I knew there was a reason why I didn't like this guy....
I could never figure out the appeal of John Edwards, not withstanding the good looks. I mean, when you think about it, the man is a lawyer. That was strike one. Have you ever heard the man answer a substantive question? Answer: never. Edwards never answers a question, he simply sidesteps them. What has the man ever done? Well, besides making a pile of money suing doctors for malpractice when his client's real problem was weak genetics, he somehow managed to get elected to office in North Carolina. Which is surprising since North Carolinians, mostly, seem to be a sensible lot to me. I can only surmise it must have been the transplanted Yankees that got him into office.

Now I know. If you would like to know, too, then read this:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14894

The secret to a successful political career? Imitate G.W. Bush and then lie your ass off about it!

The ULTIMATE Me Moment...
Obese, they-tell-me-he-is-a filmaker Michael Moore attended the Republican National Convention this week, ostensibly to provide coverage for USA Today of what transpires within the walls of Madison Square Garden. What Moore has really been doing, is research. Research for his next film -- a grotesque look inside the belly of the beast that is the Republican Party. I'm betting the best dinner in Charlotte, right now, that in two years time, we'll see a Michael Moore hit piece based largely on his experiences at the convention.

How do I know? Read this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-08-31-moore_x.htm

THIS is the reason Michael Moore went to the convention. He was waiting for the gratutious swipe. That it was delivered by John McCain (who may be a contender in 2008), is even more delicious. Yes, Michael, it's all about you. It was always about you. You are the center of the universe, you bloated, moronic mass of protoplasm. I'll bet you even had this "editorial" pre-written, waiting out on hard disk, with a bunch of blanks where the names would be written in later.

That's what happened at the convention, folks: someone made a joke about me. Not even a very good joke, or a very funny one, but it was about ME. How dare they? Never mind some of the best political rhetoric from Rudy Guiliani, Ahhh-nuld, and John McCain. Micheal Moore was being discussed, and in very unflattering terms.

Call it karma, Mike, and grow up and get on with yer bad self. Your tour-de-farce-Bush-Knew-Bush-Lied screed (Farenheight 911) was a near two-hour gratuitous swipe at the President, the Vice President, and the Republican party as a whole. Don't get all snotty and bent out of shape when they return the favor. Especially when they do so mildly. Quite frankly, you're lucky you weren't beaten to a bloody pulp on the floor of MSG. After all, that's what the freaky teenagers outside would have done to their opponents, right?

Mikey, get over yourself and start to realize that the rest of us live in a totally different world than you do, and just because YOU believe something to be the truth does not mean the rest of us are obliged to believe it to. John Kerry has the same problem, by the way. Perhaps you two could console each other in therapy this coming November.

Customer Service no longer exists...
Trying to get anything done these days with an impersonal, behemoth-like corporation is a frustrating experience, to say the least. To begin with, you cannot get a human being on the phone unless you waste 20 minutes of your life working your way through the "key tree" of an "automated response system". The first indication that something is wrong is when you get the message to press 1 for English and something else for Spanish. Now, I don't know about you, but this is the United States and the last time I looked, this was an English-speaking country. Apparently not anymore. Sometimes I wonder just would happen if I accidentally pressed the button for Spanish and got all the way through to a REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING and insisted on using English? Sometimes, you just have to make your own fun.

Now, normally, things like this bother me for about 12 seconds, but in the last month or so, I've spent more time pressing digits to direct my call to a "customer service representative" than I care to think about. After the exhaustive and annoying experience of dialing for attention, when you do finally manage to reach a human being, three things immediately jump out at you:

1. The person on the other end is an idiot, and, usually, an affirmative action hire.
2. Most of the time, after you've gone through this process, the person can't help you anyway.
3. You suddenly discover just WHY people go beserk in a post office and shoot every living thing in sight.

Now imagine, for a second, that you have, somehow, signed up for a service that your internet provider manages not to tell you about, but somehow manages to charge to your credit card anyway. You call said ISP and once you have clearly and precisely spelled your screenname for a computer, given your home phone number and a blood sample, you are instructed to wait for a customer service representative. Who informs you that despite the fact that you have used their service for 8 years, and that somehow they have been managing to charge it all to your credit cards, that she cannot find any record whatsoever that you exist. No screenname, no address, no phone number, not even the credit card number they charge it to, yet somehow, the ISP manages to get paid. Now you complain about what you intended to complain about: I never ordered this particular feature, I do not wish to pay for it, please discontinue the service. No problem, they'll just mail you a form, fill it in, and send it back -- no hassle, no fuss, and it gives them the opportunity to charge you at least one last time.

