Spurious Incantations

One Other Thing

2008-11-07T23:54:00.000-08:00

Is dissent still the highest form of patriotism? Can somebody get Chris Matthews on the phone for me?

You see, Mr. Matthews has decided that it is his job to make sure the Obama presidency is a success.

His justification?

The country NEEDS a successful presidency.

Funny story, you crackpot hack, the country could have used a successful presidency the past 8 years, but you did everything your hyperpartisan little (ha!) head could think of to rake Bush over the coals.

He does his best to make it all sound noble and patriotic. Do you think for a second he would be saying any of this if McCain had won?

Just so no one has to read between the lines for this:

Chris Matthews, I question your patriotism.

If you wanna get down, down to the ground;

2008-11-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

Cocaine.

Something just occurred to me. I don't want to insinuate anything, I just have one question, particularly for the "To 48 From 52" types:

If it was ok for you to call President Bush a cokehead for the last 8 years, to send your kids to school in t-shirts depicting him as such, will you be just dandy with it when someone does the same to President Obama?

I mean, he actually admits using cocaine in high school and college.

Now, I have no intention of being the guy to do it, I thought it was distasteful with Bush, but I wonder: when someone makes that t-shirt, and they will, how will you take it?

Gwen Ifill

2008-11-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

sure was smug in the opening of Washington Week just now, regarding Obama's victory.

As she should be, she's getting a boatload more money from her Obama book because of the win.

Clearly, this was the right person to host the Vice Presidential debate.

Ok, maybe that's a bit stale. Fine, but calling her a journalist or a "moderator," as they do on the show, is a joke.

Moving On

2008-11-05T14:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's elections didn't go how I would have liked, but I'm glad they're over. I congratulate Senator Obama on his win, and hope that I was wrong about him, thought I doubt it.

Senator McCain ran an honorable campaign. Just think how well he could have done if he understood how to combine "honorable" with "strong" or "effective."

At least we can hope that he learned a thing or two about campaign finance.

I am pleased with the overall conservative response to the election results. There was nothing so gracious, dignified, or magnanimous in 2004 (or 2000 for that matter).

While I firmly believe that it would have been better for the country to have elected McCain, I do appreciate that, like it or not, the Republican Party and Conservatives to reconsider who they are and what they stand for. A hint: it isn't that we've been too conservative.

I haven't agreed with President Bush on everything he's done, but mark my words: He will be much better remembered than many (especially those of you itching to point out in the comments that he's a war criminal and a moron and a facist) now expect.

Bill Ayers, Obama buddy and unrepentant terrorist.

2008-10-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

The major news outlets/Obama campaign satellite offices refuse to cover anything about Bill Ayers other than Obama's own statements. Want to know more about the guy and his terrorist group? Read this.

Also, from Rush yesterday:

"What do Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden have in common? They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon."

Exactly. If I started hanging out with someone like Charles Manson or the Unabomber, launched my political career at one of their homes/shacks/cells, served on a board with one of them, etc... would you buy it for a second if I told you that what he did in his past shouldn't matter because I wasn't born/was 12 when he committed his crimes?

Oh, that reminded me. Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn, speaking of the Manson Family murders, said: "Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"

Horse Massaging?

2008-09-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

Nice Washington Post article on one of the Institute for Justice's latest cases. Woman massages horse. Woman recieves cease and desist letter from state veterinary racket. I feel like I've heard this story before. Oh right.

Note: I worked as a law clerk at IJ during my 3L year, and will probably post on some of their more intersting cases from time to time.

Bidenism

2008-09-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

You can bet that if President Bush said something like this it would be irrevocable evidence of his stupidity. Thankfully we know, from the horse's mouth, that Joe Biden has a higher IQ than we do.

Just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood?"

2008-09-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

Not so much.

Eve Ensler, Sarah Palin and Guns

2008-09-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that I simply cannot take Eve Ensler seriously. The woman is famous for one incredibly asinine "play" that has been irrationally successful, I suppose because it is just so damn "controversial" and "taboo" that it just had to be produced (over and over and over and over and over) on every university campus in the known universe.

That said, she had a post on the HuffPuff a while back titled "Drill, Drill, Drill" attacking Sarah Palin for being out of step with the global sisterhood (or something like that). I didn't bother to read it all the way through until I saw David E. Petzal's response on his blog today. He does a mostly excellent job of critiquing Ensler's moronic "thoughts" on guns and wildlife, but he missed a few. That's where I shall pic up.

