bang-up stories which focus far more on fantastical adventures and lessons in loyalty, bravery and trust than any particular religious theme. There have been several times as I've been listening to these audiobooks off my iPod when I've been brought to near tears as I huff away on the elliptical trainer. C.S. Lewis knows how to throw one heck of a clean, emotional punch, and I think the success of the entire Narnian series has more to do with their imaginative story-lines, their lack of sexual violence and their decided emphasis on character growth rather than because they were written by a Christian author or because they might have a passing semblance to Christian themes running throughout.

Ross Douthat at The American Scene (a blog that has been on my roll for a while now), has posted his own thoughts regarding the Narnia dust-up among secularists who consider the stories a danger to the minds of impressionable children: "But there's a reason that the West fled from the world of magic into the "necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship," at least for a time, and it has everything to do with what makes Lewis's Narnia books so marvelous - namely, that the fairy story of fauns and talking horses and silver chairs does "bring another message, beyond itself," which is that this myth might be not only beautiful and magical, but true as well. There really is an Aslan - because there really is a Christ."

I don't agree with Douthat's concluding point, but I do like the path he took to get there. "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is so potent a story precisely because of its liberal use of Western theology. It feels like truth, but only because the story rings so familiar to denizens of a culture that has been steeped in Christian symbols and myths since its inception. What C.S. Lewis did that was so maddeningly (at least to his critics) successful is take an old story and make it absolutely new. But really, when you get right down to the bare facts, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is less about Jesus and more about how loyalty to an ideal that's larger than yourself can make one stronger, how true conviction in the sense of one's own worth may actually be the one thing that saves you at your darkest hour, and that redemption from wrongdoing is possible, but only if an individual truly desires to be redeemed.

The critics notwithstanding, I doubt very seriously that Christianity has a corner on the marketplace of these particular themes, so carrying on as if it does, or complaining that advancing a story-line which employs a familiar mythology in order to make a point is somehow dangerous rather than simply entertaining or educational, only cheapens the vast creative expanse of the psyche into which Christianity, and all religions across the world, have so successfully tapped. As Den Beste stated later in his post: "(E)ven if it may be true that 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe' contains a retelling of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, it's hard to see how anyone could interpret 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (another book in the Narnian series -- ed.) as being directly derived from the gospel in any obvious way, let alone 'A Horse and his Boy'. . . . Speaking as an atheist, I'd really like to see Hollywood stop despising Christianity. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Speaking as another atheist, I'd have to agree.

Posted by at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Christopher Barron, the former political director for the Log Cabin Republicans, has been tapped to work for Planned Parenthood in developing "its efforts to reach out to pro-abortion Republicans for support," because, I guess, there's such a huge group of pro-abortion Republicans that a marginalized gay guy is the perfect face for a wider outreach effort.

*rolls eyes*

The Log Cabin Republicans are an ostensibly conservative gay group which, nonetheless, refused to endorse Republican candidate George W. Bush for President in 2004 because of Bush's vocal support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would legally codify marriage into strictly heterosexual terms. In other words, Bush conceded to the long-standing definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and thought it prudent to head-off a national uproar at the pass by initiating a federal amendment to prevent the courts from dismantling marriage as a heterosexual tradition. This got LCR's panties in such a big gay wad that they ran about using terms like "betrayal" and "hijacked by the religious right" all the way up to the actual election, whereas, of course, the Republican candidate that they refused to endorse won, thereby ensuring the Log Cabin Republicans an even fainter voice within the Republican Party than they had before.

Nothing like overestimating one's influence.

Think of the Log Cabin Republicans as a group of excitable, hyper-ventilating Andrew Sullivans, and you've pretty much got it nailed. Self-interested? Oh yes. Conservative. Not particularly, unless the topic is cutting their taxes, but that's about it.

The BF and I flirted briefly with the idea of attending some LCR meetings here in the Seattle area, but after examining the press releases that LCR was shuffling out in the heady days between the start of the Iraq War and the conclusion of the 2004 election cycle, we realized that LCR was just another liberal gay group in Conservative drag.

I suppose one could argue that the Log Cabin Republicans officially see themselves as Spies in the House of the Republicans, or, "changing things from the inside" if you want to be all coy about it, but while gay men and women are becoming a less invisible part of Conservative politics, it's not the pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-gay-military, let's-not-endorse-George W. Bush gay conservatives that hold any positions of real influence. Nor are they likely to.

The gay left has long been synonymous with a plethora of hard left views. Abortion on Demand. Check. Anti-War For Any Reason. Check (and could someone please explain to me the "I'm against all war but let gay people in the military now!" attitude?). Racial and Gender quotas. Check. Party Like It's 1979. Check. So there's nothing revolutionary about members of the gay right traipsing down the same left-swerving paths, nor can I figure out why they'd find it politically expedient to do so.

Amanda Banks, a federal issues analyst for Focus on the Family Action, an outspoken anti-abortion, pro-heterosexual marriage organization, had this to say in a recent interview: "(Christopher Barron) has been employed by one organization (LCR) that works in contradiction to the Republican Party platform, and now he's going to work for another organization (PP) that does the same thing."

And she's speaking about a member of the self-appointed gay conservative political leadership. So, tell me, is gay-marriage and pro-abortion activism the grand plan for how gay conservatives are finally going to get mainstream Conservatives to embrace them into the fold?

OFF TOPIC:
Gay Patriot, I love you for the rest of my life for linking to this video.

Posted by at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The anti-war Democrats in the House explain to their constituency why they failed to vote for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

(***I'm so sorry . . . I couldn't resist! Make sure the sound on your computer is turned down low.***)

Click here for an OSM Update.

OSM UPDATE:
"Excuse us while we change back into our pajamas."

*giggle*

"And oh, what a drubbing we took."

Tee-he-he . . . ha ha ha . . . ah HA HA HA!

"Many, many readers pointed out to us that OSM™ was an oxymoron."

HAAAA -- HAAAAA -- HAAAAAAAA!!!!

"We are re-assuming our identity as Pajamas Media. (Just give us a few days to sort the technical issues out.)"

HAR DE HAR DE . . . *snort* - *gasp* - *cough*

"So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity."

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - *choke*

UPDATE:
"OSM makes bloggers look like buffoons; criticizing it openly and honestly is the only way we can prove we’re not what Dan Rather said we are."

Can I get an amen?

Posted by at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Has it already been a week? Wow -- time flies when you're recording podcasts and making fun of OSMtm. But since I know you've been breathlessly awaiting the next installment of Entertainment Options ("Please, Nathan -- I'm at a loss as to what to rent, and I need your help!"), well, never fear, the Blogosphere's HomoConSexual Entertainment Expert is here!

1. I know you'll consider screaming in horror at this very first recommendation, but the new Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory surprised-thee-hell out of me. It's absolutely nothing like the original film, so don't approach it with any expectations for a feel-good nostalgia trip and you'll be okay. The Oompah-Loompahs were the only disappointment in what was otherwise a whirling, swirling head-trip of a visual feast. For some reason, they used only one person and then duplicated him endlessly as the basis for the entire group of Oompah Loompahs -- and he wasn't even very interesting; I kept thinking to myself, "Is this guy a personal friend of Tim Burton's?" I didn't get it .

Danny Elfman's music is decent enough, until we get to the Veruca Salt song when he lets out all the stops and then it's bubbly, catchy and genuinely, toe-tappingly terrific. In fact, the Veruca Salt number had so much more life and energy than the rest of the songs in the film that it made me wonder if perhaps Danny Elfman identified a little too closely with the Veruca Salt situation -- rich parent who gives his child everything she wants, which turns her into a demanding little monster who's completely out of control . . . ?

Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka teeters on the edge of brilliance without quite falling off. It was like watching the love child of Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson in full-color action, and the only reason to fault his performance is because Gene Wilder did such a bang-up job two decades previous. Burton also ginned up the dark morality-play elements of the thing while downplaying the industrial espionage story-line of the original film, and included more of Roald Dahl's ambivalence towards parents and family than was evident in the first version. Really, if you're in the mood for something oddly different, big-budget and strangely unexpected, you could do far worse. Just don't expect a feel-good film, because it certainly isn't.

2. Speaking of oddly different and unexpected, 1975's A Boy and His Dog will have you laughing right out of the deep dark pit that lurks in a cobwebby corner of your heart (Oh, c'mon, you know it's there!). Steadily paced and low-budget, A Boy and His Dog features a post apocalyptic world, a young Don Johnson, a telepathic talking dog and an underground fascist state. What more could you ask for? Nothing! And the ending is priceless.

3. A good introduction to anime, if you're not familiar with Japanese Animation, would be Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. I mean, really -- you have vampires, violent fight scenes, lots of blazing weaponry and a lovely little Beauty and the Beast subplot that's perfectly creepy in its execution. While full of intense battle scenes, it takes a pass on the sexual violence that's sometimes jarringly present in anime, while even offering a comprehensible story line! Take that, Akira.

4. Did you know that the director of "Trainspotting" made a Romantic Comedy as a follow-up, titled A Life Less Ordinary? You didn't? Why, that's because it bombed abysmally at the box-office -- but not because it's not any good. It actually is. It's also rather surreal, and that's not what people generally expect (or even want) out of their Romantic Comedies. Bonus points: Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo as guardian angles with a rap to beat in order to get back into God's good graces. The one thing wrong with the movie: Ewan McGregor sings.

5. Babe 2: Pig in the City was directed by George Miller, the man behind the Mad Max movies, and it shows. Everything that was sweet, light and sentimental about the original Babe movie was rubbed out in the first 3 minutes of Babe 2. When the farmer's wife gets strip-searched for drugs at the airport, you know you're going to be on a wild ride from thereon in. French Poodle prostitutes, an alcoholic Andy Rooney, an army of wayward animals on the lam from the authorities and a desperate scramble to pay the mortgage on the farm so that it doesn't get repossessed. I loved every second of it. But be forewarned: this movie is very much not for kids, though the message at its core, "Be true to yourself, no matter what horrible circumstances you may find yourself in" is as good a moral lesson as any.

