Ann Coulter: Republicans, Bloggers And Gays, Oh My!

Ann Coulter… On target as usual.

Gannon didn’t write about gays. No “hypocrisy” is being exposed. Liberals’ hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.

I popped up at DeLong’s place with a question, in the comments to the story I linked in this space… asking if anyone had done a study between the numbers DeLong posted and women in blogging. I stated I suspected there might be a corelation… and I didn’t say it but I did suspect that it backed Summers.

If you will follow that link (I don’t have the link to hand… scroll down) you’ll notice it’s not there, anymore. Apparently the question is verboten.  Not PC. The results were fairly typical. Take a peek at what happens when Kevin Drum decides to wade in with his own slightly different take on the same issue.

Jane at Asymmetrical Information regarding SUV safety;

“Anti-SUV people, of whom there are a lot in my neck of the woulds, like to point out that many SUV’s are less safe than sedans. The reason that SUV’s are less safe is not, of course, that there is something inherently wrong with the vehicles; it’s that people who buy SUV’s often drive them like morons.”

True. Interesting; I just helped someone out the other day who decided the ditch would be an interesting parking spot, while driving by my all-wheel van at about twice my road speed. I rather chuckled at the Kerry/Edwards sticker on the back window, as it all went by… sideways, toward the ditch.

Still have a Beagle Mix that needs a home. Freindly little guy.
Can anyone help him?

Speaking of Libertarians and Republicans, Randy Barnett over at The Volokh Conspiracy makes the argument that …

…the creation of the Libertarian Party has been very detrimental to the political influence of libertarians. Some voters (not many lately) and, more importantly, those libertarians who are interested in engaging in political activism (which does not include me) have been drained from both political parties, rendering both parties less libertarian at the margin.

Interesting.

This is an argument I’ve made for a long while, now.. that the refusal to take part in the process… by seperating themselves from the mainstream, htey lose influence and are being counter productive to their ends.  To see this angle taken up by someone else is…. encouraging.

That said, that encouragement is balanced againt the idea that Barnett seems to be complaining about Libertarians not being involved in the process (by running their own much smaller party) while admitting he’s not much of an activist, either.  I’m not quite sure what to make of this disconnect, but I’m not overly impressed by his not noticing it.

Well, let’s see now.

On the one hand we have Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, who said, in part:

“In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.  I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong…”

And on the other hand we have Ward Churchill, who is on record saying:

” “True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire . . . . To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.”

Now, guess which statement the leftists have more problems with.

Ben Shapiro explores this matter further.

I will say in fairness, that I’ve noted some unease on the left with Summers being strapped to the piller for his whipping… to be made an example of. Like for example, the link I posted yesterday to Delong.  Like it or not, DeLong almost gets this. But he won’t call out his fellow leftists on it. That process will be long in coming, I think.

And I’ve yet to see the left try to seperate itself from Churchill, and I wonder if that will EVER happen.

Someone wrote me a few weeks ago asking that very question, particularly noting my frequent linking to Billy Beck, Q&O and so on, rather frequently.

And this morning, in my inbasket comes Mary Katharine Ham in The Insider Online last night, who writes some lines ostensibly regarding the supposed rift at CPAC. I think there really is no rift in the end, but that’s me.

In it, though is the best answer for my e-mail correspondant, since it gives the best answer I’ve ever seen to his question.

“As a conservative, and a social conservative in most regards, I’m thankful for libertarians. As far as I’m concerned, people who love free markets, guns, and America are welcome in a coalition with me. Perhaps I’m more apt to embrace libertarians because I spend a lot of time with our real opponents– my liberal, sometimes-dang-near-socialist friends. Debating (and I use the term loosely)20-something socialists will teach you to LOVE talking to a libertarian.

Ain’t THAT the truth!

Engadget thinks they know what the story is on this bit with Paris Hilton and her Sidekick.

(OK, yes… it’s rather a slow day around here… any other stupid questions?)

Says Engadget:

they guessed (correctly) that she wasn’t quite savvy enough to realize that everyone already knew what her answer would be to the secret question T-Mobile asks when you forget your password: “What is your favorite pet’s name?” Enter the correct answer and T-Mobile lets you reset the password to whatever you want.

The vul here wasn’t technical; It was simply the stupidity of the owner. And that, I’m afraid, should shock nobody.

Ted Rall, for example.
Captain’s Quarters does the (Fully Justified) victory dance.

If one ever needed indication that the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is a drooling idiot…  it is this in the Sun-Times this morning.

Of course, he is a darling of the far left, both in that country and this. Which ought to tell you something, as well.

Joel on Software makes mention of MickeySoft’s anti-spyware product, today, and already has found version 1.0 bugs.

Is it just me, or are others uncomfortable with the house that Bill Built making chocies about what is and is not spyware?

More… I’m equally uncomfortable with MS’s inability to get patches to the field in reasonable time for products it understands. How much more of a problem will they have getting footprints to the users for stuff they’ve got to reverse engineer, first?

AP is reporting:

Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died, a family spokesman said. He was 75.

Scott died Monday after suffering a stroke, said the spokesman, Robert Emmers.

Drezner notes the latest thing surrounding Bill Keller, the whip over at the New York Times.  He’s apparently been talking with quite a few people on the topic.

THe message he wants to send is clear; it shows up in ever one of the recent interviews I can find of the man. One Drezner links is of this report by Amanda Erickson in the Columbia Spectator:

“Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

He also links Jeff Jarvis, (Hardly a right wing idealouge, he…) who quotes Keller this way:

“”bloggers… are paranoid, propagandistic, unreliable, hate-filled, self-indulgent, self-important and humorless.”

Hmmm. He must be reading DeLong.

That snark aside, Keller’s concerns about bias within the Blogging world are correct. However, he seems to forget that bias runs both ways… unlike that bias he refuses to acknoledge…. that within the MSM, and more specifically, within his own paper.

That’s interesting, given that without that overt MSM leftist bias, blogging as a medium would likely not exist at all.

The reason he doesn’t admit such things is obvious; it would point to a major failure on the part of he and his like. It would also require his worldview to be exposed as such. More, it would require a change on his part.

Imagine an Ipod with Bluetooth ability. For example, you could UL/DL your tunes through the Bluetooth range. Lets imagine further that you have the ability to broadcast your tunes to Bluetooth receivers such as what we now see on upper end cars and such.

Now, imagine this thing’s got a phone in it, too, and will route phone audio anyplace it does tune audio, thus allowing you to use your car stereo, or your ear-buds as a hands free phone.

Now for the good part; It’s not your imagination.  So says Gizmodo

Sean at Everything I Know Is Wrong has a top flight post on the subject of Global Warming, today. The money clip:

“Given that we don’t know whether global warming is even occurring — and if it is occurring, what is causing it — committing billions of dollars and man hours as numerous as the stars to the Kyoto treaty is a big risk. As the Wall Street Journal says in an unsigned editorial today, “But the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge economic bet–as much as $150 billion a year–on the notion that man-made global warming is real. Businesses are gearing up, at considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory environment; complex carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn’t everyone look very carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this particular cliff?” 

Correct; we should.  And here’s the thing; The left, world wide has been pushing this nonsense for decades now… though it started as global COOLING, not gobal WARMING.
Could this be not a situation about the environment, but about POWER?