Tuesday, February 28. 2006
The always-interesting Kling takes a look at the Jewish Liberal-Left, and maps out a cultural-historical narrative which explains it. Here's his summary: The Original | Marxist | Folk Marxist | | | | Pharaoh | Capitalist Class | Wal-Mart | Hebrews | Working Class | Other Stores | Moses | Karl Marx | Liberal Pundits | God | Communism | Government |
His thesis is that a historical-cultural template is applied to circumstances, but that the template doesn't always fit reality. Thinking "inside the box", so to speak. At TCS, read the entire interesting piece.
The pup had a great morning with John's venison bones in the snow. Happy dog. Catholicism Rocks. Am. Princess. Good eats for Mardi Gras. Were the Founding Fathers Christians? I always thought of them as Deists mostly, children of the recent Enlightenment, but deeply imbued with a Christian culture and view of the world. Here's the case for that, albeit delivered in an irritable, if not hostile, manner. Prep. Heard lots of good comments about this coming-of-age book. Ordered it. 54 years old and perfect. Dinocrat. Makes the idea of turning 30 seem almost appealing. Canadian medicine going private. Despite the law. It's about time. There's no way Harper will fight this movement of doctors seeking freedom to practice medicine. This is a big deal - the first step in the unraveling of socialism for our comrades from the north. Robert Scott dies. Who? A guy who has done more for this country than any of us will every do. Washington seized by Moslems in 1977. Remember? Tim Blair does.
Earth's human population reaches 6.5 billion. 3.25 billion gals - so how come I can't get a date? Bill Clinton still looking for interns. Would you let your daughter? Admin. wants to sell off public lands. I disagree. Hope congress does too. It belongs to all of us, and we want to keep it. Taxes and Income. Who pays how much, and what has changed during Bush? AlphaPatriot goes over the FACTS. City Lights Bookstore shows its true colors - bans Fallaci. The home of Ferlinghetti, Corso, Ginsberg, etc. - but only Leftist speech please. Except for Kerouac? Class. Values. More from Moonbattery. Will Cheney retire? He might. A great guy in the wrong job. Atlas asks where the investigative reporters are? Moslem training camps in the US? Totally blanked on the crocodile thing. Haha. Ace Austistic kid sets hoop record. Neat. Calling all Moonbats. You won't believe this - unless you saw it on the blogs yesterday. The big protest in DC to overthrow the US Govt., supported by Theresa Kerry? In Canada, just like in the USA. SDA on their press' sense of entitlement. 184 Proof? Might want to add a little water to this Scotch whiskey.
Mathias Dopfner, Chief Executive of the German publisher Axel Springer AG, has written a blistering attack in DIE WELT, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat. Written in 2004 - how much truer does it sound today...
EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE (Commentary by Mathias Dopfner CEO, Axel Springer, AG) November 20, 2004
A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.
Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.
Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern Europe, where for decades, inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.
Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us.
Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly
500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush ... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.
And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?
I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German)
Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists.
One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the
laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler and declaring European "Peace in
our time".
What else has to happen before the European public and its political
leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially
perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims,
focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.
It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great
military conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy
that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually
spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. Only two recent American
Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.
His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.
In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the
multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal society's values and
being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true
great powers, America and China.
On the contrary - we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those
"arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even
(Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes.
Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so
materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.
For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of
additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the
American economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake - literally everything.
While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare
systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss
reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4 weeks of paid vacation ... Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists. To understand and forgive".
These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber
breaking into a neighbor's house.
Appeasement?
Europe, thy name is Cowardice.
We dedicate today's QQQ to Larry Summers. "I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei of Florence, being 70 years old... swear that I have always believed, believe now and, with God's help, will in the future believe all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach and teach. But since, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the Universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the center of the same and that it moves. That I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatsoever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine. After having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to Holy Writ, I wrote and published a book in which I treat this condemned doctrine and bring forward very persuasive arguments in its favor without answering them. I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is of having held and believed that the Sun is at the center of the Universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not at the center and that it moves. Therefore, wishing to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith these errors and heresies. I curse and detest them as well as any other error, heresy or sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. And I swear that for the future I shall neither say nor assert orally or in writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicions. And if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place in which I may be."
- Galileo Galilei (recanting his scientific beliefs before the Inquistion, 1633)
Monday, February 27. 2006
For those with freezers full of game, now that this hunting season winds to a close, try this Game Cookery site. How many hunting seasons does a person have? Each one is precious; each one could be our last one; and each critter is a precious thing which deserves to be cooked with the utmost care.