Three weeks go by and you have not received the form.

So, you press 1 for English, etc, etc, etc, and finally get a different nitwit. She also cannot find your account information. Since I'm sure that somewhere down the line SOMEONE knows who I am and they're getting paid, this is not relevant at the moment. All I want is that stupid form you said you would mail me. Guess what? There is no form. Whoever told you there was a form was mistaken! And until your customer information somehow mysteriously appears from within "my system", I cannot stop this feature you do not wish to pay for.

Well, isn't that just f*cking dandy!

Is there anyone else I can talk to? A manager, a supervisor, someone who isn't using his brain for a seat cushion? Certainly sir, just a moment, please. The moment lasts long enough for the grass on the front lawn to grow three inches before someone with an important-sounding title gets on the line. You go through your spiel again for their benefit, and they inform you that they also cannot find your account information, and unless that somehow appears, there is nothing that can be done. However, if you wish to dispute the charges, please send copies of the credit card statements and a letter explaining which charges you wish to dispute. I have to serve customer service!

We go through this all the time, and it's not just ISP's. The phone company is good for this too. You paid for a certain calling plan, at a certain price, and then they pile up charges on you that were never explained to you by the salesperson, the 62 page document they sent you, or even on the bill itself. Eventually, you wind up paying $181.09 for exactly $15.29 of long-distance charges, when you agreed to pay $49.95 per month. "How does this happen?", you ask the person on the other end of the phone, "Well, Sir, you opted for this particular plan and..." Yes, I know I did, and the plan stated that I would have a flat price, this ain't it. And, if I'm not using $49.95 of long distance per month, why am I still paying $49.95? "Well, Sir, you opted for this particular plan..." Can I go back to a "pay-as-I-use" plan? "Sure, Sir, but then you can't guarentee the flat rate that you have with this plan..." So, I have the guarenteed flat rate, even if I don't use the phone that much, and the bill doesn't reflect the flat rate at all? "That's correct, Sir". Who can I complain to? "Here's another toll-free number..."

You have to call a DIFFERENT customer service line to get customer service.

Is this any way to do business? Records cannot be found, prices are never what you contractually agreed to and when you need to have a question answered you can't? Do you have recourse? Certainly! But have you ever tried to get through to a human being at the Public Sevice Commission?

Press 1 for English, press 2 to rant about the phone company, 3 for the electric company, 4 for the gas company, 5 for cable tv complaints, 6 if it's your mother's birthday, sit through the announcements until it says "press 0 for an operator" and then get disconnected, or worse, be connected to someone in Bombay who would ordinarily be working the night shift in a gas station, and who has a speech impediment.

What a racket!

Blogging for a reason...now, anyway...
When I started this rant in December of 2003, it was for no particular reason that made sense. In a way, I thought of it as therapy --- I have had some issues in the past that have come back to haunt me, and some new ones (like 9/11, for example), and this was a way to scream my head off without hurting anyone. Almost like your dog howling at the moon: you don't know why he does it, he probably doesn't know why he does it, but he feels compelled to all the same.

But, no more. Now I sorta-kinda have a purpose behind this crap and that purpose is StopDemocrats.com. Not only will I continue to post the lunatic ravings of my own demented psyche here, in color, for all to see, but I will also now be posting them on a national forum. The four or five of you (besides myself and my therapist) who regularly read this nonsense will now (hopefully) be joined by thousands of others. Perhaps this might be a new career for me, perhaps not. You can find out all about it at www.StopDemocrats.com/blog. You'll find my posts signed "Matthew E. Noto" (which, coincidentally, happens to be my name).

Who knows? Perhaps this thing could turn into a pot of gold. And to think: I only did this because I had nothing better to do at the time (and possibly, I still don't).

Regurgitation for Fun and Profit...
I checked the calendar this morning to make sure that it was, in fact, 2004. This may seem, at first blush, to be strange behavior, but it was necessitated by the continuing references to the Vietnam War. When I went to school, I was assured that American involvement in that conflict ended sometime in 1975. I have a vague memory of helicopters taking people off the roof of a building and an airline pilot, bendishing pistol, beating oriental-like men over the head in a vain attempt to keep them from storming his airplane, but that is all I can formally remember about the end of the war.

