Mr. Grouchypants

Former Sex Pistols frontman, John Lydon, lets loose with some “outrageous statements” concerning Bono, Bob Geldof, and Live 8. He comments on the snugness of Bono’s pants and the shoddy production of Live 8. But most importantly of all, he answered the question “Is that guy from the Sex Pistols still alive?”.

(Via the Huffington Post)

It’s a pink Flying V ukelele. What more needs to be said?

You can find it at Elderly Instruments New Musical Instruments and start rockin’ on with your bad self.

(Via Engadget)

Johnny-Dee of Fides Quaerens Intellectum comments on an interesting analogy for religious belief.

I don’t have anything to add to it, so just read his post.

Cathy Young has an article dealing with attempts by some feminists to paint SCOTUS nominee, John Roberts, as being “anti-woman”. The offensive against him already seemed pretty lame. I didn’t realize how lame until I read a couple of interesting items in this column.

First there’s this:

In Slate.com, legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick finds that even if the feminist ideas Roberts criticized were bad, it doesn’t get him off the hook because he criticized them in a disrespectful tone.

So even if he was right, he was still wrong. Got it. But it gets better.

In Lithwick’s view, Roberts may be nothing less than ‘’a woman-hater.” Her smoking gun? An article he once wrote opposing the gender integration of an all-boy Catholic school, which included a sexist joke about giggling and blushing blondes in the classroom. This article was written in 1972, when Roberts was a 17-year-old high school junior. Maybe some intrepid reporter will dig deeper and find out what he said about girls in kindergarten.

That’s real horror show stuff folks. Roberts had better pray that no one uncovers any remarks he might have made about girls and cooties when he was in grammar school.

(Via RealClearPolitics)

Saturday Night Live alum, Chris Farley, was honored recently with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was always one of my favorite members of the cast. Sadly, he was a very unhappy man who took solace in substances and behavior which eventually killed him. I happy that he is being honored, but I wish he had lived to enjoy it.

Bill Vallicella has a critique of Richard Dawkins’ review of Richard Swinburne’s Is There a God?. Vallicella convincingly argues that Dawkins misses Swinburne’s point. But why is a zoologist reviewing a book by a philosopher in the first place?

Consumers are getting angry with high gas prices. In some cases their anxiety is so high that they must resort to the only logical recourse available to them. That’s right, they have to take it out on the gas station employees. We all know that the folks running the registers at the stations are the real power behind the oil and gas industry. If enough consumers yell at them, perhaps they will do the decent thing and lower the price of gas. Right?

Sarcasm aside, this type of behavior will not come as a shock to anyone who has worked in a gas station. I’m sure the rising costs are increasing the tensions, but people have been abusive to cashiers for years. When I was working at a Hell Shell station ten years ago, I averaged about one jackass a day. Some people seem to think that convenience store clerks are their personal whipping boys. No doubt these same people would scream bloody murder if people came to their place of work and harrassed them about something which was out of their control.

In his latest screed, Lileks takes angry anti-war emailers to task and answers
several stock charges leveled against supporters of the war in Iraq. The
following section deals with the ubiquitous “chickenhawk” charge.

The chickenhawk argument is likewise unpersuasive. But I’ll make a deal: only people with military experience can discuss matters of national security, and only people who grew up in North Dakota can judge the movie “Fargo.” I know what you’re saying: “Fargo” took place almost entirely in Minnesota. Why are you trying to stifle my dissent?

(Via Conservative Grapevine)

I got nothing today. Man, I feel like a loser.

Mark Steyn has an article on the Cindy Sheehan story in which he takes issue with a particular tactic of the anti-war crowd. Of the servicemen and women in Iraq, he writes:

They’re not children in Iraq; they’re grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as “children.” If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton’s Oval Office, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee “child” who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

Further on he says:

The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that “of course” they “support our troops,” because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

This highlights the flaw with the “why doesn’t Bush send his daughters to fight?” line of attack. It is not Bush’s place to send his daughters, just as it isn’t the place of any parent to send their son or daughter to fight. The armed forces are voluntary. The men and women that choose to serve are just that, “men and women”. But that’s not how the anti-war crowd sees it. To them all of the soldiers and marines in Iraq are a bunch of children. With condescending views such as this in the Democratic party, it’s no wonder that the military vote trends Republican.