6. If you're just looking for something sweet and utterly disposable, Strictly Ballroom might be the ticket. Set in the bizarro world of Ballroom Dancing competitions, Strictly Ballroom is a Romeo and Juliet story crossed with a bit of The Ugly Duckling and the Swan. The leads are engaging, and the story shoehorns high-drama into a camp setting with the end result of a witty, screwball comedy. When I first saw this film in the theater back in the early '90s, the entire audience erupted into spontaneous applause at the finish -- it was a little startling, but the movie was so "Gee Whiz" fun and affectionately kooky that such an audience reaction was entirely understandable.

7. And while the last movie on my list may be something you've already seen, this goes out to those of you who may not have had the pleasure -- Young Frankenstein is one of my favorite comedies. Mel Brooks was clever once, before he descended into the lazy slop of Spaceballs and the dull middle-aged schtick of Life Stinks (I see that he's at the helm of a new film adaptation of "Get Smart" -- but Steve Carell has been signed for the lead role, so perhaps it'll be comic genius despite the cursed touch of the increasingly wooden Brooks), and Young Frankenstein is his best work. Hilarious performances by Gene Wilder as the young Dr. Frankenstein, Marty Feldman as Igor, Gene Hackman in a cameo role as a blind man offering refuge to the monster, Peter Boyle as the monster and Madeline Kahn as . . . well, Madeline Kahn. And if it's been years since you've last seen this film, then it's definitely worth another look.

Posted by at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As Roger Simon and Charles Johnson of OSMtm bumble their way through criticisms of poor planning, a lack of clarity in their Mission Statement and a confusing rush to launch what essentially boiled down to an unfinished and undefined product, let it not be said that the people of the Blogosphere silently acquiesced in the face of facile jargon, bland web design, hyperbolic self-promotion and bewildering naivety.

One thing the denizens of the Blogosphere wish to communicate to the MSM, the surfers of the web and to the world at large is that OSMtm does not speak for us, it does not represent us, nor does it act in our name.

No $3.5 million VC account, vague press release or party in the Rainbow Room can legitimize the squandering of the good name of the emerging Blogosphere that OSMtm has managed to accomplish with so few people and in such a short amount of time.

Not in our name will OSMtm carelessly trample across the trademark rights of another, smaller media company and then issue cryptic defenses that only confuse everyone who reads them while causing the other, smaller media company to issue a reply that says, in essence, "I think they must be off their meds."

Not in our name will OSMtm publish sloppy metaphors, petulant debates and third-rate satire in the guise of The Best of the Blogs.

As if.

Not in our name will OSMtm call itself “Open Source Media” while simultaneously employing such stringent limitations in their own copyright notice as to make a mockery of the entire concept of “Open Source” anything. Dudes, your cofounder Charles Johnson lives by the cut-and-paste . . . WTF?

We must repudiate the pretensions of OSMtm as a Blogger’s alternative to the established MSM, for, if we, the silent denizens of the Blogosphere, passively allow OSMtm to label itself as the Blogosphere’s challenge to name brand news and recognized journalists, we, the members of the Blogosphere, risk international ridicule and the threat of losing all credibility whatsoever, whomsoever and so forever (amen).

We must change the Blogosphere’s reality by mobilizing the true denizens of the Blogosphere to fight for and save the unsuspecting news consumer and news analysis hound who may inadvertently stumble upon OSMtm and thereby suffer grievous neurological damage (not to mention the potential for physical damage if some such news consumer/hound chokes on his/her disbelief that this is the best that $3.5 million can get you in today’s world).

We know in our hearts and minds that the “reality” of OSMtm is but a mind-spinning nightmare for the true seeker of news, and a tangled web of “If he says he’s Live Blogging the event then how is anyone who doesn’t already know he has a habit of doing this kind of thing supposed to understand that he isn’t actually there?” bafflement for the uninitiated who dare approach its one-trick in-joke.

We draw inspiration from our fellow Bloggers who have refused the enticements of OSMtm, we applaud our fellow Bloggers who have resisted the urge to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements regarding the operations of OSMtm ("Hmmm . . . non-disclosure, Open Source, my head hurts from the irony"), and we affirm the ordinary members of the Blogosphere undertaking the extraordinary act of fleeing for virtual safety as what amounts to a very expensive Vanity Press threatens to destroy all in its path.

We pledge to create a community that supports the satire, mockery and criticism which OSMtm may quite possibly deserve, and we stand with the bloggers throughout the world who fight every day to assure people that "No, really, I'm not a part of OSMtm, I never wanted to be a part of OSMtm, I have no idea what OSMtm is actually supposed to be about and I’d be just as happy, honest, if the whole duct-taped, jerry-rigged affair went away, like, yesterday."

It is our responsibility to stop OSMtm from carrying out its disastrous, bungled, mismanaged and downright embarrassing course as it drags any and all dedicated bloggers down with it, be they members of OSMtm or otherwise, through the unfortunate appearance of mere association.

So join with us as we say: Not In Our Name!

Signed,

*************

UPDATE:
Fun-Nee! And preternaturally witty! But I was always told that people who blog about the pussy they're getting are the ones who aren't actually getting any (hence the time to sit down and blog about it) . . . I suppose I could be wrong. I mean, really, how would I know?

BTW: thanks OSMtm, for making all us "Bushlickers" look bad (but in the context of his post, I would think that Bushlicking would be a gooood thing).

UPDATE 2:
Roger L. Simon's wife has suggested in the comments section of Roger L. Simon's blog (Roger L. Simon is one of the cofounders of OSMtm) that Dennis the Peasant, one of the most vocal (and hilarious, IMHO) critics of OSMtm, be "outed" to his clients (Dennis the Peasant is a CPA. These are her exact words:

"Since I'm posting here anonymously myself, it may seem hypocritical, but what I find most vile about the personal attacks and vitriol are that (aside from Ann Althouse) they usually come from anonymous posters. Even Dennis the Peasant doesn't have the guts to identify himself . . . When Ann Althouse has a post from anonymous Dennis the Peasant (who I would love to see outed so that his CPA clients could find out about the derangement of the individual who prepares their tax returns!) . . . "

I expect, any minute now, to see SimonCo.'s skin burst into flames as a result of its parchment type qualities.

C'mon, guys (and gals), grow a thicker hide and embrace the negative attention. At least you have people talking about you and linking to you. As the BF likes to say -- "The only bad press is an obituary."

UPDATE 3:
Fortunately, Dennis the Peasant has a snappin' sense of humor, and "outed" himself before Ms. Simon could see her way around to it. Thanks to the beauty of linkage, you can now view Dennis the Peasant for yourself in all his obsessive, borderline-deranged glory. He hardly appears the menace that Ms. Simon would have you believe.

UPDATE 4:
Private Radio shows the love . . . the tough love, that is: "Name fiasco part 2: The name makes no sense. It’s Open Source yet it has a trademark symbol with it. Open source is usually associated with computer software. And what’s open about it? The sources are open? To Who? The whole thing is by invitation only. They could have called it Closed Blogging System but CBS was taken."

Ouch. Go read the whole thing.

UPDATE 5:
Houblog has some good advice for Mr. and Ms. Simon -- it starts with "shut" and ends with "up".

"When OSM(tm) debuted, you became a business. When you crossed the line from blog to business, the standards under which you were judged changed. They changed so automatically that no one even thought twice about it — maybe not even once. It was just assumed… by everyone except the principals of OSM(tm). A blogger, just mouthing off on his site, can say pretty much anything at anytime, and nobody cares unless it’s really extreme. But CEO’s and directors? They. Can. Not. Do. That."

He also brings to topic the puzzling actions of bloggers involved with the OSMtm venture as they dart about the Blogosphere answering criticisms of OSMtm's less-than-auspicious entrance into the world with, "Hmph, you're all just so jealous". Jeff Goldstein and LaShawn Barber are predominant in this, and, as Houblog noted, it's embarrassing (not to mention downright silly).

OFF TOPIC
And now that the elbow jabs at Simon/Johnson Co. are out of the way, I think it would be a great idea to head over to Michelle Malkin's site and read the latest post by Brian Maloney on Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe.

"Tonight, the story gets worse: rather than provide a strong voice for freedom and democracy in the region, increasingly suspect South African President Thabo Mbeki has pledged to HELP Mugabe torture dissidents and maintain one of the world's worst human rights records."

Oh my god -- if I had just quoted the above from an OSMtm article, I'd be in violation of their Copyright Notice! Moving right along . . .

Posted by at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hey, kiddios! The latest Pure Idiom Podcast, "Misery Loves Company", is available for download! You can either visit the Pure Idiom Website, or click here for a direct link to the podcast.

The story continues as Nathan and Tinkerbell use the Impossibility Engine to rescue Scott from his hellish Thanksgiving with his relatives in Texas, but when the relatives attack with a baseball bat, the Engine crash-lands in Harriet Miers' backyard. Tinkerbell betrays the two humans for a saucer of milk and a tummy rub, and Harriet, once she discovers she has two secret agents of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in her house, holds them all captive in a delusional attempt to force them to use the Impossibility Engine to change reality and make her the Chief Justice of the whole wide world!

Again, as a reminder, Pure Idiom Podcasts contain explicit language. All impersonations of people and depictions of places and events (real or otherwise) are entirely fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only.

Enjoy!

Posted by at 12:04 AM | Permalink

Oopsie, looks like somebody read the scathing reviews of their off-off-so very far off that it's utterly irrelevant to life as we know it on this planet-Broadway production and didn't like what they saw.

OSM of "Our trade name is OSM, and please note that we have a TM after OSM" has posted what I'm sure they consider a defense to their hubris, and the only thing lacking is a "So there!" at the bottom of the page. Yet in attempting to answer their critics and close the chapter on the discussion of what appears to be bad planning at best, and potential trademark infringement at worst (which is especially egregious when you consider that they've plastered their website with more DO NOT COPY ANYTHING notices than the RIAA -- and this from bloggers who make their living doing the cut-and-paste jive) regarding their dishwater-dull moniker, they only further expose their ignorance.

