Tuesday, May 31. 2005
SHOW ME THE MONEY Once again, President Chavez is in a pickle. The PDVSA (petroleum company of Venezuela) is missing billions. No one knows where the dollars are and Hugo's cousin is in charge. "Today in the Venezuelan blogosphere, writer after writer, some of whom do not even know each other, reach the same conclusion: Venezuela’ s state oil company, under the regime of Hugo Chavez, is being systematically looted by Chavez’s cronies so badly it’s affected production. And hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost. These sums are like Argentina’s default numbers, triple digit billions. It’s coming to a head as a powerful indictment of the Chavez regime, and try as he might to use diversions, like Posada Carriles, Bush, the Norwegians, the IRS, the foreign oil companies, it all comes down to the elephant in the room - the state oil company is bleeding money and Chavez is responsible. And Venezuelans are very angry, angry to the point that Chavez is trying to distract them."COLLAPSE OF VENEZUELAN OIL | www.vcrisis.com "Mr Chávez's hand-picked managers at Petróleos de Venezuela, or Pdvsa, are facing an avalanche of questions about the location of billions of dollars in unaccountable export revenue."Where's the money?" asks César Rincones, president of the congressional comptroller commission. "We could be on the brink of a financial crisis because of the mismanagement of the oil industry."FT.com / Home UK - Chávez faces claims of oil revenue cover-up This for the Spanish speaking readers. Hugo Chavez' type of Socialism is the type that subjugates and makes poor its citizens. His socialism is of the Castro kind: the kind influenced by the former Soviet Union and Leftist European states, the kind incorporated by the decrepit Caribbean dictator. "Cuando Chávez habla de socialismo no se refiere al Estado Social de Derecho, como anuncia la Constitución del 99, ni al Estado de Bienestar, como existe en una parte importante de los países capitalistas europeos, no importa que quienes estén en el Gobierno sean liberales o conservadores. Se refiere al único socialismo que ha existido y se conoce. Al que ha empobrecido y sojuzgado a los pueblos donde se ha implantado. Su socialismo es el que lleva la etiqueta de Fidel Castro: combina los rasgos que tuvo ese sistema es la Unión Soviética y en los países de Europa del Este, con los que le incorporó el decrépito dictador caribeño." Opinión y análisis - Fatal ignorancia USA-1 and Venezuela-0 Posada Cariles is safe for the moment but should he be? It appears there will be some tight rope walking for the State department. MIAMI, May 27 -- The diplomatic tangle surrounding Luis Posada Carriles grew more complex Friday as the Bush administration rejected Venezuela's request to arrest him as a suspected terrorist, while a high-ranking State Department official questioned whether Venezuela sincerely wants custody of the accused Cuban militant.The Bush administration may be in a classic no-win situation because it may have to choose between extraditing Posada to a nation led by one of its most strident critics -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- or being labeled "hypocrites" for talking tough about terrorism but refusing to extradite a suspected terrorist, said Jennifer L. McCoy, an expert in U.S.-Venezuela relations at Georgia State University.
Home Schooling Our favorite gun-totin' blogger Kim du Toit has been doing it, and has constructed a curriculum. Go for it, Kim. Man, what a big job.
 Proud of Buddy
Buddy, the son of my dear friends, has just graduated from his Navy Seals training. From the tales I have heard, it is tough beyond imagining. There are two kinds of men - Seals and regular guys. Buddy is a tough kid. Good going, big guy. America needs you.
Ambulance Chasing Lawyers converge on Gitmo. This is the kind of thing that gives them a bad name. Who has deeper pockets than the US Treasury? From LGF.
Romney for President I am old enough to remember supporting Romney's father when he ran in the primaries. The kid seems like a strong possibility for the Repubs. The other candidates will doubtless be vastly relieved to hear that I am not going on record as supporting him, though, yet. But McCain - forget it. A true wingnut. And it won't be Frist either - he lacks the common touch and he wears stupid neckties. NERepub has the story.
The Cochin Harbour Terminus Station and the Train of Hope This is one reason the internet is so enjoyable: more bare, ruined choirs. From The Hindu: As you make your way through the deserted parking lot and step inside this old structure, a foreboding silence acknowledges your presence. The only sound that greets you in this vast building is the echo of your footsteps. Memories of another day, when this structure once represented the lifeline of Cochin sweep past. One of those memories, quite vivid, of me dragging my mother through the hustle and bustle to the Higginbothams book stall (that stood by the entry to the platform) coaxing her to buy me the latest Enid Blyton, while following hastily the porter, laden with our luggage to board the Madras Express, remains etched.
Barry Goldwater Maine: Bull Moose has some observations of what Barry might be saying were he alive: "In his later years, of course, Barry expressed his disgust and disagreement with the emergence of the religious right as a force. He colorfully collided with its leaders. For instance,
"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." "
The American Chesterton Society The best writer, on every subject, of the 20th century that many have never read. We have one reader who is determined to make G.K. Chesterton her summer reading, beginning now. The website has lots of his witty quotes - we'll use them for QQQQ.
