Good, the Sorry Sumbitch
It's a fine way to start, but I'd actually prefer to see these people butchered in the middle of my street.

The U.S. government has sued a New Hampshire man in its first attempt to crack down on Internet "spyware" that seizes control of a user's computer without permission.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday asked a federal court to shut down an operation that it said disables users' computers in an attempt to bully them into buying anti-spyware products.

Spywaremongers piss me off something fierce. I hope this new law gives the government the right to charge these people with one count for every computer thus infected. Make it a catastrophic crime that can't be recovered from.

Sorry sumbitches.

Wood That I Could
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "Back in the Saddle" by Aerosmith
Bush won the debate tonight. And people like him a lot better than Kerry, too. That counts for plenty, especially since this election has moved beyond facts and is now all about emotion.

Can't wait to hear more about the President's timber company, though. Maybe it'll be an even more sinister corporate scandal than...Halliburton.

Dissociative Press
Charles Duelfer's 1,000-page report on the work of the Iraq Survey Group is out now ---and everyone is taking from it what they need to score their points. But, as the Power Line tells it, such partisan interests are finding their way into what should be the standard for America's wire services: the Associated Press.

This is how AP reporter Scott Lindlaw opens his "report" (emphases mine):

President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue -- whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."

Keep in mind that this is a news story about the findings of the Duelfer Report. Thousands of newspapers all across the country and world will run this report verbatim, yet it reads like a Kerry campaign press release.

This is what the President actually said:

The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions.

He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.

Therefore, the Power Line's ire:

So Lindlaw grossly mischaracterizes President Bush's statement. Bush did not invent a "new" rationale for toppling Saddam, or suggest that we went to war simply because Saddam was abusing the oil for food program. The point of Bush's reference to the oil for food program was that Saddam was abusing it for the specific purpose of regaining his WMD capabilities. This is exactly what the ISG report says. Bush correctly characterized the report; Scott Lindlaw incorrectly characterized Bush's point.

Lindlaw's anti-Bush bias is notorious and well-documented. In fact, until Dan Rather decided to ruin his credibility forever in the now-forgotten Killian Forgery Scandal, the boys at the Power Line had already jumped on Lindlaw's ass for another one of his lies.

Go check this out. And remember to not believe everything you read.

You'll Need to Read This
This is one of the best posts I have ever read in any blog anywhere. The guy's name is Bill Whittle and the blog is called Eject!Eject!Eject!

A small morsel:

It all comes down to carrots (liberals) or sticks (conservatives). By the way: if you're in a rush and need to run, here's the spoiler: You can offer a carrot. Not everybody likes carrots. Some people may hate your carrot. Your carrot may offend people who worship the rutabaga. But no one likes being poked in the eye with a stick. That's universal.

Brilliant.

I also very much agree with Whittle's belief that Osama is dead ---and that neither the President nor animals like Zawahiri have any good reason to say so. In Bush's case, if he actually does know what happened at Tora Bora, saying so would give the Islamofascists their martyr; in Zawahiri's case, it would be a demoralizer to know that the great Osama was gotten to by the Great Satan, even though the faithful would carry on with the Osama-as-martyr routine for a while to come.

In any event, this is a great post and should be read by all.

Pressureless Cooker
It doesn't matter that John Kerry vacillates repeatedly and shamelessly on issues large and small; his supporters will not hold it against him. Under any circumstances. Ever.

A couple days ago, for instance, Kerry publicly admitted that he knows that such alleged allies as France and Germany aren't going to send their troops into Iraq to help us. Yet, one of the very few points that Kerry never moves away from is his insistence that he is somehow magically qualified and capable of bringing these countries to our side in Iraq. Does he suffer any consequences for this volte-face? No. Even though it's an absolute refutation of everything he's said for the past nine months? NO.

That their nominee can change course like he does without paying any price can only be explained by the Democrats' intellectual dishonesty. When their only guiding principle is hatred of the President and their only desire is to see him removed, there is nothing else that matters. That would include the many indefensible and self-contradictory positions their candidate has taken and will continue to take until Election Day. The Kerrion willfully ignore all of that because it gets in the way of The Objective. (For real Americans, The Real Objective is putting a stake in the heart of Islamofascism, but let that pass.)

