Friends on the west coast who haven't had a chance to see the premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead tonight, should.

I didn't expect to like it.  I expected to see the first episode, satisfy myself that it wasn't worth watching, and move on.  Though I'm a fan of George Romero, I don't like most zombie movies, because most zombie movies are, to put it plainly, awful.

But here we have a true contender.  I highly recommend The Walking Dead to fans of George Romero or Max Brooks, but also to anyone (with a strong stomach) who enjoys a good suspense or horror yarn of any sort.   On the evidence of one show, this will be a top notch television program.

A bit of wishful thinking from Fox News, at roughly 8:30 pm Saturday night.

If the site has web editors working on Saturday night, it will be down the memory hole by morning.

To me, Delaware GOP Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell is many things, few of them good. She's a breathing example of my increasing inability to distinguish reality from satire of reality. She's a real-world cartoon character. She's a walking, talking example of how defiantly stupid politics has become. She's an apparent attempt to draw out, for political advantage, exactly the sort of coastal elite hubris that my last few sentences expressed.

What I didn't expect is that she'd be sympathetic. But today she is.

Gawker, an internet leader in belabored, douchey Gen-Y post-ironic detachment, posted a Halloween-appropriate anonymous young man's account of an alleged sexual encounter with Ms. O'Donnell. I say "Halloween appropriate" because (1) the alleged encounter happened on a recent Halloween, and (2) the young man's account, combined with Gawker's decision to pay him "in the low four figures" for that account, is almost supernaturally creepy.

The young man isn't anonymous any more. He's Dustin Dominiak. And, in the part of the creepy Gawker anonymous hit piece that best limns his character, he finds adult women with pubic hair to be off-putting:

When her underwear came off, I immediately noticed that the waxing trend had completely passed her by.

Obviously, that was a big turnoff, and I quickly lost interest. I said goodnight, rolled over, and went to sleep.

Maybe Dustin Dominiak has, through some unlikely quirk of fate, only previously encountered clean-shaven women. Or maybe he's only encountered women on-screen. Or maybe he likes eight-year-old girls. There's no way of knowing. Of course, the sort of man who would accept payment in the low four figures to tell an anonymous story about a sexual encounter with a famous woman is a person of low character, so I don't think we can rule anything out.

The result of Gawker's decision to publish Dominiak's extremely unsettling story has been almost universal revulsion from all sides of the political spectrum. As far as I can tell, the guys at guys at Sadly, No — whose formidable abilities at satire and humor are matched only by their long-term crippling issues with women — are the only ones morally dysfunctional enough to take a semi-pro, semi-belittling stance.

The condemnation is deserved. Gawker seems to be taking the position that this is an appropriate take-down of sexual hypocrisy. Certainly O'Donnell has spent some of her life as a professional moral scold, though she seems to be running away from that angle in this campaign. I find her previous life as a first-stone-throwing talking head to be obnoxious and more a little pathetic. But there's something very different about this particular take-down. Dominiak's account drips with creepy and voyeuristic misogyny, and Gawker's payment to him is grotesque, somehow made worse by its petty amount. Is O'Donnell a hypocrite on sexual issues? Quite possibly. Is some comment on that appropriate, just as it was for so many male politicians who solicited men in restrooms or sexted pages or cheated on their wives whilst campaigning as moral scolds? Quite Possibly. But I can't read this account without feeling that Dominiak has grave issues, and not just with O'Donnell — and that Gawker's decision to run the piece reveals nasty issues of their own. Dominiak and Gawker reveal a level of hatred of their topic based on her being a woman that the stories about hypocritical men just couldn't match.

O'Donnell will get some sympathy votes from this, though she is still very unlikely to win. Gawker will get more contempt, which it probably won't care about. Dominiak will need to change his name, or he may find it very difficult to get a job or a date ever again from anyone who uses Google. He deserves that.

Edited to add: Gawker offers a defense. For the reasons I've already stated, I think it's lame.

That's how Jonah Goldberg describes his new article calling for the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. So, before we get into how stupid Jonah Goldberg is, and how ridiculous most of what he writes is (and how awesome that National Review for Christmas pop up ad is) so first I'll give a serious answer – because they are smarter than you, and know it would do no good. Oh, and perhaps because it is also illegal and morally reprehensible, but probably less that.