Back to work day. This is a 1985 
John Deere, Model 60 Would you say that's a Farmall-lookin' machine? A handy light-weight, like some people.
The Mess at St. Paul's Ongoing problems at the once-excellent school, but it's had troubles since they eliminated daily chapel, and whatever other traditions went along with that - in my opinion. Banning Kitchen Knives This is what nanny liberals in a nanny state will get you - a movement to ban kitchen knives because people are being killed with them. But of course, dopes - if they can't have guns, what's the next best thing? How long until the Brits have a movement to ban axes and hammers? Did they ever hear of "people kill people?" Or do they prefer not to believe that? In Confederate Yankee. "Banned in Boston" - Banning Spanking Soon?
And, as if to compete with the Brits in insanity, Boston - well, the prosperous Boston suburb of Brookline - has issued an anti-spanking advisory. Does this include not spanking terrorists, I wonder. No doubt it does. In Brookline, next time your 5 year-old runs into the road, show respect and understanding, OK? Right Thinking has a little piece.
Route Irish Still, sadly, dangerous. Despite Chrenkoff, Baghdad is not yet in full control. Like Israel, Iraq may have to adjust to a long period of trouble.
Surfin in NYC Guess what? New York has better beaches than Hawaii. All you need is a wet suit in the winter.
Art News
The great moguls have been the collectors and patrons of art since the Renaissance, at least. Now we have a bunch of newly-minted moguls, from the hedge funds, who are making sure those prices stay well beyond my reach. From Institutional Investor:
Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors (whose earnings of $450 million put him at No. 4 on our top 25 list) has rapidly assembled a serious collection of contemporary and modern art. He reportedly paid $52 million for a Jackson Pollock, $20 million for a Manet and $25 million for a Warhol. Cohen also shelled out $8 million for Damien Hirst's Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot tiger shark entombed in formaldehyde. ARTnews has named Cohen one of the world's top ten art collectors for the third straight year. Kenneth Griffin of Citadel Investment Group (No. 8 on our list, with $240 million) made the ARTnews ranking for the first time last year, after plunking down an undisclosed sum for a Cézanne still life, Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl; it sold for $60.5 million in 1999. At least eight hedge fund managers were among the magazine's 200 top art collectors in 2004. Institutional Investor
"At the end, it's not the words of your enemies but the silence of your friends that you will remember." Dr. Martin Luther King
Monday, May 30. 2005
Cinderella Man See it. Our entire theater clapped at the end. Sure, movies manipulate our emotions, but the story of James J. Braddock was a heck of a story. The real comeback-kid. And a good, old-fashioned movie - pure story-telling, without layers of irony, negativity, propaganda, high-tech flash, or emotional confusion, and with compelling boxing action which will make males sweat and ladies "glow." Thus an honest movie, with neat kids too. Thanks, Ron, for another wonderful movie that puts worthwhile and lasting images in our heads, which few movies do these days. The Bird Dog father-in-law remembers listening to the Baer vs. Braddock fight on the radio in Jersey City, just like the movie: Braddock - the Pride of the Irish of Bergen County. And the story is true - he did repay his welfare checks when he was able to. The movie makes it all real, including the male indignities and the female stresses of the Great Depression. Braddock could take the punches of life - including the punches delivered below the belt by a sleaze-bag like Max Baer and the punches delivered by fate - for his family, not for himself. Thus a real adult male without excuses - the kind we admire and to which we men aspire - a true father. And that is what the movie is about - American fatherhood. Best line: "I do it for the milk."
EU Constitution is Dead (for the moment) Northwest Harbor, Me: The Editor discourages weekend political postings in a worthy effort to reduce weekend agitation, but I just want to say that France was, for once, right - but for the wrong reason - in rejecting the EU Constitution. Their reason was that they did not want more capitalism sauvage imposed by Brussels. But, on the the larger issue, they were correct: France didn't want to sacrifice its autonomy (even if their motives are in error and their understanding of economics is infantile). That is good. That represents an aspiration for freedom and a healthy distrust of distant government. Didn't they have an ugly revolution about that kind of thing? Watch the Netherlands vote "no" too - another weenie nation headed straight towards third-world status. Why have these nations no faith in the energy, productivity, responsibility, self-sufficiency, and ambition of their people? They have become nations of infants, voting for milk in baby-bottles. Pathetic. Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard: It's hard for Americans to appreciate just how out-of-touch the establishment (and it really is a single establishment) of Paris, Berlin, the Hague, and Brussels is. Its arrogance almost beyond belief. Former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the father of the 448-article constitution, early on in the campaign dismissed complaints about the document's opacity by assuring his countrymen, "The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself." As Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, writing in the Wall Street Journal, commented, "The French didn't know whether he was simply cynical or unaware of the absurdity of his statement. And so he became a caricature of the self-obsessed, aloof politician."Now, watch for calls for a re-match. Hey, EU, how about best of 3? That's enough. I am off to the boat, and God Bless America and protect our brave men at arms.
