Take a deep breath before you click on the link…

There’s no need to frame this (emphasis added):

Some of the most vituperative emails I have ever got came in after I made an offhand remark, in one of my monthly NRO diaries, to the effect that very few of us are physically appealing after our salad days, which in the case of women I pegged at ages 15-20. While the storm was raging, biologist Razib Khan over at Gene Expression (forget philosophers, theologians, and even novelists: the only people with interesting things to say about human nature nowadays are the scientists) decided to look up some actual numbers. Reasoning that a rapist is inspired to his passion mainly by the physical attractiveness of his victim, Razib went for rape statistics.

He found a 1992 report (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation) from the National Victim Center showing the age distribution of female rape victims. Sixty percent of the women who reported having been raped were aged 17 or less, divided about equally between women aged 11 to 17 (32 percent) and those under eleven (29 percent). Only six percent were older than 29. When a woman gets past her mid twenties, in fact, her probability of being raped drops off like a continental shelf. If you histogram the figures, you get a peak around ages 12-14… which is precisely the age Lolita was at the time of her affair with Humbert Humbert. As Razib noted, my own “15-20” estimate was slightly off. An upper limit of 24 would be more reasonable. The lower limit really doesn’t bear thinking about. (I have a 13-year-old daughter.)

Behind such sad numbers, and in the works of literary geniuses like Vladimir Nabokov, does the reality of human nature lie. It is all too much for our prim, sissified, feminized, swooning, emoting, mealy mouthed, litigation-whipped, “diversity”-terrorized, race-and-“gender”-panicked society. We shudder and turn away, or write an angry email. The America of 1958, with all its shortcomings, was saltier, wiser, closer to the flesh and the bone and the wet earth, less fearful of itself. (It was also, according to at least one scholarly study, happier.)

Ah, to return to those bygone days of 1958 when America was “happier.”

Just to be clear; Derbyshire cites statistics that show that most women who are raped are actually 12-14 year old girls. His conclusion? It’s because 12-14 year old girls are just so hot. In fact, since rape is all about how hot the target is, it sounds like it’s actually a compliment (does that mean it’d be downright ungentlemanly not to?).

If I were a cop that lived in the same town with this guy, I’d start interviewing every young girl he’s come into contact with — starting with his daughter. This guy’s trouble, and he’s proud of it.

We don’t do so much media critiquing around here, which is probably not a good thing. Of course we’re all familiar with the WCAX news bureau’s well-deserved reputation for being Vermont’s own little Fox News Channel, but if you want to see the most jaw-dropping, ranting, angry-to-the-point-of-delusional right-wing media source you will ever see anywhere in this nation, there’s no place like St. Johnsbury’s newspaper, the Caledonian Record. In fact, I have never seen another such newspaper anywhere (left or right leaning) that doesn’t even bother with the pretense of objectivity, referring to itself in it’s own editorial page as a ”Republican newspaper.”

By all means click on the link for the rest of the post. If you’re not familiar with this paper, you’re gonna love this…

The CBR never fails to live up to that description it wears so proudly, even when it has to twist itself into knots of self-parody to do so. You’ll recall the story from a few days back when Scudder Parker demanded action from the Douglas administration on the ever-growing domestic spying scandal:

I have asked my campaign staff to investigate whether the Bush administration’s warrantless spying activities, and the action of telecommunication companies involved in these disclosures, may have violated any Vermont laws, and if so, what actions have been taken to protect the rights of the citizens of this state”

The Douglas administration quickly (and wisely) attempted to innoculate itself:

Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Gov. James Douglas, said the governor had ordered O’Brien to determine if Verizon’s actions violated Vermont law

So how does the CBR spin this?

We take this opportunity to applaud Vermont Republican Gov. James Douglas.

  To quote Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Gov. Douglas: “The governor is certainly disturbed by this, and the Department of Public Service is going to take action if the rights of any Vermonters have been violated.”

And how many times is Scudder Parker mentioned in the editorial? That’s right – zero. That takes some serious kahunas right there, but that is nothing. This paper has a greatest hits that’s worthy of the Colbert Report.