Apparently, I'm mistaken, and the war IS NOT over, at least not for some of us. A certain Senator from Massachusetts keeps reminding us about it. The problem with his reminders, however, is that it seems that his own memories are somewhat flawed and imperfect with regards to what actually happened in Vietnam, what he actually DID in Vietnam, and with what he did AFTER he left Vietnam.

As for this certain Senator (who shall remain nameless, as I really do not need to waste valuable bandwidth typing his name), who sorta-kinda looks like a cross between Droopy the cartoon dog and a cigar store wooden Indian, and who, it appears, would be quite comfortable in a beret, the war is the only event in his life worth talking about. Eighteen years in the United States Senate garners nary a mention. Being married to two fabulously wealthy heiresses, merits no discussion at all. This Senator cannot point to any interesting biographical point or achievement for the last 35 years, BUT, we're told that four months of service in Vietnam qualifies him, unquestionably, for the office of President of the United States.

Now, naturally, since this certain Senator is a democrat (small 'd' intentional), we have to take anything he says with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to four months of service in a war that supposedly ended 35 years ago but is all the man can find to talk about.

This certain Senator kept meticulous reords of his four months of duty: he had a diary, a movie camera, and of course, the military keeps records on everything in an anal-retentive fashion and keeps the paperwork stored in various warehouses for centuries on end. However, despite all of this easily-referenced documentation, the man can never seem to remember anything at all about those four months, and what he does remember, is often incorrect.

The Senator claimed to have been in Cambodia during a time when the President of the United States denied that American trooops were anywhere near Cambodia. Not only does the Senator get the dates incorrect, he claims it was 1968, but he also gets the President incorrect. He claims Richard Nixon was the President, when according to all the other history books, it was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He claims to have been in combat in Cambodia when there were no American troops in Cambodia at that time. It furthermore emerges that the Senator was more than 50 miles from Cambodia. He claims that such memories are SEARED into his memory. No problem, the Senator MIGHT have been mistaken, but we all know what he meant. Wink- wink, nudge- nudge.

The Sentaor claimed to have been wounded in combat against the enemy on a certain date, and yet his journal recalls no hostile action on that particular date. No problem, the Senator MIGHT have been mistaken, but the actual event happened sometime (within 365 days) of the date in question, but we all know what he meant. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

The Senator, before he was a Senator, could go before a joint-session of Congress and claim first-hand knowledge of American war atrocities, and even admit to having taken part in such attrocities, but it was everyone ELSE who was a war criminal, not the soon-to-be-Senator. Hypocricy, apparently, is a disease democrats are immune to, especially when we all know what he meant. It's not the allegations or the admission that's important, it was the reason why he came forward, that matters. Just for that, he should be given a free pass. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

The Senator can also not remember having his statements passed around by the Viet Cong to American POW's, even though many of those POW's claim to have had them thrust in their faces every day. He also cannot recall being part of a group that plotted the assasination of various members of the American government, not even being present at the actual meeting where the discussion took place, despite the recollections of about 84 other people, who were also present. But that's okay, we know what he meant. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Vietnam is over. The 60's are over. And 35 years have passed and the historical record is clear and available to anyone with half a brain and the ability to read. This Senator is full of shyte, but, it's okay, we're supposed to just believe that we all knew what he really meant. He would have you, the public, trust him to run the country, to protect the country from it's real and active enemies, and to have your best interests at heart. He makes this claim based on four months of his life, the datils of which are either fuzzy, fabricated, concrete, nuanced, complicated, obfuscatory, or otherwise contradictory, as needed or dictated by the political wind, depsite documentary evidence compiled by the United States Navy, the press, and his own journals and film records. That four months was then overshadowed by several years of anti-Vietnam war activities, some bordering on treason, and are supposed to be swept under the rug, because his heart was in the right place?

Only a Baby Boomer could come up with that sort of reasoning. Baby Boomers, as a group, are a narcissistic lot, quick to avoid responsibility, quick to attach blame, who move rapidly to attach the most noble of motives to their own selfish and self-serving behavior. Bill Clinton did it for eight years, live, on television. Countless others have done it for decades in books, articles, documentaries, etc, etc, that are all designed to make it appear as if their generation actually accomplished something other than turning Bob Dylan into an international success.