Despite being the end of migration, and despite the leaves being fully unfurled, we were able to find a few good birds Sunday morning in the expansive and lovely East Rock P ark in New Haven: Black and White Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Canada Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow Warbler
Redstart
Red-Eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Solitary Vireo
Philadelphia Vireo
Baltimore Oriole
Wood Pewee
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Red Bellied Woodpecker
Rough-winged Swallow
Red Tailed Hawk
Turkey Vulture
Black Crowned Night Heron
Wood Thrush
Scarlet Tanager Plus of course the regular stuff. Always good to see woodland robins - we think of them as suburban lawn birds but they aren't - they are woodland thrushes which found our suburban lawns to be an easy source of earthworms. Thanks to Ron Bell, the great Connecticut ornithologist, for joining us yesterday for the final warbler outing of the year, and thanks to M and J for their auditory skills. The Phila. Vireo was a first for the Bird Dog. My photo of New Haven's Soldier's and Sailor's Monument, which overlooks New Haven and Long Island Sound from its perch on the peak of East Rock. God Bless both our eager and reluctant warriors, who give us the freedom we thrive on.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
--Declaration of Independence
Proclaimed in 1868, and originally known as Decoration Day, 
Memorial Day was slow to catch on in the South, which, understandably, had their own day to memorialize their war dead. We must honor them too - they were fighting for freedom, as they saw it. How easy it is to forget the meaning of the holiday - the day to remember fallen soldiers, and to decorate their graves - unless you have lost one recently, or saw pals die in battle. In that case, it's easy to remember. It shames me to think how much of what I take for granted has been bought with blood, sweat, and tears. How do you thank the dead, other than with remembrance and prayer? A detailed history of Memorial Day here.
Sunday, May 29. 2005
 Two Stooges, plus Sweden
Just to prove that some of us here have some humility, here's what we did on Saturday: We took the Ford tractor, with the Dixie brushwacker hooked up, sharpened and ready, to go mow the "back forty" which we missed last year due to the tractor being worked on, and to cut some low branches that get in our way and annoy us by smacking us smartly in the face when we mow. This is a small, not really forty but maybe 25-acre curving meadow adjacent to the beaver marsh, that we only mow alternate years, for the wildlife. (Yes, there are no birds nesting in that field, but we watch out for turtles, snakes, etc.) On my foolish advice, and foolishly listening to mine, brother-in-law rests the chain saw on the side of the tractor seat balanced on top of a hill of chain that we use to drag heavy stuff, and I march behind carrying a plastic container of chain saw 50/1 gas-oil mix, and other miscellaneous tools including a shovel and a bunch of bare-root junipers I want to plant to mark the big rocks in the meadow, along with some Gatorade and Ballantine Ale, like the beast of burden that Bird Dog is. The tractor hits a log hidden by the already 10" hay (thanks a lot, beavers, for dumping that log there), the chain saw jumps, incomprehensively, past the tire-guard and mischievously clips the nozzle off the tire. The water (yes, water-fiilled rear tires) spews out like a fire hydrant, and we have a flat tire on Memorial Day Saturday when no tractor tire places are open, plus the meadow is over a wooden bridge that I doubt any tire guy with his precious shiny Ford 350 pick-up would like to hazard. Unprintable language spewed from Bird Dog as lavishly as the water did from the tire. So much for the day's planned work. But somehow the Stihl saw still worked after its victorious battle with the tire.
from Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Saturday, May 28. 2005
[Gwynnie noted a fine Memorial Day piece in the Federalist Patriot]Public Prayer? Where's the outrage! Yesterday, much to the vexation of the ACLU and company, President George W. Bush invited a group of religious leaders to the East Room of the White House. There, he talked about the importance of prayer, and then (you'd best sit down) he prayed. Yes, on government time and on government property, he prayed. Who does he think he is? In this enlightened era when progressive, free-thinking liberals insist on the removal of all religious references and symbols (Crosses, Ten Commandment monuments, etc.) from federal, state and local public places, the President of the United States impudently promoted the merits of prayer and encouraged all Americans to do the same. But wait, it gets worse. "We pray to give thanks for our freedom," the President said. "Freedom is our birthright because the Creator wrote it into our common human nature. No government can ever take a gift from God away." He then asserted that giving thanks to God is writ through and through upon American history, from Plymouth Rock to the Revolution and to this day. He reminded us that in our nation's supreme founding document, the Declaration of Independence, "...our Founders ... declared it a self-evident truth that our right to liberty comes from God." Then, he concluded, "We pray to acknowledge our dependence on the Almighty [and] we who ask for God's help for ourselves, [since we] have a particular obligation to care for the least of our brothers and sisters within our midst." How can he, and other elected leaders, get away with such a blatant breach of the "wall of separation" between church and state? Because, in short, there is no such doctrine supported in our Constitution or its superior guidance, our Declaration of Independence. In fact, the First Continental Congress called for national prayer. Read the rest at http://federalistpatriot.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=306
The Little Coat, by Stephen Spender The little coat embroidered with birds
Is irretrievably ruined.
We bought it in the spring.
She stood upon a chair
And raised her arms like branches.