For example ---or pour example, if that will make you feel more at home--- Kerry refused to tell Jim Lehrer during last week's debate that the War for Iraq was a mistake. That is, until he called it a "colossal" mistake. Did the Kerrion notice this? Maybe, but it doesn't matter if they did because what really matters is that he looked Presidential. And did it matter to the party faithful that Kerry insisted that he will stay in Iraq and finish the job? Nope. They didn't hear that part, even though it's exactly what President Bush says, too.

Don't forget that the Democratic Party very much wanted to see Howard Dean take the nomination. Remember him? Dean was the only candidate for the Presidency whom any Democrat ever had any real passion for. Why? Because Dean was genuinely anti-war. Kerry wasn't. Edwards wasn't. And Dean was leading the pack there for quite a while. Until the Democrats realized that they needed to find a candidate whose resume could trump Bush's in one particular: military experience. And Kerry fit the bill even better because he had anti-war credentials from 35 years before. Never mind that, for the six years before Dean came along, Kerry had been as outspoken as any Democrat on the need to remove Saddam Hussein. What mattered now was that Kerry had to find some way to co-opt the Dean anti-war message if he wanted a chance at the nomination. And that is what Kerry did. He stole that support to get ahead.

What does John Kerry really believe about the War for Iraq? No question in today's political scene matters less. Not just because it is irrelevant to the machinations of both the Democratic Party and Kerry himself, but because it is a boring parlor game. If he had a legitimately held position, it would be of very great interest, both contemporarily and historically. But it is a footnote to us because it is an afterthought to him.

There is no pressure on John Kerry. He can say or do anything he pleases now and he will still stumble upon roughly half of the electorate's "approval." That should be a liberating feeling. Tomorrow's debate will tell.

My Take on the Debate
I wasn't able to watch the Vice Presidential debate live last night, but I taped it and watched it later.

There's no question that Dick Cheney won the debate handily. John Edwards did a competent job, but on the major questions, especially with respect to his qualifications to be President, he just didn't have an answer.

Cheney got pretty hot when the Breck Girl continued with the idiotic Kerry line of attack on our allies ---and that includes the Iraqi military and security forces. If people haven't been thinking of those men as being part of the Coalition, maybe it's time they do so. They're fighting for their country with our help, and they deserve our respect. The Kerrion aren't willing to do this. Indeed, they aren't willing ---unless shamed into it--- to acknowledge the sacrifices made by other countries, such as Great Britain, Italy, and Poland.

Cheney's command of the facts, his gravitas, and his long experience are a living argument against Edwards' facile, lawyerly rhetoric. You know who's better able to step into the Oval Office and guide this country. You know which of these two men is the greater resource and counsel to the President.

In Edwards' candidacy, Kerry's judgement has been discredited once again.

Why Isn't This Being TRUMPETED?
The notorious Frenchman John Kerry has admitted that

he probably will not be able to convince France and Germany to contribute troops to Iraq if he is elected president.

The Massachusetts senator has made broadening the coalition trying to stabilize Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign, but at a town hall meeting yesterday, he said he knows other countries won't trade their soldiers' lives for those of U.S. troops.

"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said.

Asked about that statement later, Mr. Kerry said, "When I was referring to that, I was really talking about Germany and France and some of the countries that had been most restrained."

"Other countries are obviously more willing to accept responsibilities," he added, as he took questions from reporters in a school yard in Tipton, Iowa.

These are unbelievable remarks. Kerry has known this inconvenient truth for quite a long time now, yet persists with his nonsense that he will somehow be able to bring our so-called allies to the "table." They have never evinced the slightest inclination to help us in Iraq.

And why is that? Not because of some moral objection or some noble faith in Saddamite Iraq's sovereignty ---but for the mere reason that these allies were making billions of dollars off of the kickback scheme built into the Oil-for-Food program. French and Russian companies were making out like bandits and didn't want to see Saddam's regime replaced.

So what does Kerry have to say for himself? How is this admission not a total refutation of his own mantra that we went into Iraq without a legitimate coalition?

If George W. Bush can't hang this around Kerry's neck, he deserves to lose.

