Retired Geezer sends this link to Clayton Cramer's blog, linking infuriating comments by libertarians on Volokh's site.

A pedophile in LA posts photos of children, and discusses what he'd like to do with various children. It is, apparently, legal, as he is not proven to have actually touched or made contact with a child. It has of course sparked outrage by concerned parents and stick-in-the-mud conservatives, of course, prompting libertarian douchebags to defend the guy with all their bluster:

We libertarians need to start hoisting the fascists by their own petards. A pedophile is, like Lewis Carol, a person who likes kids. If parents don't like the idea that others like their kids, they can stop having the damn kids! I think it great what the guy is doing and am considering taking photos of all kinds of kids. If the parents don't want photos, they can keep the kids indoors with their declawed cats.

In the meantime, we who are subsidizing their breeding have rights, whether the like it or not. It will be a cold day in hell that I give up the right to photograph, converse with and relate to ANY kid I meet in public.

(There's actually an arguably worse sentiment expressed at Cramer's blog, too.)

I hate libertarians for the same reason I hate Madonna. For one thing, I despise their juvenile pose of calculated outrageousness. Every kid knows that someone's poking you, it's not the actual poking that's the most objectionable. The poking itself is relatively mild. What is infuriating is the poker's demand for attention, his insistence upon your acknowledgment of his breaking of social barriers, his demand you bend in a small way to will by having to deal with his provocations when you'd much rather be left alone. This is what makes Madonna's various crucifix poses annoying to me -- not so much that she's doing it but that, by doing it, she's aggressively hijacking my attention so that I wind up talking about something simply not worth talking about, e.g., Madonna.

And so it is with libertarians. While many of the older, wiser, more mature libertarians don't have this childish need to call attention to themselves via their predictably unpredictable pronouncements and expectedly unexpected assertions, many of the younger ones do and, worse yet, a lot of the older ones continue on with this assholery well into their dotage. Stupidity is more forgivable in the youthfully stupid, guys.

Although it's true that libertarians do share some policy goals with conservatives, they do so, by and large, for bad reasons, or, to put it more neutrally, for reasons that conservatives reject. Libertarians share with Marxists an utter contempt which what are frequently called the sensibilities and habits of the bourgeoisie, and, like Marxists, view these sensibilities and habits to be a large impediment to the creation of a good society. They must be mocked and undermined at all turns if the libertarian project is ever to succeed-- all this regard for children and families and basic moral restraint is just illogical and must be subverted for the good of the world.

And like Marxists, of course, they tend to view themselves as part of an enlightened Vanguard which is destined to lead the rabble while of course not being of the rabble.

While they arrive, on some issues, at the same place, libertarians get there by a very different path, and it's little wonder they disagree so strongly with conservatives on all but a few issues. Their entire philosophy and worldview is predicated on a set of assumptions more common among leftists and actual Marxists than conservatives.

We saw a bit of this in the immigration debate: Libertarians largely believed the idea that American citizens should have some sort of competitive advantage in the workplace over non-American illegal immigrants to be largely illogical, an indefensible sentimentalist preference for Americans over non-Americans, and, of course, probably racist to boot. After all, who says Americans should have an advantage over non-Americans in the job market, apart from silly illogical ideas of patriotism and petty tribalism? A very bourgeoisie notion -- actually, perhaps a bit worse than that; a very blue-collar/white trash/redneck sort of sentiment -- and hence scornfully dismissed as nativism and jingoism.

I grow weary of the libertarians' look-at-me acting-up. Too many make jackass pronouncements which drip with calculated "outrageousness" and a dangerously high level of self-besmittenness. Many make "jokes," but the jokes are usually not funny, but merely flippant. Flip can be funny, but it certainly doesn't have to be. Attitude alone is not humor. But of course actually being funny -- the pandering desire to please others by making them laugh -- isn't really the point. They're not trying to please anyone, after all. They're just trying to annoy. If they're trying for laughs at all, they're largely looking for laughs from like-minded libertarians getting a giddy little thrill over all those stick-in-the-mud bourgeios-types who undoubtedly are outraged by their outrageousness. Or at least would be, if they'd bothered to read the remark at all.

And not to be a dick here, but this tendency is not merely political; it's a psychological tic as well. Sit down at a table with a bunch of strangers, whose exact boundaries for vulgarity and taste are unknown to everyone else, and if you hear someone down the table loudly expounding on, say, the various gauges and colors that anal plugs are now available in, chances are, you just discovered yourself a libertarian, now on stage and performing for the thousandth time his one-man Hipper Than Thou performance art to decidedly mixed reviews. Shock the straights, baby. Let your freak-flag fly. Make sure that no one in the table (or, for that matter, in the whole of the restaurant) is under any misapprehension that you buy into any of this fuddy-duddy bourgeois social conservatism.