I leaned my head against her breast
Listening to that heavy bird
Thudding at the center of our happiness. Everything is dragged away.
The clothes that were so gay
Lie in attics, like the dolls
With which wild children used to play.
The bed where the loved one lies
Is a river bed on which
Enchanting haunting life
Is carried where the current may -
Tangled among blocks of ice.
Nests and singing branches
Were the springs of yesterday.
 What a fine, simple name for a bird. It is now the end of warbler migration, and migration in general. This common warbler, pictured here in a Larch (remember "The Larch" on Monty Python?), is beginning to nest, although it's still cold this week up here. Read more about this handsome warbler., which is seen in the eastern 2/3 of the US.
Friday, May 27. 2005
"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice." Edgar Watson Howe
Memorial Day and the Press Northwest Harbor, Me: Memorial Day is about military sacrifice, something the press seems to have no respect for, although they are happy to report death and trouble if it makes the US look bad. So it's not really news that our self-anointed intelligentsia, especially the press and academics, look down their nose at the military as an institution, if not at soldiers themselves. Surely this is something that developed since WW2 - maybe it's a post-Vietnam syndrome, combined with a leftist desire to the see the US as less powerful and less virtuous than it is - and the corresponding tendency to idealize those who want to harm us and our interests. John Leo in Town Hall reported on this subject this week, and it is a piece which only reinforces my feeling that a universal compulsory military service would do this country a lot of good. But that's a subject for another day. John Leo: It’s official. Conservatives are losing their monopoly on complaints about media bias. In the wake of Newsweek’s bungled report that U.S. military interrogators “flushed a Qur’an down a toilet,” here is Terry Moran, ABC’s White House reporter, in an interview with radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt: “There is, I agree with you, a deep antimilitary bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong.” Moran thinks it’s a hangover from Vietnam. Sure, but the culture of the newsroom is a factor, too. In all my years in journalism, I don’t think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil.
Read entire piece here.
 Bible Talk
I don't care whether the Bible is taught as folklore, myth, revelation, literature, or whatever else. All I know is that, if you don't know your Bible - both Old and New Testaments - you can't understand much about the world we live in, or Western Civilization in general. In other words, you are ignorant. Heck, you can't even understand Bob Dylan if you don't know the Bible, much less anything else - even if it isn't your goal to know God. There are three legs on which our reality stands, and they are the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle. Most things since then are mere commentary. Bird Dog emailed me today to ask for help on a piece he is doing on a Civics and Citizenship Curriculum, another subject about which ignorance seems to reign. (And yes, I do understand that the Left reflexively likes to undermine the legs of that stool any time they can, with the hope of replacing the stool with some new stool. But I am not writing about politics here.) Willfully Ignorant This from the South Fla. Sun Sentinel: Fran Eppy was taken aback when she looked at her son's summer reading list. His only requirement was to read passages from the Bible. "Studies of the Bible are permissible under state law as long as it is studied as literature, not history. But the practice often raises eyebrows of some parents and liberal groups, who fear it may not be studied in an objective way.
The purpose of reading Genesis is to familiarize students with stories that likely will be referenced in works of American literature, such as Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark, Hierholzer said. Advanced-placement literature exams sometimes ask about biblical references in literature, she said.
"Most of early American literature is based on [the Bible]," Hierholzer said. "It gives them a foundation, so when they read other pieces of literature that make reference to it, they'll understand the allusions." Eppy doesn't buy that explanation.
"Maybe teachers should explain the stories instead of requiring students to read the Bible," she said.
Now I don't think that Mrs. Eppy is an ordinary person - what parent would object to their kid learning something important? She is doubtless a crank in other ways too. But still...what is she thinking?
Gelertner asserts that the Bible has created worlds
Indeed it has, and he puts it far better than I can: A REPORT JUST ISSUED BY the Bible Literacy Project (more on this later) suggests that young Americans know very little about the Bible. The report is important, but first things first: A fair number of Americans don't see why teenagers should know anything at all about the Bible. Scripture begins with God creating the world, but there is something these verses don't tell you: The Bible has itself created worlds. Wherever you stand on the spectrum from devout to atheist, you must acknowledge that the Bible has been a creative force without parallel in history. Go to the center of Paris and drop in on the apotheosis of the French Middle Ages--Sainte Chapelle, whose walls are made almost entirely of stained glass. It "has rightly been called," writes the scholar Shalom Spiegel, "the most wonderful of pictured Bibles." The King James Bible, says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "has influenced our literature more deeply than any other book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far more deeply." The poet and painter William Blake calls the Old and New Testaments "the Great Codes of Art." America's foremost prophet offers his culminating vision in the second inaugural address--"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right . . . " Lincoln's speech "reads like a supplement to the Bible," writes the historian William Wolf, with its "fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching." "The best gift God has given to man," Lincoln called the Bible. "But for it we could not know right from wrong."Ronald Reagan called America "a great shining city on a hill," three-and-a-half centuries after John Winthrop (sailing for Boston in 1630) anticipated a new community that would be "as a Citty upon a Hill"--invoking the famous verse in Matthew, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid" (5:14). Which harks back in turn to the prophets (Isaiah 2:2-3, Micah 4:2) and the book of Proverbs (4:18). John Livingstone Lowe called the King James Bible "the noblest monument of English prose" (1936); George Saintsbury called it "probably the greatest prose work in any language" (1887). Nearly two millennia earlier, the great Pharisee rabbi Hillel described the ideal life: "loving peace and pursuing peace; loving humanity and bringing it close to the Torah." Here is a basic question about America that ought to be on page 1 of every history book: What made the nation's Founders so sure they were onto something big? America today is the most powerful nation on earth, most powerful in all history--and a model the whole world imitates. What made them so sure?--the settlers and colonists, the Founding Fathers and all the generations that intervened before America emerged as a world power in the 20th century? What made them so certain that America would become a light of the world, the shining city on a hill? What made John Adams say, in 1765, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence"? What made Abraham Lincoln call America (in 1862, in the middle of a ruinous civil war) "the last, best hope of earth." |
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Read the whole thing: Weekly Standard
General Illiteracy
So what is the subject here? Is it Bible illiteracy, or Civics illiteracy, or general illiteracy? What are the kids being taught all day?