First off, trademark infringement is a serious matter, but only if the person whose trademark you're infringing decides to sue you about it. From the looks of things, the real Open Source Media isn't about to scare up the funds to engage in a costly, time-consuming legal process that could take years and run into the tens of thousands of dollars. No kidding. There are expert witnesses to hire, people to depose, testimony to scrutinize, papers to file with the court. It doesn't matter that they may have filed for the trademark first, or that OSM might be blatantly using another's trademarked name within and/or as their own -- they have to defend their trademark through the legal system, or they lose the trademark.

What may seem the most cynical part about the entire venture at OSM, is that Roger Simon, Charles Johnson, Glen Reynolds et al. may have actually known all along that they were treading on previously trademarked ground, but concluded that the real Open Source Media wouldn't have the funds or legal wherewithal to defend themselves. Hence, their unbelievably weak "His trade name is Open Source – and Open Source alone. He’s filed a trademark application under Open Source alone, not Open Source Media" defense, which would be akin to my starting up a car company called Chrysler Cars, then saying that Chrysler can't object because they've only trademarked the name "Chrysler" whereas my trademark is under "Chrysler Cars".

I realize I'm simplifying to a great degree, but bear with me.

It's most likely that a trademark under the name "Open Source Media" wouldn't hold water in the first place, considering that it's descriptive, and you can't trademark descriptive terminology such as "Olive Oil" or "Hot Pizza" because that would cause chaos in a free marketplace ("I own the trademark on Olive Oil, so you must cease using the words 'Olive Oil' on your product's label" -- "But I sell Olive Oil" -- "I'll see you in court!"). Nevertheless, "Open Source" has been trademarked by an existing media company, so for OSM to mutter that "Well, we added a word to our trademark, so there's no conflict" is nonsense. They're both media companies, and the new Open Source Media (er, sorry -- OSMtm) creates confusion in the media marketplace, thereby completely and utterly diluting the value of the real Open Source Media's trademark.

And I find it extremely disingenuous for the new Open Sou . . . agh! I find it extremely disingenuous for OSMtm to claim that their trademark is on OSM, and so has nothing to do with Open Source, media or otherwise, even though "Open Source Media" is printed directly beneath their title as an apparent explanation for what OSMtm stands for.

Now, it may come to pass that the trademark office declares that trademarks under the "Open Source" banner may be invalid, as the term "Open Source" is, to my mind (and possibly to theirs if the case is argued correctly), completely descriptive, which is what OSMtm is saying, and this would make any trademark infringement argument obsolete -- but only after a lot of expensive legal wrangling. But my question regarding that point is, can you trademark the initials for a descriptive term? Especially when you're printing the descriptive term beneath the initials as an explanation for what your trademark stands for? Because this is what OSMtm's argument essentially boils down to, and I have a feeling they might be full of crap (sorry, Laurence -- didn't mean to dilute your mark).

Attorney blogger Venkat posts over at Begging to Differ: 1. Trade names, corporate names are largely irrelevant. The critical issue in this context is priority (who used the mark first) and likelihood of consumer confusion (whether there is a likelihood consumers will be confused). Pretty darn likely in this case. 2. OSM considers "Open Source Media to be a description of what [they] are and do . . . ." That in itself may be enough to kill your trademark application. NOT the sort of the thing you want to say if you are trying to trademark either "OSM" or "Open Source Media." 3. "[Lydon's] URL is RADIOopensource, and he’s given up opensourcemedia.net." The domain name is completely [correction: largely] irrelevant from a trademark perspective.

My sentiments, exactly.

OSMtm's invocation of a URL for a defense means diddley-squat. I can have a trademarked name and not own the URL of that trademarked name, but it doesn't make my trademark any less valid (and since I own the trademark, I could probably sue to get the URL taken away from the person who does own the URL of my trademarked name -- just ask Coca Cola, who during the heady days of cybersquatting sued everyone in the world who bought up all the variants of the Coca Cola URLs since they owned worldwide trademark privileges, though it depends on which came first, the ownership of the URL or the trademark), just as owning a URL to a name doesn't automatically grant someone special trademark privileges over another ("What? You have a trademark? Well, I have the URL, so there!").

There's also an overwhelming number of OSM trademarks already in existence. Just check with the trademark search web-page . Which begs the question: why, if you're attempting to start a media company to appeal to advertisers, would you choose to trademark a name that's already so widely used as to make it fairly indistinguishable in the global marketplace?

Putting all other trademark issues to the side, it's shaping up to look like a $3.5 million dollar media company trampling across a much smaller and fractionally funded media company, and then stubbornly refusing to admit the error of its ways and correct the issue.

Isn't this precisely the kind of situation that our shining New Media was supposed to avoid?

I swear, it's like the people behind OSMtm are not only stuck back in 1989 when no one knew anything about the Internet and Internet law, but also stuck on stupid. I think it's high time for OSMtm to back up, wipe off its shoes and apologize to everyone else for tracking sh*t all across the nice new blog carpet. While this Rainbow Room launch party may have been intended to legitimize blogging in the eyes of the public, I think it only served to create a Point and Laugh situation around the watercoolers at the MSM newsrooms.

No wonder the lawyers over at PowerLine wouldn't touch OSMtm with a ten foot pole.

Heh. Indeed. Whatever.

ADDENDUM:
Stephen Den Beste makes this pertinent observation: "You don't get to use an acronym of someone else's trademark as your own trademark in order to compete with them in the same market. You don't get to use someone else's trademark as a motto on your product, especially if you're competing in the same market."

ADDENDUM 2:
I suppose we could be grateful they didn't name it Little InstaSimon.

ADDENDUM 3:
Glen Reynolds displays a surprising inability to even comment on the criticisms of OSM. When the Huffington Post started up, he linked to criticisms here and here, linked to the Greg Gutfeld hubbub here (while also linking to a number of Gutfeld's satirical posts which slam the Huffington Post), criticized the Huffington Post directly here and here, and there are even more links and comments regarding the Huffington Post beyond those cited.

But link to criticisms of content and policy at OSM? Heavens, no. Anybody reminded of the allergy to criticism, and the desire to shape the discourse through omission, displayed at, oh, say, the NYTimes?

Granted, this isn't the story of the century, but are our top bloggers becoming what they fear the most? "No, don't look over there -- you don't want to read about that, and I don't want to talk about it, especially because I'm involved in it and getting paid a tidy sum (plus bonuses) for my efforts. Instead, let's talk about . . . well, me!"

LAST WORD:
And this just about sums it all up, boys and girls.

OKAY, SO IT WASN'T THE LAST WORD:
Radio Open Source, run by the original Open Source Media, has noted on their website that the founders of the new Open Sou . . .*ahem*, OSMtm, have rewritten the notice on their website about the name confusion, and are deeply puzzled that this little tidbit is now included (where once it wasn't): "There are other Open Sources. A gentleman named Christopher Lydon has an excellent web site called Open Source. His URL is www.radioopensource.com, and he graciously agreed to give us opensourcemedia.net."

Open Source Media, Inc. has this to say in reply: "This is just not true. And weird. We didn’t graciously agree to give them anything. We’ve never talked to them. They didn’t answer our email."

Really, I don't have anything against OSMtm, except for the obvious fact that they seem like complete bunglers, but the sooner they stop trying to beat this dead horse and simply come up with another name, the less painful it will be for everyone involved. I mean, OSMtm is a fricking web portal without much traffic in the grand scheme of things, stuffed mostly with B-List to C-List writers that no one in the non-rarified air of the blogosphere even knows exist. So their odd little cha-cha-cha about their ill-advised name selection that's been going on from day one seems to signify that they want to get sued, because, really, did they spend so much money on business cards and stationary that they've already hit the point of no return?

The people who criticize the critics of OSMtm seem not to understand that the level of criticism towards OSMtm circulating throughout the blogs is merely a reflection of the level of disappointment and frustration over the underwhelming and badly planned nature of the entire venture. "We are blogs -- hear us fall flat on our face!"

Excuse me while I slowly back away.

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Is it just me, or does the whole OSM media thing, uhm, well, underperform in the reality vs. hype department? I certainly hope they don't think they're going to be giving the MSM a run for its money with that sterile, lifeless excuse for a website. And I hardly think advertisers will be banging down the door.

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Oh, thanks Peggy Lee -- so that must be why they're throwing an NY gala! Let's break out the booze and have a ball with keynote speaker . . . Judith Miller? Nothin' like slapping the face of the Mainstream Media just as you expect them to cover your big coming out party. Whose farce of an idea was that?

Other initial impressions of OSM have also been less than stellar:

1. "It’s designed to sound pretty impressive, but to be honest with you, upon examination it seems like it was written to defuse some of the criticisms I (as well as others) have been making about Pajamas’ lack of advertising... and lack of either a strategy or an infrastructure to acquire advertising to generate revenue. A close reading suggests this is all sizzle and no steak." -- Dennis the Peasant

2. "They've taken a couple of guys on board which is supposed to have "strengthened its advertising and sales team." The previous strength of PJ Media's "advertising and sales team", as far as anyone can tell, was zero. So 0+2 = strengthened." -- Unfair Witness

3. "Pajamas, as I understand it, wanted to be an ad network. I don’t see huge advertiser demand for a bunch of mostly conservative political bloggers. At one time, they wanted to be some sort of syndicate but I said nobody would buy content. It seems they now want to be some sort of blog central thing — antimatter to the Huffingtonpost’s matter, I suppose — but the difference is that most of her people don’t blog while most of these people already do blog so I don’t know why I need to see a collection of them." -- Buzz Machine

4. "But, to be honest, I'm not sure I've completely wrapped my head around the whole Pajamas concept. At first, I thought it was an ad network. Then I thought it was to be a portal for select blogs. But some of the things Roger mentioned made it sound an awful lot like a news organization -- there are going to be "editors" in Sydney, LA and Barcelona for 24-hour "coverage" of stories that bloggers will submit." -- The Adventures of Chester

5. "Bloggers are up in arms at David Corn's decision to join the editorial board of Pajamas Media, a consortium of mostly conservative bloggers with a hazy mission and lousy design." -- AlterNet

While the above seem to be mostly lefty sites with an axe to grind against anything conservative (except Dennis the Peasant), and since OSM appears to be unabashedly conservative (well, except for that pesky David Corn), it would only follow that the liberal knives would be drawn. Nonetheless, not-liberal Dennis the Peasant posted a rather eye-opening rant on his website over his initial involvement in, and then subsequent getting-booted-out-of, OSM, which bears a looky-loo for tabloid style entertainment purposes, if nothing else.

