V Stands for Vampire

Oh, yeah, I'm gone, forever.

2006-04-02T17:22:00.000-04:00

Not that anyone has read this in over a year since all my traffic was coming from BE, but just in case anyone was wondering, I stopped blogging for a while. I may take it up again, but as for right now, I write in the Free Lance-Star's youth section, a much better way for me to get my opinion heard. Oh. I have a MySpace, too. Gah.

So, peruse below, laugh at my opinions, and have a good time doing it.

Moussaoui to Die a Long Time from Now

2005-04-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

I couldn't help but laughing when I heard the FNC story--which covered about the same material as this FoxNews.com article--mention how the only reason Zacharias Moussaoui, often referred to as the "20th hijacker" in on the 9/11 attacks, wants to plead guilty without a plea bargain is to be a martyr for his cause by getting the death penalty. (He's already admitted to being a member of Al Qaeda and all that loyalty to bin Laden jazz, the FoxNews.com article reports, so all that's left is to shock the guy after he admits to more stuff.)

Unfortunately, the Conservative Vampire Group can now exclusively report, Moussaoui's execution will not be set until March 31, 2010, Ted Kennedy will appeal on Moussaoui's behalf until 2015, and Moussaoui will then wait an extra 10 years on death row before being executed January 3, 2026.

It's hard to be a martyr in America by means of traditional execution. We here in the States like to make it s-l-o-w and painful. Moussaoui should've thought of that.

2005-04-13T22:48:00.000-04:00

There are many types of people out there in the world today, and as a result of Revolution after Revolution in economy, politics and everything else of note, their variety is increasing exponentially. Here is a short, stereotype-enriched list:

The hacker, who knows more about the numbers in your life than you do and is proud of it but will never tell anyone.

The cynic, who either sits back in a chair and laughs, or smiles wryly as he or she walks by, or stops you abruptly with an unexpected comeback--depending on which he or she thinks is the least trite at the moment.

The bureaucrat, who files your life away daily but can't seem to remember where he put those files.

The AP, who watches everyone he or she shouldn't be and covers for him or herself with less than timely announcements memorandums.

The AP, who watch for what they think they should be and cover all the things that have been covered by themselves in the past.

The executive, who thinks he has surpassed all others in this list by simply controlling various immature versions of them.

The student, whose multitasking capabilities will take him or her to one rut in life, from which is there is not any more chance of escape with or without scholarship credentials.

The journalist, who thinks he or she knows enough about everything to lazily get him by and who knows nothing about anything besides getting by.

The actor, who is further advanced in the con art than the journalist but is also more excessively prone to glaring verbal blunders.

The blogger, who engages in all the latest online fads, forgets them all, and then begs you to support his party senatorial committee at 10:48 pm ET Wictory Wednesday night.

Rick Santorum--help him, please!

2005-03-09T18:01:00.000-05:00

PoliPundit says today:

Senator Rick Santorum’s (R-PA) race for re-election just got much more difficult because of the official entry of Democrat State Treasurer Bob Casey into the race. Santorum is one of the most stalwart conservative leaders of the Senate Republican caucus. He needs all the help he can get from you. Please donate whatever you can to his campaign online.

Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to donate to an important Republican campaign.

Look to the left and find all the great bloggers that contribute to the movers and shakers we conservatives need and appreciate.

Extra! Extra! More men than women in science!

2005-02-25T11:31:00.000-05:00

So there's been a lot of commotion lately about Harvard president Larry Summers' January comments regarding women's ability in the fields of math & science. According to Fox News, the commotion at the school was just as much (if not more) about Summers' administrative abilities than what he said at the supposed-to-be private conference in January, but the Left half of the nation concentrated on what he was saying about women in the mach & science work fields. I'd quote what he said at the conference directly, but it seems no one has agreed on the exact words he used, though he has repeatedly apologized to any offended, claimed he was putting forth a theory rather than his own viewpoint, and explained the reasoning behind the theory he put on the table, as in an interview in the Daily Hawk:

"Fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all. [Daily Hawk's emphasis]

Hmm . . . sounds like a good theory to me. In fact, I can't see why anyone but the blind would fail to see its truth, since there are obviously more than enough programs and financial aid and legislation and other unfair means of helping any woman showing the least bit of interest in a scientific area of study. Honestly, I fail to see why women are feigning this whole persecution outcry when the only ones being discredited for their scientific ability are males.

And why the gap? God made men and women differently, folks. Men are naturally more inclined to logical reasoning while women are more creative. Math and science = logic, while English and literature are on the more creative side. Note that the gap isn't one way, either: Men naturally don't care for the subjects that women tend to excel in. It's just that while no one seems to blink an eye at the absence of males in fields of creative interest, everyone is heartfeltingly pained by the fact that women aren't represented equally in math & science fields. Math & science, math & science, math & science--always the concern for women becoming the latest chemist, but no concern for getting more men in, you know, elementary education.

No Money--Just Your Name!

2005-02-16T11:22:00.000-05:00

Senators have different roles they can play as member of the legislature. They can be a representative of the people they're supposed to be representing (redundant, I know--but not many do), a member of the party they're loyal to, or just act on their conscience, legitimated by the fact that the people did vote them into office.

Or, they could do all three and be what's called a "politico." Most if not all senators choose this option, but in an ideal world, the senator should be dedicated to representing the people first and their conscience and/or part second. And when that senator's constituents sign a petition informing that senator of what they the people want, that senator should probably do what they say.

As a member of the Wictory Wednesday blogroll, I'm asking you not for a contribution, but just to sign a petition asking your senators to support some very necessary legislation. You've heard Bush talk about the Social Security reform, and it may seem unclear as to what he's doing, so I encourage you to visit the Web site and read some simple information about his proposed legislation.

The legislative process shouldn't be a confusing, elitist, convoluted mess reserved only for those who "know better" for you. So stick it to your senator and let him know what you want.

All My Readers Probably Read the late-night Wictory Wednesday Post on Thursday Anyway...

2005-02-03T11:24:00.000-05:00

Got to love IMAO-inspired headlines.

Yesterday, hundreds of bloggers told you about how to help out the GOP Senatorial Committee, so I won't repeat myself unnecessarily. If you're one of those people who doesn't like to read and instead copy in their credit card number, please go here. It's a worthy cause, conservatism is.

Now I will give you: an Anecdote From The Masses, so entitled because I, your humble blogger, am among a mass of bloggers, and this is an anecdote about the government bureaucracy sucking your money out of your wallet faster than a million-dollar jet engine sucks air.

We've all had bad experiences at the DMV, and this is one of them.

Mine involves a 90-day temporary license, a lack of organization at the Stafford County Courthouse and the government's intrinsic desire to levy any fees possible on any human in their jurisdiction.

I got my 90-day on Oct. 30, after giving up on public Driver's Ed. and paying extra money to have my education done privately. Soon thereafter I received a short postcard from the Courthouse telling me that my court date for getting my license was to be Jan. 14.

But on Jan. 10, I got another postcard, informing me the court was closed then and changing my date to Jan. 28. I can deal with that, I thought--but that's cutting it awfully close with the expiration date on my temporary license.

The Courthouse actually realized sooner than I did that Jan. 28 was an exam day, so they moved the date again to Mar. 4.

All this is cool so far. I can understand when things come up and you have to shuffle things around.

The problem here came when I went to renew my temporary license, not wishing to be caught on the road as a white, male, licenseless teenager.

I had my three postcards, my permit and my license (set to expire that day) in hand. After filling out the standard, useless form and waiting for the customary hour or so, I heard my name called and proceeded to Desk 7.

There, the clerk informed to wait further while she went to ask someone what she was supposed to do with me. She looked me up, filled out another 90-day temporary license, and then ruined my day.

It seems that such trivial things like getting an ever-expiring license renewed is worth ten dollars to the county.

Now, had I been at fault for any reason whatsoever, or if I were simply getting my normal license renewed, this would not have been a problem.

After all, it does cost money for VDOT to fulfill the government's role everything related to getting people from one place to another. Yet when it is the Stafford County Courthouse that delays the issuance of my normal license beyond my 90-day's expiration date, I don't think I should have to pay.

Reason leads me to believe that there is no policy for my specific situation, especially since the clerk hardly glanced at my three postcards and hurried off to ask someone what to do. Furthermore, my older sister twice had to do the same thing for various reasons, and she was asked to pay once, but not the other time.

But just like businesses, the government is looking for every opportunity to reel in some of your hard-earned cash.

My advice: Whenever possible, make sure the clerk at the desk knows that your problem is their fault, not yours.

Don't Take Our Senate Majority For Granted

2005-01-26T17:13:00.000-05:00

As you know, National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice has taken a lot of heat from obnoxious lawmakers who don't even deserve to be on Capitol Hill. She got confirmed with a Nay vote of 13 (the biggest yet), and this should serve as a warning to all of us who want to see a conservative agenda in Washington that we shouldn't take the Senate lead we just fought over in 2004 for granted.

As many Republican volunteers know, a lot of effort was put into getting out the vote in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, we lost that state in the 2004 presidential race, but that doesn't mean we're going to give up. After all, we can't lose Senator Rick Santorum! If you have the means, this is me begging you to donate online.

Today is Wictory Wednesday, a weekly event when hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to donate to an important Republican campaign. You can join Wictory Wednesdays by e-mailing PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com. He’ll add you to the Wictory Wednesday blogroll, which is just another way for those with like conservative minds to communicate and focus their efforts on areas that need it most.

As for myself, I've bee taking an extended break from blogging because it's one of the few things that I can take a break from. I'll be back next Wictory Wednesday, all set to chat up W2!

An Inspirational Moment

2005-01-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

Sitting here in Creative Writing class, being oh so creative as I ever could be, I had an inspiration. Why not contribute to Social Security reform? I asked myself. President Bush is taking the charge:

Social Security reform is necessary and difficult. President Bush isn’t afraid to take it on. Helping make it happen are groups like Progress for America, who came up with the inimitable “Ashley’s story” ad during the election. Watch their new TV ad on Social Security here. Help spread the word by contributing to Progress for America.
Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to donate to an important Republican campaign.

and Progress for America is helping out too. Now, I know "progress" is a liberal buzzword used mindlessly by many a spin-doctor, but we really should help Bush etch out his legend and have something more than 8 years of blah to put in his Presidential library.