Do we really live in a world where columnists can hope someone is killed by CIA agents? Someone who is not Osama Bin Laden? Someone who is (sort of) a member of the media, whose job it is to report on the mistakes, tragedies and incompetence of our occupation of Iraq? I'm guessing Jonah's not a big fan of Daniel Ellsburg either, right? Isn't calling for people's deaths the sort of thing Goldberg repudiates in our enemies (see Rushdie, Salman)

Seriously, rhetoric like this is good for nothing. In fact, I find it disgusting. Always have. No one should celebrate or cheer for the death of another human being, no matter what they have done. Where's the outrage towards Goldberg? Heck, a New Hampshire legislator had to resign when he talked about a "Dead Palin" He wasn't even actively advocating for her death.

So, why shouldn't Jonah Goldberg be forced to resign? I can dream, can't I? It's not like I'm calling for his assassination, right?

Conservatives, we are told, oppose big government and mistrust government in general. Liberals, on the other hand, love them some big government.

Given a sufficiently generic and uncritical definition of "conservative" and "liberal", that might be true — on some issues. "Conservatives" definitely tend to oppose government intrusion into the sphere of economic activity, whereas "liberals" urge and welcome it.

But here's the grotesque irony: when you stop talking about business — about money — and start talking about blowing shit up, putting people in jail, and executing them, the opposite seems to be true. The mainstream American voices generally identified as "conservative" tell us we must trust the government when it decides which enemies of the state to lock up (whether they are suspected terrorists or accused criminals), and tell us that insisting upon some semblance of due process for such people puts critics on the side of terrorists and criminals. People who are extremely skeptical about the government's right and competence to regulate, say, the amount of rat feces in breakfast cereal suddenly become the government's biggest boosters when the question becomes whether the government has the right and the competence to jail and execute a man accused of murder.

I submit that this is breathtakingly irrational (as is the belief of "liberals" that the government can't be trusted to run the criminal justice or military spheres, but can be trusted to regulate every element of our economic lives). Prosecutors, cops, and military commanders are not some different species than IRS agents and regulators and city councilmen. They are all human: broken, fallible, subject to the insidious lures of power and the immense pressures of the culture in which they find themselves. All of them – any person who comes to wield the authority of the state against us — should be viewed with a healthy skepticism.

But that's just not our culture. Ask anyone who has ever tried to have a conversation with the average citizen about the presumption of innocence. Ask any defense lawyer who, during voir dire, has ever asked prospective jurors whether they think that the guy probably did something if he's sitting there at the defense table.

Ask Anthony Graves.

Anthony Graves spent 18 years in prison in Texas because of prosecutorial misconduct. Mark Bennett has been documenting the story admirably; read his work and follow his links to the searing Texas Monthly story about the case.

Anthony Graves was accused of a horrific mass murder. He was accused despite an utter lack of physical evidence: rather, he was accused based on the uncorroborated word of a man who admitted to participating in the murder, and based upon an expert's opinion that Graves' knife, among many other knives, was "consistent" with the weapon used in the killings. Graves was tried and convicted despite the fact that the actual murderer — Robert Carter, Graves' accuser — recanted and admitted that Graves had nothing to do with it. You'd think that would matter to a jury. Perhaps it would have — but multiple courts found that prosecutor Charles Sebesta didn't disclose that his star witness, the only witness establishing that Graves had anything to do with the murder, had recanted and exonerated Graves, then flip-flopped again in time to testify against him. The actual murderer, Robert Carter, went to his execution declaring that Graves was innocent. Yet Texas courts rejected Graves' appeals. It took the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to reverse the conviction. This week, the special prosecutor assigned to the matter dismissed charges against Graves, and he walked free after 18 years of incarceration.

Carter was patently a killer and a liar, uncorroborated by relevant evidence. But the jury bought his story — because the government told them to, and when the government wears the prosecutor's hat, people trust it. The proposition that the government's concealment of Carter's recantation was irrelevant is facially ridiculous — yet Texas courts bought it, because judges are people too, and when the government wears the prosecutor's hat, people trust it. Prosecutor Charles Sebesta — who took out an advertisement in the paper defending the conviction — still has his supporters, and many will say that this result is an example of clever lawyers getting criminals off on a "technicality" — because the government accused Graves of a crime, and when the government wears the prosecutor's hat, people trust it. I suspect that if you said to many of those people "when the government decides how much taxes you should pay, or how you should run your business, or what kind of health care plan you ought to have, you should trust the government," those people would react with disgust, seeing that statement as morally treasonous and displaying a canine level of devotion to the state. But tell them that defense lawyers spin bullshit to get the guilty off the hook, and they'll nod sagely and agree. It's a cultural thing. Some people identify more with folks who like to shoot dogs, and some people identify more with folks who like to tell you that you can't buy dogs.