Put me in, Coach: Macho Coach Drops Trousers Pray, not Prey, Pastor: Pastor-Investor Pleads Guilty Caffeine and Hyperactivity, Here Saudis and Homosexuals. From Gay and Right Poll says 60% say country on wrong track, CBS gleefully reports
Russert and Dean: From MSNBC Transcripts: MR. RUSSERT: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. `I'm not very dignified,' Dean said." DR. DEAN: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified. MR. RUSSERT: But is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who has gone into therapy and the abuse for drug addiction? DR. DEAN: Here's the point I was trying--as most of these things are taken by the Republicans, spun around Washington saying this in a one sentence, which I generally had said. But then they're sort of manipulated around, saying this is the kind of thing he said. The Rush Limbaugh comment was one that I made about Rush Limbaugh, and I also said something about Bill O'Reilly. The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction. That's a medical problem. And I respect those who clearly, in my profession, who are trying to overcome their problems.The problem is it is galling to Democrats, 48 percent of us who did not support the president, it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don't think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people--I think the Bible says something to the effect that be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven't removed the moat from your own eye. And I don't think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves.Rush Limbaugh has made a career of belittling other people and making jokes about President Clinton, about Mrs. Clinton and others. I don't think he's in any position to do that, nor do I think Bill O'Reilly is in a position to abuse families of survivors of 9/11, given his own ethical shortcomings. Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.
 Many people have probably read about the little flap that occurred recently over Vincente Fox's statement in a speech that Mexican immigrants in the U.S. take "jobs that not even blacks want to do." For a long time now, having failed to implement any meaningful domestic reforms at home, Fox's administration has turned into what is essentially one huge lobbying firm on behalf of illegal Mexican immigrants, reasoning perhaps that if one cannot placate a disgruntled, jobless citizen, what better solution than to simply ship him out of the country while scooping up the remittances that flow back home? Of course, Fox is forced to praise these undesirables as "dignified" and "hard-working" citizens who make a critical contribution to the American economy, which should raise the question (among Mexicans and American both) why Fox would want to see such valuable workers out of his country at all costs.
With his most recent remarks, El Presidente has inadvertently called attention to another unsavory feature of Mexican society: its endemic racism. Like almost every other Central and South American nation, Mexico is a racially stratified country, with the elite ranks occupied almost entirely by whites, mestizos in the middle, and blacks and indigenous Indians on the lowest rungs. Discrimination and outright violence against the lowest classes in Mexican society is a common feature of everyday life in that nation, yet Fox spends the greatest part of his time complaining about "mistreatment" of Mexican illegals in the USA, such mistreatment usually referring to gross injustices like the refusal to issue drivers' licenses or discounted in-state college tuition (!) to illegal aliens. Of course, such blinding hypocrisy is nothing new for Fox, who recently leveled harsh criticism against the volunteer Minutemen project, even as the Mexican army patrols its own southern border with Guatemala, routinely imprisoning and deporting Central American illegals. And where is the guy who is supposed to be on our side in all of this, George W.? Far from standing up to Fox's tin-pot grandstanding, Bush has gone out of his way to praise illegals in the highest terms, condemn the Minutemen as "vigilantes," and advocate mass amnesties, concessions which have earned him nothing more than further scorn, abuse and even threats from the Mexican government. Note to W: A nation which exports drugs and crime north of the border, vocally opposes the Iraq war, presses for "rights" for illegal criminals, meddles in our domestic policymaking and maintains a system of institutionalized racism to prop up a corrupt elite is not our "friend." If we can go halfway around the world to destroy a corrupt dictatorship (and one that posed no immediate threat to us), surely we can stand up to the one in our own backyard!
