A great Jonah Goldberg article about how pointless public opinion is:

HUGE NUMBERS of Americans don't know jack about their government or politics. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 31% of Americans don't know who the vice president is, fewer than half are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29% can identify "Scooter" Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the vice president, and only 15% can name Harry Reid when asked who is the Senate majority leader.

Also last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe that Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales' firing of eight U.S. attorneys was "politically motivated."

So, we are supposed to believe that two-thirds of Americans have studied the details of the U.S. attorney firings and come to an informed conclusion that they were politically motivated — even when Senate Democrats agree that there is no actual evidence that Gonzales did anything improper. Are these the same people who couldn't pick Pelosi out of a lineup? Or the 85% who couldn't name the Senate majority leader? Are we to imagine that the 31% of the electorate who still — after seven years of headlines and demonization — can't identify the vice president of the United States nonetheless have a studied opinion on the firing of New Mexico U.S. Atty. David Iglesias?

Posted by: Sarah at 02:34 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Mark Steyn is awesome, as usual: Let's be realistic about reality

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:16 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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1 Oh that was awesome. The Prussians has a great saying: Trust is good, control is better.

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at April 26, 2007 11:43 AM (deur4)

2 Possibly so. But think about this: would you really want more than one untrained idiot running around with guns? It would be worse carnage than what happened. More guns is NOT the answer. I don't know what the answer is, but arming more idiots who go charging in like Rambo is NOT the answer.

Posted by: dejah at April 26, 2007 04:50 PM (pD1u6)

3 I don't necessarily think that people who own guns are "untrained idiots." More guns isn't always the answer, but I think in this particular case it was.

Posted by: Sarah at April 26, 2007 04:53 PM (vrR+j)

4 "A profoundly deluded view of the world." Like one where Saddam possesses WMD and is working with Al Queda, and where the Mission is Accomplished?

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 01:46 AM (n17hK)

5 Q, Hijacking another thread, eh? Your right, Saddam never had or used WMDÂ’s against Iran or his own people. The UN was free and able to verify that he no longer had WMDÂ’s. Hell, he was a wonderful man and his people and neighbors loved him. There were no terrorist or their training camps in Iraq pre 2003. We didnÂ’t crush the Iraqi army, capture Saddam, kill his lunatic sons and free the Iraqi people from a tyrannical dictator and his rap rooms and slaughter houses. You absolutely right, the world would be a much better place with Saddam still in power. One other thing, we should leave Iraq, that way there will be peace in Iraq and the world will be one happy place. Kumbiya my Lord, Kumbiya...

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 03:55 AM (nno0f)

6 It's getting harder to find places where the nutcase right still speaks up, but this site rarely disappoints.

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 05:25 AM (n17hK)

7 ...and youÂ’d be an expert on the nutcase subject. DoesnÂ’t that tinfoil get hot?

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 07:15 AM (nno0f)

8 Doesn't giving dittohead get tiring? Army Spc. Bryan O'Neal is a hero. You dishonor brave soldiers like him.

Posted by: q at April 27, 2007 08:31 AM (n17hK)

9 You can't fight ideology with a gun. Iraq and virginia tech were both avoidable mistakes that Bush is directly responsible for.

Posted by: Will at April 27, 2007 10:20 AM (soQkB)

10 q, Get a clue. Since you seem to think you know about honor, exactly how do you honor soldiers/marines? Careful now, IÂ’m setting you up. Will, So Columbine was Clintons fault? (Speaking of Clinton, shall we dovetail Kosovo into all this, q? ) Your freedom of speech, in your & qÂ’s case-to make an a$$ of yourselves, came from the barrel of a gun. If you didnÂ’t think that history started the day you were born, youÂ’d know that. FreakinÂ’ children. Go play with your ipods. Till Monday kids. Late.

Posted by: tim at April 27, 2007 11:02 AM (nno0f)

11 The gun issue has always been so foggy for me. On one hand, I agree that it's so very scary to think of the kinds of people who possess weapons in our society but I also realize that many people who own guns are responsible, law-abiding citizens who realize that the gun is probably their only chance against someone else with a gun. It sounds so simple but it's so true. In many ways, I agree with the view that if we outlaw gun ownership, the only people with guns will be the outlaws.

Posted by: Nicole at April 28, 2007 07:32 AM (vYQMs)

12 Nicole: Actually, a gun is also useful against an assailant who doesn't have a gun. Say, one who is a lot stronger than you are. It's caller an equalizer for a reason.