Best quote: "My impression from Day One was that Roger truly believed that the sheer brilliance of our idea would have advertisers knocking at our door sans much effort . . . Beyond that, there’s the matter of simple, basic expertise (if you want to call it that) in business itself. The documents Pajamas Media sent to those wishing to sign up were beyond dreadful. Their business plan, such that it was, would have been laughed at by any venture capitalist or businessman worth his salt. It was amateur hour. And that would be what you’d expect from two guys with absolutely no business experience who ditched two guys with professional training in business who had each started and developed their own (successful) businesses."

Politico differences with some of OSM's critics notwithstanding, I have had (and still have) the same (un)impression of Simon's sparkly, rose-colored vision for OSM: "If you build it, they will come."

Hmph, that may be a great tag-line for a Hollywood film, but it has very little to do with reality. Just take a gander at Huffington Post. And about the documents Pajamas sent out to those who were interested in signing up? Yeah, I got those documents, too. "Beyond dreadful" doesn't even begin to describe them, though it's a start. And when I wrote back and asked for a copy of the business plan so that I could see why in the h*ll they were talking about "millions of dollars" in investment to get what was essentially a group-blog project moving, I received the big Nada in reply.

Never a good sign.

And now I hear that the name "Open Source Media" is already trademarked -- by someone else! . . . (and here's a link to where they notice who's noticing). God, what a trainwreck.

Note to Dennis the Peasant: Why have I never heard of you before? You're so on my blogroll, like, yesterday!

ADDENDUM:
And while I rarely read Ann Althouse (maybe once every couple of months), I find it utterly hilarious that while she's offering valid criticism of the OSM site and model, OSM founder Charles Johnson throws a pissy little snit and his loyal LGF comment-crowd launches into attack mode against Althouse because, well, because Charles Johnson is throwing a pissy little snit.

The most telling thing she says (and the biggest problem I had with the whole Pajamas Media/OSM development): "Everyone who signed on is now stuck with the presentation on that website that we were not able to see when we were asked to sign on to 18-month commitments."

Face it, Simon and Johnson -- the website for OSM is dull dull dull, and now, honestly, everyone who is stuck with it is not going to be happy about it (I know I wouldn't be). But, as Dennis the Peasant said, perhaps OSM really is about just creating a high-traffic site that Simon and Johnson can quickly turn over for some cash in pocket, pay each other hefty little dividends (beyond their hefty little salaries) and then walk away. That might explain the surprising lack of long-term planning, and the averse reaction to criticism from their peers ("Shhh, don't say anything -- you'll kill my cash cow!").

ADDENDUM 2:
Speaking of cash cows -- Open Source radio says $3.5 million dollars in Venture Capital was raised by OSM. It certainly didn't get spent on web design, or the tossed-off logo, or trademark research for their name, or genuine office space. Is anybody asking where the money went and/or is going? How much you wanna bet you don't get an answer.

I also notice that top conservative blog PowerLine is not only not a part of OSM, but also isn't - saying - one - word about the launch of OSM.

Interesting.

ADDENDUM 3:
A commenter on Ann Althouse's site made this pointed, and absolutely spot-on, analysis of Charles Johnson's individual blog "Little Green Footballs":

"Charles doesn't spend nearly enough time interacting with his commenters in a way that keeps the tone on his site non-toxic . . . I am grateful that someone is doing the exhausting work of archiving together every terror story and a number of adjoining themes. It is good to see one place that tries to look at the war on terror in a unified way. Unfortunately, I think that there is some element of Nietsche's line "Stare not into the abyss too long or the abyss will begin staring into you". Unrelentingly paying attention to the evil nihilism of Islamofascism and documenting the seemingly willful lack of interest in confronting it by western civilization - as well as a side dish of tracking anti-semitism - would make anyone a bit toxic. I think this weakens his message (though it's a message) I largely agree with."

Another commenter posted this:

"LGF used to be a very different place, about 30 or so months back. Sigh. The front page is still useful. Beyond that ... Kos in reverse. Sometimes the opposite of a bad idea is also a bad idea."

Amen, to both of them.

ADDENDUM 4:
And because I think it fair that when I criticize, I also scrutinize, I've been wandering back to the OSM site all day. Which means, unfortunately, that I ran across this piece of utterly childish political footstomping that's labeled a "debate" between 4 members of OSM: Austin Bay, Max Sawicky, Brad Friedman and Sgt. Mom.

So let me get this straight (if you'll pardon the pun) -- this is what's supposed to be redefining the discussion: "You're wrong!" "No, you're wrong!" "No, you're a hypocrite!" "No, you're reprehensible!" "It's a Debacle!" "You're unreasonable!" "You're shrill!" "A big lie!" "I'm outta here!" "Fool!"

Jesus Jewish Christ -- I forced myself to read the whole thing, and it made me nostalgic for the New York Times and Maureen Dowd. No thanks.

Posted by at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Agh! And people complain about our health care system?

"A woman died in a Calcutta hospital after ants ate one of her eyes as she was recovering from a cornea operation, media reports said Tuesday . . . when her bandage was removed the next day they found big black ants nibbling at her eye."

There goes the vacation to Calcutta.

Shudder.

But hey, the Calcutta ants may be eating eyeballs, but the Japanese still don't want our beef in the wake of 2003's Mad Cow scare (yeah, I know, it's not the best transition from one subject to another, but you'll get over it).

New Japanese Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai resisted what he termed "aggressive negotiation" from United States farm-region senators who are threatening $3.1 billion dollars in trade sanctions against Japan for its continued ban on beef imports, ostensibly becuase a panel of Japan's independent Food Safety Commission said in October that beef from American cattle is safe if "risk materials" that could transmit the disease are removed, yet Japanese consumers are still leery about American beef, enabling an extension on the ban of beef imports into Japan and angering the representatives from beef producing states.

"I've said time and time again, there is little risk of BSE in U.S. beef, but it is obvious that we have not yet convinced key trading partners of that,'' stated Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Risk Materials that could transmit the BSE disease are materials that are known to harbor the highest concentrations of the infectious agent, such as the brain, skull, eyes and spinal cord of cattle 30 months or older, and a portion of the small intestine and tonsils from all cattle, regardless of their age or health.

Yeesh. Brain, skull, eyes, tonsils and spinal cord? That's as good an argument against ground beef as I've ever heard.

"Don't make a great fuss just because we don't import your beef," Nikai said. "We are making an effort toward a decision (on lifting the ban), but don't push us . . . (US) beef will be accepted by the Japanese on condition that consumers are willing to buy and eat it."

Taking fully adequate steps to remove risk materials is a step in the right direction toward the lifting of the ban on U.S. beef, and something our beef industry should have been doing since the 1980's, when Mad Cow Disease began cropping up in the UK. Over 150 people worldwide have now died from contracting the human variant of Mad Cow Disease, and federal investigators have criticized the government's testing procedures as too little and too slow, citing instances of animal proteins that still crop up in cattle feed despite a U.S. ban on animal protein additives since 1997, plus the fact that despite testing 1,000 cattle a day, the number of cows tested is still only about 1 percent of the total 45 million adult cows in the United States.

Japan began its ban on U.S. beef imports in December of 2003 after one cow in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease, followed by a second cow found in Texas in June of 2004.

Posted by at 12:19 AM | Permalink

Hilarious article off the AP today, titled: "Bush Escalates Bitter Iraq War Debate" -- well, okay, but I find it kind of funny that defending a policy that over half the Democratic Senate voted to authorize is seen as "escalation" on Bush's part, when the only reason that the President is saying what he is at present (i.e. reminding the Democrats that they voted to give the President the power to go to War against Iraq) is because the DNC and MSM have been steadily ratcheting up the decibels on the "Bush Lied" meme to the point where it's drowning out anything that even remotely resembles logic or rationality.

The only reason the debate over the Iraq War is "bitter" is because the mainstream press has blown its wad rah-rah'ing the likes of anti-semitewar mom Cindy Sheehan, cheerleading the bogus indictment of Tom DeLay and pulling out all their guns in a vain snipe-hunt for Karl Rove, all while resolutely erasing and/or revising pre-2003 statements that might agree with the current administration's pre-war stance on Saddam Hussein's WMD programs.

Even Bill Clinton spent the weekend attempting to revise his flaccid little legacy, complaining that his impeachment "was an egregious abuse of the Constitution and law and history of our country" while steadfastly ignoring the ugly fact that the reason historians will simply skip right around any of his potential accomplishments is because they were overshadowed by the tawdry embarrassment he caused the American people.

Anti-War lefties may foam at the mouth regarding the Bush presidency, but it's because they hate what he stands for: naked capitalism, national pride and a strong foreign interest, all qualities that Conservatives believe are the cornerstones of a strong America. Anti-Clinton Righties, on the other hand, foam at the mouth over Clinton because he was cheap and sleazy (well, that and because his administration was spilling nuclear secrets to anyone who would listen). Apparently, Clinton believed his mandate as Chief Executive of the Nation was to fiddle with his zipper, playing "hide the salami" in the Oval Office while he should have been paying attention to North Korea thumbing its nose at the “Agreed Framework”, his own Justice Department's heavyhanded bungling of the Elian Gonzalez affair and Waco, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, the first WTC bombing in 1993 and the bombings of our embassies in Africa -- turning the office of the presidency away from anything resembling leadership and moving it smack center into tabloid fodder as a result. If anything, Bush has struggled since day one to restore public faith and trust in an office that Clinton valued less than his morning erection.

But hey, why face facts when you can simply engage in the new Democratic strategy -- revise and conquer! White Phosphorous? Chemical Weapon! Senate Intelligence Report? I been hoodwinked! Nasogastric tube feeding? Torture! Can Joe Wilson be trusted? Karl Rove must resign! Forged CBS documents? Fake but accurate! Progress in bringing democracy to Iraq? It's another Vietnam! U.N. scandal? George Galloway is a hero! And so it goes . . .

But, of course, left-leaning media bias has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this -- it's all the fault of Fox News (or maybe Wal-Mart). Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha!