Try the editorial entitled Al Gore: The Jane Fonda of the War on Terror, or maybe Dean’s Delerium (hint: he was talking about Iraq). Health Care? Check out their visciously deceptive op-ed entitled Jim Dandy To The Rescue.  The Abramoff scandal? Bet you didn’t know that there wasn’t a single Republican involved, but virtually every major Dem lawmaker seemed to be. Who knew? Bet you didn’t realize how ”many black leaders are race-baiters”. Don’t worry, the CBR from it’s perch in the Northeast Kingdom will separate the good blacks from the bad (read: liberals). After all, the Democrats are the “party that just loves to raise taxes in order to tuck another taxpayer-funded comforter around the body politic,” right?

Come on, admit it. At some point reading that list you started to chuckle. Just a little.

( – promoted by odum)

(Cross-posted at DailyKos)

  When I started my undergraduate career, I was enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, and boy, nothing works harder than a Democrat in Texas – we had lobbying committees set up for different issue areas, and we were in legislators’ offices every week presenting our case.  We were fired up and we were effecting change.

But then I decided I needed a change, because while the University Democrats were a beacon for reason and hope, a lot of the rest of the student body was not, and the school didn’t seem to be suiting my academic needs.  So I thought, “where can I get the education I want and be in an amazing political environment?”  My answer: The University of Vermont!

So I arrived in the Green Mountain State, thoroughly excited to join a thriving, motivated, spectacular political group – the College Democrats.  Upon attending my first meeting, I found less than ten people in attendance, and it only got worse from there.

Read on below!

Only ten people at a College Democrats meeting with a student body of over 8,000!  What happened to the Vermont I had heard about from so many people?  It seems that at my University, the student body has been sticken with a serious case of political apathy. 

And it’s not even for lack of competitive races – Peter Welch is running for Congress against a highly decorated military official who comes across as more honest and moderate than any Republican I’ve ever heard speak in person; Bernie Sanders is against Rich “Monopoly Man” Tarrant, doling out thousands of dollars and free laptops to summer interns, and spending ridiculous money on his campaign; Scudder Parker is running a grassroots initiative against Jim Douglas in a state that has a disturbing tendency to re-elect incumbents just because.  So what’s the problem?

My second semester at UVM (why not UVT?  It’s from the latin for University of the Green Mountains,) I became the co-President of College Dems, and we managed to put together a stellar executive board, all ready and willing to whip our campus into shape.  We went on an advertising blitz, brought free food, and set up a table three days a week.  We got a grand total of, again, less than ten people at our first meeting, and it only went down from there.

Then Barrack Obama came.  Students streamed into the Ira Allen Chapel where he was to speak, filling its 900-person capacity in mere minutes, with more pressing their faces up against the window to try to hear him speak.  Barrack Obama will surely fire these students up!  Grand total of new members as a result of Obama’s speech: one.  And she only came to one meeting.

So at the end of my second semester at the University of Vermont, I’m the President of the College Democrats, and I have no one to lead.  I have no one excited about the local races, or even taking back Congress in November.  The most popular student groups on this campus are the outing club, and the ski and snowboard club.  Why are so many students politically apathetic?

I must have talked to dozens of people a day running the College Dems table, and almost none of them knew who Roberts or Alito were, people blinked at me when I said Bill Frist, and some didn’t even know that Howard Dean was running the DNC – Howard Dean, Vermont’s native son!

We need a candidate who’s willing to talk to young people in this country, because even back in Texas, UDems was maybe 40 or 50 students from a student body upwards of 50,000.  We need a candidate who speaks to America’s youth, and not just when he or she is addressing a crowd of college students.  I don’t want to hear “I’m going to ignore the advice my political consultants give me and pay attention to young people” every time someone is addressing me and others my age, but at no other time.

I want a candidate who speaks to the future leaders of this country, and communicates why issues like domestic spying and our nuclear stand-off with Iran matter to them.  I want a candidate to court the youth vote like they court the senior vote.  I want to see students reading the newspaper before class instead of listening to whatever their iPod Shuffle tells them to.

I’m not really sure what the punchline of this diary is, but this is a big problem, and I’m genuinely terrified that the well-being of my children will be in the hands of my generation, because as much as I see activism and interest and amazing things happening, I see ten times as much apathy, and it’s scary.