Give the People What They Want
In an effort to kill rumors being spread by chickenshit liars in the Democratic Party, the United States House of Representatives yesterday voted 402-2 against a bill that would reinstate the military draft. The bill was authored by New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, a Democrat, and was originally intended to be a protest against the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq. But Rangel, when faced with the reality of having to vote for his little stunt, voted against his own bill, saying:

"It is a prostitution of the legislative process to take a serious issue and use it for political purposes on the eve of the election just to say they are against the draft."

Pure chutzpah, Charlie. Your party, which is full of Moore-ons, Movers-on, and fucking traitors, has been sending out e-mails, flyers, and ---for all I know--- winos in sandwich boards to warn college-aged kids that Bush is going to reinstate the draft if he gets re-elected. It's a big lie and you and Baghdad Jim McDermott and the other lying turds know it, too.

I am a pretty well-read political junkie and not once in the past three years of this war against the Islamofascists have I ever heard any Republican or member of the Bush Administration or any member of the Department of Defense or any active-duty officer in the United States military even suggest that we should reinstitute the draft. On the contrary, I have heard these very same people explicitly and convincingly describe the superiority of the current system of an all-volunteer force. And this would be in every aspect of the troops' morale, desire, sense of duty, and disposition to make the kinds of sacrifices necessary.

I am a colleague of a man who is a 12-year veteran of the US Army and who served in the Gulf War ---and he is working hard and planning to re-up. His sense of duty to himself and his country is what drives him, as is the case with many other such men. The modern military wants the best ---and that's what they get when they accept men and women who want to prove that they are the best.

The Democratic Party are a lot of cut-throat liars and smear-artists. But don't expect them to stop what they're doing anytime soon. They've got an election to try to steal ---let 'em at it.

Demeaned It
Courtesy of Cox & Forkum (the best editorial cartoonists you've never heard of) comes this withering retort from last night's Vice Presidential debate:

EDWARDS: [...] Not only that, 90 percent of the coalition casualties, Mr. Vice President, the coalition casualties, are American casualties. Ninety percent of the cost of this effort are being borne by American taxpayers. It is the direct result of the failures of this administration.

IFILL: Mr. Vice President?

CHENEY: Classic example. He won't count the sacrifice and the contribution of Iraqi allies. It's their country. They're in the fight. They're increasingly the ones out there putting their necks on the line to take back their country from the terrorists and the old regime elements that are still left. They're doing a superb job. And for you to demean their sacrifices strikes me as...

EDWARDS: Oh, I'm not...

CHENEY: ... as beyond...

EDWARDS: I'm not demeaning...

CHENEY: It is indeed. You suggested...

EDWARDS: No, sir, I did not...

CHENEY: ... somehow they shouldn't count, because you want to be able to say that the Americans are taking 90 percent of the sacrifice. You cannot succeed in this effort if you're not willing to recognize the enormous contribution the Iraqis are increasingly making to their own future. We'll win when they take on responsibility for governance, which they're doing, and when they take on responsibility for their own security, which they increasingly are doing.

There's really no question that Dick Cheney could step into the role of President at a moment's notice. But John Edwards? Gimme a break.

Separation Anxiety
Now Playing: "Keep 'Em Separated" by the Offspring
I don't know how it began, but the notion that the War for Iraq and the War against the Terrorists are separate issues is baffling. Well, I say I don't know, but I do: it serves the anti-Bush interests, shared by Big Media and the Democratic Party, to present these two fights as unconnected. One is a justifiable action, even grudgingly consented to by most of the Democrats and even much of Europe; the other is a Halliburton-inspired adventure, embarked upon for filthy lucre and to straighten out some deep-rooted inferiority complex suffered by the Chimperor.

But if you see Iraq and the fight against the al-Qaedists as two stages in a broader war against Islamofascism, then you are more likely to take the longer view of our struggle to liberate Iraq from the grip of murderers and savages. And why shouldn't you take that view? Because George W. Bush didn't explain it you eloquently enough? Because, if the French and Germans were opposed to the war in Iraq, then there must surely have been something wrong with it? Because every time Dan Rather or Peter Jennings showed you an opinion poll, they trotted out one set of numbers for what we have done in Afghanistan and elsewhere against terrorists and another set for our horrible quagmire in Iraq?

