Man Overboard

"Mansfield writes that he wants to 'convince skeptical readers -- above all, educated women' -- that 'irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason.' Sorry, professor: You lose. What this country could use is a little less manliness -- and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt."

Correction: You lost. And you will continue to make us laugh at your inability to recognize that fact. Better save all your propaganda/analysis for 2008. You're gonna need it.

The right to abandon your child�

"The feminists may well be stumped by this argument. After all, they've based their abortion advocacy as a matter of women's reproductive rights. Is it logical to claim women have reproductive rights that men lack? Yes, a woman has to carry an unplanned pregnancy for nine months and give birth. But Mr. Dubay, and many other men, are saddled with 18 years of child support. That's a pretty substantial inhibition of one's 'reproductive freedom.' "

Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship | The Brussels Journal

"No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage."

Funny. Tax referendums work that way too don't they? Congress votes over and over for new spending programs until they pass. then we spend the next 50 years debating how to pay for it.

At what point to ordinary citizens say "ENOUGH!"

We have to look to the former Soviet Union for examples. We're not quite there yet.

WCPE - Great Classical Music 24 Hours a Day

With local radio stations under largely deserved pressure to do something useful, an unfortunate outcome is that many marginal specialty stations are going under, or worse, changing format in the unlikely hope that having just one more top-40 broadcaster per square mile might make them slightly profitable again.

I can see myself soon totally weaned of the need for radio stations at all. Living now beyond the outskirts of much of anything the "scan" button on my radio has trouble finding a signal strong enough to stop at. Just the opposite of the problem I used to have where the stations were so close together it stopped at every single frequency (making it mostly indistinguishable from the up-down tuning buttons).

By some miracle though, I have a fast Internet connection, and various means of listening to "Internet Streaming Radio" (I'm not sure if there is an official term for this, so I made that up). I can listen directly, using one of several computers, but after I got used to this notion I wanted that music piped out of my moderately fancy stereo system as well, so I got an Apple Airtunes gadget and have been using it for coming up on two years I think. More recently I caught These Things on sale for $99 (well more, if you wanted the nicer display) and decided to try one (and then another). Being able to tune into an Internet radio station without the need to be sitting at a computer (as was the case with Airtunes) or even have a computer turned on, is really liberating. Having two going at once in different rooms is also nice, even if the sounds are a bit out of sync. More expensive devices can cure this problem too, but this one is good enough for my needs, namely being able to go from the living room to bedroom without losing continuity.

Now if I want to listen to my own music collection rather than someone else's, this devices connects (in a more user friendly way than Apple hardware) directly to my iTunes setup, and it will also connect to several other music server programs (including one that runs on Linux, a big bonus for me), but I haven't yet gotten over the convenience of having such a large selection of music (and with database search capability rather than that mere up-down tuning mode of an actual radio) so other than to prove it works, my local music collection is sitting idle for the time being.

Finally though, this is about revenge. Revenge for one thing against all those top-40 stations which seem to be coming and going monthly around here so that you can no longer keep the presets on your radio programmed properly for any length of time. Do you hear me top forties?! I'M NOT LISTENING! But this is also revenge against some of those marginal stations, that, rather than do more to leverage whatever specialty market they are in, and rather than do the graceful thing of just going out of business, instead embarrass themselves and their listeners by making sweeping death spiral changes to their programming switching from classical to religious, from religious to country, from country to talk, from talk to top-40 and then finally closing their doors after wearing out whatever audience they had.

Locally, here in the middle of nowhere, there was only one station that played classical music, a college station, and they did a fairly good job of it too, using two different frequencies, one of which I could receive in my concrete silo, the other I could only receive in the car. For some reason they decided that the farmers in this area do not include enough old-time Communist sympathizers, so they have switched one of the two stations to 24-hours of NPR programming. Guess which one? So at home, there is now no reception of classical music, and on the station that such reception used to exist there is a constant demand that I send them money. They are barking up the wrong tree. I spent my donation money on a new Internet radio and now I'll be listening to this:

theclassicalstation.org

among others. Maybe the connected world only needs a few of these, and I'll be sending them a check to let them know I appreciate their efforts. In the mean time, I wish the local stations were more imaginative. But they aren't. So there.

Sen. Clinton Says Rove Obesses About Her

"'He spends more time thinking about my political future than I do,' Clinton said, noting that Rove and other White House aides have met regularly with her possible opponents in November's 2006 Senate race."

No es possible.

WSJ.com - Daughter of Islam

"After 9/11, many Americans assume that the radical Islamic agenda is to destroy the U.S. The reality is that attacks on Western targets are designed to function as brutal propaganda coups that will attract recruits to the cause of violent revolution. The main goal of ideologues like Osama bin Laden is to topple the governments of Muslim countries, including, most famously, the Wahabi royal regime of Saudi Arabia. But the real strategic plum, Ms. Wahid says, would be her native Indonesia and its 220 million citizens -- with the largest Muslim population on earth."