Thursday, May 26. 2005
Monkeys alive and well in Kansas - More curriculum monkey business. The downside: They make religous folks look dumb. The upside: It's a free country. Being free to be dumb is better than not being free, and subject to the "experts." Think about it - how often do those "experts" turn out to be wrong? In this case, the expert theory is probably more right than wrong, but still... Child welfare dept. drops the ball again: WATERTOWN, N.Y. -- State and local authorities are investigating how a convicted rapist from Oregon failed to register as a sex offender in New York and was allowed to serve as a foster parent in an upstate county for four years before it was discovered.
"We are treating this matter very seriously," said Brian Marchetti, a spokesman for the state's Office of Children and Family Services. "Children's' safety and well-being are always our top priority. Every child deserves to be protected from sexual predators." Click here: Newsday.com: Authorities probe how convicted rapist became foster parent
Well, they're not showing any lights tonight
And there's no moon
There's just a hot-blooded singer
Singing "Memphis in June"
While they're beating the devil out of a guy
Who's wearing a powder-blue wig
Later he'll be shot
For resisting arrest
I can still hear his voice crying
In the wilderness
What looks large from a distance
Close up ain't never that big Never could learn to drink that blood
And call it wine.
Never could learn to hold you, love
And call you mine. Dylan, from Tight Connection to my Heart (Has Anybody Seen my Love?) - buy it here
I think this is a Mississippi River Channel Catfish. This is about as big as they get, Captain Ahab . Editor: Then tonight I get an email from Curt, saying "Is this a bait fish?"
Teach the Constitution in school, you must be kidding. From the Federal Register: SUMMARY: The Assistant DeputySecretary for Innovation and Improvement announces that, pursuant to legislation passed by Congress,educational institutions receiving Federal funding are required to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution onSeptember 17 of each year. This notice
implements this provision as it appliesto educational institutions receiving
Federal funding from the Department. "The rule puts into effect a provision that was inserted in the final federal-spending bill for 2005 by Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat and the Senate's unofficial constitutional scholar. The Chronicle: Daily news: 05/25/2005 -- 03 ." "But many university presidents remain concerned that Senator Byrd's provision could establish a precedent for Congress's setting curricular requirements," said Becky Timmons, director of government relations at the American Council on Education. "Federal law prohibits the Education Department from establishing a national curriculum. Our members find it very intrusive," Ms. Timmons said. "They are concerned about the precedent it holds for Congress telling them what to teach."
It is inconceivable that the American Council of Education believes that teaching the Constitution is opening the door to Congressional edicts regarding curriculums at the elementary, high school and college level. It makes common sense to teach the Constitution of the United States if you are educating Americans who have the right to vote and decide who leads their city, state, and country. Isn't an informed public the best safeguard for Democracy? I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Ms. Timmons is a card carrying ACLU member. People are always looking to pounce on anything remotely patriotic. It's a good thing Senator Byrd is a Democrat or we would be reading the how President Bush changed the American History curriculum. Editor's Note: I beg to respectfully disagree with the learned and honorable Opie. Of course, every kid should have a civics course in grade school and in high school - but that is the responsibility of the local school systems. I know it's getting late to close the barn door, but keep the Feds away from our schools. The real problem is that the schools want the Fed $, so they have to give up their own authority and judgement to get it. That isn't good.
Hedgies: Brother, can you spare a dime? From the NYT: ON average, according to Institutional Investor's most recent survey, the 25 best-paid hedge fund managers each took home $207 million in 2003, about double what they made a year earlier. That's $207 million in cash - not in equity or stock options. Meanwhile, the nation's 25 highest-paid chief executives each made an average of $37 million in total compensation last year, including options granted (but not those exercised), according to Business Week. Most hedge fund managers do make money for their investors. But even if a hedge fund manager doesn't make a cent for his investors, the manager invariably makes a fortune for himself. Think about it: just for showing up to work, the manager of a hedge fund with $1 billion in assets is guaranteed to earn $20 million a year in management fees alone. Why should he take any risks? Why should he alienate his cautious investors? If we add in his 20 percent cut of the gains, and assume that his returns last year were just average (in line with the S.& P. 500) he would have grossed a total of $41.8 million." Gunslingers No More: The Cautious Cash In - New York Times
Leaving the Left A fascinating piece from Thompson, with plenty of honesty: Nightfall: January 30, 2005. Eight million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.
I’m leaving the left – more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.
I choose today because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere — reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode.
My estrangement hasn’t happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades; yet refused to truly see. Now it’s all too obvious. Leading voices in America’s “peace” movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World people because it hates George W. Bush more than it loves freedom.
Where the rich put their money: Not in hedgies, right now. A Blog: The UN: One World United Under a Global Dictatorship Walking away with Birkenstocks? Here. Another Blogger for ya - from California: Thompson at Large Another Blog: Pave France - The British Need More Parking Stanley Kunitz Turns 100 this summer. McCain vs. Frist? McCain is running for sure. Bad Taste Humor - as bad as above item: A Michael Jackson cartoon. The Latest on Soros - Click here: Accuracy In Media - AIM Report: CNN's George Soros-gate - May B :The latest campaign by the Soros-funded operatives is to "save PBS" because Kenneth Tomlinson, the new Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is demanding that public TV and radio adhere to federal law requiring fairness and balance in programming. The New York Times sparked the controversy when it reported that Tomlinson had authorized monitoring of the liberal bias on the Moyers PBS show and had backed a PBS show for Paul Gigot and members of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Lincoln Bedroom: Sorry - donors still sleep there.