They who control the media control the message.

And I see from last night's Vice Presidential debate that John Edwards continues to parrot Kerry's line that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. But that is a lie.

As I have written before, con artists like Kerry and Edwards want their base, which is mostly comprised of Oprah-watching dumbasses who take to books and politics like Superman takes to kryptonite, to think that Bush has lied to them.

I think I understand now what the problem is: you people believe that Bushitler claimed that Saddam was behind the atrocities of 11 September 2001 because when you hear the term "al-Qaeda," you only think of "9/11." Thus, when the Bush Administration rightfully claims that the Saddamites and al-Qaeda were linked, your minds elide these three things into one statement: "Bush says Saddam was behind 9-11."

Never mind that Bush has never claimed that Saddam was responsible for the atrocities of 11 September 2001. But he did proclaim once, not too long after that awful morning, that the United States isn't going to wait around while threats gather; nor are we going to make any distinction between terrorists and the countries that harbor them.

Iraq was ---and still is--- one of those countries. Last week, Kerry said that Iraq was not anywhere close to being the frontline in the war against the terrorists, but that is what he needs to tell you. The reality is much different. Read Stephen Hayes' latest article in the Weekly Standard. It's a good wrap-up of the connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda ---and attested to not only by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence but by the Kean Commission itself. You know, that august body whose recommendations John Kerry is so gung-ho to implement.

But it's clear that he's never read their report. Otherwise, he wouldn't keep telling the lie that there was no relationship betwen Saddam and al-Qaeda. Right?

The Barking Moonbat Alights upon Greensburg
In another nauseating turn at the mic, Ter-AY-zuh Heinz (who Charles Johnson at LGF wonders might be "the first barking moonbat First Lady") has done gone plum Evita, insisting that, among other things,

"Every child in America will receive health care from day one if John is elected. Period."

Is that something her consort can decree by imperial edict, or will the Congress have any role to play in that?

Yesterday, at a hotel in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, the foreign-born billionairess made a startling number of other weird remarks, such as her claim that this country is headed towards a huge new state-run health care system:

Under her husband's plan, the government would pay 75 percent of all medical costs above $50,000 per incident[...]

Is it even conceivable that she was authorized to make such an outrageous claim? Did the Senator actually tell her to say that, or is this just more of her bizarre ultra-socialist gibberish? It's unbelievable.

But, naturally, it was Ter-AY-zuh's idiotic remarks on Iraq and the war against the terrorists that has most gotten my goat. Try this comment on for size:

"On 9/12 every single newspaper in the world said 'We are all Americans.' Today it is not the case."

Every single one, eh? Did she mean to say that, or is such hyperbole to be expected when the demonization of her adopted country is demanded?

By sending American troops to Iraq instead of to Afghanistan, Bush permitted Osama bin Laden to escape, Heinz Kerry said.

This is a lie, of course, and criminally stupid to even believe, but such is Kerry's suggestion. He said the President allowed Osama to escape, but no one knows that. Osama could be dead. But don't ask Madeleine Albright that; she thinks he's been on ice for a while, just waiting to be paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in chains as in a Roman triumph.

"Osama bin Laden is Osama been lost," she said.

Hilarity. How I wish to God Almighty Albright were right. That'd shove the cork so far back down the Kerrion's collective neck that they'd never breathe again.

"The Taliban is back running Afghanistan," Heinz Kerry said.

Well, don't look now, but they're about to have elections in Afghanistan next week. Sure, it's all illegitimate and fixed by Karl Rove and the Bushitler War Machine, Inc., but ten million new voters (40 percent of whom are women who don't know their place) are going to be doing something at the polls next week that they never dreamed of before. Can't we get this billionaire socialite-ist to give 'em their propers?

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was not a hotbed on terrorism, but it is now, she said.

Assuming that Ter-AY-zuh's right, where does she think those terrorists came from? I'm not talking about the homegrown nuts who polish their poles to visions of the Butcher of Baghdad; I'm talking about people like Zarqawi and the Ansr al-Islam and Tawhid murderers. Where does this crusty old clown think they would have gone after they fled our forces in Afghanistan if they hadn't gone to Iraq? Maybe they would have come here. Maybe they would have gone into the Sudan where her consort thinks we should go to save the natives from the Janjaweed. Since there's no reason to suppose that these vermin were planning on giving up the fight against us, isn't there something to be said for meeting them in a place where they are harbored?

