Snark of the day

Comment about the comic-relief LP Prez wannabe Daniel Imperato, from Ken Braun:

Imperato: Goofy, inconsistent policy positions and wild claims that have no logical connection to one another, let along the people of the party he seeks to “lead.”

Reading the policy “ideas” on his website led me to wonder if anyone else has noticed that his name is an anagram for “I Am Perot.”

And as good, from David Weigel

“[Imperato] is the most ridiculous candidate I have ever seen,” says Starchild.

…who should know.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, lesbians are from Lesbos

Residents of the Greek island of Lesbos launched a legal action yesterday against a homosexual group, insisting that only islanders had the right to call themselves lesbians.

The inhabitants of the island said they were attempting to ban the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (Olke) from bearing the name “lesbian”.

Residents of Lesbos now suffer “psychological and moral rape” from the “seizure” of their island’s name by gays, according to the complaint by Dimitris Lambrou, a local activist. He has set out his argument in “The Misfortune of Being Lesbian”, published on his website.

It’s a hoot, but legally, it isn’t going anywhere. Ask the brewers in Ceske Budovice. Though it is nice to know that there can be male lesbians.

The Golden Rule per Jeremiah Wright

Dana Milbank has some interesting Wright quotes. This is the oddest one:

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”?

Wright defended it: “Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.”

Is Wright claiming here that we want terrorism, so we’re doing it on other people? Jesus’ words are a call to forgiveness, not revenge.

On the other hand, if America were run by a cruel dictator, then by religious militias, would most Christian Americans welcome somebody coming in to fix it? Perhaps we are obeying the Golden Rule.

LP RIP

The Libertarian Party is calling for increased coordination and communication between federal and state law enforcement agencies in order to help to apprehend and convict child predators and those who engage in child pornography.

How very nice. A fine odor, somewhat like that of the NRA’s Project Exile. Stephan Kinsella’s take:

There is some gossip that this release was a stupid inner-party power play, to make radicals, including believers in decentralist law enforcement, feel uncomfortable in the party. By forcing this issue over the very emotionally charged issue of child porn, some people in charge of the party are trying to force anarchists and other radicals to admit they do not think the federal government should be involved in such questions. Specifically, they are attacking one presidential candidate, Mary Ruwart, over this and using it as an excuse to alienate radicals.

Well, it worked.

I caught some of the Ruwart-rumblings yesterday, but could not find what her words were that were alleged to be pro-kiddie porn. She’s made it more than clear that that is NOT her position. Somebody could probably find some words on this blog that would implicate me as pro-kiddie-porn, just because I believe in Federalism and the 1st Amendment.

First the Reasonoids and their war against Ron Paul drove me into the arms of the paleoconservatives. Now this. I’m seriously thinking of voting Constitution Party this year. Yes, they’re a bunch of theocrats, but at least they believe in One Who doesn’t change, while the LPs beliefs appear to be negotiable. So much for the Party of Principal-and-interest. I can hardly wait for the next fundraising letter.

UPDATE: here’s a link to the whole source of sordidness. Note that whatever you think of Ruwart’s words, their link to The Watergaters call to federalize child porn investigation is tenuous.

U-M prof tangles with CPS over kid’s drink.

Dr. Christopher Ratte, professor of classical archaeology, had his 7 year old at a ballgame and saw a sign saying “Mike’s Lemonade”. So he bought one for the kid…thus starting the meat grinder. A week later, the family was reunited.

I’m not going to be as hard on CPS as you might think. Both the interviewing cop (at the hospital, where young Leo’s BAC tested at zero) and the CPS workers thought it was all stupid and embarrassing. But there were orders and procedures that had to be followed, jawohl.

Nor will I be as easy on Dad. He saw the bottle: “Mike’s Hard Lemonade”. Excuse me, but “hard” only has one meaning in the context of beverages; did he think there were pieces of fossilized lemon peel in it? “I don’t watch TV” is no excuse; neither do I, and I not only know what Mike’s is, I’ve even consumed it. Well, now he knows how government works. I won’t assume that he needed the lesson; after all, he is an archaeologist, not a Womyn’s/Gay/Black/Insert-your-pressure-group-here Studies prof, so he might be normal. But given the general propensity of academics to be court intellectuals, giving one a reason to hate the State is a good thing.