Cynicism mixed with an Intellectual Discourse on Good & Evil is not a good thing

2004-12-21T22:43:00.000-05:00

THERE WAS A REASON that George Bush in his first inaugural address in 2001 began many eloquently structured descriptive sentences with the phrase, "America, at it best..." That reason was because America is not always at it best. America has its gluttons, its murderers and rapists, its Scott Petersons, its celebrities. While it is not good to focus on anything's bad side when there is a substantial good remaining, it is equally not good to ignore it completely. Some theorists, of course, do not believe there is such a thing as good and evil (and they are a potently indifferent evil themselves), but we will exempt them from retribution here. Instead, I will bring to you my honestly biased list of what I think epitomizes America's bad side.

Pop culture.

MTV, VH1, BET, etc.

Sugar-loaded yet amazingly carb-free junk food.

Digustingly conformist noncomformism.

Michael Jackson and the media that follows his hooplah of eye roll-worthy stunts.

Church abuse scandals and a scandal-hungry media.

Increasingly ironic loopholes in affirmative action legislation, and "professional courtesy."

Some of these are very general, some even more specific, and I could think of many more, but I don't want to waste your time. Many of these problems are self-explanatory, and some of them are not. Some of these problems are hyped up and almost overrated as America's issues, but many are not. It depends where you go and who you talk as to what kind of a list get a list you'll get, of course, so here's my more thorough run-down of why my list is obviously the best ever. (Let's add pride and overuse of superlative clichés to that list right now.)

It used to be that to be a popular band, you had to play good music. Not any more. Now you just have to create the most inventive away to get around the FCC's protective measures (bikinis are out now; having a "hot" guy rip off your shirt instead is in.) Sex sells quicker and easier, and so quality music is something resigned--no, forced, shoved--to the history books.

My hatred for diet fads is something not expressable in words (yet I just expressed it to you.) Somewhere inside all of us, we know that the key to having a relatively healthy lifestyle is what Mom always told us--eat your vegetables, and cut your slice of cake a little thinner than normal this time. Oh, and don't be a lazy bum either. Running is good, and for some playing a sport is more exciting.

Teens: look around your high school, and what do you see? A manifold of your peers trying to express themselves. Some have one piercing, others go for multiple chains and zippers in the most unnecessary of all places--but do they really look all that different? Are they not conforming by agreeing amongst themselves to be "nonconformist"?

Scandals are bad, to be sure, but just because something is shocking doesn't mean the media need to follow it with their investigative eye wherever the tell-all sibling leads. Justice is best served by leaving it alone. (That means you, Greta.) It seems to me that with all of the satellite time and "investigative" (prying) journalism expenses spent on the 2004 court cases, a few murders could be solved and a few child molesters arrested.
If married man with a small business wants to get tax breaks, what does he do? Get his wife to be the CEO on paper. That way, his business will be commended for helping minorities achieve levels of elevated status. In the same fist-shaking level of annoying way, police officers in their civilian vehicle can speed all they want and never be ticketed--just ask the cop who pulls you over for some "professional courtesty." There's a reason the sixth item on the list includes two things. It's because they're both relatively little-known details of the inside life that aggravate the common man.

This list is not exhaustive, and only God knows the real list. Just my ole' humble opinion.

Nothing like Wictory Wednesday on a Thursday

2004-12-16T11:19:00.000-05:00

I've been busy with schooling stuff before (Christmas) break, so I haven't blogged recently. In the style of turning in assignments, I encourage you with late notice to again support the Washington State GOP. It's a good cause. Go here to, like, learn more about it and stuff.

Political Ad-Lib: A Ready-Made Speech!

2004-12-12T20:01:00.000-05:00

Include relevant issues for the American people (without proposing a solution for them), insert a few war ons here, add just a touch of mentioning vast ___-wing conspiracies, check with your staff, plagiarize the following, and voila! you've got a political speech.

The plan proposed today by my colleagues in Congress is, while potentially effective, simply not adequate. The American people deserve something better for this. I have a plan that will be much more effective both in covering the issues here, and addressing potential problems that we will undoubtedly encounter. Someone on Capitol Hill needs to take at least partial responsibility for this, and frankly, I'm upset that all of this partisanship and filibustering has stopped real work from getting done. We need to set ideology aside here and take a fresh look at innovative solutions. At the same time, though, we need to ensure that the proposed plan is environmentally friendly. Thus, this program really needs more study. To do that, we need more funding, and to do that, the partisan filibusters by the minority party obviously needs to be stopped. All of these misleading untruths about this program are very unprecedented, and are probably unconstitutional as well. Negative consequences to the nation will inevitably be a result of the President's negligence if he doesn't sign my bill right away. I am willing to work closely with foreign leaders to get this done. This is key to getting results. A lot of politicians will talk all day about their plans, but I am about results. In conclusion, the only way to secure a positive future for our children is to take a moderate approach--as proposed in my plan--or the terrorists will have won.

Oh, an appropriate quote here from Orwell's Politics and the English Language: "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" How true for so many words--he lists many more under the subsection "Meaningless Words," but I like fascist the best because it's used so incoherently so often from the left.

© Conservative Vampire Group 2004

One of Our Own

2004-12-11T00:21:00.000-05:00

Well, I have now decided it is time to attack one of our own, the target today being the overwhelmingly popular conservative radio and TV show host Sean Hannity. First, let me say that Hannity is indispensable in the conservative movement and will help us for years to come. He articulates his positions well, and even though he is sometimes obnoxious to certain guests on his shows, he is largely fair as well (Colmes is only too willing to help him out on that.) But the problem I have with him is a short rant, don't worry. He's become so popular that ABC and FNC have him locked into a commercial property, and this definitely is not good for a media figure representing the conservative cause.

I often hear him telling us about his favorite steak house, pain ointment, bone-growing supplement, or whatever else is popular. He's being used. People listen to Sean Hannity; they like him; they often agree with him. So the schemers of commercial advertisements scheme away. They have now managed to make it so that Sean Hannity is as closely associated with Citrical as he is with tax cuts. I'd like to think otherwise, but it seems like Hannity's going along with the deal and is just reading a script to make money and bolster his image.

It's gotten so bad that I have to pay five bucks a month just to be able to listen to the re-streaming of his show when it's not live. Oh sure, becoming a Hannity Insider has lots of other great benefits, but I never agree when a company takes away a free offer. Why not offer the regular re-streaming we've always had as a free option, but then if you become an Insider, you can have it commercial-free and downloadable? I don't like this all or none commercial gimmick. Hannity's agents love it. Meanwhile, this construction worker turned conservative giant is stuck between more money and fighting for conservative causes.

I don't mean to bash too much, but acting like Hannity isn't at least a little detached from his little man roots wouldn't feel right. I'm tired of the commercialization of America, and it looks like conservative talk show hosts aren't exempt from this either. The more popular they are, the more revenue--companies wouldn't do testimonial ads if they didn't work. So what can we do? It's not my aspiration to take the same route as Hannity; it probably wouldn't work out for me or anyone else who tried. Hannity really had some luck going for him. I just hope it doesn't go to his head, or more importantly, his wallet.

Do Liberals Really Care About...

2004-12-09T23:36:00.000-05:00

the environment, or do they just want to spout out feel-good lines about wasteful government programs which say they will help clean up a purportedly filthy environment? Example: loggers in California are being forced into unemployment by radical environmentalist groups who want to stop them from clearing areas of forest full of dead wood and brush that will help reduce forest fires by preventing an overabundance of extremely dry fodder for the fire. Liberals claim it's all because of evil corporations who want to destroy trees, but this is just a gross misrepresentation of the facts. So do liberals like radical environmentalists really care about, you know, the environment? Not when it comes to forest fires. Not when it comes to realistic plans for our economy's energy supply in the future. Not when it comes to anything other than something which will help them feed iteratively on their paranoia about the government and spread it as much as they can.
the right to choose, or are they just taking advantage of an easily preyed-upon voting bloc that's making decent females turn into pro-abortion drones? Example: following the passage of the so-called (literal definition of "so-called" here) Partial Birth Abortion Act, Hillary Clinton was on the steps of Capitol Hill at a rally shouting in her unforgettable voice that their right to choose was being stolen from them. In fact, all that was done in that bill is protecting those coming out of the mother's womb who can't choose life and defend it for themselves. So do liberals like Clinton want to protect choice? Not when it comes to guns. Not when it comes to schools. Not when it comes to actual, real, personal decisions that only directly affect you and don't involve, oh, you know, the killing of another human being?
democracy, or are they the ones using scare tactics on minority groups to influence vote? Example: I think you know what I'm talking about on this one. Consider the loud cries of voter intimidation preceding and, by some conspiratorial out-of-touch bloggers, following, the November elections. No actual documentation materialized, but I'm sure numerous unfounded mid-campaign criticisms of this nature locked in many key votes with blacks who have been reliable for their persecution complex. Democrats weren't exactly helping the cause of truth and fair voting practices when spreading smear propaganda about those racist Republicans. So do DNC activists really care about democracy and fair elections--in the United States? Not when it comes to real, honest, open recounts in all counties, not just Democratically leaning ones. Not when it comes to when the truth doesn't help their cause to try and win an election fairly. Not when they can get away with it.
the safety of our military abroad, or are they just taking the gleeful opportunity to criticize a Republican majority, Rumsfeld, the military, or any other slew of easy targets for finger-pointing? (Simultaneously, they can also call for more spending, though it is kind of ironic that they want more spending on the military. Sometimes liberals' positions on issue depends on how the issue arises.) To be fair, some or maybe even most liberals do care about the immediate physical safety of our troops--but they sure don't understand them. Example: the issue of armor plating for military vehicles in Iraq came up when a member of the military, cooperating at least unethically if not illegally with a member of the press, asked Rumsfeld during a Q&A session about the lack of armor plating on all military convoys. Liberals try to construe this as an example of poor planning for the war they hated anyway, while failing to comprehend the real military situation on the ground. So do liberal members of Congress and other well-heard criticizers of the MSM really care about the safety of our military abroad? Only vocally, it seems, when they can put someone they don't like's head on the chopping block for it.