The point is that Ter-AY-zuh is an ill-informed, ultra-wealthy dominatrix who can't wait for her shot at the White House. It is her prize for meeting with the Great Unwashed in their fast-food restaurants and high school auditoriums and train stations. But she knows dick about this country. All she knows is how much better it would be if it were just more like France.

And if everyday Americans could get a better look at this creepy broad, you know very well that they would have none of it.

To Wallowers in the Slick
Help yourself to this piece ("Echoes of History") by Duane Freese at TechCentralStation. No, George W. Bush is no Lincoln, but Lincoln would have recognized Bush's determination in the face of ill-informed detractors and pessimists as being akin to his own. Freese writes:

But find in one Kerry utterance anything so clear as Bush's aspiration, uttered in the debate of our purpose of why we are fighting in Iraq:

"I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that a free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest. And I believe both a free Afghanistan and a free Iraq will serve as a powerful example for millions who plead in silence for liberty in the broader Middle East."

America fought a world war to make the world safe for democracy. But to make our democracy really safe we must spread the word -- especially to places where it may in the end inspire the greatest hope for transformation.

Bush may not wax as eloquent as Lincoln, but he certainly manifests the Great Emancipator's certainty that we ---America--- are the last, best hope of Earth.

"Samarra control returning to Iraqis"
That was the headline on the front page of yesterday's Austin American-Statesman ---and what a miraculously neutral, even positive, thing to proclaim. Because what does it imply in the face of all the standard-issue anti-war horseshit and pessimism? That those who have been "resisting" (i.e., murdering innocent people and our brave troops) heretofore were not the treasonous Michael Moore's "Minutemen" who were fighting for "their" country, but vermin who are standing in the way of Iraqis' progress. Plain old Iraqis. Isn't that nice to know who has the better claim to being an Iraqi? Foreign terrorists, Ba'athist losers, and psychopathic Saddamites ---or everyday citizens who want to see the rule of their country restored under democratic principles.

You don't get to be an Iraqi when you plow your car into a crowd of little kids and detonate explosives. You just get to be a subhuman sack of shit. Keep the distinction and keep on keepin' on.

The Giggling Barbarian
You know what I'd pay cash money to hear right now? People from around the world doing the most extreme and bigoted imitations possible of what an American sounds like. Like, I could rattle off some faux Chinese or German right now and it'd be amusing enough. But what's got to be really amusing would be to hear them doing me. Heh, heh. Could it get any better than that?

My Blog Host Is Now Back in My Good Graces
Mood:  celebratory
After a month of wondering what the hell was wrong with my blogroll link management function, it is now back up and doing more than what it did before.

Sweeet!

Madness

Not the Only Iranian Stooge
Have I mentioned lately that John Kerry's plan to supply Iran with nuclear fuel is stupid and dangerous? Clever people (like those that backed the same failed plan in North Korea as implemented by the Clinton Administration) want this to happen because it, uh...well...because it's...

Help me out here, folks. Kerry wants to supply Iran with nuclear fuel for what the mullahs claim is the generation of electricity ---and he hopes that we can trust the Iranians enough to not take that spent fuel and reprocess it into weapons-grade plutonium. Am I getting this right? Is there any possible reason for this?

Turns out, it may not matter.

After hearing of Kerry's largesse in his very Presidential debate performance last week, the Iranians came out and said:

Iran has rebuffed a proposal by U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry who has suggested supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel for power reactors if Tehran agrees to give up its own fuel-making capability.

Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday it would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear programme in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad.

"We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others," Asefi told a weekly news conference.

Hmmm. Maybe the Iranians just don't trust themselves to play by the rules.

But would there be another reason for Kerry's stupid and dangerous proposal? Read this excellent post at the Captain's Quarters. Kerry seems to have a lot of Iranian friends who would very much like to see relations normalized between us and Iran. They'd like to see it so much that they've put their money where their mouths are.

Ah, yes. Some more of the old "meeting-with-foreign-leaders" bit, eh? Keep an eye on this.

