Last post before Christmas, kids. Let's see whom I can piss off.

* I just bought a Dell. Quite frankly, that hurts. I tried putting together my own machine, and found out that not only is it cheaper to have Dell put together the thing for me, it is much cheaper to have Dell put it together for me.

Some back story: Aw, heck, forget it. No back story. I declared war on Dell back in 1997 or 1998, I forget which. When I bought laptops, I went Compaq. When I went desktops, I went self-built. But my friend Jimmy loaned me his laptop, and while it's good, I feel lousy for using it. And the CD player broke. Sorry, Jimmy. I'll buy you a new CD ROM soon.

So basically, the enemy just took the gates of my capital city.

* I am soooooo looking forward to the 2004 campaign.

* I am coming to the slow, inevitable conclusion that the 19th Amendment was a mistake. Indeed, in my most misogynistic (let's be honest, misanthropic) moments, I think we should restrict the vote to landed men over the age of 25. (If you think this is racist, you haven't spent much time outside of cities.)

I'm fighting this conclusion, but the evidence is compelling:

Since the passage of the 19th, here are a few examples of the damage done to our nation:

(1) The Democrats, adopting in milder form many of the platforms of the Socialist parties of Europe, became a viable party again.

(2) FDR elected, making (1) worse.

(3) JFK elected, making (2) worse.

(4) LBJ elected, making (3) worse.

(5) (Anyone else see a problem with Presidents with three easy initials, by which they are commonly known?)

(6) Following from (2)-(4), Roe v. Wade. Current death toll: ~31 million children dead.

(7) Following from that, boy births are more common than girl births for the first time ever. So not only have women voters helped slaughter kids, but they've inadvertantly declared war on their own sex.

(8) Accepted expansion of the State well beyond its Constitutional limitations, so single women and widows can feel safer. The rest of us can choke.

Just something to think about. Doubtless, my wife will beat me for this.

I should add (but not hasten to add!) that I recognize the inherent unfairness in knocking somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the population of the voting rolls, especially in a country founded on the link between governance and representation. I will be the first to admit that this is not the nicest thing I've ever said, is decidedly not Christian, and I'll probably repent of it later. But it's been working at me for a while.

* Can we all agree that Howard Brush Dean III is kinda funny looking? Long arms, big belly, stumpy neck.

* See that big space at the top of my blog? You're looking at why I'll be switching over to Movable Type some time in the next year.

* I think my profession is destroying our society.

* I think the French will launch a genocide within fifteen years. I just wonder if they'll win.

* Hillary Clinton is a miserable failure.

* Jimmy Carter lick ass.

* I've had doubts about Arnold Kling's mental rigor; that said, this is a respectable, if wrong, opinion. It assumes that the broad middle of American society is irrationally apathetic; that demagoguery was somehow less a danger when the Constitutional limitations on government were stronger (thus overlooking, at a glance, the years 1815-1823, 1850-1861, 1876-1918, the entire career of Huey Long, and the history of the Democrat party); and that the will of a few determined individuals is somehow more effective on the polity than it was before the Internet. I'll be the first to admit that the transactional costs of organization have decreased; but I'm yet to be convinced that the decrease is so substantial that the additional energy will translate into quantitative electoral differences.

Now, I think demagoguery might very well be a great danger, but for the following reasons:

* More women vote.
* More voters have passed through college, and are therefore stupider than at any equivalent time in the past.
* More men without a physical stake in society, i.e., without real property, vote.
* The media is polarizing, and providing more deliberately ideologically discreet information than ever before.
* The "blogosphere" is such a tiny sliver of the electorate that the moderation that comes from being exposed, directly and openly, to one's ideological opponents, is not well-shared enough to have any effect countering the trends toward polarization.
* Will and Grace is still on the air.
* Alec Baldwin lick ass. Sorry, couldn't resist.
* We are at a stage of true ideological clash between left and right; it has been about seventy, no, ninety years since anyone could say that.

Time will tell.

* I'm late on this, but I've been swamped: Happy Chanukah to any Jewish readers I have.

* I watched my side of the spectrum go loony during the Clinton years; but I never saw anything like what's happening to the Left now. Y'all are nuts, kids. Seek help.

* Following from my second point, the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Twenty-Second Amendments were mistakes.

* At some point, inferring the opinion of the entire Magisterium from the loud-mouth remarks of a single Cardinal is a signal that you're either (a) lazy (b) stupid (c) intellectually sloppy and/or (d) anti-Catholic.

* I wonder: If everyone who hates Evangelicals actually met one, would I still have to put up with utterly nauseating, vacuous references to the "religious right"?

* Paul Cella is wasted in his day job.

* Merry Christmas to all.