Can this marriage be saved? I doubt it. Quite frankly it was a marriage of convenience from the get-go and having been in it for far too long I find my mind drifting to happy "accidents" that might befall my condescending, self-centered, juvenile, embarrassing spouse, so that I might yet be free to date again.

Or maybe just to play chess, left to my own thoughts, like Hal Holbrook in Creepshow. Anyone know of a mysterious and dangerous crate of some kind discovered in the sub-basement of the university library?

And Yet I'm Frequently Called a Libertarian. I can see why -- I curse, I use a lot of sexual or playground humor, and I'm moderate(ish) on social issues. I lean conservative on most of them, but they don't particularly animate me.

It sort of proves my point that all it takes to get characterized as "libertarian" is to engage in juvenile potty humor.

Then again, I'm a vulgarian not to shock or outrage readers, but to pander to them (and I use the word "pander' in its most neutral sense -- to please, to amuse). It's sort of like the difference between Norm McDonald and David Cross. Both are funny, both take delight in vulgarity, but McDonald does so out of puckish desire to amuse. Cross does that too, but he's also trying to be outrageous for the sake of outrageousness; his audience appreciates him partly because they're imagining all those stick-in-the-mud conservatives who would be greatly upset -- outraged, in fact -- if they heard his act, which of course they usually don't.

McDonald just says "cock" a lot because it makes people giggle. Which is why I do, too.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (110)
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I take back everything I ever said about liberal paranoia -- there is a neocon conspiracy afoot, and They put out the word to bring everyone in on this.

Who did They mean by everyone?

Well, everyone.

Worth reading all the way through, of course, but here's the obligatory teasers:

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administrationÂ’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

If this Blogging Heads exchange is any indication (it's loooong), at least some of the less moonbattish of liberal war critics aren't quite certain any longer we should abandon Iraq to genocide and Al Qaeda. Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus can't quite endorse a continuing presence in Iraq, but it's good to see they are at least grappling with the newer facts on the ground, as well as with something liberals claim to have in great quantities yet often demonstrate little of -- "the politics of uncertainty," as the One True Conservative on the Internet calls it.

It's something, at least.

Actually... Wright's hemming and hawing can just be an attempt to pay lip service to a mission he and other liberals supposedly believe in -- using American might to prevent genocide. It could just be that he's attempting to appear consistent, while having no real interest in actually being consistent on this point. Just wants the appearance.

But for what it's worth his ambivalence seems genuine to me.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (57)
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Okay, I was wrong.

I'm surprised they included the whole silly bit about Tony Stark secretly building the armor while a captive of a swarthy Asian warlord, which I would have dumped myself, but you have to give it to Favreau for faithfulness.

Looks really cool.

Thanks to z ryan.

Update (Slublog) - Looks like the video's been nuked. Allah's got a version up at Hot Air - get there before the lawyers!

Udpate: Swapped out the nonworking link for a working one.

Just noticing that Downey's performance is full of comic arrogance and jackassery. That's not true to the Tony Stark character, of course, but then again, there really is no Tony Stark "character." He's one of the most boring characters in the Marvel Universe. They tried to make him interesting by making him an alcoholic and it still didn't work.

So basically they've turned Tony Stark into Bruce Campbell's Ash character from the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness trilogy. I can live with that.

Get some.

Another Link: Well, now that one's dead, I hear. Your last chance may be found here, someone tells me.

This is so silly. The filmmakers obviously want us to see this thing, but they're yanking the trailer just to make us work for it. I suppose they might be obligated to do so; maybe they signed some sort of exclusive agreement with ComiCon, but that seems unlikely: As if ComiCon would turn down the chance to screen it first unless they had some sort of guarantee of exclusivity.

Okay, I'm done with the game. They beat me. I won't update anymore for fresh links. If these guys really don't want anyone to see a trailer that's getting overwhelmingly positive attention, fine, they win.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 PM | Comments (51)
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This guy's even gutsier than Scott Beauchamp, and he's not armed with bulletguns or stabknives.

Yup, it's cute animal videos day.

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (53)
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Posted by: Ace at 01:02 PM | Comments (31)
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Part of this I already quoted, but here's the whole post. Not only does he include two more absurd portmanteaus ("mothertalk," "prisonfleshes"), he continues writing about the soldier "LeClaire," previously seen being ordered to shoot a child, and now apparently having gotten his "dick blown off," just like Jake from The Sun Also Rises.

Not only is he a bad writer, but he seems to mix real life memoir and complete fantasy without bothering to distinguish between them. I can't claim I know his intent here was to lie to his readers, or he thought his readers knew this was chiefly fiction, but he certainly doesn't alert readers to his curious style of mixing realfacts with shadowfictions, prisonreality with balloonanimalpoesyfakenotions.

It's also interesting that his ambition is not to be a journalist nor, of course, a soldier, but an author of war fiction.