Antiquing

HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

After a pleasant lunch yesterday with my Momma, I decided to stop by and check out some of the antique shops on South Congress Avenue. There's a whole row of them there where fashionable people go to waste money and be kitschy.

The last one I went into was a huge warehouse full of everything from 50's-era ashtrays, radios, and blenders to vintage clothing, funky lamps, and John F. Kennedy memorial busts. I don't know who runs the place, but they have a real sense of decor in how they've arranged all those tens of thousands of items into some sort of thematic flow. It is a very interesting place to spend a half-hour or so.

But what sent me away with a profound sadness that had overcome even my fascination was the sense that I had just walked through a house of death. What thing in there hadn't been a part of someone's life that had survived them? Every particle of that detritus ---now sporting price tags and fancily arrayed across every available surface--- had been made or bought or received with some, maybe nobler, purpose in mind than to what it was reduced to now, which was nothing but to be a commodity to decorate some systems analyst's condo.

It was depressing. Especially the baskets and buckets full of many hundreds, maybe thousands, of black and white photos. There were even some tintypes laid out. How could these things have ever come to such a sorry state? I went through some of them, looking into the eyes of anonymous people who lived in those captured moments 50, 60, 70 years before me now. And I turned them over: no names, no clues. Why were those images now a part of some mouldering, unidentifiable pile? How could they have been let go? Did no one think enough to save them?

We cannot keep the past intact forever, that's true. But the truth of that has never made what we do to forget it any less painful.

Six Hundred Barrels of Plaster
Here's Richard Byrne's new profile and review of Stephen Greenblatt and his new biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Although my ardor for things Shakespearean has cooled lately, it's always interesting to see how full of shit the orthodoxy is about the Bard. To wit:

Literary sleuths have proposed a number of eminent Elizabethans -- including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and Queen Elizabeth I herself -- as the true author of the plays and verse. To this day, news media stoke this controversy, in spite of a virtually unanimous chorus of literary scholars who dismiss the so-called "authorship question" as nonsense.

"No serious person who is engaged in the historical record can have any doubt" that William Shakespeare wrote the works published under his name, says Mr. Greenblatt. "He was famous in his lifetime for writing them. It would have required a literally unbelievable conspiracy to pass these plays off as his when they were someone else's."

And, yet, "serious people" (i.e., know-it-all shills employed by major universities and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, among others) are always having to answer Those Pesky Questions. That wouldn't be because they're valid questions, of course.

And, in the course of this review, Byrne manages to mention several of the problems with how Shakespeare is understood by the mainstream academics, but without little sense of irony or circumspection:

In Will in the World, Mr. Greenblatt's creative suppositions about Shakespeare's life often win out over certainty. Anecdote and coincidence mix easily into his narrative, which also draws heavily on a close reading of the works for clues about the writer.

Well, we're often told that "close readings" (i.e., looking for autobiographical clues in the works themselves) are to be avoided, lest subjectivism creep too far into our cold interpretations. Yet, stylometry (which I hold is a form of autobiographical revelation) is at once defended by these orthodox Stratfordians if they think it will make the case for their latest lost (and found) work by Shakespeare.

Thus far, it's been a flop.

Just remember what Mark Twain once said of Shakespeare: "He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster."

A Bone for the Craphounds to Gnaw On
Now Playing: "Two of Us" by the Beatles
Think that the Patriot Act is the Gestapo bible? Well, then you may just be stupid enough to be a Kerry supporter. But if you want to know the truth of the matter, read what Deroy Murdock has to say about it.

Civil-libertarian purists [...] see the Patriot Act as the birth certificate of an American police state. But the Justice Department's inspector general found only 17 Patriot Act-related complaints through December 2003 that merited investigation and substantial review. That's a rather low error rate, given millions of contacts over two years between Justice employees and average citizens.

It would also be important to remember that John Kerry (and his running mate, whose name escapes me just now) voted for the Patriot Act. In fact, Kerry even wrote part of it. Did you know that? Keep that in mind the next time you hear Kerry talk about what an awful, rights-stealing instrument of our civic destruction that law is.

After all, you wouldn't support a man who voted for something and then spent all of his time acting as though he never had, would you?