Eisenhower was the last Republican president not to be subject to rage unto paranoia, press hostility, and continual assault, disrespect, and contempt from the political opposition. (However, it is a fact that the leader of the war that saved the "free world" from fascism was widely viewed as a dunce by the Adlai Stevenson supporters.) If you are old enough to recall, Nixon was subject to what we would now call a "Nixon Derangement Syndrome" which finally brought him down. So were Ford and Reagan and Bush 41. All were demonized, called "stupid," and intensely hated by the opposition. Having learned this unfortunate lesson, the Republicans finally decided to try that same game with Clinton, who they managed to handcuff politically via relentless ankle-biting, but were never able to rally intense hatred against him - probably partly because of press sympathy but also because the foundations of hatred were not present. Where does this hatred come from? I think the Left believes that they are the "good smart guys," and any Repub a "bad dumb guy." I do not think that Conservatives tend to use such a black-and-white view of politics. Most Conservatives I know do not see themselves as the good guys, but as having better ideas. Thus, amongst Liberals, you rarely see the kind of social stresses that people like neo-neocon go through in being a neocon in a Left-liberal community. (Take me, for an example. I do not believe that I am "smarter" or "better" than Leftys and Liberals. I do believe that the ideas I hold about the relationship of the individual to the State are better ideas, that offer to bring out the best in people, but "some of my best friends are liberals," and it doesn't bother me at all. Friendship and shared interests should trump politics. When my Liberal pals are willing to discuss issues rationally, and not emotionally, I think it can be fun to debate and that it can add something to a friendship.) Along with the good guy/bad guy syndrome comes a sense of entitlement, I believe. If we are the good guys, then we deserve to be in charge. If we aren't, then something has gone terribly wrong, or something nefarious has occurred, or Americans are idiots. Feeling powerless when you "know" you are right makes some people nuts. (Never forget, though, that if American voters are idiots - it's the same idiots that vote when you win an election.) I find the hatred that is generated by this disappointed sense of entitlement to be very destructive. Debating ideas and world views is great, but hatred, lying, tantrums, and attribution of malevolence to other public servants is not the civil society I want to live in. (I also believe that not everything about this subject is psychological, per se. Liberals care more intensely about politics, because they are more invested in the role and power of the state. As a rule of thumb, except in the case of war, Conservatives tend to want to lessen the power of the State over the individual, Liberals to increase it. And yes, I think Bush is a conservative at heart, but a politician in practice....and I mean in "practice".) My message to the Bush-Deranged: there is no good vs. bad here. There are simply differing ideas and differing views of human nature - all deserving of rational debate. Let's debate - not hate.
Bloggers world-wide have already posted Steyn's latest on anti-Semitism. Sometimes I wonder whether 50% of the worth of blogs is to disseminate Steyn's pieces. Needing to wake up, West closes its eyes. I know some Neanderthals. So I am not sure I believe this report that there was little interbreeding with homo sapiens. And, on a related topic, proof that blond cavegirls had more fun - and why: Cave-Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. The Conservative Imagination. George Will reviews two new books on the modern conservative movement, in the NYT. Why does the Left enjoy submission? We refuse to get into the depth psychology of this, so let's just say that, while they may be closet sitzpinklers, in effect they are nihilistic and welcome anything that harms the US. Captain Ed notes that, in addition to submission, the Islamists want the Jews gone from the world. You won't read this in the New York Times. The West Point CTC report on Al Quaida's deterioration and internal dissent. Am. Thinker. And why won't you read it there? Because the NYT has already decided that the neocons are wrong about extending freedom. And they have already judged that effort, In Iraq, as a failure. Why? I don't know. It's too soon to judge, in mid-game. Fukayaama has already decided though. Will his much-quoted piece in the NYT go down in history as prescient, or blind? February 19, 2006: After Neoconservatism,By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA - a few quotes: As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point. and The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document. and But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naďve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. and More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends. How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends. The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering — which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare — suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering. Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.
Atlas reminds us that yesterday, Feb. 26, was the  anniversary of a declaration of war against the Infidel. The follow-up attack was not a movie.