I could discuss many other modern liberal hypocracies, like do liberals really care about... minorities, or seniors, or Middle East peace... you get the gist. I hadn't posted a really vampirish post of the type that I know would inflame my liberal friends very recently. So, I decided to give you an idea of what I see as the hypocracy in modern liberalism and the desperate pleas for votes rather than intellectual arguments for our country and the world's betterment.

Wictory Wednesday: Don't think the Recounts Are Over

2004-12-08T20:40:00.000-05:00

It's been six weeks since John Kerry conceded the presidential election, but that doesn't mean the Democratic Party conceded all of the important contested governorships and senator's seats on that blissful first Wictory Wednesday. So as we head in to W2, today we're looking at the key Washington governorship race, which the Republicans won in the initial count with a slim margin of 42. Of course, the DNC cried "recount" and it is normally mandated in such close races. So the state GOP of Washington needs any of you available in their state to call 425-646-7202 and volunteer your valuable time to observe vote recounts to ensure this important victory won't be stolen from us. We need Right governors as many places as possible, even on the Left Coast!

This is a Wictory Wednesday post, sponsored by BlogsforBush.com and coordinated by PoliPundit. Email him at wictory@blogsforbush.com to join the long list of bloggers (which you can view on the left column of this site) that support the Republican Party in any way they can.

On Art, Science, and Religion

2004-12-06T20:16:00.000-05:00

I've been contemplating over the past couple of weeks the number of widely recognized people who have dedicated themselves to either science or art. These people have a true passion for the gifts God has given them. From the many romantics, realists, or activists I study in History and English to people like Watson and Curie in science to geniuses like Archimedes in math, history is enriched with the contributions of past humans. Some of my own teachers are creative and/or scientific in their own right.

I like to think of myself as using logic to come up with new and creative ways of defining abstract concepts. I score slightly higher on the verbal side in the SATs, and mathematically I am able to see a lot of relationships quickly (sometimes calculations slow me down more than normal for some reason). In my creative writing class, I come up with what I think is nifty stuff, and this blog is my political creative outlet. Similarly, I'm loving Chemistry and Math Analysis this year, in so far as the devices we have come up with in manipulating facts and figures and relationships. I'm a compare/contrast kind of guy, even though I hate school assignments so entitled. But unlike some, I don't make creativity or science my god.

I truly believe that Art and Science are gifts from God, tools that he has endowed us to use. Many visionaries have given and continue to give their work as a gift back to God. This mindset has inspired some of both the best art and the understanding of the known world to date. Yet some in the ultimate irony choose to use their gifts to compete with God by denying or demeaning his existence. Modern science claims evolution and other various theories refute the Bible and therefore refute God's existence, or at least his relevance. The more artistic among the human race sometimes claim that religion in itself is too repressive; we must break free from the chains of indoctrinization.

This can help to explain both why the most arrogant of entertainers and scientists are liberal. They choose to ultimately serve themselves and their pleasure in art or science rather than using their talents to serve God and humbly repay him for the good Earth that he has given us to take our craft in. Many popular entertainers like the Dixie Chicks and scientists like Dr. James Watson become so arrogant that they claim Art or Science defies Religion. Instead, it only compliments God and his creation, full of both artistic and scientific beauty.

Awesome.

2004-12-05T23:14:00.000-05:00

On the morning of November 3rd, all I could say was "Nice." Nice Rove and Mehlman strategy, nice outcome in the Senate, nice margins in various voting blocs, nice Kerry concession speech. Now, after watching the Breaking Point Special about the USMC's India Company in the Battle of Fallujah on FNC, I all I can say is "Awesome." Awesome job by our troops, awesome courage, camaraderie, and humility, and awesome consequences in the War on Terror.

You can still watch it at midnight in about less than an hour from now at midnight ET, and that's really the only way to comprehend all of what was captured by Greg Palkot and his cameraman embedded with the India Company. They were the first to gain a toehold into the city and pave the way for other invading forces, and they stayed true to their cause with evil-defying skill. The soldiers, some as young as 20 years old, were told to fall back on their training and not let the pressure and the grief of their three fallen comrades get to them. All in all, they were an exceptional fighting force.

Some would look at the horrors of war showcased in this one-hour documentary and see vindication for their belief that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, or, in some extreme views, that marines and soldiers are evil gluttons of death. They wouldn't believe it when the commander of the company said he found "no personal satisfaction" in defending his country. The boys-turned-men of India Company found the battle of Fallujah full of blood and guts, but certainly not glory.

Extreme Moderates

2004-12-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

I've had a lot of commenters on this site ask me what I mean by saying that I don't like moderate views. Let me clarify--moderacy is just fine. In fact, political theory tells us that moderate positions are necessary so polarization of the electorate won't intensify further. I agree. So I guess what I'm saying is moderacy is fine, but moderacy for the sake of moderacy is disgusting. What I don't like is the people who on some policies go to the extreme to appear moderate.

For example, George Bush--often criticized by conservatives as a big spender, especially for a conservative--and rightly so. He has dumped so much federal money into prescription drugs and other Medicare Reform just to appease voting blocs that it might have cost him the election--130,000 isn't all that much, you know. Democrats had a point when they complained about conservatives being fiscally irresponsible, and they should have harped on that more than the cost of lives in Iraq, because Americans are willing to pay for the cost of freedom, but I'd bet most Americans aren't willing to pay for the cost of other American's drugs.

The same goes for the border situation. Bush is getting closer and closer to just declaring all out amnesty for Mexican illegal immigrants, not a smart thing to do for many reasons. It certainly isn't a conservative position; it's moderate to liberal. It's also pandering for votes.

And it works, too--how did Bill Clinton get elected? He was clever enough to look moderate. He took positions that some of the activists in his party didn't like, but he knew to win the election, he'd have to even though those weren't his true convictions, and he did.

I just get sick when people are too scared to be bold and extreme enough to stand out from the sticky middle ground that's so hard to get out of once you're in it. Compromise is fine, but compromise too much of your conviction and you won't have anything left but moderate, good-for-nothing policies. Small tax cuts won't do any good; lowering the interest rate a quarter of a point isn't really going to do much; arguing "one nation under God" is secular just to get something rather than nothing is despicable to me.

Far more than most Presidents (though not perfectly), Ronald Reagan stood up for daring positions and wouldn't compromise on the important issues of the day, the most important being the Soviet Union. In fact, his policy was so uncomprising and out-there in his day that many people believed it impossible. But today, it seems like the only real solution:

"My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: 'We win and they lose.'"

Am I religious? In a way. Right-leaning? Definitely.

2004-11-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

But am I a member of what you characterize as bigoted, primitive, oppressive, uncivilized fundamentalist Religious Right which threatens world peace and the ozone layer? I don't think so.

But many of those who are upset about the recent election refuse to actually blaming a slogan, to which they pin all of their numerous sorrows, so much so that the term "Religious Right" can hardly stand up under all of the added emotional baggage. Those Religious Right-Wingers... they're responsible for minority disenfranchisemen, rampant homophobia, the destruction of the environment, the incessant deep wounds of the Palestinian people, anything less than indiscretional tolerance anywhere ever, and worldwide poverty. In fact, the only other American class responsible for anything bad would be Corporate Conspirators, a less complained about group recently perhaps because some liberal hunger was filled in the Enron scandal.

Now, as with any liberal slogan or accusation, there is some intellectual postulate--one might even call it a scholarly postulate--to back it up. But this postulate, in this case the generally accepted view that many Protestants especially in the South tend to vote overhwhelmingly for order over liberty and liberty over equality, is then contorted beyond all recognizability by liberal spinmeisters. We then get something like a liberally purported party line that the Religious Right is a horde of backward blind zealots who want to stop progressivism with their Jim Crow laws and menacing homophobia. The trouble is that this is so far from the truth.

While many supposed Christians are unfortunately hypocrites, this is not true for all. Like Jesus's actions in biblical times, I know of many Christians who act just like Jesus in biblical times. I can tell you of preachers throwing parties for prostitutes. I can recount a second-hand story a Navy officer who happened to be a Christian transferred an inferior (as in, the chain of command inferior) to another station in order to save his life from his peers who were likely to kill him because of his homosexuality. Many abolitionists and suffragists were, yes, fundamentalist Christians--including William Jennings Bryan, who (in)famously promoted anti-evolution legislation. Not so famously, though, he also supported the woman's right to vote. That's just what you'd expect a bigoted Religious Right-Winger to do, right?
Again, I can't convince you of the true heartfelt love of Jesus Christ that is in the hearts of many Americans being slandered by the Left. You'll have to experience it and weigh the actions of others yourself. Please just keep an open mind.

On Openmindedness

2004-11-22T22:03:00.000-05:00

Seems like I don't ever go more than a couple of days without being told to have an open mind, or that I'm too narrow-minded, or to look at things from a new (not conservative) and fresh (freshly liberal, that is) perspective. Now it's possible that I can see why. People have problems with me about me being hardcore conservative on every issue except, um... well, I know I'm moderate on something. But if I was dedicated to moderacy in every public policy arena and didn't change any of my views for decades, no one would call me close-minded, would they? Hopefully you can see my point--that the definition of narrow-mindedness is not necessarily one-track thinking in and of itself, rather it is seemingly radical and out of the mainstream (fascist even) one-track thinking.

Come on now--we all know being blindly dedicated to a progressive cause isn't being close-minded; instead you are called enlightened and adorned with halos and adoring praise for finding the one and only true path to relativism. Suggest anything less than liberalism, and you really need to try and have an open mind, or you're just really not a good member of the human race. That's what's implied, of course; no one save the extremists would actually tell you that face-to-face. But I get the point, y'all--I should take my fundamentalist bigotry elsewhere, or face serious consequences.

Yet I honestly believe that I'm open-minded on most issues. If I read something counter to my views, I don't immediately stop reading; I try to "engage" the text and learn something from it. This may come as a shock to my many well-informed readers, but there are times when I come upon a liberal argument that dumbfounds me. I may never have even heard the issue discussed before. I then research (okay, google) the issue and see what others (not just conservatives) have to say. I often discuss issues with my friends (and some commenters on this famous little blog of mine) and I learn something new about how people think about an issues every time.

So I think in this way, I try not to be some narrow-minded conservative vampire. I try to argue my viewpoint intelligently every time. Many of my views may seem radical, yes, but so be it. I'm not going to conform to a diluted version of my thoughts to make others happy. I will, however, try to be intellectually honest as much as possible. There's no other way I can convince anyone of that than to get to know me and how I think. So to those of you who think I'm a brainwashed close-minded ideologue, just to try to have an open mind, okay? I'm not all that bad. Really.

