Okay, folks, it was fun while it lasted, but I've decided we've reached the end of the paleocon invasion, and I'm pulling the plug on it. Thanks for stopping by, and take it somewhere else now. Blogs are free at Blogger.com, and you don't need mine in order to be able to post your defenses of racial separation and the good side of the Klan. You can set up your own and spew until your dark little hearts are content.

Read all you like, and feel free to post on other topics. But all posts from here on out regarding any of this paleo crapola will be summarily deleted.

Thanks for visiting, and buh-bye.

The good folks at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have just informed me, I'm pleased to say, that Al Mohler has entered the blogosphere. There are few people I admire more than Dr. Mohler. This will be a worthwhile daily stop in your blog surfing.

To judge by the "comments" box in one of my recent entries, the controversy continues about paleoconservative racism.

If your appetite has been piqued, you can see some paleo minds wrestle with this question by visiting a forum thread devoted to this latest brouhaha. Among the gems you'll find there (along with plenty of "what's the big deal?" comments regarding the Holocaust) is this perplexed observation:

I'm still trying to figure out how calling the former Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee "Jew Lieberman" is demeaning.

And the similarly perplexed response:

There's nothing about "Jew Lieberman" that's in the slightest sense demeaning. It's just considered rude to point out that someone is a Jew, unless you're praising them. Space is at a premium on your front page, requiring an economy of words. "Jew Lieberman" gets the essential points across a lot faster than "Joseph Lieberman, Democratic candidate for president, and proud person of Jewish descent".

You see, it's actually just a helpful shorthand. For the millions of paleconservative readers who weren't aware that Joe Lieberman is Jewish, we'll call him "Jew Lieberman" in a merely objective attempt to impart information.

These guys are entertaining, you have to give them that. I would only ask that if you happen to own a Ryder truck rental shop and these guys come in for a rental, make sure you get a big deposit. Because the truck ain't comin' back in one piece.

Welcome to all my new visitors, who have apparently been brought this way through links that have been emailed to them (I presume as part of the recent trans-blog kerfuffle regarding paleoconservative antisemitism and racism). Feel free to look around and put in your two cents worth. Just be aware that anything I perceive as being racist will be deleted. My judgement will be final and unappealable. I've never had to delete any post before, but I've also never had a lot of racist comments posted here before by paleoconservatives. So we'll see how it goes.

Is it an arbitrary standard? You bet! What fun is it to be the king of your own little webpage if you cannot wield arbitrary power?

Discoshaman's site seems to be down for the moment. A note comes up saying that he has exceeded his alotted bandwidth. I'll be curious to see if it has anything to do with a sudden influx of antisemitic paleoconservatives who've taken umbrage with his disapproval of their Jew-baiting.

While we wait for Discoshaman's site to come back up to see where things stand, you may want to take a look at the site that concerned him, and which published a "defense" saying, among other things:

I don't understand the barrage of information about the German Holocaust if the numbers killed are equal to or less than what we saw in other wars during the 20th century, and even today.

Oh, and this one. It's becoming clear why these guys think the wrong side won the Civil War:

It's interesting that in the book Gone With The Wind, a black man attempts to rape Scarlett in Shantytown, and the Klu Klux Klan is given proper respect as defenders of civilization during Reconstruction. But when Louis Mayer and David O. Selznick, who were Jews, turned the book into a film, they designated a white man as the attempted rapist and downplayed the significance of the Klan.

Nice, huh? This, folks, is "Reformed" paleoconservatism. Enjoy.

On my way into work this morning, the gal on the news radio station here headlined a story this way: "A bill which would have made cars go a lot further on a lot less is shot down in the Senate."

Now aside from the annoying propensity to phrase everything in the present tense no matter how convoluted, which is now the norm in radio news, this is far from an objective way to headline this story. In reality, the bill that was "shot down" would have essentially forced automakers to begin phasing out enormously popular SUV's and other low-mileage vehicles over the next 12 years.

Though the American people have clearly stated at the gas pump and in their automobile choices that they are not unduly burdened by the cost of gas or our "dependence" on foreign oil (and in fact are willing to pay quite a bit for the convienience of an SUV or a minivan), Sen. Dick Durbin and his fellow do-gooders wanted to engineer a nation in which everyone is forced to drive Hyundais. I wonder why the newscaster didn't say "A bill which would have drastically cut down your choices in choosing a car is vanquished in the Senate." It would have been just as objective and quite a bit more accurate.