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt
Sunday, February 26. 2006
16 degrees F. today with a strong wind that blew from Canada down the Hudson valley, and through whatever layers you had on. Still, a very fine day. And managed more than enough pheasant breasts for next Saturday's Pheasant and Venison Gala. I think it is going to be Pheasant Bourguignon - a coq au vin sort of thing - and Venison Strogonoff. We used Pudelpointer, Lab, English Springer, English Pointer, and Poodle in the course of the walk-up hunts over a couple of hundred acres of meadow, cornfields, and brush. 
From DeHaviland at Samizdata: Guy Herber's excellent article The public mood (while the public moo-ed) got me thinking about the nature of the 'Radical Centre'. The Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology: there is no Blairite or Clintonite (or even 'Bushite') 'The Communist Manifesto' or 'Mein Kampf'. They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that does not organise mass rallies or collectivise farms, it just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera. Perhaps this also explains the radical centre's transcendent hatred of the USA's system of checks and balances: the US Bill of Rights takes whole sections of civil society and tries to place them outside politics (free speech, the right to have the means to defend yourself etc.). Sure, it fails miserably as often as it succeeds but at least the notion that not absolutely everything is subject to politics is part of the American cultural DNA and that, rather than the US government's policy towards, well, anything, is what makes the US anathema to the Radical Centre (including the US Radical Centre). The Radical Centre has also been called 'Authoritarian Populism' because it seeks to impose the popular will by force and it does not much care what that will is. Just as liberty for liberty's own sake is the objective of the Classical Liberal/Libertarian rather than some 'overarching narrative' as was the case with the radical statist left and statist right in the corpse filled 20th century, the Radical Centre seek control for control's own sake with no particular grand reason in mind other than to perpetuate a political class whose reason for existence is to make decisions about other people's lives. The reason they dislike us so much is that to attack regulatory statism is to attack these people's very reason to exist and we challange them on a profound psychological level. They need to control other people just as we need to control our own lives. The Radical Centre is our demonic reflection.
Most deer hunting injuries 
are caused by falls from
tree stands, and the
conventional safety harnesses can leave you dangling helplessly in the air with a couple of broken ribs, while the deer gather around to laugh. Cabela's has a safety vest that is a true improvement.
 Our final pheasant hunt of the year today. A real breakfast at the lodge, fun with dogs, birds and guns for five hours, then some beer and pheasant pot pie. Maybe shoot a couple of lawyers, too. That is really living.
Dubai. Sisu takes a look at Dubai. Very wealthy mini-nation where Moslems go to break all of their rules, and party with booze and multicultural hoes. The Clockwork Orange, Revisited. The mighty mighty Dalrymple on this 20th Century grotesque pop classic. The Scooter-Plame story. "Who cares?" is right. It's just more "drip drip drip" from the Bush-haters. In any event, I remain very unhappy with the idea of nailing citizens on perjury when there is no underlying crime. They did it to Martha Stewart. Not saying that perjury is OK - just saying "No blood, no foul." Common sense. Libertarian Leanings has story. Scooter is a good kid. The Tipping Point? Dinocrat thinks we've reached the point where the greater European community realizes that radical Islam is TROUBLE. I think he is right. It is push-back time for those with any self-respect. Why are Conservatives happier people than Leftists? Many have commented on the study, but Ex-Donk does a good job with it. Red Ken's Time Out. Superb piece by Big Lizard. Who votes for this embarassing schmuck? How the PTA was co-opted by the Left (and the teacher's unions). Horsefeathers. How many mainly women-led organizations did this happen to? The YWCA, the League of Women Voters, the Junior League... what else?
Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. We are jumping the gun here; this is from Wednesday's Lectionary:6:1 "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 6:2 "So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6:3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 6:4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 6:5 "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 6:16 "And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6:17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 6:18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 6:19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 6:20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Saturday, February 25. 2006
 What are your House Guns? MassBackwards shows you his. I prefer a short-barreled pump 12 ga. The ominous "ka-chunk" of a pump gun chambering a cartridge in the dark ought to be sufficient for all but the most crazed bad guys to run for the hills.
Bremer wanted more troops in Iraq, says Gen. Sanchez did too: Review of Bremer's new book. The White House mess: Podhoretz echoes our complaints. The Harriet Myers thing was the first sign of big problems. Burchill in Haaretz on Brits being paralyzed by manners and suicidal political correctness (H/T, LGF). A quote: Anyway, from now on I think I'll get just a few less accusations of racism when I point out that Muslims can be a bit, well, narrow-minded. Mind you, it's a long hard struggle trying to make bleeding-heart liberals see sense. Especially when you live in a country where a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it.
Read entire.