More Musings on Why Liberals Exist

2004-11-19T01:42:00.000-05:00

The obvious answer is: why, to give us something to laugh at, of course!

No. This sick humor is wrong on a fundamental level. But only half-wrong. So it's fundamentally half-wrong.

What's right about this comic is as obvious than what's wrong with it. The author displays hate and mockery of the hate-filled lefty, which is bad, very bad, but the author's description of the hate-filled lefty is more or less on target. Recent examples are liberals like the recently mentioned sorryeverybody.com participants that have sorrow and remorse that Kerry didn't get re-elected, but they also have a deeply rooted desire to place blame on their ills. The obvious target being Bush, they look up "idiot" in a thesaurus, add a few curse words of their own, and voi la, a Moore-type liberal stump speech.

As humans, we all need to hate something and attribute the wrongs of the world with that something, and for conservatives it's generally terrorists and "freedom fighters" who blow up, rape, mutilate the anatomy of, and generally commit hate crimes against those not directly in line with their radical theology. But alas, for liberals, these people are not evil, so they must be scrutinized in minute detail: "Why do they hate us? It seems so wrong... how could this be? Ah! We might have offended them by blowing up their brethren-in-Allah-And-Virgins, Co. fundamentalist crazies next door! How wrong of us! [Insert explitive here] Bush! And oil and war, too!"

And so thus, in a tragic irony, radical liberals end up despising our freedom fighters known as the United States Armed Forces and feeling compassion towards these misunderstood Islamic fundamentalists. (As for Christian fundamentalists, these crazy traditionalist fools have been understood to in a simple medeival mindest for decades now.)

Now, a word about moderate liberals here. Some of them, like Alan Colmes, express ambivalence. Some terrorists like in Iraq are bad and yay for the Army and Marines for fighting them, but those freedom fighters in Palestine need to be negotiated with, and some Bush policies may have the right idea, but most are still right-wing religious rantings of no help to U.N.-endorsed world peace.

There are those on both sides of the aisle that have blind hate in their hearts for either terrorists or conservatives. But while both irrational hating mindsets are wrong, which do you think is the most detrimental to our country's progress?

News Headline: Liberals Have "Heart," and Are Sorry From the Very Bottom of It

2004-11-17T23:30:00.000-05:00

Apparently, some of those Kerry supporters that rushed to therapy November 3 are now seeking forms of self-expression over at sorryeverybody.com. Unfortunately, these people need to get their facts straight, claiming right on its front page that half of America is sorry about the election. No, you foolish liberals... get it right:

There. Much better.

I didn't really need to do that, though... this one has got the basic idea down pat. Almost half. Yup. Almost...

But this infant... has me feeling insulted. That's the ignorant fifty-one point four-eight-two-zero-five percent of America to you, brainwashed baby!

So why is it that the liberal feel-gooders among us feel compelled to photograph themselves holding up signs saying the same thing over and over again? I'm not sure, but my theory is that is has to do with the underyling self-important prejudices against their fellow Americans that sorryeverybody.com submitters have bottled up inside them and didn't know what to do with--until now!

Now they know they can just start a website feigning apology over the election, but all this does is bash the Bush supporters among us who are apparently too dumb, too ignorant, too stupid that we rednecks obviously made the obviously wrong and hateful choice to support such an evil President. Posters on sorryeverbody.com also believe that they are important enough for the rest of the world to care, and the world body of our former allies embrace sorryeverybody.com's great remorse over losing a fair election...

Can you think of Republicans ever doing such a thing like this? No, because when we lose an election, we don't cry about it and make a webpage solely dedicated to amplifying our whining on the Internet. We just work harder--evidence being that the volunteer Republican work force did make the difference in Election 2004. Liberals, on the other hand, draw sorry faces on paper plates and are too convolutedly befuddled to do anything but post these redudant pictures of themselves on the net.

A fitting note to end on: sorryeverybody.com in their FAQ claims not to accept submissions containing "hateful or hostile" messages, but read this picture and you'll begin to wonder what is hateful or hostile if this isn't.

Go Ahead, See How Canada, or Switzerland, or France, or Norway, or Liechtenstein Likes You

2004-11-17T01:11:00.000-05:00

If there is one thing which I utterly detest more than masses of hair in the bathtub, it is ignorance. Specifically, I hate ignorance on anything which is important. If you say Kazakhstan is in the Middle East, I say you are sadly mistaken--the term for its geographical region is Central Asia, which, although it does consist of Muslims, has many important cultural distinctions from the Middle-Eastern Arab world. If you talk about pagans in Africa like they all follow disturbing tribal rituals tantamount to devilry, I will correct you as soon as I possibly can. There are many Christians in Africa, there are many Muslims in Africa, there are notable numbers of black non-religious groups in Africa. Following the theme of geography and cultural nationalities, if you say you're going to move to Canada as soon as you graduate from college and become freed from the bonds of oppression that democracy has a way of agitating your freethinking self, I will say be a freethinker, even rip your parents off in tuition and then blow your education if you want, but please don't be so presumptious to think that Canada actually wants you.

It takes many years to change your citizenship and immigrate to most any country, and I promise you that postscripting your application with a note indicating your absolute abhorrence of anything south of their border will not accelerate you a single second ahead of the other applicants. Furthermore, my sanity would be eternally indebted to those of my readers who realize that Canada will not give you free healthcare while simultaneously endorsing your use of marijuana. Let me clarify: you can smoke weed, but please don't go to them if you start having medicale issues. Actually, even if you have cancer for which you are entirely at fault, the socialist economy will gratiously bestow upon you a waiting slip. I've never lived in Canada, and visited it once, but I have heard tale after tale of Canadians actually having to cross the border and use the free market of healthcare in the United States to get the prescriptions they need. Their logical remedy for the situtation is to pay a higher price for the same drugs but get it when they need it.

Ignorance may be bliss in the idea of becoming a resident of a country suited to your ideological needs, but then a weighty, pesky thing called reality will wake you up into the real world. Now, all this is not to say that I don't mind the liberal among us immigrating--in fact, I can't see anything wrong with the idea off the top of my head. So if you're so inclined to abandon America, please do. Just don't complain when you realize your destination is eerily like those bonds of oppression you whined about earlier... socialism has a way of irritating even the most freethinking among us.

Democracy's Monolith

2004-11-16T13:05:00.000-05:00

As all of us know by now, there has been a lot of hoop-lah about recent changes in the Bush administration's cabinet. Some of these are important, like Colin Powell's position. But, honestly, who cares about the Department of Agriculture or Education or Veterans Affairs or Energy? I bet only the most serious political junkies even knew who the Secretaries of those Cabinets were before the recent coverage. Some of you may still not remember. (We are, in fact, part of a Google-lazy Digital Immediate Gratification society.) I can say for myself that I knew the Department of Education's Secretary, but that's only because Rod Paige is black, and therefore gets more coverage as an example of Bush "reaching out" to African-Americans.

My stance on the President's Cabinet is this: why even have most of them? The original Constitution provided for three: State, War, and Treasury. Simple enough. But we've added fourteen since then, piling on the government bureaucracy and weighting down the effectiveness of our federal government. I know it's easy to bash our nation's government, and it always takes heat for being overgrown. But like ditzy celebrities, the biased media, and anatomy-altering spam advertisements, there's usually a good reason why we criticize the things we do. Democracy's Monolith, known to some as the federal government, is no exception.

Who needs a Department of Energy, really? I say let the free market inside the U.S. reign and let the State Department take care of foreign energy issues. As for Department of Education, education certainly isn't in the enumerated clause of the Constitution! Let the states decide. The most ridiculous Cabinet position ever invented is the Department of Veterans Affairs. Why do we need someone allegedly on the same tier as the Attorney General or the Secretary of State rambling on his little government website without having any real legislative or executive powers? What does Anthony Principi do anyway, tell the veteran's heroes what great people they are and repeat over and over all of their wonderful benefits? We don't need a Cabinet-level position for that.

Let the Congress legislate under the Constitution, let the President and his maybe five or six Cabinet Members execute policies, and cut all of the fat out of our federal government. All of these worthless Secretaries are in power today because of pandering to special interests groups, wanting the government to help them get benefits, when really the States in the United States of America should decide most policy.

This is a Radical Pro-Lifer Extremist You're Talking To

2004-11-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

And I'm not ashamed of it either. Seems like with Scott Peterson's 2nd degree murder of baby Conner guilty verdict, the increase of 12% in voters which and the likely potential for new Supreme Court nominees in W2, abortion has come back to the forefront for a while and there has been a fair amount of mitigating (though somewhat understandable) positions on the issue. So while the issue's hot, let me get my evil anti-choice vampire-like two cents in.

There are many nuance positions on abortion, just like on every other issue. But with abortion I am less sympathetic to moderate positions than on other issues. Some tax cuts for all (and more tax cuts for some than others), but no flat tax? Fine. Give incentives to other private social security accounts in addition to the social security pool, as opposed to the outright privatization of social security? We can work with that. But as for abortion--you either believe it's a vulnerable human being or it's a sack of cells. In terms of policy, the only positions that make sense to me on some basic level are a)abortion should be fully legal and government-funded just like any other health service or b)abortion should be outlawed entirely. I don't think there's a compromise possible. Before you quit reading, please let me explain why.

Some, like this respectable Power and Control blogger, opine that abortion "is tantamount to murder," Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and the matter should be left to the states to decide. When you say abortion is tantamount to murder, you're saying it's equal to it (according to Dictionary.com anyway.) But tell me, does the Constitution let things like murder be left up to the states to decide? I should think not! So please don't equivocate here. If you say 'abortion is murder,' just like that--the statement is much more powerful and decisive because you're not letting the feeling that somehow abortion is anything less than that sneak its way into your argument.

Others argue abortion should be outlawed except in the case of rape or incest, or if the baby may have abnormal growth patterns, or the health of the mother. First, let me say that this means, according to NRLC, 93% of abortions would be outlawed. Excellent! But that's not good enough. My rebuttal, in order from least compelling case to most:

1) Many liberals like Senator Clinton opposed the partial-birth abortion ban for what reason? It didn't allow exceptions for the health of the mother. This is an argument we often hear, but what it really gets down to is that we value the mother's life over the baby's life. Simple as that. The argument says that okay, maybe a fetus has the potential for life, but we concede its potential for life isn't as important as the mother's life. I'm not willing to accept that rationalization. If the fetus has potential for human life, it's still a part of the woman's body and we can forget about moral complications entirely. Why not have abortion government-funded abortion clinics if the human embryo is less important than the mother? But if the fetus is actually a human from conception, that life is as important as the mother's, period. With all the modern obstretic health care available today, this business about the mother's health should not be much of a concern, and whenever it's flaunted as one, we've got to be suspicious of alterior motives.

2) Even if the baby will have defects like down syndrome, autism, or simply may not have a good chance of living, it is still your child. Please give it a chance. Again, with medical options for your child improving dramatically, don't give up because you think it'll be just too hard. Dr. James Watson (who discovered DNA along with Dr. Francis Crick) thinks we should accelerate evolution by terminating the life of all those we find to be genetically malformed. This is vile and shows how Darwinism taken to its extreme logical conclusion is a theory of hate while creation is a theory of love, as William Jennings Bryan told us so many years ago.

3) The most extreme of the "hard cases," rape and incest, are abhorrent acts of violence and should be taken seriously. But to cave in to the idea that the child created is somehow worthless because he was an accident and then terminate that child is just as abhorrently violent. Indeed, the NRLC cites two studies in its argument against the exception for hard cases which showed that women who were raped, got pregnant, and then had an abortion often felt as though they and their child had been subjected to a second act of violence. By contrast, those who chose to carry their pregnancy to term "felt they had turned something awful into something good" by giving even the human child rejected most by society a chance to live.

Still others tell us that back alley coat hanger abortions will be widespread across the country as soon as abortion is outlawed. While it is likely that some incidents like this will occur, we have no hard evidence showing what will or will not happen. We also do not know for sure what happened before the legalization of murder in 1971.

This is just another rationalization, another excuse to fly in the face of prolifers and make them second guess themselves because of their natural emotional response to hearing the gruesome details of what did happen in the 50's and 60's. But if one stops and thinks for a moment, can one seriously believe that all women who would abort their child legally would still do it illegally? The problem is that feminists out there coerce thousands of women into accepting abortion as a morally acceptable thing to do. We need to address this problem at a fundamental level on a national scene. Also, inner city crime, which allows many to speculate somewhat reputably on the idea of back alley abortions, needs to be dramatically curbed. We can't just act like it's inevitable and then rationalize our way out of outlawing abortions. So in response to the thesis that all legal abortions will become much more dangerous illegal more abortions, I say yeah right. Some "back alley abortions" will inevitably happen, but we should respond to this problem by proactive policies, and not use it as an excuse to legalize murder.

With Bush's opportunity to appoint at least a couple of conservative judges to the Supreme Court, we can hopefully overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion, which is murder, which should not be left up to the states, and which should definitely not have excuses made for it. I, like Sean Hannity in his excellent must-read book Let Freedom Ring, am hopeful that we will come to see the Roe v. Wade case placed alongside the grievous errors of the Supreme Court like Dred Scott v. Stanford. In fact, as Sean points out, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, Jane Roe, whose real name is Norma McCorvey, is now a Christian and ardent Pro-Lifer. Surprises you, doesn't? I would encourage everyone to read her story at RoeNoMore.org and see if that doesn't give you a new outlook on abortion and the vile thing that it truly is. While I understand the reasons that some want to only partially ban abortion, or in only some forms, or with a million other possible qualifiers, and while I would certainly like to see the abortion issue left up to the states rather than judicial activists as it's at least better than what we have now, I cannot rationalize, I can not equivocate, I can not make excuses, I can not be half-way prolife with exceptions. I am a Radical Pro-Lifer Extremist and I'm not ashamed of it either.

© Vampire Conservative Group 2004

On Political Socialization and the Recent Election

2004-11-13T01:21:00.000-05:00

As I have read through innumerable political blogs (conservative, independent, and liberal alike) over the past few days in an attempt to make my own blog known, my mind has become swarmed with so many phrases all saying a few simple things. Cut the sharp wit or added fluff from these blogquotes, and you get things like: liberal lost the election because of red state rednecks; conservatives are for common sense, less government and fair taxes while liberals are wishy-washy; liberals have compassion and conservatives are dimwitted fools; I'm a unique libertarian because I really don't like government even on social issues, unlike the hypocritical conservates; both party has its pros and cons, so I'm a hardcore dead-center independent; everyone and everything left of socialism is corrupt capitalism and evil capitalists reminiscent of Orwell's 1984... all this without anything new being added to the conversation. Sure, one-liners on politics from almost any ideology save fascists, terrorists and communists can be funny. (Notice I didn't say communitarians, because socialists can be funny, and sometimes even in the humorous way intended.) But all this repitition of political clichés bores me after a while, it really does. Perhaps you say this is my problem, not yours. And right you are. Get a life, you say. I say this is my life.

So, as the saying goes, let's go deeper. As an aspiring politico of some yet-to-be-determined mold, one of my main subinterests is demographics. Many people do in fact vote their pocketbook--thus, it's the economy, stupid, or Ann Coulter's "historically, the best way to convert liberal is to have them move out of their parents' home, get a job, and start paying taxes." So we have blue-collar labor union members, a (D) voting block. We also have corporates like Trump who "love Bush's tax policy," and all of his investor pals who make a (R) voting block. Research indicates the lower the income, the more likely you are to be liberal, and vice-versa.

Also considered is foreign policy. This is where the family, the first political socialization tool in your life according to the "Challenge of Democracy" government textbook, affects your ideology. If we are to give Nature in the credit in the Nature vs. Nurture debate, we could say that the you are affected by the beliefs you hold within you on the spectrum of preemption and intervention to pacifism and isolationism. Pretty basic: you like to bring the fight to them, or wait for an attack, OR drive on the median and crash into both approaches. America. Choice.

Thirdly is ah, yes, moral and social values, purportedly the big bloc that turned out for Bush in '04 to make a W2 possible. You are also influenced by friends and family here, though it seems to me that many economic and foreign policy opiners beg to be neutral or centrist in social issues. Many political figures like Guilani, Schwarzenegger, and O'Connor are more centrist here than they are on economics, but why? Social issues are inherently controversial and are based on gut feelings. Bloviate on convoluted economic data which supports your thesis and only economic gurus will debate you, but everyone has an opinion on abortion, gay marriage, etc.--what they feel is right or wrong. Naturally, many social liberal or social conservatives like to tone down their rhetoric, e.g. Hillary Clinton (not now, but starting in '06) and Specter.

That's my hard take on where we get these boring ole' redudant political sayings. Be sure to check out excellent articles on why the "redneck/moral values" vote is a myth (tip to Krauthammer) and an irrational transition from the heat on Bush to his voters (go Steyn). If you want to see what enough of a percentage of voters to change the election thought like in in Election '04, read this blog which I found revealing when perusing with BlogExplosion. This kind of moderacy displayed scares me--I have a natural distaste for those who can't decide. Why can't they decide? Perhaps they should watch Fox News. I also suggest a fasting from typical cliché blogquotes on politics for a long period of time. Clear your head. Figure out what you think. Be informed. Then go vote!

Politics, a Parody

2004-11-11T19:34:00.000-05:00

In my ponderance of the preponderance
of political pandering
I pose to you a problem,
my perfect political patriot—
And after careful consideration
Of all my alleged information
I begin my interrogation
which I surmise
will be your demise.

You speak of a road map,
Or resources to tap,
But I say it’s sap
You’re full of crap.
What, you want us to clap?

You speak of cleaning up rap
Or spending to cap,
But I say it’s sap
You’re full of crap.
What, you want us to clap?

You speak of elites to zap,
And programs you flap,
But I say it’s sap
You’re full of crap.
What, you want us to clap?

No, my perfect political patriot.
No, my pitifully pandering politico.
You’ll get from me no clap
Because while people’s problems
Are grossly misproportioned
Against your own political predicament
You take a nap and give us crap.
You have pathetically pitfalled
Because you purposely pretended
To pity the poor
Or protect the people
But I say it’s sap.
You’re full of crap.
What, you want us to clap?

I'll Only Say it Once

2004-11-09T22:48:00.000-05:00

Forget about Scott Peterson already, Greta Van Susteren! I want real news, not theories on the speculative theories regarding juror # 7 jumping in some old boat which some loser obviously used to kill his wife almost a year ago. Thankfully, no blogger I read is commenting on the subject, but FNC and other cable outlets can’t get enough. They’re possessed by the artificial reality TV courtroom melodrama. How can I prove this? Because if they really cared about Laci and Conner and other victims like them, they would tell the viewer how often this really happens (there are more physco-killers out there than just Scott) and analyze preventive law enforcement. Instead, they act like this drawn-out court case actually has anything left to decide and hover like hawks around all of the "big players" like Garagos and, um, whatever the prosecutor’s name is.

You know what, come to think of it, I don’t know what his name is because he’s not a big shot defense lawyer. Says something about this country when you become a popular lawyer when you’re either defending killers or prosecuting doctors and corporations, doesn’t it? Here. Let me Google-News Search it and see how long it takes me. Ah. About 5 Seconds. (I love Google.) The guy’s name is Rick Distaso, according to… oh boy. The LA Times. Well, we’ll trust them with this one.

What was I saying? I’m not sure. Something about killers in court and the media. Not much to say, really. Oh, except this: O’reilly and his guests were speculating tonight that if Peterson hits the slammer for some hard time, it’s only a matter of time before other criminals try and do him in. Somewhere, deep down inside me, I may believe this is wrong. But we have more important social ills to worry about than what happens in Peterson’s penitentiary predicament. For instance, the murdering of the unborn that goes on every day might be slightly more important than Scott and his villainness. So shut it, Greta, or get on to something useful. I’ll only say it once.

© Conservative Vampire Group 2004

Having Trouble Understanding Ratherisms? I Am here to Help.

2004-11-07T16:09:00.000-05:00

Keyetv.com has the best list of CBS’s favorite anchorman’s witty punchlines, though I believe they have failed to fully appreciate the underlying meaning in many of these sayings. I will attempt to provide a more thorough translation.