Andrew C. McCarthy on Port Security on National Review Online

"You may recall, however, that, upon election, President Clinton proceeded to get tough with Beijing for, oh, about ten minutes. After that, there was no transfer of precious technology and no national security secret that couldn’t be had for the right price. Oh, and guess who now controls several port operations on the West Coast? And has for years? Well, whaddya know? It’s China.

Indeed, Chinese infiltration of U.S. ports would have been even more pervasive if Senator Clinton’s husband had had his way. In 1998, the Republican Congress (led by Senator James Inhofe (OK) and Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA)) had to stop him from turning over management of a 144-acre terminal at the former U.S. Naval Station in Long Beach to the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company — a subsidiary of the People’s Liberation Army linked to arms trading to Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Cuba, and even the street gangs of Los Angeles."

A Failure of the Press - By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz

"We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities."

2006 Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda

"This 2006 Congressional Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda lays out what the Democrat Party promises to do if they are given majorities in Congress this fall:"

In government we trust

"Hillsdale College Economics Professor Robert Murphy cites some of FEMA's stupid responses to Hurricane Katrina, which include 'delaying firefighters two days in Atlanta hotels to receive sexual-harassment training and watch videos on the history of FEMA while people were dying in New Orleans.'
By contrast, private firms like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Home Depot had trucks on the road right after the hurricane. "

Alec Baldwin Blasts 'Chicken-Bleep' Dems

"Hollywood Democrat Alec Baldwin is blasting his party's Senators for failing to block Samuel Alito confirmation to the Supreme Court, saying he's appalled that Sen. Ted Kennedy and other liberals could muster only 25 of the 41 votes needed mount a successful filibuster."

Funny, I thought he had left the country. Whatever could be holding him back?

BREITBART.COM - La. Turned Down Feds' Help, Documents Show

"Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina.

The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, 'responded no, that they do not require anything at this time and they would be in touch if and when they needed assistance,' wrote HHS senior policy analyst Erin Fowler."

Flourishes and flubs - R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. on "Alioto" Hearings

"I cannot rid from my mind the name Alioto, Judge Samuel Alioto. That is the name of Judge Samuel Alito as pronounced by the delightful Sen. Edward Kennedy, or is it Eduardo Kennedino?

No, it is simply Teddy, and he is as entertaining as any U.S. senator since the days of the soused Southerners, who would tipple their way through the dreamy days on Capitol Hill, rousing themselves for histrionic oratory in the midafternoon and then slumping back into their seats, awaiting the late afternoon hour when they would all gather in one or another's chambers for a 'restorative' -- then on to dinner. "

WSJ.com - The Wages of Leaks

'I believe, I accept, your explanation that you didn't want to hurt the United States, that you are a loyal American,' Judge Ellis said in sentencing Mr. Franklin. But 'it doesn't matter that you think you were really helping,' the judge said. 'That arrogates to yourself the decision whether to adhere to a statute passed by Congress, and we can't have that in this country.'

Triumph of the Redistributionist Left | csmonitor.com

"Republicans' capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. But the latter can take solace that 'Republican' is no longer synonymous with spending restraint, free markets, and other ideals of the political right."

Amen

The Barrett report by Robert Novak

"The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel David Barrett, to be released today [Thursday], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges."

FORK REPLACES DONKEY AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY SYMBOL

"Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, may have had some unpalatable goals, but at least they were big ideas. Wipe out the Indians, kill off the national bank and institute a spoils system. Love him or hate him, he never said, 'I'll be announcing my platform sometime early next year.' The Whigs were formed in opposition to everything Jackson stood for.

The Republican Party emerged from the Whigs when the Whigs waffled on slavery. (They were 'pro-choice' on slavery.) The Republican Party was founded expressly as the anti-slavery party, which to a great extent remains their position today."

CNN banned from Iran for nuclear translation gaffe

"He said a restoration of CNN's right to work in Iran would depend on an assessment of the broadcaster's future coverage of the Islamic state."

If only we could do the same thing here!

OPENING ARGUMENT: The Case of Alito v. O'Connor (01/09/2006)

Brilliant!

Media Report Miracle Mine Rescue -- Then Carry the Tragic Truth

"The Washington Post story by Ann Scott Tyson, which appeared on the front page, opened: 'A dozen miners trapped 12,000 feet into a mountainside since early Monday were found alive Tuesday night just hours after rescuers found the body of a 13th man, who had died in an explosion in an adjacent coal mine that was sealed off in early December.'"