Houblog

…is very eloquently smashed by this article. h/t to Instapundit.

Four years ago, I wrote a letter. It was meant to badger someone into doing something I thought was important. They refused, but I don’t apologize for it, even though I completely understand that person’s decision — and ironically, have made exactly the same one. Hypocritical? I don’ t […]

P.J. O’Rourke tours the Big Stick, and thinks about the presidential race. Money grafs:
Some say John McCain’s character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do–voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a […]

Spotted in the comments of a discussion of Starbucks (and the politics thereof):
I generally either shut out the “No one I know voted for Nixon” vibe or I eavesdrop and see how many inanities get spouted. I’ll never forget one time, at a Starbucks in Houston, I struck up a conversation with some locals and […]

From a discussion over at Samizdata, jumping on Drudge for revealing that Prince Harry was in Afganistan.
Wait, let me get this straight. Here in the US we criticize the POTUS for serving in the National Guard as a fighter pilot during Vietnam and not shipping his daughters off to Iraq, but in England we criticize […]

Couldn’t have been said better about a nicer candidate:
Hillarymandias
I met a pollster from an antique land,
Who said–”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand, one in Texas…., one near Canton,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose brow, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on […]

Seen in the comments on Howard Taylor’s Schlock Mercenary blog:
What this country needs is a 6% unemployment rate. With rates in the low fours, the otherwise unemployables get hired and inflict themselves on the rest of society.
I consider that a backwards endorsement of my contention that we’re getting the bureaucracy we pay for; […]

“The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.”

Yesterday’s comment by SDB about his difficulty in writing about proportional response by Israel resulted in my writing a brief grumble to him and rambling about my change in focus on Houblog. Two and a half years ago, when I started it, one of my major subjects was supposed to be the War on […]

Via Instapundit:
REAL SIMPLE: George Jonas explains what ought to be obvious:
I’ve stumbled upon the secret of the countries Israel has never bombed or invaded. Different as they may be from one another, they have one thing in common. These countries have never bombed or invaded Israel…No matter how much you detest Israelites in particular, […]

Tory strikes again, over at Houston Strategies. In part 1 of a 2 part series, he discusses metro growth over the last 20 years. Key grafs:

It’s just common fucking damn sense that you don’t go blabbing about secure programs, but these jackasses would have published the details of every convoy leaving New York in WWII. They just do not get it. They belong in jail. I mean, I called them “AlQueda’s Intelligence Bureau” a few days ago but it was meant to be satire, not reality.

I don’t have the time to do this justice, so here is an e-mail I received recently, raw. And frankly, it’s pretty damned raw.
Friends:
Consider this fact: in just the past year, more than 5,700 properties nationwide have been threatened by or taken with eminent domain for private development - a figure that […]

No, that’s not a mistake above. The mistake was made in Austin. Check out the inventive response at the Lone Star Times.

Steven Den Beste makes some observations on the Wachowski brothers over on Chizumatic. Because his server will be going down soon (he’s moving to Portland), I have taken the liberty of posting it in full below.

20050111: Remember The Matrix? Remember the Wachowski brothers, who were responsible for it and co-directed it? They’re involved in […]