(Via Instapundit)

Professor Burgess-Jackson has a nice post concerning liberal smugness. He analyzes a bumper sticker he saw which read, “Annoy a Republican, Think for Yourself”. In his estimation the message conveyed by the sticker is far from truthful. This is correct but ultimately beside the point. The sole purpose of the bumper sticker is to inform the world that the driver of the car is a “free thinker”.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the driver though. I’m sure that he/she is completely convinced that only people that share his/her viewpoint are really “free thinkers”. And I’m sure that all his/her “free thinking” buddies feel exactly the same way.

For those that enjoy word games, Merriam-Webster has some entertaining ones on their website. See here.

I’m not sure which is weirder:
A) The fact that there might actually be a market for this, or
B) The fact that my brother had this same idea about 10 years ago.

Not too much to talk about today. However, I would like to recommend the CD “Twice the Speed of Life” by Sugarland. If you like the band’s first two singles, you should enjoy the rest of the album. You can listen to the CD at their website.

I thought that the Republicans were supposed to be the party of big business while the Democrats were the party looking out for the little guy(and gal). If that is so, then why is it that Democrats are the ones defending the right of the government to seize your property so that a developer can build a shopping mall on it? According to Reason editor, Matt Welch, one reason the Democrats are defending eminent domain is that conservatives are against it.

So where is that Democratic Party concern for the “little guy” we’ve heard so much about? Subsumed by paranoia about the right. “The Kelo backlash is tempting, but it’s wrong,” warned Alyssa Katz in American Prospect Online. “In seeking to limit public power over urban planning, well-meaning community activists are lending strength to [the] conservative movement.”

I imagine the additional tax revenues generated by the new malls and Wal-Marts also influence the thinking of some of the politicians.

Michael Reynolds at The Mighty Middle has an excellent post concerning the Democrats’ campaigning woes. Rather than buying into the party’s line that they lose because they aren’t as mean as the Republicans, Mr. Reynolds instead proffers the theory that the party is just stupid and out of touch. The “out of touch” charge certainly rings true, and he makes some excellent points in the following excerpt:

I think Democrats just don’t get it because they come from a very different place than the Republicans. The moral center of the GOP is in big business, small business and churches. The moral core of the Democratic Party is in academia, unions and the groups - the NARALS et al. The unions are disintegrating, the academy is the very definition of “out of touch,” and the groups are hermetically sealed parallel universes inhabited by lawyers, flacks and giant, bloated Senators.

The insular nature of much of the base of the Democratic party makes it much more difficult for the party to connect with average voters. NARAL’s ad attacking John Roberts demonstrates how tone deaf the party can sound at times. Reynolds offers some advice that I believe the party would be advised to take.

If you want to talk to people — people who do not already agree with everything you have to say, professor — you have to actually know some people. Some of those people you need to know will drive SUV’s. Some will own jet skis. Many will attend churches where people sing a lot. They will not necessarily dine on a small green salad with lo-fat dressing on the side. They will not know or care who Noam Chomsky is. And here is what is vitally important for Democrats to understand: although these people will not necessarily be part of your all-Angelou book club, they will be at least as smart as you are.

To communicate with people, understand people. To understand people, listen to people. Fire the consultants. Fire the gurus. Fire the pollsters. Fire the lawyers. Get back into the real world. Send forth your minions, Democrats, scatter them to the winds with instructions to go forth into the McDonalds and the Wal-Marts and the churches, to boldly engage fat women in spandex, and skinny guys in pick-up trucks, to speak without sneering to the local businessman, to talk on equal terms with the minister and the insurance salesman and the cook and the fisherman and the clerk. Watch TV. (No, not PBS. Not HBO, either.) Read bestsellers. Shoot a gun. Ride a speedboat. Drive a big old gas hog across west Texas at ninety miles an hour. (It’s fun. Even more fun than composing briefs or conducting a focus group.) Smile at other people’s kids. Talk to teachers - not their union reps.