My dad hipped me to this, and reminded me that if this sort of thing had gone on when I was growing up, I and my sister would both have been brought up in foster care.

I-slammers invent phone rape

Our friends in the Religion of Peace Piss have invented a new twist on phone sex: phone rape. A Tunisian family claims that their 20 year old daughter lost her virginity during a phone call, that her hymen ruptured and there was bleeding. Well, maybe she should have kept her fingers out of there. And as for rape…’scuse me, but the defining element of rape is lack of consent. Would somebody explain to be how one can have non-consensual phone sex?

If this girl is suddenly used merchandise and thus unmarriagable, it will be a good thing that she won’t be spreading her family’s stupidity genes.

Eldorado kids moving to foster care

and the state is being ever so gentle...no red clothes, no TV, no public school. Brainwash them slowly. Ironically:

The group of children, while large, shouldn’t have a serious impact on the state’s foster care system because caseloads have declined over the past 18 months as CPS implements new laws designed to keep children with their families or place them with relatives.

…unless of course all their kin are FLDS.

The black Harold Stassen misses CP nod

The Constitution Party won’t be running Alan Keyes for President; they went very solidly for Chuck Baldwin. I saw Rev. Baldwin in the ’04 VP debate in Berea OH, and found him very impressive. There’s a bit too much of theocracy around the CP for me to go that way, but I wish luck to Chuck.

“If we treated violence as a disease, would that help us find a cure?”

So begins the lady’s article, describing a professor lady’s work.

“Youth honor killing” is a meme which may be susceptible to change, if you’re going to treat memes as infections. It may even be possible to do so without violating the 1st Amendment, though I doubt it. If so, it is self-evidently worth doing. But “violence”? I see several problems here. One is that violence is absolutely necessary to a free society. Let’s use a collectivist metaphor and pretend that society is the human body, made up of millions of cells all working together. We declare non-violence on a cellular level. No foreign bacteria are allowed to attack…and the immune system is not allowed to counterattack. Now, the minute you have one exception, one bacterium that enters the body and does not play by the “no violence” rule, the body is toast. You cannot eliminate violence without becoming food for the violent…which is ultimately what happened to Ghandi, and would have happened sooner had he not been working against a Christian and conflicted nation.

The other problem: what do you do if the violent do not want to give up the violence meme on their own? The conquest of infectious diseases rests on violence: mandatory vaccination, quarantine, tax-funded research, tax-funded water and sewer treatment. It is reasonable to assume that the conquest of the violence meme would likewise require violence. Now, how the hell are you going to do that, wiping out an idea by practicing the idea? If Dr. Hyphenated-Name really wants to get rid of violence, she should be praying, because God is the only being who can do that.

It’s also amusing to see the hand-wringing about “a Founding Father” killed in a duel. Alexander Hamilton was the Founding Father most deserving of an early and violent death as a counterrevolutionary.

Save Benny from icky art

Benito Shapero has discovered Aliza Shvarts. And he is not happy:

All rights have reasonable limits.

And reason tells us that the limit is when the right starts violating the rights of others.

The right to bear arms does not include a right to own a nuclear weapon.

It doesn’t? Now, using a nuke is problematic, and why have one if you can’t use it?

The right to free exercise of religion does not include a right to ritualistic child sacrifice.

Because the right to life supercedes it

The right to free expression in art should not include a right to film yourself having an abortion; neither should it include a right to use feces, urine or any other bodily fluid in public, nor should it include a right to engage in sex acts before live audiences.

OK, why not? I’ll buy no. 1 because of the abortion, but given that abortions are perfectly legal, why shouldn’t they be filmed? As for the rest, why not, legally? Whose rights are being violated?

Why not artistically is another matter. Non-art like this is bad for art and artists; it makes us all look like depraved fools. But when art is operating under market forces, you don’t see a lot of this. When the government is paying, or academia, then the nutjobs come out. So, Benito, why are you asking the source of the problem to pass laws to fix it, instead of having it just stop what it’s doing that creates the problem? Quit funding art!