Giving the government the power to do things we like tends to give the government the power to do things we don't like. In a perfect world, conservatives would see that reposing uncritical trust in prosecutors and cops ultimately promotes the government's power to regulate their businesses and their health care. Liberals would see that trusting regulators and bureaucrats increases the government's power to jail citizens upon flimsy evidence. Maybe one day more people will meet in the middle and recognize that the appropriate stance of an informed citizen towards all elements of the government is vigilance, skepticism, and firm support of individual rights against the state. Perhaps more people will agree that the correct response to any government attempt to control the individual is to question: "What evidence do you have to support this? Is it really believable? Can it be trusted? Is it enough?"

But I'm not holding my breath.

who shows up out of nowhere.  He won't tell you his name.  He's not from around these parts.  He just says what needs to be said, and moves on never to return.  But the place is never the same.

I'm speaking, of course, about the abrasive first-time blog commenter who's just there to insult the author and his readers.

Generally we ignore or delete these people, but every once in a while it's nice to give one of them a thorough workout.  The kind of workout where you can almost hear the author cracking his knuckles before hitting the keyboard.

This reply, to something calling itself HumboldtBlue, is a masterpiece of the genre.

The Giants won game 1 of the World Series last night. It's a thrill to see how excited this city is. There is Giants gear everywhere, and a buzz throughout the town. I so want my team that I have loved almost all my life to win the World Series. But, history gives me pause. Now, before I start with my sad memories, this is not some insipid Dan Shaunessy "Curse of the Bambino" Red Sox thing. I will not die sad if the Giants never win, and my love of the team does not define me. That being said…

Continue Reading »

Oh, Canada.

You continue to be a haven for speech-despising thugs.

Today's main culprit: our old friend Richard Warman, crusading censor of incorrect thought and expression. Warman, you may recall, has a penchant not only for using Canada's malevolent and totalitarian speech bureaucracies to suppress incorrect thought, but also for suing people who criticize him for doing so. He's also got a knack for endangering the lives of the most pitiful of his foes, even when they roll over and show their belly, and of a generally thuggish approach to public discourse.

So it should be no surprise that, once again, he is suing Canadian bloggers, this time for merely linking to posts criticizing him.

The suit arises, indirectly, from British Colombia's shamefully censorious and unprincipled pursuit of pundit Mark Steyn. I don't agree with the Canadian blog Blazing Cat Fur on much, but I agree with its consistent strong stance against Canada's totalitarian speech laws, which are premised on the concept that certain favored groups have a protected right not to be offended. Blazing Cat Fur has drawn Warman's ire, and he has sued for $500,000 Canadian (which in this poor economy is almost as good as real money), complaining that Blazing Cat Fur wronged Warman by linking to a Mark Steyn post about him and by allowing rude comments, including one that — brace yourself here — calls him "Billy."

As I said, I don't agree with Blazing Cat Fur about a lot of things. They've written some things there that make me angry. But because I'm not a moral defective or a big girl's blouse, I articulate my disagreement if I am in the mood, or otherwise just get over it. But there are creatures in this world, creatures like Warman, who revel in abusing the system to inflict harm upon their detractors. Even a frivolous and patently abusive suit can be financially ruinous — Canada is even worse than the United States in that regard, as at least many U.S. jurisdictions have anti-SLAPP statutes.

Blazing Cat Fur could use your help fighting the good fight. Consider a donation to their defense fund. Or, at least, consider publicizing the issue and speaking out against a system that allows censorious thugs to sue citizens for pointing out that they are censorious thugs —- whether you are talking about Warman, or about Canadian cops who harass citizens for blowing bubbles and then sue people who make fun of them for doing so. The tide may be turning in Canada against such things, but for now the censors and their apologists are firmly entrenched there.

Hat Tip.

Vladimir Putin Action Comics!

Note that the middle panel is an homage to Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel, a subversive from a country where being a subversive artist is actually dangerous, rather than a cocktail party pose as it is in Hyde Park.

Plenty more here.

Hat tip: Angus.

Via Radley, a brutal video: Why Chuck Can't Start A Business.

Sucks To Be Chuck

Quoth Joe Biden, in defending the party that openly supports omnipresent government (as opposed to the party that gives lip service to limit government whilst relentlessly increasing the power of government):

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

I actually think Joe Biden is partially correct. Certainly in the 21st century, and for most of the 20th, every single great idea has required government involvement, as a result of government's steadily increasing ubiquity.

Where you stand on the role of government depends on this: do you think those great ideas were imagined and implemented because of government — that they required government involvement? Or do you think that great thinkers were able to bring their dreams to fruition despite government involvement? Or is it something in between?

I lean strongly towards "despite government involvement," as you may have guessed.