The 60's have been dead and buried for quite a long time, and the verdict of history is that the 60's should be a collective embarrasment to Americans. A generation of youth that believes they "spoke truth to power" managed to do nothing of the sort. The war dragged on until the mid 1970's, and their protests did nothing ot ameliorate the fact that conflict in Vietnam was centuries old to begin with. How many millions were saved by the "Summer of Love"? None. How many American boys were saved by the protest movement? None. How many Vietnamese and Cambodians lived to enjoy the luxury, of a rich, self-centered, democratic country that could debate it's own policies to the detriment of it's own interests while riding high on a cloud of pot smoke? None. How many Cambodians and Vietnamese could enjoy a slew of social programs running the gauntlet from Affirmative Action to Judicial Activism to Social Security? None.

The 60's generation accomplished nothing. It did not stop the killing, it did not save one damned life and it fractured the landscape of America for the next two generations with it's idiocy and it's selfishness. But they meant well.

And we're supposed to believe that a product of that generation, who spent four months of his entire life engaged in what his generation calls a "lost cause" and then his subsequent time trumpeting his service during it, and who obscures even the most easily verifiable parts of that four months, has the fiber to be President of the United States? That Generation ran Nixon out on a rail for being a two-faced liar. It considers it's own lying a qualification for office.

We live in 2004 (I checked) and the events of 35 years ago bear little relevance to the world of today, except as far as what the intervening decades tell us about the people who lived then. It tells me that we have a bunch of folks who live in a fantasy world in which they believe that only they have a right to objectivity, truth, morality, history, and to be heard, and that what they think about anything is the only correct version. Of course, all of this is subject to the whims of the individual and what he/she requires, needs or feels at any given moment.

So, if the Senator says he was in Cambodia, when all other records indicate he was not, then it must be true for AT LEAST HIM, and the rest of us are obliged to believe it because, somehow, we mystically "know" what he's really talking about. If the Senator says he FELT that his protests against a war he himself fought in are morally correct, then we are obliged to believe it too. If the Senator has faulty memories, we're obliged to join with him in sharing them. If the Senator can admit to committing war crimes, we're obliged to forgive him because he only brought them to light in the name of "justice" or for some self-centered reason that only he can explain. The facts can be made to fit the truth or they can be stretched fit any truth you wish to fit them to. This is the essence of the 60's generation. This is also, apparently, a qualification for the Presidency: don't listen to what we say, try to divine the hidden meaning of what we MEANT.

Personally, I prefer a leader who can be counted upon to say what he/she really MEANS, and then has the guts to stand behind it or the audacity to defend it, when required. Even if he speaks in incomplete sentences and has a bad grasp of the English language because in the end, I don't have to expend braincells on translating vague and subjective concepts into reality.

The 60's generation should get over itself. We live in a new era.

A Trip To The Big City...
I've been on hiatus recently, taking a trip back to my native New York City to visit family and friends.

I'm not sure if it's me or not, but, New York has changed. Radically. Perhaps three months in the relative quiet of Charlotte, NC has changed me, and New York is the same place, albeit somewhat skewed in my eyes due to absence. Then again, maybe the character of the city has changed so much that based on my 37 years there, I no longer recognize it as my home. This is a preocess, I belive, that started soon after September 11th, and now it's coming to it's completion.
New York will be unrecognizable to it's natives within 10 years, I believe.

I no longer feel comfortable there. I felt like an alien. Everything is pretty much in the same place as it was before, but it seems subtly different, somehow. The same stores, churches, office buildings, etc., no longer have the feel of familiarity to me that should be second nature to someone who has been in them thousands of times.

The crowds are still there. A vast sea of millions of people, each living in his own little universe oblivious to everyone else, rushing headlong into an early death from stress and aggravation. However, the crowd has accoutrements now: police officers, in flak jackets armed with sub-machine guns and walking bomb-sniffing dogs. There was a time, even in New York, when such things would have drawn spectators, or at least raised an eyebrow. But now, this is part of the scenery. Just one more guy to push past on the sidewalk.

The subway has changed, somewhat for the better. I found it cleaner than I remembered it and I don't recall seeing any of the usual vermin that manage to survive there: the 4' long rats, the vagrants. But when you look at the advertisements in the station, or on the train, you'll see they're written in Spanish, Creole, Polish, Russian, Chinese, in short, usually anything but English. Did the English speakers all suddenly move away, like I did? There were not massive crowds on the trains either, like there normally are. Even places like Penn Station or Union Square stations, which are usually wall-to-wall people, seemed empty.

I was only in NYC for four days, and granted, I spent the majority of them on Staten Island which is sort of like being stranded in the desert between Phoenix and Las Vegas -- there's not much there, and it never changes. But I was amazed at how quickly I was able to pick up on the subtle changes that quickly, and even more dumbfounded by how incomprehensible I found most of them to be. It's not my New York anymore, and I'd better get used to the idea.