(Click the Aliyah Diary Category to find out what this is about)  Feb. 17, 2006 Leg Hopper
Something about working in the persimmon orchards gets the writing into me.
Today, despite a partially severed Achilles tendon, after ice pack, much anti inflammatories and Linus Pauling dosages of Vitamin C, I am
off. The bus is beaten by my favorite, the Sheirut Monit. (Pronounced as in the Old West term for stogies, Cheroot). I hop on (hopping being a current mode of travel on my left foot) and sans newspaper, sans reading glasses, sans full wakefulness, daydream the route to the kibbutz. The woman just in front of this 10-seater van is making herself up. I wonder of this, as I see her wedding ring. But she is careful, with mirror balanced on two fingers, she works with concentration. She needs little help, with her slightly olive-green tint of skin, but -- as woman have wont -- does look more beautiful after her "do." Moshek is always enthusiastic when I call. I read the word "karkar" on the Glil Yam welcome sign -- it is an archaic term for "founded." I also glance at the signs pointing to various companies leasing space from the kibbutz -- DHL is here, as is some high-techy place. Then there is the "biton," which I later learn is the kibbutz's own cement factory; this kibbutz and these kibbutzniks have very fundamentally built this country and in ways not deeply appreciated today. Moshek arrives in one of his dust-burdened diesel-powered trucklets. His handshake, this 68 year-old, rail-thin former Navy Seal, a man whose abdomen is noticeably hollow beneath his work shirt, is bone-hardened, firm. We are off. I mean to ask him something about energy collaboration with the Swedish government, but these matters evaporate from my head this early in the a.m. and in the face of his greeting: the last of the Zionists, he calls me. But, I tell him there are more of us. He likes, "us." We join the two Thai workers -- Shay is out ill, Moshek says. (Tomkap later tells me that Shay has sore muscles, not from work, but from weightlifting.)
Continue reading "Guest Author: Aliyah Diary #12"
Cool book. Gwynnie made me read it because I had forgotten the Danish Viking kings of England - the Canutes etc. My favorite - George lll. A good fellow, for sure. We demonized him here in the US during the Revolution, but he was just trying to pay his bills, like all of us. "Farmer George" they called him. Sadly, a victim of porphyria later in his life. Always interesting to see that the loss of the American colonies is just a footnote in Brit history. Entertaining reading: Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards: Who's Who in the English Monarchy from Egbert to Elizabeth ll.
Yes, we usually do good poetry on Saturday, but for once, some Broadway Lyrics from Bernstein and Sondheim's West Side Story - of course. Gee, Officer Krupke Music: Leonard Bernstein/Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
RIFF:
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringing up-ke
That get us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks,
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks! RIFF and QUARTET:
Gee. Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that every child oughta get
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood,
Deep down inside us there is good! RIFF:
There is good! ALL:
There is good, there is good,
There's an tapped good,
Like inside, the worst of us is good. SNOWBOY(imitating Krupke):
That's a touchin' good story! ACTION: Lemme tell you to the world! SNOWBOY ("Krupke"):
Just tell it to the judge!RIFF(to "Judge"):
Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough,
With all the marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.
They didn't wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin' lizards, that's why I'm so bad! DIESEL ("Judge"):
Officer Krupke, you're really a square;
This boy don't need a judge, he needs an analyst's care!
It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He's psychologic'ly disturbed!
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: Sondheim"
Friday, February 24. 2006
 Backlash at Harvard: Let's hope so. Dershowitz slams the PC Cops: NE Repub. Also, Ruth Wisse of Harvard, in the WSJ, as passed on via Protein Wisdom.
Dhimmitude on Parade. In Malaysia - a prohibition on comments about the cartoon issue. The curtain of silence falls. Did they learn this from the American press? Michelle. How about prohibiting comments on the prohibition of comments on the cartoons? Sitzpinkler. Captain Ed would like us all to take up this word. Will take it under serious consideration. ... OK, we'll use it. Sitzpinklers in the American press. We have noted several times that the press seems to have no fear of the demonic Dick Cheney, but acts terrified of the peaceful and cuddly but misunderstood Jihadists. Daily Pundit addresses the craven press. Our hero, VDH, is back from Iraq. Quote from his piece in NRO: It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.
Initial dates announced, in the Southwest. BobDylan.com
There are as many different thinking "styles" as there are personality types. But we obviously cannot be aware of our unconscious reflections - by definition. Every student of chemistry remembers Kekule, to whom the structure of the benzene ring came in a dream. