Quick Roundup 41

Where was this post ...

... about eight years ago while I was dating?

What did I think of dating? Well, I'm an introvert and our culture stinks. You can take it from there -- or you can read this post (HT: Ian Hamet) to get an idea of what political correctness and cultural value deprivation can make dating like for a decent, single man. Sums it up pretty well.

I do have one thing to add: I don't know whether to be happy* for this guy that he didn't stumble across this Moslem dating site, or sad that his post lacked the additional "spice" that such an encounter would have added to the mix!

Paradoxically, I think that giving up (as this guy says he has) is, in a sense, the best thing to do in the context of modern dating, for those interested in serious relationships. You can relax more and your relationships can develop without the pressures of sexual and marital expectations. In my case, a mutual friend introduced me to my eventual wife as someone I might enjoy hanging out with on occasion. We were "movie buddies" for awhile and things eventually got romantic. Now, we've been married for close to five years.

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* The thought reminds me of the time I came home from a day when, feeling lonely to begin with, I'd taken an undeserved drubbing by a bunch of feminazis during a group "therapy" session, only to come home to see news coverage of some murderer getting a death sentence -- but not without some bimbo standing by his side to protest his "innocence". Things can and do get better, I am happy to report.

Carnival of Objectivists

Nick Provenzo once again does a great job hosting this Objectivist roundup. Lots of good stuff!

You have to give him one thing.

Anyone in this much hot water for having a blog has got to have cajones to crack a joke like this.

In better days, someone with some authority and a willingness to take some responsibility would have taken one look at something like this, laughed his kiester off, and called off the whole investigation.

Domestic Security vs. National Security

I like this article by Felipe Sediles on how a proper wartime policy would take care of our concerns over the various national security measures the Bush Administration has put in place since we were attacked in September of 2001.

If we declare war, some emergency domestic security measures will be required. But we will have no legitimate reason to fear them, as long as they do not violate fundamental rights and as long as we know when the emergency will come to an end. Congressional critics of the president should realize that our Constitution gives them the power to rein in the president through a war declaration. Thus, if we are to protect our liberty from an unlimited, ever-encroaching police-state--and from foreign enemies who would impose their own police state on us--nothing short of a clear, confident declaration of war will suffice.

And congratulations to him on his appearance in The Undercurrent!

Suddenly, they don't seem to "CAIR".

Amit Ghate passes on an interesting observation from LGF:

[W]hy isn't CAIR demanding an apology from Borders Books for this open admission that they fear violence from Muslims? Isn't this a blatant example of "racist stereotyping" by CAIR's usual yardstick?

Boy! A post on the CAIR lawsuit would have made a great April Fool's Day post!

New Theater, Same Old Show

Once again, as rumors surface that our leaders might possibly be about to consider stopping a terrorist regime from killing large numbers of media consumers, our press shows its business sense, patriotism, and bravery by warning of the consequences.

As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.

U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said.

It is true, but not really news, that Iran would probably launch or aid terrorist attacks against the United States if we attacked. But it is also true that Iran will probably use its nukes against us if we allow it to develop them.

This point is very nearly lost, however, because the article only obliquely mentions Iran's heavy involvement with the so-called "counter-insurgency" in Iraq. Iran is not a potential military threat. It is actively at war with the United States and there should be no question of its "prov[ing] that its nuclear program is not meant for weapons."

And, while Israel and Hezbollah -- and even Iran's involvement with Hezbollah -- are mentioned separately in the article, these are treated as if they are unrelated. And worse, little mention is made of Iran's backing (and harboring of leaders) of al Qaeda, but yet the article does see fit to broadcast the usual leftist drumbeat against American military action: that is will "inflame" maniacs (whose ideology precludes the need to be inflamed) and that it will be pointless anyway (as opposed to the decade plus of UN sanctions and hand-wringing that worked so well to depose Saddam Hussein):

Because Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered around the country, some military specialists doubt a strike could effectively end the program and would require hundreds of strikes beforehand to disable Iran's vast air defenses. They say airstrikes would most likely inflame the Muslim world, alienate reformers within Iran and could serve to unite Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which have only limited contact currently.

With war reporting like this, who needs a Tehran Rose?

Well, it is the same old show. I just hope I'm seing it in a new "theater"....

TTLB Status Report Spam?

I think I may have uncovered a new kind of blog spam, or perhaps a new variant of an old one.

I usually take a look at my TTLB Ecosystem and Technorati profiles in the morning to see whether anyone has commented on any recent blog posts of mine. The last couple of times, I have seen what appeared to be complete strangers commenting on blog posts only to find what appear to be computer-generated splogs that, if they link to anything, link only to the TTLB profile. Both blogs (http://blogcurry.com/ and http://state-income-tax.justthetax.com/) superficially look like they might be written by human beings, but the posts are uniformly short, sometimes make little sense, and have other interesting peculiarities. From the second blog is this post.

According to the Colorado Department of Revenue (on the 2005 Colorado Individual Income Tax Guide), the average household with an adjusted family money income of $20000-$30000 pays $1681 a year in state and local taxes other than state ...

Note the bold. Every occurrence of "income", "tax", and "state" here and in this blog is in bold. The other blog does the same thing every time "politics" or "U.S." or "us" shows up. And, oddly enough, both blogs include plenty of advertising links. Of the two blogs, the only one that linked to anything remotely connected to this blog was the second, whose hyperlink went only to the TTLB ranking for my blog. I already place little stock in my TTLB ranking as a measure of how well-known my blog is due to the fact that so many bloggers "game the system" by joining blog alliances. But now, unless the good folks at The Truth Laid Bear figure out how to quash this phenomenon, it will become less and less useful to me to stop by there at all.

-- CAV

Updates

4-4-06: Corrected a typo and removed a URL.