And by the way, still no smoking in bars. I guess one thing hasn't changed: the perpetually panty-bunched always get their way.

They EU-rinate Sitting Down...
From the August 18th, 2004 edition of Best of the Web (Wall Street Journal):

Germany's Last Stand --- EU-niks are taking a stand against standing. "German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them," reports London's Daily Telegraph:
The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln").
"Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," one of the devices orders in a voice impersonating the German leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Another has a voice similar to that of his predecessor, Helmut Kohl.

The manufacturer plans to market an English-speaking version in the United Kingdom:
Their prototype English-speaking WC ghost says in an American drawl: "Don't you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who's behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha."

So that's what Europeans mean when they criticize Americans as "cowboys."
The Telegraph notes that "in German, the phrase for someone who sits and urinates, a 'Sitzpinkler,' is equivalent to 'wimp,' " The paper also cites an expert called Klaus Schwerma, author of "Stehpinkeln: Die Letzte Bastion der Männlichkeit?"--an actual book, the title of which which translates as "Standing Urinators: The Last Bastion of Masculinity?"

This makes all the more unsettling the New York Times' observation, when, in that editorial blasting President Bush's military reorganization plan, that an "advantage" of stationing U.S. soldiers in Germany is that it gives them "the experience of living in other cultures." Pulling out of Germany may prove beneficial to America's defensive posture in more ways than one.
These are the serious, nuanced "allies" that John Kerry would have us grovel before? Any country that a) engages in such stupidity and b) uses tax dollars to fund such stupidity, is an ally I could do without.

I wonder, will the Germans make it mandatory for all them EU nations to buy these things for their public restrooms?

A Stupid Question...
I saw a post this morning on Freerepublic.com that had a title like: "If the GOP wants Black Votes, why don't they go on BET?"

I'll give ya a whole slew of answers:
1. Why should GWB go on BET? If you've ever watched some of BET's programming you'll find it to be mostly immature, a place where standard english is not spoken, where white people are ridiculed on a minute-by-minute basis. If I was GWB, I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR BET because it sends the wrong message. That message is: idiocy will be rewarded. BET is the closest thing we have to Klan-based television in this country and it's ironic because the race-baters are all black. You would think the victims of racism would be more circumspect. I guess not.

2. The NAACP ran a commercial in 2000 that stated, unequivocably, that GWB's failure to sign "Hate Crimes Legislation" was almost like lynching James Byrd all over again. You remember James Byrd? He was the black man in Texas who was assaulted by a bunch of rednecks, chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death. Never once did it occur to anyone pushing "Hate Crimes" laws that capital murder gets you a lethal injection in Texas.
The NAACP is supposed to be the premier "black leadership" forum in the country, and they not only engage in this kind of idiocy, they pay for it.

3. GWB will get that 9-10% of the black vote no matter what he does, short of an economic catastrophe. This 9-10% represents the black population that not only shares conservative values, but also has somethign to keep: their homes, their jobs, and their bank accounts. In short, they're everything other blacks despise about whites: educated, employed, intelligent, and living in the suburbs. Exposing himself to a potential gaff infront of an audience that woudl do whatever was necessary to provike one if they had to, is not smart politics. Better to deal with the Latinos who, at least, largely share Conservative values.

4. Since the message Bush would deliver: self-respect, self-responsibility, self-help, conservative values of work, faith and perserverance, do not resonate in that portion of the electorate that is used to being mollycoddled and having their failures excused automaticall, he has nothing to say to them anyway. What they want to hear is what they might expect to receive personally from a Bush presidency, not what they will hear: Government is not your salvation and I am not going to hand you anything at all. Today's African-American (and just how many of them can even spell Africa, by the way, let alone ever been there) is conditioned as a reflex action to constantly have a hand out, and then riot when he hasn't been bribed sufficiently.

5. But, many will say, it would show that he "cares". If caring was all it took to eliminate the problems of perpetual poverty amongst the black population, it would have disappeared. If caring could prevent the abrotion of 1 in 3 black children that takes place every year, then blacks wouldn't be on the road to statistical insignifigance the way they are now. If caring solved anything there wouldn't be 2 million black men in jail. The point is this: even if he showed he "cared" would anything actually change? Answer: No. Reason: He's not the cause of your problems, nor is he the solution. YOU are. All it requires, to a large degree, is your effort. But you don't want to hear that, do you? So, if he goes to show he "cares" and then you don't like the message (guarenteed), did it make any difference?