Posted by: Patrick Chester at April 28, 2007 07:46 AM (MKaa5)

13 OK - College Exam time. Put away your IPODs...no cheating here. This is a multiple choice exam. One question. Two answers. You DO NOT GET to answer "C". Why? The VT students did not have access to answer C. OK...Ready? Scenario: You are a VT student sitting in class taking notes on the lecture when a student you've noted around campus but don't actually know walks into class, lifts his firearm, and begins taking aim. Something inside you assures you this man is not bluffing and will begin killing people within nanoseconds. Do you: A: Scratch your head, wondering how this can be since you are seated in a clearly marked "gun-free school zone". Silently congratulate the university administration for creating a NEARLY gun-free zone while at the same time cursing them knowing that 99+ percent of your fellow students scrupulously follow the rules. Sadly, you realize, at least one doesn't...never knowing this is to be your last thought as NUTJOB has apparently selected you to be his first casualty. B. Take a quick assessment of the situation and realize that NUTJOB apparently holds all the cards. Drop to your knees and pray to God that by His grace there is at least one other person in the room who has disregarded the law-enforcement-by-sign approach and is carrying a weapon, determining that one additional weapon in that room statistically reduces the body count by half...implicitly understanding that if this is a particularly GOOD day for you, that other weapon in the room might end the event with only the bad guy dead or wounded, achieving a 97% to 100% needless death avoidance rate, including saving yourself, who, unknown to you, were to be first on the shooter's list of victims. OK...time to mark your answer. Before you do however...ask a trusted friend to help you. Ask your friend to hold your head under two feet of water for exactly 2 minutes. Not a second more, not a second less. Then, around about 1 minute, 18 seconds, try to rationally assess just what rule for good social order can prevent you from breaking your friend's arm in order to grab a precious breath of air so you may continue to live. Time to mark your papers. Remember...you may choose only between A or B.

Posted by: Tim Fitzgerald at April 29, 2007 05:35 PM (kb594)

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Interesting study on how women need to quit their bitching: Surprise -- Men Do Just As Much Work As Women Do
For the record, my husband works way more than I do. He always has. Even when I had two jobs and felt like I was going nuts, he was deployed. So he always trumps me.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:12 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Hilarious line from Steyn: "Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their 'Who was that ho I saw you with last night?/That was no ho, that was my bitch' shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again."

And from an article by a civilian contractor in Baghdad: "Why are the Democratic Party, the mainstream press, the human rights groups, the UN leadership and the "social justice" crowd currently pushing policy that virtually guarantees an Iraq genocide? Are they not familiar with what transpired after the US abandoned South Vietnam to the communists? Can they not see that their cries for US withdrawal threaten to take Iraq to the same places as the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia and Rwanda?"

Also, I've been reading the book The Tipping Point, and I wanted to plug it here, to be a maven for the book, if you will. It is so good, I am reading it with a giddy smile on my face. I love this book. If you're looking for something interesting to read, check The Tipping Point out.

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Victor Davis Hanson has a dream:

In this dream, I heard our ex-presidents add to this chorus of war-time solidarity. Jimmy Carter reminded Americans that radical Islam had started in earnest on his watch, out of an endemic hatred of all things Western. I imagined him explaining that America began being called the “Great Satan” during the presidential tenure of a liberal pacifist, not a Texan conservative.

Bill Clinton would likewise add that he bombed Iraq, and Afghanistan, and East Africa without congressional or U.N. approval because of the need for unilateral action against serial terrorism and the efforts of radicals to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

George Bush Sr. would in turn lecture the media that it was once as furious at him for not removing Saddam as it is now furious at his son for doing so; that it was once as critical of him for sending too many troops to the Middle East as it is now critical of his son for sending too few; that it was once as hostile to the dictates of his excessively large coalition as it is now disparaging of his son’s intolerably small alliance; that it was once as dismissive of his old concern about Iranian influence in Iraq as it is now aghast at his son’s naiveté about Tehran’s interest in absorbing southern Iraq; and that it was once as repulsed by his own cynical realism as it is now repulsed by his son’s blinkered idealism.

And Bill Whittle has posted Seeing the Unseen Part 2

Reader Oda Mae had a visitor when we lived in Germany who came to work on a project with Germans for a few weeks. He told a story at dinner that the Germans told him they could never imagine living in the United States, that it is so scary that the government could just make a person disappear. Oda Mae's friend looked at them puzzled and asked what on earth they were talking about. They replied, "Well, we've seen it on Enemy of the State." They thought a Will Smith movie was the truth about the US government.

Wow.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:24 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Like Tarantino? Read this.
Heh: only "4 3/4 films underneath his belt." Personally, I loved his room at the hotel.

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