Just as a warmup: "I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks."

Now, about these drowned polar bears, what the hell happened to them? After all, polar bears are excellent swimmers, found tooling along hundreds of miles off shore, and topping out around 6mph. I guess that doesn't sound fast, so let's put it this way: If you put Michael Phelps up against a polar bear in the 200M freestyle, the polar bear would have a good shot at winning (Phelps' world record time in the 200M in Beijing works out to just over 4mph), and would then put Phelps' now legendary diet to shame by eating Michael Phelps.

Eve likes polar bears, and on that, we are in accord. Of course, I like them because they are totally badass, she likes them because she dreams them to be big white teddy bears.

Moving on, Eve whines: "I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war."

Really, because it seems like you don't mind raging at women at all. You seem perfectly content to do so when they don't think and act the way you think they should.

"I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover."

Typo in the original. Anyway, was that a threat, Eve? I'm sure if I took the time to look I could find her railing against the "politics of fear" or some such, but I'm sure the irony would be lost.

"She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list."

I'm pretty sure Petzal missed this one. Here's the deal, Eve: Polar bears are actually listed as threatened, not endangered, and have only been so listed since May of this year. They were listed not because there are few of them, or because populations are massively declining, but because, put broadly, the EPA was pressured by environmental groups in court to make a decision on listing the polar bear, based on potential loss of habitat due to climate change projected over the next 100 or so years. So, there are still plenty of bears for now, but if you want to touch one, as Eve apparently does, you better move fast!

"As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'"

More like "Not at all what she said."

"She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes."

Uh, yeah, that would be zero. Bristol Palin was presumably taught abstinence, but I can say with 100% confidence that she wasn't practicing it when she got pregnant. She was also probably well aware of condoms and any other sort of birth control imaginable. No one counts the times that a condom isn't used when evaluating the effectiveness of protection focused programs, why should times when abstinence isn't used count against it?

"Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth."

Well, apparently you failed to gather the thorough debunkings of the book banning nonsense.
As for the aversion with those who think independently. 1. Pot, meet Kettle. 2. Any executive, whether mayor, governor, CEO, or president, is going to want his or her administration to be made up of people with whom he or she agrees. Lively, robust debate is wonderful, but it is not how any administration ever has been run. Debates are at home in the legislatures.

Finally, I'll end with:
"If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain."

Whole lot of crazy going on there. I'll just say this: For Eve Ensler, rape is only bad when a penis is involved. Google "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" if you don't believe me, but keep in mind that in the original the storyteller was 13, not 16, and that the closing line was "If it was rape, it was good rape." Ensler changed both when people got upset, since apparently 16 is far better than 13.

Like I said, not to be taken seriously.

More On Astroturfing

2008-09-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

Dr. Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report does yeoman's work in tracing and breaking down the connections between the Obama campaign, Winner & Associates, and efforts to smear Sarah Palin.

I agree with Ace; this is but the tip of the iceberg.

UPDATE: Asked point blank by John McCormack of The Weekly Standard whether he had anything to do with the videos in question, Jared Liu-Klein of Winner & Associates responded "I'll have to get back to you as soon as I can."

Right. At this point, between that response and the disappearance of all of the YouTube profiles associated with this effort, we can pretty much say with 99.9% confidence that Rusty nailed it.

UPDATE UPDATE: Ethan Winner confesses to making the video, but claims, quite implausibly, that he made and paid for it himself, and that all of the rest of it just happened. Sorry Ethan, not going to cut it, there are too many connections, too much coordination, too many employees of the same firm involved, for that to be a plausible answer.

Obamania Gets Creepy

2008-09-17T02:47:00.001-07:00

In Brazil. Sure am glad there's no weird and creepy adulation going on here in the U.S.of A.

Bad to Worse

2008-09-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

Aunt Nancy is going on a witchhunt:

"House Democrats plan an aggressive look at the administration’s role in this weekend’s meltdown, and explore further regulation and government structures that would be taken up under the new president."

Great, I'm sure that will help enormously.

Shrewd thinking on Nan's part though; this way she and the others can use what little time they spend away from campaigning on, essentially, campaigning, AND be guaranteed favorable news coverage (i.e. free advertising).