Am I the only one who finds it odd that the left, which describes itself as "pro-choice," is not pro-choice when it comes to cars, guns, schools, religious speech, the right of association, or indeed most of things which real people make real decisions on every day?

These are the times in which we live: Telemarketers have sued two federal agencies over the government's new do-not-call list. The reason? Because of the huge numbers of Americans (an estimated 60 million) who are sick of being bothered on the phone by telemarketers and have signed up to be on the list, telemarketers stand to lose as many as two million jobs when it goes into effect this fall.

Try to get your mind around this logic: telemarketers are suing because they will lose their jobs doing what their own "customers" have told them in no uncertain terms they don't want them to do. It would be as if you decide that your new job will be to dance naked in your neighbor's yard every day. Then, when he calls the police to come get you, you file suit against the police saying, "You can't do this! It's my job to dance naked in his front yard!!"

There is another round of voting in the Senate this week as the Republicans try to break the longstanding Democratic judicial filibusters while also drawing attention to the Democrats' obstructionism. Without a doubt, the Democrats will also filibuster Bill Pryor and Carolyn Kuhl when they come up for confirmation later in the week.

With the Senate heading into summer recess, there will never be a better time to beat the drum on this and put political pressure on the obstructionists. The time is now to push these nominees through. The President needs to get off his duff and start making some noise about this if he's going to have any chance of receiving my Broward County, Florida vote in 2004. There's no point in having good poll numbers and control of both houses if you can't get any of your stinkin' nominees confirmed.

In Oberlin, Ohio, a battle is brewing over whether or not white teachers can adequately teach black history at the local high school.

Leaving aside the fact that such classes are of extremely dubious educational value to begin with (motivated not by a desire to impart knowledge but rather a desire to impart a point of view and to heighten "self-esteem"), there is much to be troubled about here. Seeds are being sown even now which will produce their poisened harvest in future years.

If you wonder why race-relations in the country are often still tense, look no further than this snippet, from the story printed on a local TV station's website:

Phyllis Yarber Hogan, a member of the Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, said a white teacher wouldn't be well-suited to teaching students about subjects like slavery.

"When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault," she said. "Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved.

"How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?"

The tears are now pouring forth for Uday and Qusay. It might be a nice time for a pop quiz.

Who wrote the following?:

There are several questions that American journalists should there be asking, supposing there are any who have not been enlisted in the ranks of the embedded reporters. The first and most obvious is “Why?” Why did we kill these criminals, when they might have been arrested and put on trial in front of the Iraqi people?

Notwithstanding the answer to the question, which is "They weren't exactly inclined to throw down their weapons and wave the white flag--they kept firing actual bullets at actual American troops," was this paragraph written by:

A). Al Jazeera's Iraq correspondent

B). Reuters

C). Maureen Dowd

D). The paleoconservative Bible, Chronicles Magazine

Click here for the fevered and hysterical answer.

(By the way, its amusing to note that in the patented style of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the article grudgingly admits that "...it is probably also a good thing for the people of Iraq that his sons can no longer symbolize the hope of restoring his regime." --empahsis mine.)

Incidentally, my man Discoshaman has the laugh-out-loud line of the day in observation of the recent behavior of the "paleocons":

For several years now the so-called Paleo-Conservatives have drifted farther and farther away from what the rest of us refer to quaintly as "reality." They seem to have woken up still slightly drunk, and in bed naked next to Noam Chomsky.

When I read something as beautiful as that, I almost lose my will to continue scrawling these entries. "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"

I tried to refrain, but I just can't help myself. The temptation is too strong. Please forgive me:

According to Newsweek magazine, among the stuff found in Uday and Qusay's belongings after the deadly firefight last week was a stash of Viagra. Apparently it worked. The boys are plenty stiff now....

According to a bulletin running on CNN.com right now, Bob Hope has died at 100. It's hard to be shocked, considering that when one thought of Bob Hope in recent days, one mostly thought "Wow, it's amazing that Bob Hope is still alive." Nonetheless, he was a guy who served his country in an inestimably important way.

One thing is for sure--you will see the most well-produced tribute shows imaginable in the next few days...because the networks have had such shows sitting on their shelves awaiting this moment for years now.