He saves the most useful suggestion for last though:

And by the way, when I say “talk to” I mean, “shut the f**k up and listen.”

And by “useful”, I mean “likely to be ignored”. It is much easier to simply assume that voters vote for GOP candidates because they just don’t know what’s good for them.

There are a couple of sites that I check pretty frequently. They are AnalPhilosopher by Professor Keith Burgess-Jackson and Maverick Philosopher by Bill Vallicella. As their site titles suggest, they are both philosophers. They are also pretty interesting reads.

Incidentally, Professor Burgess-Jackson’s title refers to the fact that he is an analytic philosopher and anal-retentive. It’s not one of those philosophy/porn sites that are all the rage these days.

Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher has a nice post about the use of harsh language. He makes a great point about the overuse of such language and how it blunts its effectiveness. I agree with him that sometimes harsh language is called for. But if terms like the “F” word are used in casual language, they lose a great deal of their punch. While I don’t want to return to the days when women would faint over Rhett telling Scarlett that he didn’t give a damn, I do think that it would be an improvement if people in general were more mindful of the language they used on a day to day basis.

John Cole over at Balloon Juice is not happy about the anti-Roberts ad from NARAL. You can see his rant here. I agree with Cole that the ad is out of line. What I don’t understand is why the liberal interest groups are taking such steps in trying to derail Roberts’ nomination. They run the risk of looking like extremists, particularly when they defend actions such as the New York Times trying to look into the adoption records of the Robrerts children. If they go over the top attacking Roberts, it will only serve to blunt any arguments they make against any future Bush nominations.

I think that part of the problem is that liberals are as overcome by anger towards Bush as conservatives were with Clinton. It didn’t help the conservatives that much, and it probably won’t help liberals either. I suppose they will console themselves with the thought that they are fighting the good fight, just like lots of other true believers do.

I have been spending a lot of time lately modifying the layout of this blog. However, my actual posting efforts have not kept pace. So I am making a late New Year’s resolution to post something on here everyday, even if it is just a post to say that I don’t really have anything to say.

Like right now for instance.

Who on earth thought that this was a good idea?

Do they have everything they need to win over Middle America? Let’s see. They have an actress with lots of baggage from her Vietnam protest days protesting the war while promoting her recent book. And she is going across the country Merry Prankster style in a bus because people can’t get enough hippie nostalgia. And as an added bonus, the bus runs on vegetable oil. That’s right, vegetable oil. What’s not to love?

This tour is going to stink in more ways than one.

It appears that the Supreme Court ruling in support of eminent domain seizures may actually lower the chances of such seizures being permitted in the future. It seems that the publicity caused by the Kelo case has managed to initiate action from several state legislatures. See here.

Hopefully the recent interest in property rights will prevent Super Wal-Marts and other stores from pushing homeowners off their land. And it’s nice to see the politics in my home state of Alabama making the news for something other than Ten Commandments monuments.

(Via Instapundit)

Here is an article from New Scientist explaining why talking on a cellphone while driving is more distracting than talking to passengers. The gist of it is that the changes in signal strength cause the sound quality of the phone to vary. This forces the brain to work harder to understand the person on the phone. Of course, I’m inclined to think that the majority of the problem is that lots of people aren’t paying that much attention to their driving in the first place.

Although I voted for her husband twice, I don’t believe I would vote for Hillary Clinton should she run for the presidency in 2008. I have mixed feelings about Bill, but Mrs. Clinton has never struck me as much of a leader. Certainly she has a strong following among Democrats, particularly the more left-wing variety, but I don’t believe she can inspire much trust and confidence in the minds of the average voter. Jacob Weisberg spells out her problem pretty clearly in this article in Slate (Via RealClearPolitics).

Her basic problem boils down to this:

But she still lacks a key quality that a politician can’t achieve through hard work: likability. As hard as she tries, Hillary has little facility for connecting with ordinary folk, for making them feel that she understands, identifies, and is at some level one of them.

This is not a minor issue either. While one would hope that voters would mature once they leave high school, popularity is still a motivating factor with voters. If voters don’t like you, it makes it difficult to convince them to give you their support.