In the pursuit of total incomprehensibility, I have declared myself a temporal god and displayed disdain for any sense of chronology. Please forgive me.

"Let's hit these biscuits with a dab of gravy."

TRANSLATION: Whereas the former comments on this show were statistically substantive yet dry and flaky like abiscuit, the ensuing summary is sure to be condimental and flavorful yet wholly unecessary like gravy.

"Bush is sweeping through the South like a big wheel through a cotton field."

TRANSLATION: Moore and Moore unimpeachable sources are telling us that Bush is scaring black voters away like a slavemaster in an early 19th century cotton field.

"In some ways, George Bush's lead is as thin as November ice."

TRANSLATION: In addition to election leads being capable of having characteristics similar to jello and turnip soup, they also can have the consistency of November Ice. But only in some ways, though, because I am reluctant to say if this ice is in Alaska or Florida.

"If you believe that, you believe that rocks can grow."

TRANSLATION: You are an incompetent nincompoop. I, however, am the Rock of Salvation, but alas, I am shrinking, not growing, because my old bones are sinking. Fox News is evil, too.

"Hotter than a Times Square Rolex"

TRANSLATION: I have now run out of southern Ratherisms so I will procede to contrive analogies which make sense only to members of New York, which, yes, Beverly Camhe, is an island off the coast of Europe.

"Don't taunt the alligator until you cross the creek."

TRANSLATION: It is wise to first prove you know what you’re talking about, Joe Lockhart—not unlike crossing a creek with alligators in it—and then and only then try to vaunt it in front of Republicans—like taunting the alligator.

"This race is humming along like Ray Charles."

TRANSLATION: Election 2004 is getting boring, so let me tell you about this movie I I recently saw called "Ray" and it was about this black dude who had so much more rhythm than my old white man self, so I just had to tell you about it.

I Yearn for Justice, and Justice Yearns for the Flat Tax.

2004-11-06T12:55:00.000-05:00

Excluding the unlikely incident of impeachment and conviction by your legislative counterparts, Mr. Bush, it looks like you’ve got a virtual free ride on your second term. So do something daring with this political capital you speak of. Invade Iran, disavow the UN with your central digit elevated, or eliminate the tax code as you know it with a flat tax. OR do all three in addition to making South Korea an island unto itself by simply eliminating its unworthy pinko counterpart to the North. Eh, maybe but that’s going into a political capital deficit far too soon into the latter half of your administration. Let’s just stick with the flat tax bit.

While I personally am not an economic expert by any means, Mr. President, I am confident there are those that have a more legitimate claim to knowledge of revising the means by which we raise federal revenue. I am furthermore assured that they would be willing to discuss with you the ramifications of a flat tax if only you would ignore your micey advisors and let the ostracized experts speak.

They say to you, "it is fair." You say, "so are prescription drugs." They tell you, "it strengthens a free market." You reply, "so do my normal Republican tax cuts." They beg, they implore: "be bold, be daring, revolutionize our economy and shove it in the face of liberal elites!" You condescend, "Ah, but, my naïve economists, that would be much too risky."

Bah humbug. I want something exciting to really get our economy going, but the President’s economic policies, while good, are not spectacular, something that really wows us. Granted, the conservative Republicans in Congress are not in a majority, but with a shrewd political conspirator reminiscent of Ghengis Khan (er, I mean, Newt Gingrich), and well thought-out debates on the floors of both houses, we could really do something here.

© Vampire Conservative Group 2004

Nice.

2004-11-04T15:14:00.000-05:00

For the first time since I started blogging, I can’t immediately think of a reason for a Republican to be depressed right now. As for us conservatives, eh, we always worry, but the GOP is rightfully gleeful following the Election Day post-mortem on the 33-year political career of John Kerry—as am I. I said 41 days ago that I would now "celebrate and theorize over the next four years," and boy am I ready.

STRAIGHT TO IRAQ: Everything hangs on the January elections and what goes on in Fallujah. The troop number is slowly increasing, as is probably warranted. I predict it’ll go surprisingly well, but not as well as the Afghan elections. Everything is micro-analyzed in Iraq now whereas the American people had almost forgotten about Afghanistan, so good nows got pumped up and the media actually didn’t run with voting error rumors. With Iraq, the story will be much different, and reporters will be all over everything going wrong, and that’s a lot of stories to iterate themselves in the news cycle. But with Bush winning, the line that Iraq is a quagmire will have less oomph now. The American people gave Bush a mandate on Iraq to tough it out.

WAR ON TERROR: I’ve never said this before, but I actually don’t like the term "war on terror." I can see how it is both analogous and allegorical to a war, but for some reason I define a war in physical terms where there are actual fronts and battelines drawn. So in this confrontation against the terrorists and those who support them, condone them, or be ignorant of their existence, not much will change in matters of foreign policy. We’re still in the execution phase of things like Iraq, diplomacy with Iran and North Korea… I don’t think Bush will be giving any presidential addresses any time soon, but important things will be happening in the war on terror, some of which we will not know about for some time or will never know.

ECONOMY: Well, at least Donald Trump will get to keep his tax returns as a result of the Bush tax policy that he loves. Hopefully corporate conspirators like him will give us an economic upheaval here to prove the Kerry economists wrong, and that the recession really has ended. Over history, though, the correlation between good economic policies and immediate results is shady and hard to interpret at best. With an even stronger Republican Congress, Bush will really get it to him if the economy doesn’t grow substantially. The effect may be mitigated, however, by the economists’ babbling banter on both sides to try and prove why their guy is right.

SOCIAL ISSUES: Gay marriage hopefuls are more down than Michael Moore and his hopes for the election of bin Laden. (Try France after your stop at the donut shop; it’s 20% Muslim!) The courts can’t do much in many key states now, and the voting reflected national polling on the issue, which was never mentioned by the media elite. As for abortion, I’m praying for a reversal of Roe v. Wade. All of this emotional obfuscation about "reproductive rights" ticks me off more than any other issue (including terrorism).

I wasn’t as surprised as many that Bush was elected, and that was for two reasons. First, I learned growing up through Clinton’s impeachment and Recount 2000 that anything’s possible. But more importantly, it just seems right that America endorse its zeal for defending itself during this time. Having a Kerry administration would set us back so many years that the war on terror would be prolonged to the point of a potential failure. This point is driven home by Manhel al-Safi of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry who told Senator Kerry: "destruction is easy; building takes a long time."

Let your Heart Be Troubled, But not Too Much

2004-11-02T02:18:00.000-05:00

So here we are; I can hardly believe it. We are, as the ramblers and spewers of hours of worthless verbal garbage (also more politely termed newscasters and senior correspondents) would tell you, hours away from when the great people of America, or at least half of them that are allowed to “vote”, will somehow manage to impregnate electronic voting machines. Don’t ask me how, but there will be enough butterflies to have an effect on every lawyer in the country. Let us hope, then, that enough of them impregnate the right spot on whatever democratic-republican participatory implement they choose to use.Eventually, on December 13, their actions of punching and pushing and pulling will culminate in a great proclamation of who shall lead this great country over the next four years.

As the editor of electoral-vote.com notes, this is the most studied of presidential elections in U.S. History yet we are still clueless as to who will be our next president. The general banter between political commentators of record, what I shall call polispeak, has however shifted from one end of the “I don’t know” spectrum to the other. What I mean by this is that given a line at which one end there was a total Kerry victory and the other a total Bush victory, and you had to choose a segment of predictability where that line would fall, that segment has shifted over the last couple of days, though it still leaves room for either party’s victory. In short, the pundits say that either Kerry will win relatively big or Bush will win by a squeaker, where as on Friday night they said the opposite—that Bush will win relatively big or Kerry by a squeaker. Both predictions are based on national polls, state polls, the occasional “tracking poll,” and beautifully calculated average of all three with a couple more random polls thrown in for good measure.

Blast these foul, artificial creatures of the earth! For what seems like years now they’ve been saying Bush with a varying lead in the popular vote, and a probable win in the Electoral College if such and such a state does what the polls say it will do, then calculate in slight variations and almost real time ameliorations of elaborate computer models. Now over Halloween weekend, they have something else to tell us. So please, listen with all attentiveness you give to the Moment of Silence.

…..Kerry opens slight lead electorally……

kind of….

in a way….

… but electoral votes in Hawaii important….

Republicans intimidating voters…

… Florida now swinging to Kerry…

and Bush….

simultaneously…

Okay, I’ll stop the senseless torture of your level-headed American brain for now.Instead, let’s refresh ourselves for a moment in focusing on the following reasons as to why these polls are all rubbish.

A)Most of them are well within the margin of error and those that aren’t have counterparts that say the exact opposite, though no one seems to care about the margin of error anymore.

B)Republicans typically do worse on weekends, perhaps because the evangelicals are going to church at various points throughout the day, and/or because rich right-wingers are busy taking vacations.

C)As they say (and they may be right this time), the only poll that matters is on Election Day, and that all depends on turnout, turnout, turnout.

So there you have it, folks. My recommended course of action is to pray tonight.
Hannity loves to repeat the phrase “let not your heart be troubled” whenever he isn’t spieling about how important get out the vote effort is and you better vote or we’re all doomed to hearing the words “president-elect Kerry.” I prefer to be anywhere from, on another line of mine, cautiously optimistic to defensively hopeful. Thus I tell you let your heart be troubled, but not too much.

Whatever happens in this election, it will be noted in history (the history I write at least) that this was a great clash of two political mindsets.This is symbolically embodied in the two candidate’s home states. Texas vs. Massachusetts. Wow. One ideology favors taking the fight to the terrorists and telling appeasing nations to shove it while the other opts for political expediency over military reality.T his fight, in various political forms, has been fought throughout our nation’s history and I suspect it still will be fought until the end of time as we know it.Roosevelt, Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Bush--the list of those who have fought the fight grows. John Kerry is nowhere near that list, folks, nor will he ever be, and no amount of impregnated litigation can change that tomorrow.

Slavery in the 21st Century?

2004-10-18T14:47:00.000-04:00

Slavery. Makes you think of history class, right? In fact, the number of our fellow human beings around the globe and even in our country that are enslaved has grown to 27 million and shows no sign of stopping. By some accounts, that’s more slaves than was trafficked from the coast of Africa to the Americas during European expansionism over the last few centuries. Numerous international accords have outlawed slavery during the last century and the 13th amendment was added to our Constitution 140 years ago, yet this infamous institution continues to persist while entire developed country’s population are oblivious to its mere existence, much less its growing prevalence. Tragically, the institution of slavery is not consigned to the history books as you might think.