Best case scenario: Nothing will come of this.
More likely scenario: Nothing good will come of this.

"No," she said.

2008-09-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

It has long been my opinion that the current "mortgage meltdown" resulted directly from Democrats pushing banks to lend money to people who they should not have. Today, Hans Bader has a piece on OpenMarket.org that sets out this idea quite well.

Funny enough, when asked today if Democrats bore any responsibility for this, Nancy Pelosi set us all straight with a firm "No."

Thanks, Nan.

She went on to inform us that “I think the American people have had it with this situation where the middle-income people in our country are not protected from the ramifications of the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,”

Well that's just special, isn't it? The very behavior she's now calling risk taking and greed was, and probably still is, also labelled "making home ownership more affordable for low income people." These loans by definition include more risk for the financial institution. Granted, I would guess that Aunt Nancy thinks it "greedy" of them to foreclose on these loans when the borrowers default. Apparently banks should be like big money libraries with no late fines.

Not so much. Banks have ways of identifiying acceptable and unacceptable risks, and lending accordingly. Things go just fine until politicians decide to "manage" the economy. Banks, not being stupid, seek to get as favorable a deal as possible when they are about to be "managed" and you end up with corruption. By pushing them to lend money they never would or should have, this weighing and balancing is thrown off.

Look, I'm not an economist, but you know who is? Thomas Sowell:

"In other words, government laws and policies at federal, state, and local levels have had the net effect of putting both borrowers and lenders way out on a limb."

Here's what it comes down to: If you think Democrats will do a better job of "managing" the economy than Republicans, you may be right, but that doesn't mean "management" is a good thing. People like Aunt Nan use the term "management" because it sounds professional, but the fact is there is not a single soul in Congress or on this planet that could actually "manage" our economy. Far more often Congressional "management" is the equivalent of pounding a twelve pack and going to work on your car's transmission.

Oh yeah, and government bailouts will actually encourage foreclosure.

The real problem with our economy, and the one that no one wants to talk about because it is boring as hell, is that our monetary policy is a joke. Even I'm not getting into that.

Not a Question of Theology.

2008-09-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

The question is not, and has never truly been, "when does life begin," though it is often phrased that way. Nor is there any necessary question of the attachment of a soul when it comes to public policy and the law. No, the question is simply: at what point does a new human being become entitled to the protections of law? And that, Barack, is not above your pay grade.

Fr. Thomas Berg clears away the detritus today at NRO.

Al Gore Buys 100-Foot Houseboat

2008-09-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

To be fair, he's going to need some way get around to give his speeches somehow after all of the runways are flooded by the rising oceans, right?

Ace Aims at Axelrod and Astroturfing

2008-09-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

He's tearing up a storm today on this, and I think he's dead on. And, as always, hilarious.

About Me. About the name.

2008-09-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to start a new blog for a while now. I used to blog at a site called FritzFeds with other members of the Federalist Society at the University of Minnesota Law School. We had a good thing going for a while, before the pressures of 2L year overwhelmed us and we got out of the habit of posting.

After I graduated I decided to get started again, and it hit me. What would I name this thing? I had a lot of really lame ideas, and then I remembered an Althouse post from a year and a half ago, that had stuck in my mind for some reason:

Banning YouTube in Turkey... and you probably know why.

Somebody's making fun of Ataturk!

The court was acting on the recommendation of a prosecutor, who was himself apparently prompted by an escalating war of homemade YouTube videos created by ethnic Greeks and Turks, who antagonized one another with clips featuring images of Ataturk as hero or fool, the flinging of insults, and spurious incantations like “Ataturk is gay."(I think this is a TimesSelect link.)

ADDED: "Spurious Incantations" would be a good name for a blog. "Ataturk Is Gay," not so much.

Of course, for a while I wanted to name the blog "Ataturk is Gay" just to prove her wrong, but decided "Spurious Incantations" would probably be better, even if I hope not to write too terribly spuriously, or do much incanting.

Af FritzFeds we wrote primarily about legal topics, with some culture and social issues thrown in, and avoided partisan politics as much as possible. It was fun, but now I can write about whatever I feel like writing about, which will probably include law, politics, social issues, that sort of thing, with some pop culture thrown in as well.