OFF TOPIC:
I just ran across this article by Brian Van de Mark in the Gay & Lesbian Times (GLT) titled, "Gay Republicans – an oxymoron?" Usually, when articles that deal with the topic of Gay Republicans appear in a Gay/Lesbian publication, it's a total hit job disguised as a dialogue. This time, however, it's not a total hit job, and I'm a little surprised at the apparent searching attitude about the whole piece. It's as if Lefty gays have suddenly woken up to the fact that not everyone wants to be just like them, and that it's the height of hypocrisy to demand that the 95% heterosexual majority tolerate their differences if they can't even tolerate philosophical differences within their own ranks.

It's not the brightest article you'll ever read, and there are still traces of this strange, foot-stomping "Well, stop sipping your martinis at our trendy gay bars if you're not going to be the right kind of Right-wing gay!" -- as if the meth-addled, STD-ridden go-go boy at the club is A-Okay because at least he's out. But it's bright enough for now, and it's a start.

Money quote: “If I had to choose between joining a crowd or making a difference, I would choose to make a difference."

Posted by at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Since it's the weekend, I thought I might offer a few off-the-beaten-track suggestions for movie rental entertainment. Below is a small list of titles that you might not otherwise have considered, but which I think are worth taking home for a spin.

1. One of my now favorite 1970's "horror" films, the B.F. is responsible for introducing me to the pleasure of Demon Seed, which wins kudos for its attempt to create a full-fledged techno-horror flick warning of the impending dangers of creating Artificial Intelligence ("It'll get out of control, kill your men and rape your women!"), and also for its gratuitous environmentalism sloganeering ("I will not allow man to rape the planet (but pardon me while I rape his woman and create a new master race -- yee-haw!)". Julie Christie stars as the wife of a brilliant scientist who's imprisoned by his creation, and she plays the part as though she can't quite make up her mind that being impregnated against her will by a domineering and murderous Artificial Intelligence is a bad thing. Totally cheesy. Vastly amusing.

2. An understated and yet thoroughly engrossing film, Primer is a minimalist, talky little flick about two science-geeks who build their own time-machine, and then grow entirely paranoid toward each other as they use it over and over and over again for their own purposes. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, it's a high-concept story in a low-budget wrapper. Perfect for you if you liked the movie Pi.

3. Battle Royale had me turning Japanese in, like, a minute. Violent and compelling (in a live action, anime kind of way), it tells the story of a future where Japanese society has been hijacked by teenagers run amok. Adult society strikes back by kidnapping the sassy little brats and isolating them on an island, then forcing them to fight each other to the death. There can be only one. The little brats, of course, go at it with gusto, except for the typical Romeo and Juliet who attempt desperately to escape the island prison rather than savagely murder one another. They find unexpected help in the shape of a mysterious fellow player in the game who knows more than he's letting on.

4. In the documentary department, Devil's Playground is a fascinating examination of Amish teenagers during the tumultuous period which the Amish call "rumspringa", a period in which the Amish allow their teenagers to experience what life is like in the outside world so that they can make their own decision as to whether they want to remain Amish, or go "English" (outsider). This documentary shows the Amish teenagers drinking, smoking, dancing, getting jobs, dealing drugs, ditching their Amish wear and hanging out at the mall. I never knew that Amish teenagers were given a grace period in which to make up their own minds about remaining Amish or joining the outside world.

5. Colossus: The Forbin Project is one of the B.F.'s favorite movies. It, too, deals with the topic of Artificial Intelligence, and pre-dates War Games by, like, 13 years. Colossus is the story of a computer program developed by the military for defense purposes, but once it's activated, it realizes that it has a counterpart in the Cold War era Soviet Union, and demands access to its equal. Humans are doomed. Funny.

6. Cypher: Okay, I just love Jeremy Northam ("Emma", anyone?). That's reason enough, mmkay? What? It isn't? Fine -- mind control, corporate spying, explosions and Lucy Liu. What more do you need? Rent it! Now!

7. Friends and Family: The only gay movie I would ever recommend (because most gay movies are horrendously written, acted and produced), and the only gay movie the NRA might possibly endorse. The two protagonists balance their loyalty to each other against their loyalty to the mafia boss who thinks they're the best employees he's ever had. The gay leads are (relatively) strong and sexy instead of stereotypically faggy, dying of AIDS and whiny about their oppression at the hands of straight society. Need I say more?

ADDENDUM:
I realized with horror that I hadn't included a single Bruce Campbell movie on my list. The Shame! With the conviction firmly planted in my heart that no true entertainment list can be compiled that leaves off the likes of Mr. Campbell, I must therefore recommend . . . uhm . . . erm . . . something that he's barely in, like, say, "The Hudsucker Proxy" -- which is my favorite Cohen Brothers' movie (even though it stars the execrable Tim Robbins). The rest of the cast is terrific (Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney, Jennifer Jason Leigh), the computer graphics are dandy and the story is a wildly entertaining stand-off between good and evil. And it has Bruce Campbell in it!

Posted by at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I just wanted to post a brief commemoration of Veteran's Day in honor of my oldest brother, who served in Vietnam, my father, who served in WW2, and my grandfather, who served in WW1. They all spent years of their lives in service to this country, and I'm proud of each of them for that.

I also want to give a shout-out to Brad Jr. for his current and very valuable service in the Marine Corps -- thanks, Brad! You rock!

There are other gay Conservative bloggers (yes, really, there are others) who are observing Veteran's Day with posts of their own. Feel free to visit: Gay Patriot, Gay and Right, Charging Rhino, Gay Orbit, The Malcontent, North Dallas Thirty and Cake or Death.

And don't forget to stop by Blonde Sagacity, one of my favorite pro-military bloggers with a very personal connection to the U.S. Armed Forces. It's through her site that I found this post at Stop the ACLU -- a terrific and rather extensive list of links to blogs that are commemorating Veteran's Day.

You can observe Veteran's Day by offering a donation to the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, a fund that's been set up to help provide educational opportunities for the children of military veterans who have been wounded or killed in battle.

And, finally, here's a terrific link to Michelle Malkin's blog, where she posts an excerpt from a speech by the President that has been long overdue. Here's an excerpt from the excerpt (but please, visit the link to read more):

"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war . . . The stakes in the global War on Terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our Nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory."

Can I get an amen?

Posted by at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here it comes: "Authorities in China said Thursday they have quarantined 116 people in northeastern Liaoning province after two new outbreaks of bird flu there. The province has now suffered three outbreaks in less than three weeks despite a massive campaign to contain the virus."

And there it goes: "The entire Middle East region has been worried about possible outbreaks because the region sits on important migratory routes for birds. Migratory birds have already spread the virus to Russia, Turkey and Romania. "

You know, I hear people continue to pooh-pooh the Bird Flu because they're pretty sure the danger of human to human transmission is pretty low. But that's not my only concern, and shouldn't be yours, either. The global spread of H5N1 will decimate the poultry industry, costing millions of jobs and billions of dollars in damage. As I'd mentioned in a previous posting, Brazil's main export is poultry and poultry products, so the global spread of H5N1 threatens not only human immune systems, but national economies.

Consider this before you casually dismiss the topic of the Bird Flu -- entire economies could take drastic hits if the Bird Flu gets out of control. The U.S. poultry industry has suffered a 22% decrease in the last 4 years due to global concerns over animal health and trade (remember how the recent Mad Cow scare socked the cattle industry right in its solar plexus?), and that's without a major Bird Flu outbreak here in the states. It's estimated that the global damage to agricultural sectors could reach into the trillions, with trade slowing down and nations isolating themselves in precaution. It's important that we encourage our government representatives to stay on top of this. The last thing any of us should want (or need) is an H5N1 wrench tossed into the present international economic scene.

In other news: Can we please (PLEASE!) send Barbra Streisand to Paris? I can think of a few wacky Muslim teenagers who'd just adore her wisdom and pithy insight into world affairs . . .

Speaking of Paris, Islamic groups are quickly attempting to disassociate themselves from the Paris rioters -- at least, publicly. And it's particularly notable whom they're blaming for what an article on ABC News laughably describes as "civil disobedience": "Those gangs are not Muslims, their heroes are American rappers like 50 Cent . . . these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture," says an article in Aljazeera titled, "Those are not Muslims". "This is the culmination of a series of events and it has very little or nothing to do with quote-unquote (Muslim) extremism."

Quote-unquote. Nice touch. Very Western, ironic and oh so Bill Maher.

But I get it. They're not Muslims. This whole mess is not the fault of Islam or Islamic Imams enjoining the faithful to convert the stinking infidels or kill them in the process; rather, it's our fault, the fault of The Great Satan for filling the heads of the poor hash-addled ragamuffins with the likes of 50 Cent -- those sweet teenage street urchins who just want so badly to get a job and contribute to French society.

But wait! There's more: The Union for Islamic Organizations of France issued a fatwa declaring: “It is formally forbidden to any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life.”

Wow. Talk about colossally late to the party.

So, okay, let me see if I have this straight: the rioters in Paris are not "real" Muslims (quote-unquote), and certainly not associated in any way with "real" Islamic fundamentalism (quote-unquote) because they smoke hash and go to clubs and are corrupted by American rap music and American street culture, plus they indiscriminately attack property and murder people, and that is so not what a "real" Muslim (quote-unquote) is about. A "real" Muslim (quote-unquote) follows the precepts of Islam with an inspired devotion, and doesn't participate "in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life," (quote-unquote) like this, or this, or this, or this, or this.

Thanks, Aljazeera, I think I understand now. I've been so blind and have had it all so terribly wrong since September of 2001, because attacks like those on New York (twice!) and Madrid and London and Bali and Jordan (to name only a few, really), and now the riots in Paris, you know, those blind hits on private or public property that could constitute an attack on someone's life -- well, now I know that I've seen it all wrong, and have nothing at all to be concerned about from any "real" Muslims (quote-unquote), because a genuine follower of Islam who seeks divine grace and satisfaction would never even think to blindly hit at property or attack someone's life . . .

Posted by at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pardon me while I indulge in some commentary of the results of our statewide elections.