In order to ignore this reality, some try and mitigate the facts, and rationalize that even if slavery does exist, it’s probably not very widespread, and certainly does not exist in the United States. After all, someone else’s definition of slavery might be child labor with little pay, which isn’t really slavery, right? But the fact of 27 million slaves in the world, accepted by numerous credible worldwide bodies as the best approximation, works with the definition of slavery as “work done without any compensation under the threat of violence.” If you broaden the definition of slavery to include things like child labor and cruel treatment of paid employees, the number of “slaves” increases exponentially, yet the hardships suffered of true slavery are unlike any other. This strict, confined definition of slavery is given for clarity.The thinking goes that grouping slavery together with other, less harsh forms criminal acts would be wrong; it would lessen the modern slave’s plight.

While the definition of slavery is narrow, the act can take many forms, each corrupted in its own way. According to the American Anti-Slavery Group, the most common form of slavery is debt bondage. This is a con game and is played on many innocent unemployed workers. They are told that if they sign up on a deal, usually involving travel to a foreign country, they will be able to get a better job with decent pay. Upon arrival, they are told that the trip they took cost them an exorbitant amount of money such as $50,000, and that they need to work unpaid until they pay it off. Of course, this “contract” lasts until the captive dies or manages to escape. This form of slavery occurs where the government would intervene if slavery were conducted on a massive scale, but is either unwilling or unable to combat debt bondage slavery. In other countries, slavery on a massive scale does exist and the government sponsors, condones, or ignores it. While this form is not as common, large ethnic groups and social classes have been enslaved in this manner, and it is important to not forget its existence.

These enslaved peoples are then used for a variety of purposes. In perhaps the worst type of the worst crime, sexual slavery is alarmingly common in the world. With numerous suffering economies around the world, slave labor is used to widen the gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished many. Other types of slavery include domestics who serve to clean the house and do the dishes. Many masters use women as workhorses during the day and concubines at night, constantly intimidating those who serve them.Each slave has his or her own unique experience, but when anyone has the ability and the will to enslave another human being, it gives their peon an experience common to every slave around the world.

The only continent that doesn’t have slaves is Antarctica. Asia has the most slaves, and India may even have more than all other country’s slave population combined. Africa, as a haven of both religious and economic unrest, continues to be a major source of many slaves for the world market and other African countries. Europe and North America, by virtue of being developed, do not enslave nearly as many people in raw numbers but individual greed causes many concubines and domestics to be there, but hidden from public view. Examples are the United States, which traffics an estimated 14,000 to 17,000 slaves per year from Central and South America, and France, which receives its chattel from exploited peoples in Asia.These countries such as Argentina and Brazil in South America, Russia and the United Arab Emirates in Asia, and the Australian continent both use slaves in their countries and export innocents to richer countries as well. Virtually our entire globe has the taint of slavery in its history and in its present.

Sex slavery is concentrated in Ghana, Australia, Honduras, the United States, Bolivia, Chile, and generally throughout mid- to southern-Asia. Sex tourism is an entire industry in some places, and the masters profit from exploiting innocent children and women in “stores” where the “customers” can pick and choose. In other places, the slave is by oneself and is taken advantage of each night by the same master. Slavery in a sexual form is neither isolated nor irrelevant according to human rights groups; a “quickie” for a tourist or a deeply hidden concubine-type relationship highlights the immoral capacity of the human mind.

Forced labor in the world, on the other hand, is the superlative of the deadly sin greed. In some of this world’s national economies, business-owners face a choice: either do what some vaguely define as the “right thing,” do not purchase slaves, and consequentially lose your business, or use slave labor to do an otherwise economically unviable task. The choice is clear for most who have lived with the reality of slavery their entire lives and may never have had the idea that slavery is wrong enter their mind.

It is apparent to those who research slavery that the ultimate cause for slavery can be best defined as the human will to make others suffer to save oneself from suffering. The fact that the pain one would undergo if you didn’t enslave others is far less than the pain that which your slaves are currently enduring doesn’t stop many. We can only place the blame for human nature and its consequences on everyone, and not only on the slave masters.

Because of this, modern day slavery is unlike the institutions of the past where transoceanic monopolies existed and whole peoples were enslaved for centuries. No longer is there any one large conspirator or dictator upon whom we can place the blame. Instead, many blame both those who engage in the practice of enslaving the militarily weak and those who perhaps do not own slaves but are in an excellent position to do something to abolish the practice and instead do nothing.

Many international organizations and treatises have been created to confront the problem of this global issue. The International Labor Organization has its positions and chronicles its reports on the rise of modern day slavery.It has organized legal agreements among countries to neither endorse nor allow slavery and aid it its prevention as best as the government can. The United Nations also has its international days of recognition of problems, holds meetings on the problem that mankind has in addressing modern day slavery, and agreements are passed. On occasion, sanctions can even result if the UN feels that sticking its neck out is worth it due to the extent of the slavery in a certain country. But all these agreements are only on paper, and while a country outwardly decries slavery as a violation of human rights, the reality of the state of the nation can be vastly different.

Here at home in the United States, law enforcement of course does the best it can to prevent slavery, and the Congress passed in 2000 the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, which helps prosecute slaveholders. 100,000 people are enslaved in a country with a population of 300 million—a fraction of a thousandth of a percent empirically, and that is a testament to our country’s process of abolishing the slavery over 140 years ago. But numbers don’t mean anything to those taken advantage of in a fake employment offer and trafficked into the United States, and they undoubtedly have a rotten impression of the country that touts its motto as being “the land of the Free.”

We haven’t just taken that attitude of freedom and stuffed it into our egotistically oversized bag of meaningless phrases, though; the US has made an effort to encourage world bodies to employ whatever means necessary to coerce countries into doing something about their slavery problem. Whether or not this does anything is another issue. As the United States is now the world’s only superpower, many argue that it is responsible for abolishing slavery worldwide like no one else is. As is always the case in American politics, though, both sides have ample “ammunition.”

According to the State Department, the Sudan Peace Act of 2002 has provided the President with leverage in the UN to further the policy of the US which is peace and the abolition of prejudicial slavery. Both presidential candidates tell us that they plan to appeal to the African Union to enforce foreign military measures when necessary. Reportedly due also to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Sudan and Venezuela have been sanctioned by the US government for not adequately responding to the problem of global slavery. They further assert that simply because of the threat of sanctions, Bangladesh and Burma have cooperated and improvements are beginning to be seen in those countries.

But the State Department also used to proclaim yearly that the country of Mauritania in northern Africa is violating human rights by allowing up to a million black Africans each year to be enslaved, their children and their children’s children will be enslaved as well.By all accounts, the policy of the Mauritanian government was not sufficient and the State Department was right to cite Mauritania is a violator of human rights.Then in an ironic twist, the US began to ignore chattel slavery in Mauritania after it joined the Middle East peace process.

So because of the mixed messages many prominent governments, international organizations, and world bodies are sending, many independent activist groups have sprung up to further the cause of abolitionism. Examples are the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), the first abolitionist group in the United States since the Civil War, Kindernothilfe, a German-based child advocacy group, the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) which works in the slavery-ridden country India, and many other regionally based advocacy groups. These activists get out the message to those aren’t aware of modern day slavery, conduct research (like Kindernothilfe’s reporting on modern slaves today versus those trafficked from Africa in previous centuries), and in some cases literally help slaves escape from slavery and transition into a life of prosperous freedom. They challenge corrupt governments and act as a watchdog with only one liability, which is the right of those enslaved to be free.

With all of the assemblies of people in this large world of ours, both of legal governments and unaffiliated activist groups, it may be a wonder why slavery still does exist in any fashion.Certainly no clear-thinking person wants slavery to exist. Yet its existence is as clear to us as the paper you’re holding in your hands right now. Who holds the blame? Everyone and no one simultaneously. What can you do? A whole lot more than you would think.

As an American citizen, you can lobby, protest, spit in the face (well, maybe not literally) of whomever you want to. The AASG is based on this principle, and one can join their cause in many forms possible. Increasing one’s awareness is always a good place to start. In some cases, boycotting can be effective indirectly. According to antislavery.org, there have been cases where American businesses were buying goods that were produced by slaves, and as a result of boycotts and protests, the companies took their business elsewhere almost immediately. Furthermore, as the situation in Sudan escalates and the world is becoming more focused on the issue which effectively illuminates the issue of modern day slavery, the American citizen can use his treasured power to vote wisely, if he or she is aware.

As is apparent to many, the nagging problem of slavery is not consigned to the history books, and one could even argue that it's worse now than ever before. A 27-million-people and $7-billion dollar a year "industry" is no small amount. Because of this, the blame is placed both on the slave masters those who have power and seemingly do nothing to promote abolition in favor of idleness and the status quo. Many governments have conspicuously opted to sweep their problem of slavery under the rug instead of being proactive.

In response, activists around the world have stepped up and had their say, and they no doubt have had influence on world bodies that claim to be responsible for the rights of all humans. What is apparent is that the public outcry about modern-day slavery of this world is stagnant.In a personal sense, one can only make sure that his or her self is not caught in the same trap of ignorance. As the American columnist Halton Adler Mann has noted, "Although unspeakable atrocities have become all too commonplace in this brutal, terrorist world, we must recognize our humanity by our abiding ability to be shocked."

Rational Articulation vs. Emotional Obfuscation

2004-09-30T23:05:00.000-04:00

There are about as many liberals as there are conservatives in our America, which makes understanding the American demographic crucial to winning elections. Let’s go cut to the chase and consider what is at the heart of the two prevailing political ideologies in the U.S. today.

Liberals would define their stance as one of compassion, civil rights even at the cost of security, and a stance for progressiveness, as though they actually know what those words mean. Compassion for liberals is a vague concept of an endearing government bestowing care and comfort to those hurt by our foolish capitalist society. A liberal lexicographer would say civil rights are simply what we’re supposed to get and it’s as simple as that. For a liberal, rights aren’t really given by any supernatural force higher than the 9th District Court of appeals. Liberals give themselves their own rights. And don’t get me started on progressiveness. That term ‘progressiveness’ is the epitome of obfuscation. What does it actually mean!? The trouble is, liberals don’t even know themselves.