I wonder if Schnieder from "One Day at a Time" is jealous that the similarly simian Matt LeBlanc got his own spinoff series? What about Gopher from "The Love Boat?" Or Chachi from Hap....oh yeah, they did give him a spin-off.

Maybe since they're moving Joey to L.A., they could have him run for governor.

In 1998, I read Hugh Hewitt's book "The Embarrassed Believer," and it was something of a turning point for me. In the midst of a career crisis, doing a radio program that I was not entirely comfortable doing, Hewitt's book was one of several factors that pushed me towards making substantial changes in my life as a Christian.

Though he has a well-repected radio program in California, I've never had the chance to hear it. But I'm pleased to say that I've discovered (through Tim Berglund, who's turning up on my blog these days as much as his own) that Hewitt is an upstanding citizen of the blogosphere, and I've added his excellent blog to the roll, primarily based on the strength of these two paragraphs (about the upcoming gubernatorial recall election in California), which made me laugh out loud:

Who else could win? Anyone with pre-existing name i.d. and an energized base of support. That's why Bill Simon is formidable, why Jack Kemp is tempted, and why it wouldn't surprise me to see Jerry Brown jump in. If Charlton Heston wasn't ill, he could have run and won. Johnny Carson could be governor if so inclined. Only Arianna's and Michael Savage's trial balloons are filled with lead. (On the other hand, my friend Dennis Prager could run a very, very respectable race. Dennis? Oh, Dennis?)

Benny Hinn has a shot. Kareem could make a play. Don't tell me it hasn't crossed Barbra's mind, or Tom Selleck's. Tom Hanks is America's favorite guy-next-door, you don't think he'd poll in double digits?

The idea of Benny Hinn as the governor of California is amusing enough to keep me coming back to Hewitt's blog on a daily basis. You'll find good, incisive, witty stuff there from an explicitly Christian worldview.

Alright, you wisenheimers. I just got a Yahoo referral for "john rabe gay".

You may have heard of the recent study done by UC Berkeley on the psycology of conservatism. According to the "study":

...some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

*Fear and aggression

*Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

*Uncertainty avoidance

*Need for cognitive closure

*Terror management

I suppose its not suprising that UC Berkeley needs to see conservatism as some sort of pathology. There's probably an entire Ann Coulter book in there somewhere.

Fortunately, the enterprising folks at ScrappleFace have broken the story that Medicare will soon cover conservatism:

Medicare to Cover Conservatism Prevention Measures

(2003-07-23) -- Now that a report in Psychological Bulletin has identified the causes of political conservatism, Medicare and most private health plans will soon cover experimental preventative regimens for the syndrome.

According to the study, conservatism is brought on by several psychological factors including fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, and uncertainty avoidance. Researchers emphasized that it is not an ideology arrived at by study, rational discourse and life experience.

"Conservatives should not be debated, anymore than you would try to talk someone out of schizophrenia," said the lead researcher who wrote the journal article. "They are to be pitied, medicated and confined to institutions when necessary."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said he was "deeply saddened" to hear of the plight of America's conservatives. He called on his colleagues to be "tolerant, patient, but never patronizing to those sick individuals on the other side of the aisle."

While there is no cure for conservatism, early intervention by public schools and welfare agencies offers the best hope for prevention.

I have two words for you, Matt LeBlanc: "After M*A*S*H."

Sometimes I find the coolest stuff over at Tim Berglund's blog. You ought to check this out.

It's a great demonstration of the enormity and complexity of the universe, and it's also just plain cool.

I love this reader's note that Jay Nordlinger printed in his "Impromtus" today:

Dear Jay: Obviously, the problem in Iraq with the attacks on our soldiers is not the diehard Saddamite guerrilla army. The problem is illegal guns. Let the new governing council pass some tough gun-control legislation and watch these attacks subside.

Though these sorts of statistics are thrown around frequently, every now and again one jumps out and slaps me in the face with reality.

It is not news to me that money is not our primary problem public education these days. Still, sometimes you just need to see the numbers to drive the point home. (I found these in Rebecca Hagelin's column today, which in turn came from the Heritage Foundation.)

If you ever needed any more proof that education spending does not equate to a good education, this is it: the Washington D.C. school system is the worst school system in the country by any measure you want to use. And the Washington D.C. school system spends $11,009 per pupil per year. $11,009.

If you can't properly educate a kid on half that, you simply can't educate. And all the money in the world isn't going to make you a better educator.