Via Sinistar, who should be credited for having found a lot of these posts before most people did.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

ill return to america an author

bavarian stories in some sort of rounded metaphysical order...personality death stories intersecting with poesy home memory reflections. You begin with a place and an action and let it carry in every direction till the words are vibrating on the page, dripping in thick robust delapidated barnhouses of adjectives and pronouns...no time for the subtle gray faced calculations of a PERFORMED intimacy...go...but remember what Kerouac forgot: revision is spontaneous also.

a brief coming back to america introduction, stories about soldiers, prositutes, innocent students rendered featherless by dark rivets of experience and the decadence of human pursuits in every vein...and then there's the veins...follow 'em.

Cut your wrist let it bleed onto the paper in unique soulpatterns of mindthoughts. after the coming back to america introduction theres sgt. Leclaire with his dick blown off and the house 12 working girl with her stuff blown out in the other direction and both lost darkeyes brooding on prisonfleshes of human animal bodies the bridge across being only that connection spark instant also lost as quickly. a revery of mothertalk and love looks back in the soft american night. the awol in bamberg lying to make himself into someone who can actually touch another persons lips to his heart to feel. a grandma memeory of cracked heavy crystal balls and smoke serpitine around stacks of tarot cards. the smell of the antiseptic physical therapy room filled with limbless veterans, some missing half a face, and one wearing a god bless america t-shirt...of course this was all before the war, but the war is closer here and an everlengthening shadow over my half closed eyes...but this is all in our time, here and coming back to america...

posted by Scott Thomas at 9:46 AM 3 comments

"Memeory." Yeah, his spelling is atrocious, but I'm pretty sure he meant to do that.

Dreamdeception? Or Jesterjoke? I don't know about this one. Decide for yourselves.

I think this is ambiguous because it can be argued (and no one can disprove that argument) that this was intended as a joke. I know that I've said all sorts of things on this blog that I thought were absurd enough that people would get that I was joking, but every once in a while I don't make the absurdity clear enough and people ask, "Is that true? Really?"

On the other hand: This does sort of reinforce the pattern of his blog, and maybe of his Baghdad "Diaries," of mixing three true facts with one entirely invented one and providing no guidance to a reader as to what's real and what's simply bullshit (or should I say, a "liemagination").

Here, the stuff about his travel in Germany is true, as is, I assume, the thing about having a girlfriend. But then there's the picture, which is proven conclusively to not, in fact, be his girlfriend at all, but rather a female blogger whose picture he found in the internets.

I dunno. I wish Dr. Helen were willing to provide a completely unethical and uninformed psychological profile based on some blogposts, but I'm sure she won't.

Thanks to Larwyn for that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (153)
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This does seem to be a major failure of the Bush Administration -- its addiction to torture may have cost us bin Ladin.

The report criticises the Bush administrationÂ’s approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances.

Damn George Bush and the shortsighted, unconstitutional torture shop he was running from Austin, Texas as Governor of Texas and, if the Guardian's understanding of the US scheme of government is correct, Director of Central Intelligence and Commander in Chief of the United States of America. It's a rotating title -- that year the Governor of Texas had it, in 1999, it was the Kentucky Secretary of Commerce. I think currently the job is held by the Boca Raton Comptroller.

Clinton apparently just handled the domestic stuff -- school uniforms, raising taxes, putting objects into interns.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 AM | Comments (112)
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CGI? I dunno. Who can tell anymore.

Thanks to CraigC.

Kangtankerous:

"Right up there with Gallipoli," says Amos.

That is one foul-tempered marsupial.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 PM | Comments (30)
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The glass is half full. Two thirds full, actually. I've seen boobies before, after all.

Natalie Portman has confirmed she did not strip completely naked for new movie Goya's Ghosts.

The Hollywood beauty was believed to have stripped off for the graphic torture scenes in the movie - in which she plays the muse of painter Francisco Goya who is accused of heresy during the Spanish Inquisition - but she has revealed she used a body double for some scenes.

...

Natalie has previously revealed she would become a lesbian, if she met the right women.

She said: "I've never a dated a woman or anything like it. But I think it's much more about the person you fall in love with.

"Why would you close yourself off from 50 per cent of people?"

Actually, I'm pretty sure she's "closing herself off" from 99.9% of people. Last time I checked, there were no Natalie Portman messages on my cellphone.

She think she better 'n me? Whore.

Least I ain' a dyke.

Thanks to Alice.

Posted by: Ace at 06:26 PM | Comments (57)
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Damn, this story was on my navigation bar for days, but I never got around to posting it. MKH notes the basics of it-- a Murtha ally slipped into a spending bill a million-dollar earmark for an organization based in Murtha's district. A Republican could find no evidence this organization even existed, and so he asked the Murtha ally if it were real or not. The ally replied, basically, "Well, I assume it's real, and if it's not real, obviously the money won't be given to it until it actually becomes real."

Obviously.

Anyway, MKH made the road-trip to find this mysterious organization.

I'm sure you'll be shocked at what she didn't find.

Posted by: Ace at 04:31 PM | Comments (37)
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