Are Political Blogs a Waste of Time? To what extent do the conservative bloggers and readers just talk to each-other? And don't the DailyKos folks do the same? Is anyone influenced or convinced? Doubtful. But maybe at the margins. After all, Rush gave voice to millions of people who thought the way he did, but had no outside reinforcement for what they felt. The success of FOX news is the same - a crappy news program yet semi-entertaining if you have something else to do at the same time - but folks want to feel represented in the national dialogue. They need validation. Humans always want that - to not feel invisible. People enjoy information too, or they wouldn't be wasting time online - except for porn, or check-paying, or email, apparently. We are all yentas at heart. But people also want reinforcement - a feeling of community. The MSM takes care of the liberals, so the conservatives need all of these "alternative" outlets to feel reassured that they aren't out to lunch. There is no comparison between the numbers of traditionalist blogs and leftist blogs - and no comparison in their quality and intelligence (our blog excepted - it's not intelligent and is of low-quality...but ya like it, dontcha?). So I dunno. One thing I do know for sure - when new info is made widely available by blogs, it makes a difference in the "real news." Powerline has had true power, run as it is by three extraordinary Dartmouth fellows. But how do you reach other folks, to help them open up their closed minds? I do not have the answer to that one. Wish I did. One idea: Let's do an LBO of the NYT, and bring it balance! We will need a few very big players to do this deal...and the Sulzbergers must be bored with their toys by now.
The Siege of Western Civilization A DVD, by Herb Meyer. This 40 minute chat is getting around by word of mouth. Thanks, Right Thinking, who reviews it here.
From a church bulletin: This week's Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 pm. Please use the back door.
Wednesday, May 25. 2005
Hack's Memorial Service: Here. A Connecticut guy who gave a hell of a lot more than most of us ever will, and kept on giving.
Big Fish - Mississippi Catfish - story here.
A Cape Cod Day We have been having a Cape Cod day today, and, in fact, a Cape Cod week in New England. What that means is low 50s, 40s at night, strong wind, rain, clouds and fog. It is for hearty folks. Got a fire going right now, in late May. What a wonderful world.
If at first you don't succeed, then 'trial, trial' again. Mr. Posada has been tried and acquitted twice in Venezuela and pardoned in Panama. This is a tricky one for Bush. Cuban Exile Is Charged With Illegal Entry - New York Times "Mr. Posada spent nine years in a Venezuelan prison during trials and retrials on charges that he conspired to bomb the Cuban airliner. He escaped in 1985 and went underground to join a C.I.A. operation in El Salvador in an effort to help anti-Communist Nicaraguan rebels.He admitted masterminding bombings at tourist spots in Havana in 1997 that were intended to destabilize Cuba and terrorize people. One of the bombs killed an Italian visitor in Havana.He was jailed in Panama in connection with a bomb plot against Mr. Castro in 2000, convicted, and then pardoned by Panama's president nine months ago."
A Chinese Blogger for Justice- Audio-visual in the NYT
Seafarer's Friend. A worthy Yankee charity.
A Call for Information from the Blog-World We would like to collect information on the political activities and political agendas of innocent-appearing non-profit organizations. Our post today on the UCC was not our first on this topic, but the millions of blog-readers out there can collect the info better than we can. For example, we have been told by a reader that the National YWCA has a mission statement to "defeat rascism and sexism by all means necessary." We are all against racism and sexism, but what does that mean, is it true, and what do they do about it? This kind of stuff isn't on the organizational websites - you have to know it from the inside. We suspect that most people are not aware of what the national HQs of many non-profits are doing with their share of dues in Washington and in New York. Let's try to find out. Email us with hard data. Thanks.
Humanitarian Adventure Travel. Relief Riders International. How cool is this? Camel? Donkey? Elephant?