Finally, Perhaps, an Answer...
Recently i was complaining about the fact that I get the local newspaper delivered to me when I never asked for it. I also mentioned the fact that nobody ever comes around to get paid for it either. I kind of wondered if this was just someone with no brain in their head, a paper-trowing automaton, if you will, just a mistake, or if I had stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Leave it to John Derbyshire (NationalReview.com) to provide the answer for me! Derb's good for those sorts of things. Turns out, he too receives newspapers he never asked for nor pays for. Derb did some digging and found out that newspapers (allegedly) do this a sa way to boost circulation numbers -- i.e. they print more papers than neccessary and distribute the extras. And why do they do this? Boosting the circulation number ups the price advertisers must pay to put an ad in the paper! So, does it matter that the Charlotte Observer is sending me papers I'm not paying for? Heck no, because Wal-Mart is paying more for advertising!

Of course, it never entered anyone's head that if Wal-Mart pays more for advertising, then it stands to reason that I must pay more for goods at Wal-Mart, did it? If, and I say, if, the Charlotte Observer is engaged in such shennanigans, then shame on them. In fact, I think I just might call them on it.

I'll give you an update later on.

A Blogger's Hitlist...
I have been asked on a few (very few, mind you) occasions just what blogs I myself like to read. Well, here's a representative list of what I get into on a daily basis, complete with commentary:

1. Instapundit.com - Glenn Reynolds (of TechCentralStation.com fame) give us a daily roundup of all the good things on the web, and ads his own commentary. His site is so good that I can easily forgive him the sin of training would-be lawyers for a living. (www.instapundit.com).
2. Porphyrogenitus - a fine writer, and an even better thinker, Porphy also rounds up the web and has an interesting series on the European Union. Currently, he's on hiatus (re re-enlisted inthe Army), but his archives are definitely worth scanning. (www.porphyrogenitus.net).
3. FredOnEverything - Fred Reed is one of my all-time favorite bloggers, although I must admit, I don;t always agree with what he has to say. However, he seems to always find just the right way to say it, with a big dash of Southern common sense, and a big pinch of humor.
(www.fredoneverything.net).
4. Best of the Web - James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal. They guy very rarely gets caught out, and is one of the few that can make politics fun. BOTW also has a daily roundup of what's happening around the world. A first-class site!
5. SteynOnline - Mark Steyn is one of the finest writers on the planet today, He has atalent for the turn of phrase and an impeccably logical way of thinking. He's funny, he's refreshing, and he's on the web! (www.steynonline.com).
6. Lucianne.com - a daily roundup of newspaper stories from around the world. Lucianne Goldberg is famous for two things: she stuck up for Linda Tripp and her son, Jonah, who writes for National Review, and very well, I might add. (www.lucianne.com).
7. NationalReview.com - the Web and Bill Buckley: it doesn't get any better than this. There's also a plethora of other writers on here that I enjoy immensely, such as John Derbyshire, Mark Steyn, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru. (www.nationalreview.com). It's a Conservative's dream!
8. Jewish World Review - a collection of columnists and religious writers from around the world. It has an all-star lineup (Ann Coulter, Larry Elder, Cal Thomas, Tohomas Sowell, just for starters), and is chock-full of links. (www.Jewishworldreview.com).
9. Lileks.com - The web would be a dull, bleak and devestated landscape if it wasn't for James Lileks. If you've never heard of him, or read him, I implore you to do so. The man is a national treasure, or at least he should be. (www.lileks.com).
10. Etherzone.com - the latest in political thought and humor from all ends of the universe. (www.etherzone.com).
11. FreeRepublic.com - a Conservative forum and daily roundup of world events. A little bit of something for everyone, and everyone gets to participate! (www.freerepublic.com).
12. My Side of the Swamp - Michael M. Bates gives us all a dose of common sense and a ton of Midwesterner humor that makes you wanna know just who was it that said Garrison Keiler was funny? Mike has got the goods. (www.michaelmbates.com).
13. Andrew Sullivan - another very talented writer and a gay conservative, to boot! Mr. Sullivan manages to combine wonderfully concise writing with a very active and surgical brain. He's another guy I don't always agree with, but he sure as hell makes you think! (www.andrewsullivan.com).

I hope y'all will check some of these out and give yer brain some excercise. P.S., I think they're all fun, too, which is important. After all, most people consider reading a chore, don't they?