I suppose you could say that I'm "stung" by the re-election of Ron Sims as King County Executive. Despite a dismal performance record, and a governor's election that was notorious nationwide for evidence of incompetence and abysmal oversight by King County's electoral board, Sims managed to hold on to his seat for a third term.

During the recounts in the 2004 Gubernatorial election, King County elections officials acknowledged numerous errors, including counting the votes of dead people and felons whose voting rights had not been restored, overlooking more than 100 mail-in ballots until it was too late to count them, interpreting provisional ballots and running them through the machines before the votes could be properly vetted, and so on.

It was a mess, the recounts were expensive and the voting process in Washington State suffered a hit to its reputation. There were some, such as Stefan Sharkansky over at Sound Politics, who campaigned tirelessly to get Ron Sims booted from office this election, claiming that election reform without replacing Sims is D.O.A., but to no avail. It was always a long-shot in getting a Republican elected King County Executive in such a prevailingly liberal and Democratic region, and apparently David Irons wasn't the one to beat the odds.

I am, however, pleased that the initiative to repeal the gas tax was defeated. King County voters have a terrible habit of stripping away all city government revenue and voting down every tax increase, all the while screaming that nothing is getting done. It was a relief to see that enough people realized that this kind of behavior can't go on indefinitely if we're to have a city that holds itself together. There's a big difference between cutting bureaucratic waste and bleeding the city dry, and we need the tax gas money to maintain the aqueducts and our floating bridges (which I have to cross every day on my way to work) -- both highly expensive projects to maintain.

But the increasingly expensive and wasteful monorail plan went down for defeat. Hooray! Now let's figure out something else for mass transit, and fast; traffic in Seattle is a nightmare (Metroblogging Seattle suggests that the success of Vancouver, B.C.'s monorail project was precisely because the city leadership didn't leave the designs, approval or funding up to votes by the public, calling into question the wisdom of voter initiatives for expensive mass transit projects).

And I was surprised to see that the initiative for medical malpractice reform was defeated. In fact, we had two proposed reforms -- one sponsored by the medical community and the insurance companies, and the other proposed by attorneys. They were both defeated. No one argued that nothing needed to be done, but apparently neither of the initiatives satisfied enough of the voters. Perhaps it was simply too specialized an issue. Reform across the entire legal system would prick up everyone's attention, but when it's narrowed down to strictly medical malpractice reform, it's hard for those with little to no experience in either the medical community or the legal field to dig into or get behind it.

Now, on to 2006! Though, unfortunately, Dino Rossi's decision not to join the race for the Senate has robbed a lot of potential drama from next year's proceedings . . .

IN RELATED NEWS:
"Ouch . . . that's gotta hurt," and "Gee, what a surprise -- thanks for nothing, Gavin Newsome!"

Posted by at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the "Be Careful Where You Point That Thing" department, the attempted takedown of Karl Rove by the more leftward leaning elements of the press (for allegedly outing a debatably undercover CIA employee) may just turn around and sink their own leaky ships.

Today's modern press exists, for good or for ill, on leaks from various governmental bodies, which makes the press' decision to paint the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame affair in criminal colors in order to sink the Bush Administration and scuttle popular support for the Iraq War a head-scratchingly bad idea -- now any and all informational leaks, especially those involving classified CIA material (or any classified governmental material), will be up for investigation and potential prosecution, with more and more journalists compelled to reveal their anonymous sources or go to jail (and the idea of scores of journalists spending time in the pokey on principle looks pretty shaky when you consider that they can't even cover a cushy celebrity trial without complaining about the food).

Gentlemen, kiss your sources goodbye.

While the DNC, the MSM and the CIA danced a little jig over the indictment of Libby, the morning-after has proved to be a different story entirely.

Did the likes of the NY-Times honestly not realize that they were shredding the credibility of "the public's right to know" argument for a journalistic shield law by turning their own attack dogs on administration officials who considered that, well, the public has a right to know who was behind Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, and what his motivations might have been behind his critical (and what the Bush Administration considered outright deceptive) op-ed in the Times?

Or was it just one of those "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" moments?

As Max Boot states in the LA Times' "Plamegate's Real Liar": "So much for the lies that led to war. What we're left with is the lies that led to the antiwar movement. Good thing for Wilson and his pals that deceiving the press and the public isn't a crime."

ADDENDUM:
And get a load of this howler from Newsday: "We have never before had the chief of staff of a sitting U.S. vice president indicted for lying to a grand jury," as if somehow the indictment of a Republican VP's Chief of Staff (essentially, a glorified personal assistant) trumps the fact that a sitting Democratic U.S. President (erm, Clinton) was impeached for lying to a grand jury, which just slightly overshadows the whole ado about Libby.

And notice the bizarre "Karl Rove. Karl Rove. Karl Rove. Karl Rove" repetitions before the beginning of almost every paragraph. One can almost picture the sweaty, morally indignant journalist typing away furiously at his computer keyboard between downing handfuls of Paxil with gulps of lukewarm coffee.

ADDENDUM 2:
This satire on The Swift Report deftly skewers the MSM's Rove obsession nicely: "The poll comes on the heels of a steady drumbeat of news reports regarding the leak of the name of Mrs. Wilson, nee Plame back in 2002, part of a long, confusingly plotted investigation that has won over critics while faring poorly at the box office."

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was struck by these recent examples of the mainstream press seemingly turning the corner on its blatantly observable anti-conservative bias. I know, I know, I'm probably just being foolishly optimistic, and these examples do seem like a mere drop in the bucket, but they're notable for the people and publications involved, and besides, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step . . . right? Right?

*tap tap tap*

Hello . . . is this thing on?

1. The Guardian's Emma Brockes, a journalist with one of the UK's notoriously left-leaning news publications (the same paper that invented the letter-writing campaign by British citizens to American voters urging them to consider world opinion of the Bush Administration during the run-up to the 2004 election), takes down Noam Chomsky a peg or two, and boy is he ever pissed about it, ranting about "lies" and "distortions" yet never once addressing the main point of the Brockes' interview -- that Chomsky is an often ill-informed hyperbolist who invests in and profits off the capitalist system and the military industrial complex he so publicly rails against.

Hats off to Brockes and the Guardian for putting the screws to one of their own. The resultant self-righteous shrieks from Chomsky's corner are sheer poetry.

2. The St. Louis Dispatch's own Ron Harris blows the whistle on former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, who has been circling the country with Sheehan and friends fabricating "atrocities" that he supposedly witnessed and/or participated in while on a tour of duty in Iraq (hey, just like Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia).

Massey's allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as in numerous broadcast reports, and he joined the anti-war bus tour of Sheehan while also collecting speaking fees on the University lecture circuit. His two DVD set of his "eye-witness" accounts sells for $50 to $100 dollars, and he released a book last year in France (natch) titled, "Kill, Kill, Kill". While the majority of the MSM swallowed the "Marines are Monsters" performance hook, line and sinker, Harris, who was one of five journalists embedded with Massey's unit, has found no journalists to substantiate Massey's stories, no photographic evidence for any of Massey's claims (though there were numerous photographers in place), and no other Marines or Military Personnel who tell the same stories or who support Massey's account of events. Harris has additionally dug up a timeline of articles where Massey's stories repeatedly change according to who's listening.

Kudos to the St. Louis Dispatch for coming to the realization that genuine news is, well, actual information supported by corroborating witnesses and/or photographic support. Massey's stories of supposed atrocities had neither, and he should have his honorable discharge revoked for lying about the conduct of his fellow marines and smearing the reputations of his superior officers.

Re: Massey / Kerry -- Is it surprising that the anti-war Left would roll out the same tactic, especially when it was so effective the last time it was used? Thanks for nothing, Walter Cronkite.

3. The unexpectedly positive notations in both the New York Time and the Los Angeles Times regarding judge Sam Alito, the latest Bush nominee to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Sandra O'Connor. I found this little gem, buried deep in the Los Angeles Times article, particularly interesting: "'Sam Alito is my kind of conservative. He is intellectually honest. He doesn't have an agenda. He is not an ideologue,'" Higginbotham said, according to (Judge Timothy) Lewis. "I really was surprised to hear that, but my experience with him on the 3rd Circuit bore that out," added Lewis, who had a liberal record during his seven years on the bench. "Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a 'home run.' He is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference."

Agh! Will Liberals ever realize that the reason that Conservatives consider Alito a "home run" is precisely because he doesn't have an agenda, is not an ideologue and believes firmly in judicial restraint and judicial deference? While the Los Angeles Times has no compunction about telling its readers that Judge Lewis has a consistently liberal record on the bench, it's portrayed to Alito's credit that he himself doesn't have an agenda that one can point to.

*thwacks palm to the forehead*

While the Los Angeles Times loses points in its article for its thick-headed misunderstanding of Conservative politics as a whole, I am impressed with both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times that they're not just taking the hatchet to Alito simply because he's a Bush Administration appointee, and I see this as perhaps a baby-step on the road to potential recovery from their bad cases of Bush Syndrome.

And with the riots in France growing out of control, might we possibly see the entire Mainstream Media do a bit of a double-take on immigration issues and the danger that unintegrated Islamic culture poses to open Western societies?

Stay tuned, indeed.

OFF TOPIC:

Quote of the day: "If a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful."

Posted by at 4:00 PM | Permalink

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution Tuesday that will create the first international day of commemoration for the 6 million victims of the Nazi Holocaust, nearly all of them Jews. Kofi Anan's spokesman said the annual commemoration will serve as "an important reminder of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, a unique evil which cannot simply be consigned to the past and forgotten."

Co-sponsored by 104 member nations, the measure is the first Israeli-initiated resolution the General Assembly has ever passed.

"It's a good day for the Jewish people at the United Nations," said Amy Goldstein, director of U.N. affairs at B'nai B'rith International. "It demonstrates that it is possible for the United Nations to seriously address the basic human rights of the Jewish people."

But just last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," an action which, according to the U.N. charter, would necessitate that Iran be expelled from U.N. membership, yet Iran is still fully, and proudly, a participating member of the U.N. and has suffered no set-back for its violently anti-Israel proclamations.

"When a president or a member state can brazenly and hatefully call for a second Holocaust by suggesting that Israel, the Jewish homeland, should be wiped off the map, it is clear that not all have learned the lessons of the Holocaust and that much work remains to be done," said the U.S.'s own U.N. ambassador John Bolton.