I think Biden is clearly wrong to use the terms "vision" and "incentive", though. First, governments don't have vision. People do. Sometimes those people are in government. Sometimes the visions are positive. Sometimes enough of the rest of the people in the government cooperate with the vision to allow it to work, and sometimes they don't. Meanwhile, the most powerful vision experienced by people in government remains staying in government, preferably with more power.

Second, many great ideas of the last three centuries have succeeded despite strong government disincentive. Take any small, medium, or large business. They succeed — if they do — despite enormous government disincentives to operate. Now, there ay be individual, isolated, and minimal incentives — say, a tax credit — but those pale compared to the overall disincentive created by government involvement. It's irrational to focus on individual purported incentives, as opposed to the entirety of the government's treatment of . After all, if you are thinking of working for me, and I promise that I will refuse to pay you, kick you in the nuts, insult your mother, and throw dung at you all day, but also say that I may give you an ice cream cone at the end of every day, would you say that I'm giving you an incentive to work for me?

Via, among others.

Just be careful going through the checkout line.  Some of the customers are pretty nasty.

Not parenthetically, at the rate George Romero is achieving mainstream saturation, he's on his way to a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.  Which will be given one day after he dies.  As a fan of Romero before it was cool to be a fan of Romero, I like to see him getting his cultural due, but I'd prefer that he got loads of money, or at least had Martin recognized as the weird work of genius that it is.

Hat tip: David.

As Halloween is upon us, I thought I'd share this wisdom, which has kept me alive in a world teeming with serial killers, aliens that aren't interested in bringing peace to mankind, backwoods cannibals, and corpses that hunger for the flesh of the living:

1. If the sign says, "Last gas for sixty miles," it's time to buy gas.
2. Better still, turn around.  Drive to the station where the sign says, "Next to last gas for seventy miles".
3. Historic anniversaries divisible by five are overrated. If a tragedy occurred ten years ago at the house on Maple Street, mark your calendar to visit on the eleventh anniversary.
4. The psychiatrist is not your friend.
5. If it sleeps an ancient slumber, don't wake it up.
6. Don't go into the cellar.
7. Don't get into the shower.
8. Don't climb up to the attic.
9. If you have to climb up to the attic, don't enter head first.
10. I don't care how hungry you are: If a stranger offers you food, don't eat it.
11. Bullets cannot stop it.
12. Unless they're made of silver.  Good luck finding that in nine millimeter.
13. Unless bullets can stop it.  In that case, aim for the head.
14. Large black dogs are nothing but trouble.
15. Charming, urbane, vaguely European men of wealth and education are nothing but trouble.
16. Pale beautiful women with wide eyes are nothing but trouble.
17. "Do not call up that which you cannot put down."
18. If you hear a solitary bassoon playing but you're not in a concert hall, stop what you're doing immediately.  Walk out of the building slowly, get into your car, drive to the 7/11 and buy a Slurpee.  Nothing ever happens at 7/11.
19. When you meet a small, precocious child, beat it to death with a hammer.  Just in case.
20. Rural vacations in mountain cabins are overrated.  Miami is warm this time of year.
21. If science teaches us anything, it's that there are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
22. Old, dusty books are dusty for a reason. Who are you to open them up and disturb the dust?
23. It's better to build a new house than to buy an old one. New construction keeps the economy strong.
24. But do a thorough title search on the land where you build the new house.  Just in case.
25. "Don't look back.  Something might be gaining on you."

Keep these lessons in mind, and you might live to be as old as I am.

Update: LabRat's list is better than mine: "Avoid cornfields and apple orchards at all costs."

What does it take to defeat the ravening unquiet dead, who inexorably seek our brains? Will it be a properly prepared armed force equipped with lobotomizers? Will it be small bands of desperate citizens standing behind rough barricades with a motley array of shotguns and chainsaws?

No. The zombies will only be thwarted by the most petty and verminous little things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.

I refer, of course, to bureaucrats.

The National Park Service says it has no permit filed for zombie activity at the Lincoln Memorial Tuesday morning by AMC, a posse of zombies, or anyone else.

Tariq Aziz has been sentenced to hang.

Not to minimize the crimes of the Ba'ath regime in Iraq, but Aziz seemed a  powerless figurehead, a guy Saddam trotted out for television because he looked like a strange, avuncular owl who spoke perfect English.  Aziz was at most a cover for the really grisly characters who sprayed chemical weapons on Kurds.

To the extent most westerners will even remember Aziz, it's as a character who used to appear on early 90s  television interview programs, much like George Plimpton.  You could tell the regime was in trouble when, for the sequel war, they replaced Aziz with Baghdad Bob.