In startling contrast, conservatives know exactly what they mean when they define their ideology. Government to conservatives is a necessary evil. It performs task society requires of it, and should promptly remove its buttocks from the scene anywhere it is not asked for. As for civil rights, we get those from God (capital G) and government (lowercase g) does its best to protect them for us. Conservatives wish to protect and cherish our national religious heritage instead of deleting God from history because of their interpretation of a flawed document. Alan Colmes once said conservatives want to conserve the past, and in all honesty, we do! We love America despite its shortcomings and want to learn from history and what works when and what doesn’t work. Finally, conservatives do not take shortcuts, they do not take the easy way out, and they act based on what they think is right, not what they feel is right.

While both human feelings and thoughts are flawed, at least we know thoughts come from some sense of logic! Conservatives strive for logic, while liberals are too busy examining their emotions to comment on the subject, thank you very much. Part of the underlying reason liberal sound bytes sound better than conservative sound bytes is that liberals appeal to your emotions while conservatives appeal to your reasoning. Emotion takes only a split-second to conceive, but thinking about the simplest of political issues takes time. And the more time one takes thinking about the two ideologies one has to choose between, the more the choice becomes articulately clear.

© Vampire Conservative Group 2004

The Geraldo Riveras of the News

2004-09-26T23:34:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Jeanne is the fourth hurricane to hit the United States this season, and Mother Nature has wrought a devastating amount of damage to the southern East Coast. It’s been all over the news, as it should be, but perhaps disproportionately so. What makes matters worse is the exaggerated melodrama that goes along with the large amount of coverage on the anchors’ part. What makes me despise the media’s coverage of these hurricanes, though, is the foolish reporters who stand conspicuously vulnerable to the hurricane that’s passing over that they’re "covering" when they should be shut up in some hotel somewhere safe.

I’m not really sure what makes people want to pull this kind of stupid stunt… at least they’re doing it legally with a news organization. But really, what’s the difference between other thrill-seekers and these reporters that play rag doll with a hurricane? These "journalists" have a microphone and a windbreaker with a company logo on it while other the other foolhardy musketeers don’t, but that’s about it. They both have inflated egos and a disproportionate amount of testosterone to sense.

Fox News isn’t immune to this, either. The inspiration for the title of tonight's piece is FNC's own Geraldo Rivera, who is the perfect example of the kind of news guy I’m talking about. All melodrama, no news. While covering "the heart of the storm" in Riviera County, Geraldo had the gall to joke the place should be renamed after him because he covered one of the hurricanes there. Rest assured, the entire FNC audience was not laughing, and those that were were laughing all the way to CNN.

I suppose if anyone should be out their covering the hurricanes, it should be folks like the Weather Channel gurus who actually know what they’re talking about and know what they’re doing. But still, we all know what a hurricane looks like; all the information we get out of the news is how strong the hurricane is, where it is, where it’s headed, and the death toll. All the other stuff is just show. Just lights and wires in a box.

© Vampire Conservative Group 2004

40 Days Out: An Analysis

2004-09-24T02:36:00.000-04:00

Well, it may be hard to believe it to some of us political junkies out there, but we have as much time as Noah had in the rain to yak it up and root for our guy. After that, I either go into hibernation during the lame duck period or celebrate and theorize over the next four years, which, by the way, will not end in 11th hour pardons. At 1 1/3 months out, I’m guardedly optimistic about the President’s chances. Here’s why.

People like Dick Morris and Newt Gingrich all throw up these complicated analyses of why such and such will happen, and most of the FNC analysts have Bush winning reasonably comfortably (Morris by a figure of 58-42!). I don’t see that happening. After Bush’s convention, he got a bigger bounce than Kerry, sure, but let’s not over interpret here. The RNC was better ran than the DNC , and the weekend before Labor Day is the closest to the election day in history, so naturally people paid more attention to the RNC. The Bush-Cheney '04 team also benefitted from having a well-planned and calculated response to the DNC.

But now, it’s seems a key shift in the Kerry campaign management actually has the Massachusetts liberal speaking much more coherently over the last 3 days than before (which, albeit, isn’t saying much). Perhaps the volatile waffling iron won’t be used as often for the last month and a third here. I just sense that Kerry’s building up a repertoire of more complicated and one-liners, which take 3 sentences to explain and not just one. This is critical in a sound-byte media.

Aside from my use of The Force to predict Kerry’s verbal vulnerability, my further proof is that the polls aren’t looking great either. While various electoral board counters like Election Projection, Electoral-Vote and the Beltway Boys have Bush up over or close to 300, these numbers are steadily dropping as Bush’s bounce decreases and Kerry’s coverage increases following the hurricane media hoop-la which is gone for now. Speaking of the media, Bush's message, imho, is a stronger and more coherent one than Kerry's, and even with the media filter, the crux of Bush's message will get through to people willing to listen. So don’t get me wrong. I'm neither a doomsayer nor a naïve wishfully thinking conservative, but as Hannity said on his radio show the other day: play it like we’re 5 points down, not 5 points up. Don’t be too optimistic here.

Kool-Aid drinkers

2004-09-23T02:41:00.000-04:00

In the 1,978th year following Christ in the town of Jamestown Guyana, 900 cult-followers committed mass-suicide by drinking an imitation of Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Ever since, one has used the term ‘Kool-Aid drinkers’ to term someone irrationally dedicated to a cause. There are many Kool-Aid drinkers in politics today; some of them are officeholders, others voters, some of them bureaucrats, others common people, some of them Democrats, others Republicans. However, they all share one thing in common: they are commited to ideology rather than logic, and assume the logic of their ideology will be a shortcut to actual thinking.

Before you get too frustrated with this type of people, think to yourself for a moment. Are you a Kool-Aid drinker? After all, you wouldn’t admit to being one even if you were. Some people would call me a Kool-Aid drinker; others call me a deep thinker. It is somewhat subjective. Just make sure you aren’t automatically siding yourself with your party or ideology in a debate. Listen to the other side of your first opinion on a subject, and imagine yourself in a debate with them. Could you hold your own? If you really could, this means you are thinking independently, because you are not just citing your party line’s thoughts but are quickly adapting to other’s opinions and logically reasoning out why you think they’re wrong.

In analyzing Kool-Aid drinkers, one must realize that without them, we would be left only with apathetic, disengaged Americans and thoughtful, reasoning, intellectually committed ones. Kool-Aid drinkers make up the base of both parties and give us our red-blue state map; they’re what other more clever Kool-Aid drinkers who hold office pander to the most. Often, political commercials using logical fallacies work only to inspire the Kool-Aid drinkers while having only a marginal effect on the apathetic voters. Kool-Aid drinkers are depravedly a key part of the United States political system and understanding them goes a long way in understanding how our government works. Alas, what can be done? Not much, except making sure you yourself are committed to using your brain instead of repeating your party's talking points.

"Lights and Wires in a Box"

2004-09-21T02:51:00.000-04:00

Not so many years ago on the great American communicative medium of ours we call television, there existed a great famine in the land for real broadcast journalism. In place of authenticity, you where given three cronies of the elite media establishment hiding behind three-lettered acronyms dictating to you, their loyal viewer, what you should think the news means. If at that time, one read the words of the great American television journalist Edward R. Murrow, one would think he was a prophetic genius. He told us, "the new medium of television had the potential to educate, illuminate and inspire." However, Murrow said, "it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely lights and wires in a box."

For a long time, the 30-minute newscasts of were just that—lights and wires in a box meant to impress the audience with their journalistic nobility. No, I take that back. They weren’t lights and wires in a box; they wished they could possibly, just maybe someday in their lifetimes achieve the grand title of lights and wires in a box. Before that, the term one substituted for "the nightly news" was "pile of crap," and that was when one was in a good mood. And then we all know what happened afterwards; CNN succeeded at impressive coverage of events but ultimately failed to disguise TV journalism’s leftist leanings, so soon Fox News and the common man’s newsman like Drudge took over and pronounced the elite media’s reign over. Ted Turner had said CNN would squash FNC like a bug; evidently he was nowhere the prophetic genius range.

Given this, a naïve, newborn conservative might logically assume that CBS, ABC and NBC give up the news business and go back from whence they came to entertainment programming. Or, at the very least, they would radically change their quality from "pile of crap" to "just above lights and wires, but still has a lot of work to do," right? Not so, my friend. They continue to blunder and flail in their elitist arrogance so pitifully that were journalism not such a serious business, one would laugh. The most recent even-you-liberals-can-see-this-can’t-you example case-in-point is rather obvious. Pun intended.

Dan Rather never has been the one to adapt quickly to changing times. He is getting up there, and so maybe that’s why it took him five years after concocting a groundless slander story attacking our President to finally admit that it was someone else’s fault. Fortunately, though, we don’t have to go through another minute of this kind of bias and arrogance anymore. We go from NBC to FNC, from Kronkite to Limbaugh, from three major news networks to only one. We, the American public, have decided we want real news and we want it right the first time, not after a week and a half of stonewalling. So we got what we wanted, because that’s the power of the television audience. We wanted more than just lights and wires in a box, and we got it. Props to Mr. Murrow.

Here's the Kickoff

2004-09-19T00:50:00.000-04:00

The underlying problem with liberals nowadays is that they're too stupid to recognize phrases beyond one word. They know what phrases like "peace," "love," "racism," "conservative," and "tolerance" mean, sure. These are liberal buzzwords that they use often.

But try to explain to them the meaning of a "free market" or "Evil Empire," and you've lost them. Say "compassionate conservatism" and they have a confused look on their face, but mention "reverse racism" and they quickly change their mood from confusion to absolute shock. Talk about the problem of "moral relativism" or "naive liberalism" and they go nuts; they've always thought they were "tolerant" and "moderate." Say you think Clinton's policies were "far fetched" and "disturbingly reckless," and they'll say no, they were "compassionate" and "empathizing."

When you try to counter that argument with a huge phrase like "the incalculable improbability of empathy or sympathy in a slyly acting greedy sleuth" like Bill Clinton, they'll start bawling because they simply don't understand. And that is what constitutes the problem with today's modern liberal: it's not that they are too "dumb" to debate your arguments, it's that they're too "convolutedly befuddled" to understand them.