Immediately after the vote to pass the Holocaust resolution, Egypt's Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz nearly tripped over himself in his rush to complain that the day should commemorate all victims of genocide, "without discrimination on the basis of religious or ethnic background" (note the clever approximation of Western sentiment without any genuine understanding of the reasoning behind it), and not be limited just to victims of the Holocaust -- for heaven forbid that an Arab state should commemorate any loss suffered by Jewish victims alone. "We believe that no one should have the monopoly of suffering," he said.

Fine, set your bloggers free and we'll talk.

But the icing on the cake of irony came from Venezuela's Ambassador, who pointed to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II as examples of "devastating destruction" that occurred "with no justification" and should be included in the resolution's stance against human atrocities.

Wha-wha-what?!

So here I am, as I type this, watching the documentary series "Hell in the Pacific", which is a coolly (and horrifyingly) objective look at the battle in the Pacific, the savagery of the Japanese treatment of all non-Japanese people who had the misfortune of getting in their way, the terrifying specter of kamikaze pilots who were ordered to destroy themselves rather than allow an American advance, women and children who leapt from cliffs to their deaths upon sight of American troops (as their government had drummed the message of foreign monsters into the minds of their populace), and the "Never-Surrender, Fight Until the Last One of Us Is Dead!" cultural philosophy which led to America's decision to drop the atomic bombs -- yet some willfully clueless ambassador from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela (which wackily called for a ban on Halloween because it is a U.S. "game of terror" and whose current land-redistribution policy threatens to turn Venezuela into the next violence-riddled and starvation-shackled Zimbabwe) claims that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred "with no justification".

I think this is what's considered the photoshopper's approach to U.S. history. Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall . . . with no justification, of course.

OFF TOPIC:

In which Excitable Andy hilariously (if it weren't actually so predictable and sad) accuses other bloggers of going 'round the bend, conveniently forgetting his own "Watch Out, World -- I'm Off My Meds!" screech-fests regarding the 2004 elections, Abu Ghraib, Gay Marriage, Pope Ratzinger, President Bush, The Iraq War, Instapundit and did I mention Gay Marriage?

Glass Houses and all.

I've noticed that respectable news bloggers and serious Conservative pundits reference Andy-pants less and less as time goes on, and that Alexa shows his website's reach, rank and page views have been trending inexhorably south over the last two years. Compare his dwindling numbers to Michelle Malkin's steady upward surge in the blog polls and you just might see the motivations behind his snarky "MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE (for shrill right-wing hyperbole)" a bit more clearly.

And hey, his latest nominee for the Malkin Award, PowerLine, also bests Sullivan handily in the traffic trends department. Sour grapes, anyone?

OFF TOPIC 2:

And is it just me, or does Warren Beatty's attempt to crash the Schwarzenegger rallies remind you of Arianna Huffington, circa 2003, desperately shoving her way towards a photo-op with the Arnold and knocking over his mic stand in the process?

Posted by at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The novel The Camp of the Saints, first published in France in 1973, forecasts a cataclysmic invasion in which novelist Jean Raspail depicted a fictional last stand of Western Civilization as over 800,000 immigrant East Indians descend upon the beaches of Southern France.

The central theme of the book rests upon this question: will the West use violence to save itself when (not if) it is confronted with a de facto occupation by Third World people who've come to live, but not to assimilate, within their boundaries? Is there a will to live that is strong enough in Western Judeo-Christian civilization that would countenance to pull a trigger in defense of its cultural existence?

Critics of the novel declare it as a racist polemic and a frightening vision of white nationalism, but a good number of others (such as Professor Jeffrey Hart of Dartmouth, a literary historian and columnist, who claimed that "Raspail is not writing about race, he is writing about civilization...") see The Camp of the Saints for what it actually is -- a treatise on the impact of unchecked immigration and subsequent lack of cultural integration upon the host country, and an exploration of the philosophy that being a Westerner is more about a state of mind than it is about nationality or skin color.

While Camp of the Saints was intended as a satire of liberal multiculturalism ("Is your culture worth defending?' the book asks; "Would France be just as French if a million East Indian immigrants poured through its borders and continued to live their lives as East Indians instead of assimilated immigrants eager for a new cultural experience -- and should anyone even care?"), recent events in Paris have made such questions less abstract.

In his analysis of The Camp of the Saints, Michael W. Masters states that "The standards that govern (current) public debate are reminiscent of the Dark Ages in that they have no basis in science or in human experience . . . a deep misconception about nature and morality (...) arises from the mistaken, sentimental belief that altruism can be extended beyond its evolutionary origin--kinship and within-group altruism--to the whole of humanity."

While Masters makes arguments about racial identity that I wouldn't, his analysis of the origins of altruism ring true, and help explain why unassimilated immigrants in present day Paris are content to destroy the host city in which they live while wailing about being victims themselves. Kinship is key, and when one has refused a connection to the country he or she lives in -- repudiated the language, traditions and values -- then destruction is sure to follow.

But what would be the loss of Western Civilization? Without the persistent role of the west in pursuing and encouraging democracy, would objective law, progressive technology, international compassion and the concept of individual liberty survive?

These questions animate the present U.S. debate over illegal immigration across the Mexican border into the United States. Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, says, "If over one million Mexican soldiers crossed the border, Americans would treat it as a major threat to their national security and react accordingly. Why then do we not react as vigorously to the invasion of one million Mexican civilians?"

The answer, he says, lies in the half-truths of multiculturalism. Huntington notes a fundamental difference between settlers and immigrants, explaining that the United States originated as a settler nation, composed of Anglo-Protestants who fled their home countries to cross the waters and create a nation where none had before existed. Immigrants are different than settlers in that they come to an established nation to take advantage of the opportunities that settlers created. Paul Craig Roberts states that "Until 1965, immigration worked, because it was European, and immigrants assimilated to the settlers' culture. Now the question is, "What do immigrants assimilate to?"

Anyone questioning the role of immigration in modern cultures has become the latest target of racist accusations flung about by leftist fashionistas who take no pride in Western accomplishments and see no point in attempting to preserve a tradition that has nonetheless brought more progress and liberty to the globe than any other cultural or philosophical movement in the history of mankind (take that, communism). As Jean Raspail cleverly noted in The Camp of the Saints, it is "a known fact that racism comes in two forms: that practiced by whites -heinous and inexcusable, whatever its motives -and that practiced by blacks (or Muslims -- ed.) -quite justified, whatever its excess, since it's merely the expression of a righteous revenge . . . ."

In his preface to the 1985 French edition of his controversial novel, Raspail observed: "[T]he West is empty, even if it has not yet become really aware of it. An extraordinarily inventive civilization, surely the only one capable of meeting the challenges of the third millennium, the West has no soul left. At every level —nations, race, cultures as well as individuals— it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles."

In a 1993 interview, Raspail explained that, in one sense, the West is more triumphant than ever, but in its conception of the rights of man, it adopted the Jeffersonian "all men are equal" mantra rather than the Masonian "all men are equally free" philosophy. There is a subtle, though highly distinctive, difference. In its original form, the equality of all men and cultures was an excellent idea, but it has now been misappropriated and misapplied to the extent that this same philosophy is being used like a cudgel against the very values and interests of the civilization that first conceived it.

For instance, why assimilate or integrate when the culture you've immigrated into has no superior value or higher degree of worth in comparison to the culture you fled?

Huntington makes this salient point: "A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways . . . This is no less than a clash of civilizations--the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both."

We in the West have become accustomed to an international stage in which the West sets the rules, and the non-West are merely objects in the game. Yet as economic power has increased among non-Western states, a result of the globalization of trade, cheap labor in densely populated non-Western states and the vast amount of oil resources in the Middle East, the same non-Western states seek to be actors rather than mere pawns in the game, influencing their own outcomes and imposing their own rules. This is a new challenge for a civilization that's used to being the only show in town, and can we find enough commonality with the non-West to coexist while still treasuring and promoting our own unique accomplishments, or will we simply collapse in a heap of pathetic self-loathing?

In an excerpt from a 1995 translation of Jean Raspail's foreword to his novel, there's this apt depiction of the forces of modern liberalism which Raspail believed were so damaging to the West's chances for survival: "But the petty bourgeois, deaf and blind, continues to play the buffoon without knowing it. Still miraculously comfortable in his lush fields, he cries out while glancing toward his nearest neighbor: "Make the rich pay!" Does he know, does he finally know that it is he who is the rich one, and that the cry for justice, that cry of all revolutions, projected by millions of voices, is rising soon against him, and only against him."

The cultural clashes we see occurring in France and in the United States due to the massive amount of immigration and the refusal of the immigrants to integrate into what they see as a Western civilization with values and interests that are significantly different from their own, is only the rumbling beginnings of a wider, and undoubtedly much more intense, future conflict between disparate civilizations, a conflict in which the West may have already lost its will to fight.

That is, unless we decisively repudiate "white guilt", embrace our past achievements in moving beyond slavery, monarchy, violent superstitions and class-hierarchies, build on our notable social and technological progresses, portray our values of democracy and individualism as proudly Western rather than this nonsense about them being "universal", and therein regain our soul.

Posted by at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I knew it -- the increasing freedom of political argument and the spreading ease of information exchange across the internet were just too good to be true. Somehow, somewhere, the government regulators were bound to step in and start with their meddlesome ways, and the 225-182 vote in the House to oppose the Online Freedom of Speech Act only underscores the point.

At Daily Kos, where I shudder to even visit (the B.F. suffered the fools for me, though not gladly), Adam B. writes: "There's a certain wing of both parties (mostly ours) that believes that regulation is the way to stem campaign finance abuses. And it generally is. Just not here."

Ah, but there's the rub. Once you offer the beast the taste of blood and release it from its cage, how are you then to tell it that, well, uhm, erm, some blood is off-limits? "Go forth and regulate, for regulation is good -- but heavens no, don't regulate me!"

Whatever.

This is the problem I have with pro-regulation people -- the whole "Not in my backyard" mentality. They argue for regulating campaign finance and "in-kind" contributions because they're convinced that large corporations and evil McHitlerBurtons are destroying our precious political system, but should they host their own political opinion site and make money off of ads and traffic, especially political ads and political traffic, while endorsing candidates and issues, well, that's a different story and just ignore the fact that they exist, mmm-kay?

It doesn't work like that.

McCain-Feingold is terrible lawmaking, pure and simple. As Mickey Kaus stated in a column for Slate, McCain-Feingold isn't just about limiting corporate money during campaigns, it's about wanting "to limit the speech of individual citizens who may be rich (or, as in the case of bloggers, may be making money on their politically oriented sites -- ed.), as their rhetoric about leveling playing fields and "curbing the influence of money" suggests."

Stifling political speech simply because money might be attached to it is a Bolshevik's dream, until the Bolsheviks start peddling political influence of their own, and then watch out! A lot of Conservatives have been complaining about McCain-Feingold since day one, and now some Liberals on the net only just appear to be realizing that "the wingers" have a point. While restrictions on campaign spending by profit-making corporations can be defended (as these corporations get money from commerce with people who may not agree with their political views, which is why there was such a stink during the 2004 election over Unions who use their member dues to contribute to political campaigns), restricting political speech across the board just because the individual speaker has cash in his pocket is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, at that -- yet this was always going to be the end result of a law that naively believed it could ban money from politics.

But perhaps the McCain-Feingold law is less naive than we'd like to suppose.

A March, 2003 Wall Street Journal Op-ed states that "Since 2003, when the Supreme Court upheld it, McCain-Feingold has failed spectacularly in its stated goal of reining in fat-cat donors. Yet its uncompromising language has helped to gag practically every other politically active entity--from advocacy groups to labor unions. Now the FEC is being asked to censor another segment of society, the millions of individuals who engage in political activity online."

Captain's Quarters had this to say back in March of 2005: "While McCain and Feingold protest that their lawsuit only targets paid advertising, their action and the decision points out that they are being dishonest about it. The decision (the decision by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Shays-Meehan v. FEC) forces the FEC to regulate unpaid communications, including the Internet. How exactly do they propose on doing that? By going after those sites which repeat the candidates' positions -- or link back to them -- and declaring them in-kind contributions, the only way possible to regulate it."

In October of 2004, Reason Magazine warned that "Now it is official: The United States of America has a federal bureaucracy in charge of deciding who can say what about politicians during campaign season . . . America now has what amounts to a federal speech code, enforced with jail terms of up to five years."

What the Supreme Court has done (by upholding the McCain-Feingold Law)," says David O'Steen, the executive director of the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, "is make it possible for these guys to set limits on how and when they're criticized."

Still think it was naive?

179 Republicans voted in favor of the Online Freedom of Speech Act (thank you, and bless you -- the other 38 who opposed the motion can eat the kickin' side of my boot), while 143 Democrats voted to quash it, even though the bill was co-presented by Democrat Harry Reid. Interestingly enough, Markos "Screw 'Em" Zúniga can only be bothered to thank the meager 46 Democratic representatives who had the foresight to vote "yes" to keep Internet speech free and clear from governmental regulation . . . you know, along with those 179 Republicans!

Typical.

Nancy Pelosi defends her opposition to the Online Freedom of Speech Act by claiming that there wasn't enough time alloted to debate such an important piece of legislation, and that the lack of time wouldn't have allowed for amendments to be added. Yo, Pelosi -- #1) there's nothing to debate about free speech, and #2) Paul Wellstone's parting gift to all Americans was his amendment to the McCain-Feingold Act, which made a bad law even worse -- we don't need no stinkin' amendments!

If the Democratic party wasn't so eager to regulate the hell out of everything, and their ignorant Dkos base didn't make "Corporate Money is the root of all Evil" their rallying cry, we might have seen a different outcome to this sorry state of affairs. But the DP are eager to regulate the hell out of everything, and no, you can't change the stripes on a socialist tiger, so here we are.

My only hope is that a changing Supreme Court will strike down McCain-Feingold as unconstitutional. Look for Zúniga to not thank the Republicans again.

OFF TOPIC:

Before the Christmas holiday season drains your banks accounts dry, please visit Soldier's Angels or Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund and make a kind donation -- whatever it is, you can know that it will be appreciated by our fine men and women in uniform.

Posted by at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tired of listening to the Left spew its faux outrage over the horror, the horror, of Libby-gate (and is it just me, or does anyone else have that "If it says Libbys Libbys Libbys on the label label label you will like it like it like it on your table table table" jingle running through their heads)? Then try these news articles on for size, and, as always, click on the links to follow to the full articles.

1. "I've never been that fond of the French, and there's a part of me that feels a touch of schadenfreude at their problems now. But my mother always said that everyone in life serves a purpose, even if it's just to be a bad example. And France is showing the rest of the world the dangers of allowing unrestricted immigration by a people determined to re-create their own society and culture, in utter disdain and defiance of their hosts. But will anyone listen?" From "Is Paris Burning?" by Jay Tea at Wizbang

2. "UN Resolution 1559 was meant to isolate Hezbollah, but it might also begin isolating Lebanon. If Hezbollah continues holding onto its weapons and the international community holds Lebanon accountable for this, there is no way that Hezbollah can continue to hold cabinet positions in the government. And there is no way that Lebanese politicians will convince the people that international sanctions against Lebanon are worth putting up with in support of a violent Shia militia that does not represent the interests of the nation as a whole and was not elected by all of the Lebanese people to administer the violent services it provides." From "Isolating Syria and Hezbollah - The Future Movement Hawks" at Lebanese Political Journal

3. "I don't own a single share of stock!" filmmaker Michael Moore proudly proclaimed. He's right. He doesn't own a single share. He owns tens of thousands of shares – including nearly 2,000 shares of Boeing (whom Moore implied was partially responsible for the Columbine School shootings in his "Bowling for Columbine" schlocumentary . . . ed. ), nearly 1,000 of Sonoco (a non-recycling packaging company which undoubtedly contributes to deforestation . . . ed.), more than 4,000 of Best Foods (which uses the liberal nightmare of genetically modified foods in its products . . . ed.), more than 3,000 of Eli Lilly (one of those dastardly American pharmaceutical manufacturers who exploit the poor and sick for profits . . . ed.), more than 8,000 of Bank One (but I thought Capitalism was evil and greedy . . . ed.) and more than 2,000 of Halliburton, the company most vilified by Moore in "Fahrenheit 9/11." From "Michael Moore owns Halliburton! -- New book debunks claims of celebrity activists" at World Net Daily

4. "Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican. Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log . . . "There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People." From "'Party trumps race' for Steele foes" by S.A. Miller at The Washington Times (h/t Amy Proctor)

***For more information on the over-the-top and racist attacks on Michael Steele by the Democrats, visit Michelle Malkin.***

5. "The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France . . . Investigators in Rome suspect that Mr Martino was first engaged by the French secret services five years ago, when he was asked to investigate rumors of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He is thought to have then been retained the following year to collect more information. It was then that he is suspected of having assembled a dossier containing both real and bogus documents from Niger, the latter apparently forged by a diplomat . . . Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent." From "Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France" by Bruce Johnston at News Telegraph (h/t World Threats)

6. "A rap star speaking up for a Republican President? Is this a sign of the Apocalypse?" From "Hell Freezes Over: 50 Cent Defends Bush" at The Jawa Report

7. "US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defended a decision not to allow UN investigators to meet foreign terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison following allegations (by the attorneys for the detainees . . . ed.) of torture and a hunger strike . . . Rumsfeld also told a Pentagon news conference that the 27 hunger strikers, some of whom have been force-fed (i.e. fed via nasogastric tubes, a standard medical procedure in American hospitals . . . ed.) since they began fasting in August, were simply trying to attract media attention." From "Rumsfeld defends Guantanamo decision" at The Age

***(Also, check out this marvelous interview the German media source The Spiegel recently conducted with Donald Rumsfeld. I love Donald Rumsfeld -- he refuses to get caught up in liberal pretzel bending, and, instead, answers emotionally loaded questions with a disarming forthrightness that cuts right to the chase.***

8. "Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) won an early round in his money-laundering and conspiracy trial Tuesday by getting a judge aligned with Democratic candidates and causes removed from the case. The ruling to recuse Travis County District Judge Bob Perkins was made by District Judge C.W. Duncan after a four-hour hearing. DeLay's lawyers argued that Perkins's impartiality appears to be compromised by his contributing money to national and local Democratic candidates, as well as to MoveOn.org, a group that has targeted DeLay's defeat in national fundraising efforts." From "Defense Wins New Judge in DeLay Case" by Sylvia Moreno at The Washington Post

9. "The head of a religious centre which hosted Madonna's visit to Israel was last night under arrest on suspicion of promising to cure a woman's cancer in return for more than £30,000 . . . Madonna, who wears a red thread around her wrist to protect her from negative influences, yesterday defended her adherence to Kabbalah in New York, although she did not comment on the fraud allegations. "It would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party," she said. "It's not hurting anybody." From "Kabbalah leader arrested over '£30,000 charge for fraudulent cancer cure'" by Conal Urquhart at The Guardian

10. "Returning to (Maureen) Dowd's original question ("Do I look as dried up and bitter as I sound?" . . . ed.), yes, the feminist movement was a hoax inasmuch as it told only half the story. As even feminist matriarch Betty Friedan eventually noted, feminism failed to recognize that even smart, successful women also want to be mothers. It's called Nature. Social engineering can no more change that fact than mechanical engineering can change the laws of physics . . . Even now, the latest book to fuel the feminist flames of male alienation is Peggy Drexler's lesbian guide to guilt-free narcissism, "Raising Boys Without Men." Is it possible to raise boys without men? Sure. Is it right? You may find your answer by imagining a male-authored book titled: "Raising Girls Without Women."" From "Feminism's devolution from hoaxers to whores" by Kathleen Parker at Townhall

ADDENDUM:

Jimmy Carter: "Saddam's Probably Got WMDs and Bush is Lying if He Agrees With Me"

ADDENDUM 2:

Quick, get Alito on the Supreme Court so he can help toss the McCain-Feingold law into the shredder . . . where it belongs.

God, I hate John McCain.

Posted by at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)