Class Warfare Gwynnie recalls that since the major Republican wins in November a number of Liberal politicians have expressed disappointment in their constituents not voting in accordance with the priorities attributed to their perceived “class” by liberal theoreticians. Indeed, blue collar employees are expressing resentment at being described as “working class” by ivory-tower liberals. Class warfare, an invention of Karl Marx, has just about disappeared in the United States, and with it, the block which the Democrat Party is accustomed to assembling, leading, instructing and patronizing. This week, Gwynnie, while using the New York Times for her normal doggie purposes, noticed the three-part series on Class differences and is highly entertained. The articles were entitled: - Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide
- Up From the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither
- When Richer Weds Poorer, Money Isn't the Only Difference - Marriage between people of different classes often means moving outside comfort zones
The Times’ message was that class is really important, even if Americans don’t think so. To prove its theory, The Times took a poll: “To discover how Americans regard social class and where they place themselves, The Times conducted a nationwide survey in March. The poll uncovered optimism about a financial future, opportunities and the reward of hard work. While there are differences in the views of rich and poor and some respondents have a sense of tension and inequality, there remains strong faith in the American Dream, however defined. ” [emphasis added] Gwynnie was curious about the concluding spin concerning “some respondents” so she looked at the data. As usual, the quote was negative spin very much in line with The Times’ usual editorial tactics. [Although Mr. Bush was elected, some people (reporters?) think he should have lost in Ohio. Although there are no more public hangings of women in the soccer stadium in Kabul, some Afghanis {Talibani?) find the occupation repressive.] Here are their data: - Is it possible to start out poor, work hard and become rich? 80% said Yes, 19% said no, vs. 57% yes and 38% no in 1983. [The number of respondents having “a sense of tension and inequality” is not revealed]
- Current class vs. when growing up: 45% said higher, 16% said lower
- Likelihood of upward movement vs. 30 years ago: 40% said easier, 23% said harder
- Upward mobility vs. in the EU: 46% said easier, 13% said harder.
“Where,” says Gwynnie, “are the ‘shadowy lines’? Although The Times is trying hard to make class important and thus reopen class resentment (and benefit old-line Democrat tactics), their data disclose just the opposite. The Times says, “The movement of families up and down the economic ladder is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. But it does not seem to be happening quite as often as it used to.” Gwynnie suggests that maybe that’s because so many are now in the middle, but not “happening quite as often as it used to” could refer to 1946, 1935, 1920 or even 1815. Here are The Times’ statistics for the period 1988-1998: MOVED STAYED MOVED
UP SAME DOWNTop 20% 52.5% 47.5%Upper middle 55.6% 30.0% 45.0%Middle 37.5% 27.5% 35.0%Lower middle 40.0% 37.5% 22.5%Bottom 20% 47.5% 52.5%
Note the following: - The same percentage moved up from the bottom as moved down from the top.
- For the middle 3 categories, more moved up than down
- An average of 40% stayed in place
If this is not mobility, what is? It is hard to wage class warfare if 60% of us will be in another “class” in 10 years! View from 1776 has a companion piece.
The Obesity Scam - who is behind this hysteria? There is NO obesity health crisis. Pure BS and pure pseudo-science, yet another big fat arena for the trial lawyers. Fat ain't very appealing, it's fatiguing, it makes you look like an out-of-control person, it's a turn-off, and it damages your hips and knees, but being fat doesn't damage your health all that much, especially when balanced with the joys of good food. Get fat if you want! It's a free country! All it is, is gross and it won't help your sports. Disclaimer: Yes, I do own shares of McDonalds, but I can't eat that crap myself. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. And I hate the way they tie you down and force that Big Mac down my throat. Barf City. Global Warming - Antarctica ice cap is growing?!?!?http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/050516-10.html You call this a church? Photos and details of Oakland's new Christ The Light Cathedral, at Curt Jester. Amazing architecture. It would not go over in New England. The New Mai Lai. You can do 999 things right, and some jerk can do one stupid thing, and as far as the Left goes, you are now the Devil. Unless you're a Dem or a Lefty, in which case it is overlooked. I hear there are wives who think like that. Abu Graib is the current "one dumb" (trivial, tho illegal) thing. But Larry Summers is now being led around on a dog leash with a choke collar by rabid maiden schoolmarms in Cambridge, and no-one complains. Is it because he's not a Moslem? Where is Seymour Hirsch? On Abu Graib, there's even a new book out, and articles like this one. What I hate about this stuff is how delighted the hate-American-first crowd is when we screw up, and how depressed they get when things go well.
"In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow."
Ecclesiastes
Tuesday, May 24. 2005
Judiciary Filibusters The Repubs have the votes, the power, the ideas, and the future - but they can't govern worth a damn.
Isikoff: It is a "blip" Innocent lives, far away, may be a "blip" to Isikoff - or is the main concern about the life of the magazine?
OPINION IN BRIEF
"It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth. They certainly don't feel any 'obligation' to learn economics, out of a sense of 'social responsibility,' much less because of any 'social contract' requiring them to know what they are talking about before spouting off with self-righteous rhetoric." --Thomas Sowell RE: THE LEFT
"How come it never occurs to liberals or Democrats that the very terms in which they phrase the question are part of their problem? These, after all, are people who are obsessed with politically correct terminology, from 'African-American' to 'fetus.' Yet somehow it never dawns on them that 'working class' is an insult. Think about it: Would you call a janitor, a secretary or a carpenter 'working class' to his face? The term connotes putting someone in his place: Your lot in life is to work. Thinking is for the higher classes. The questions the Democrats ask about the 'working class' reflect precisely this contempt: What's the matter with these people? Why don't they understand that we know what's good for them? Why do they worry about silly things like abortion and homosexuality? If they must believe in all that religious mumbo-jumbo, can't they keep it to themselves? Every time the Democrats lose an election, they make a big show of asking questions like these. Then, the next time they lose an election, they once again wonder why the 'working class' has forsaken them. Maybe it's as simple as: because they were listening." --James Taranto
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