Author: David

Well, well. President Bush’s re-election certainly is the gift that keeps on giving…

Vincent D’Onofrio has held a special place in my regard ever since I first saw him act. (D’Onofrio is the annoying twitch on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and the chief reason why I have been unable to watch even one entire episode of that show.) He gives me a rash and makes me feel like hurling. I constantly expect to see him hauled off in a straight jacket in the next scene. When he isn’t, I change the channel in disgust.

Well, thank you President Bush. See this, from today’s NYPost

November 11, 2004 — VINCENT D’Onofrio, the star of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” passed out while shooting the hit TV series yesterday morning — prompting insiders to gossip that the actor is “losing it.”

“Ever since John Kerry lost the election, [D’Onofrio] has lost his [bleep,]” said our on-set insider.

“He has been getting into fistfights with people, and when he passed out today, we all thought he was faking it. But then he insisted they call 911.”

[Let me get my head around this: he passed out and asked them to call 911? Yeh, well… Conversational English isn’t necessarily meant to convey meaningful information anymore, now is it?]

Some are speculating that he may not be long for the show… Good ridance to bad acting, I say. (Unless, as I have long suspected about him from past roles, the twitchy freak he plays on the show isn’t acting at all… )

Maybe the show’s producers can replace him with a role/actor who can actually add something to the show without turning my stomach.

An alternative might be to doublecheck his medications. (Thorazine, anyone? Whatever. His dosage definitely needs to be doubled.)

Neither I nor any current living member of my family was alive at the time, but “11/11/11” still evokes powerful “ghost” memories… memories I’ll never have except as ghosts of memories shared with me over the years by people who were living when WWI ended.

“Armistice Day” it was known as for years; in more recent years, Veterans Day.

Stop a moment today to remember those who have paid the price for the freedom afforded by our society. And stop also, if you would, and pray for those paying the price, today, for your safety and for the predervation of that freedom.

The question “Why study history?” finds a ready answer on an almost daily basis on Jerry Pournelle’s site. An example, built from one of the most fascinating periods of European history, the Thirty Years War:

“… the world is in much the same condition now as it was during the Thirty Years War. Calvinists in that time used the notion of Sovereignty to imprison or execute people like Grotius who believed in free expression. Sovereignty allowed repressive regimes, and gave them a legal status, which both Catholics and Protestants were quick to make use of. The year 1648 is one of those dates to remember: not only did the Treaty of Westphalia change Europe forever (one of Hitler’s avowed goals was to reverse that treaty) but the English killed their king and brought in Puritan rule to abolish Christmas and make Merrie England somber and pure. (Charles I was executed in January of what we now consider the year 1649, but in those times the year did not end on 31 December).

The world is now larger than Europe, and the United Nations isn’t united as the Papacy had been. There is no universal agreement on anything including the status of women. The United States has explicitly repudiated the notion of sovereignty as regards nations that sponsor terrorism and harbor terrorist enemies of the West. The United Nations doesn’t recognize that right.”

Just read the whole thing.

Besides evoking Gustavus Adolphus, one of the most fascinating and frustrating, truly pivotal persons of European history—and a good argument for the “great man” view of history, too—the model Pournelle extracts and applies to current events is provocative at the very least.

Well, Carol, you’re a better person than I am:

“Yasser Arafat is dead. May God have mercy on his soul. And now, perhaps in time, there will be a chance peace for long-suffering Palestinians and Israelis.”–Carol Platt Liebau

Yes, of course. And the sentiment is echoed throughout the blogoshere, but more common reactions from my bookmarked sites are found here, and here and here. I am particularly drawn to Jay Tea’s comment,

“Good riddance to bad rubbish

Yassir Arafat: requiescat in feces.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Ad aeternam.”

Yeh, maybe it’s a tad small of me, but why no street parties in the US of A last night, such as the Palestinians held celebrating 9/11?

Maybe the real “street partiy” is being held here. By real men.

Well, now at least, more and more terrorist scum is finding out what it means to “dance with the devil” thanks to coalition forces in Iraq.

“U.S. Marines said American forces had taken control Wednesday of 70 percent of Fallujah in the third day of a major offensive to retake the insurgent stronghold. Major Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said enemy fighters were bottled up in a strip of the city flanking the major east-west highway that splits Fallujah. Army and Marine units had pushed south to the highway overnight, Piccoli said.”–Bakersfield Californian

(h.t. Belmont Club—where you should go to get your news on Iraq/the Fallujah push. A good clearinghouse of maps/photos of the action.)

Hmmm… some have proposed that the pull out from Fallujah last Spring was an engraved invitation for terrorists to consider Fallujah a safe haven, so as to gather as many as possible to a central “roach motel” where many (and the toll is mounting hugely) will NOT be checking out.

It’d be nice if the Israelis could consider Arafat’s entombment seremony to be a similar ingathering…

Oh. Well. At least he’s dancing with the devil, now.

“Yassir Arafat: requiescat in feces.”

Just a short note…

John Ashcroft’s resignation brings to mind some of the LLMB anti-christian bigotry of the LLMB, such as Anthony Lewis of the NYT and his comment, “…certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft.”

Hmmm, I have wondered what Lewis and his ilk would say if faced with comments built around “people like John Kerry and Bennedict Arnold”? Or “Anthony Lewis and Hermann Goebels”? (Of course, the problem with addressing the LLMB with valid similes is that they can’t see the difference between their fallacious ad hominem attacks and valid comparisons…

🙂

This comment in response to “Clowns to the Left of Me…” is typical of the experiences many have with the LLMB:

“…I have been treated like an idiot because I do not fold to the LLMB ideals. When I tried to point out that it is interesting that those on the extreme left cast those on the other side as ignorant as a part of a comment about how politics tends to polarize people- I did not receive a positive response… Guess it goes to show me that I cannot expect to have a rational conversation with LLMBs… “

The LLMB and the MMPA are generally composed of people with the intelligence to know better than to think that a closed mind is a smart thing. That they choose to close their minds to facts and reasoned argument is proof that intelligence and stupidity can coexist quite happily in the same person. In fact, their stupidity might easily be defined as willfully choosing to underperform intellectually.

Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?
(h.t. Instapundit)

The Daily Telegraph (a Britrag) chimes in with this rhino in the livingroom comment about Nov 2:

Not since Moby Dick has a great white whale been so bloodily harpooned. It took a shocked Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, until yesterday to comment on the US election result. When he did, he made a lame joke, offering “reasons not to slit your own throat”. But if John Kerry’s strategists feel like slitting anyone’s throat right now, it is Mr Moore’s.

All i have to say to any LLMB and MMPA who happen upon a beached Moby Dork is, you catch ’em, you clean ’em. (But a fair warning: the blubber’s bound to be toxic. And a real mess to dispose of. I can hear the cries of “NIMBY” already… )

James Taranto, in Best of the Web, collected these comments (yeh, yeh: I’m qouting his quotations. So what? [g]):

*** QUOTE ***

"Democrats nationwide are scratching their heads today and trying
to regroup after resounding defeats for the White House and in Congress."
-- Katie Couric  http://www.fednews.com/transcript.htm?id=20041104t0912 ,
"Today," Nov. 4

"Applying the tried-and-true formula for success, Democrats were scratching
their heads yesterday, wondering how Sen. John Kerry lost Ohio to President
Bush by 2 percentage points."--
Columbus Dispatch  http://www.columbusdispatch.com/ , Nov. 4

"Sixty-five percent of the voters in Preble County backed the president this year...
The support for Bush leaves the Democrats scratching their heads."--
Palladium-Item
http://www.pal-item.com/
(Richmond, Ind.), Nov. 4

"The liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which has long dominated its
leadership, seems stunned that a clear majority of Americans chose to
re-elect a president that exudes courage, confidence and a faith that is
so easily identifiable. They are scratching their heads at the polls which
reveal that the issue that mattered most to voters in this election was not
the economy, or security--but moral values."-- Rebecca Hagelin  http://www.townhall.com/columnists/rebeccahagelin/rh20041105.shtml ,
TownHall.com, Nov. 5

"Other Democratic strategists (the same ones who predicted a huge pro-Kerry
youth vote) are scratching their heads over the Bush victory."-- Laura Ingraham  http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Ingraham20041105.shtml ,
TownHall.com, Nov. 5

"Bush was reelected because he told Americans in the clearest possible
language who is he and what he stands for. Just enough of them liked what
they heard. Kerry left voters, including many people who voted for him,
scratching their heads."-- Eileen McNamara  http://www.boston.com/news/ ,
Boston Globe, Nov. 7

"When Sausalito resident Marty Krasney was in Ohio this month working on
the Kerry campaign, he met a woman with a life-threatening disease who
acked health care insurance and could have benefited from stem cell research.
Krasney was surprised when the woman told him she planned to vote for
George W. Bush, not John Kerry. 'I can't vote for a baby killer,' she told him.
It is just such conundrum's [sic] that have Marin Democrats--like Democrats
across the country--scratching their heads and pondering just what they need
to do to restore the party's majority status."-- Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal  http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234%7E24407%7E2519930,00.html , Nov. 7

" 'Our analysis of Gwinnett County shows there are many, many more
Democrats than showed up to vote,' said [Mike] Berlon, the chairman
of the county party. 'We're all scratching our heads wondering why they
didn't go to the polls.' "-- Gwinnett (Ga.) Daily Post  http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/
 Nov. 7

"The sound of head-scratching coming from Democratic circles will likely
be as much a part of autumn as the rustle of leaves."-- Jabari Asim
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33885-2004Nov8.html ,
WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 8

*** END QUOTE ***
[emphasis added]

When there's that much scalp scratching going on it just has to be a lice or a serious skin condition.  The LLMB needs to have that looked at. 

Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review, has some good snark (N.B. “good snark” meets two criteria: it’s witty sarcasm that hits marks you want hit [eg]) directed toward LLMB whines about the election that continue to this day and probably will continue for four more year! four more years! to come. An example:

Take the two leading liberal columnists at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. As we all know, one’s a whining self-parody of a hysterical liberal who lets feminine emotion and fear defeat reason and fact in almost every column. The other used to date Michael Douglas.

But beyond the really good snark are some thought-provoking observations about other whiners in the LLMB such as,

What Maher, Raines, and Smiley fail to grasp is that all morality is based upon transcendence — or it is merely based on utilitarianism of one kind or another, and therefore it is not morality so much as, at best, an enlightened expediency or will-to-power. It is no more rational to vote based on a desire to do “good” than it is to vote based on a desire to do God’s will. Indeed, for millions of people this is a distinction without a difference — as it was for so many of the abolitionists progressives and civil-rights leaders today’s liberals love to invoke but never actually learn about.

Just go read it all.

h.t. to Kerryspot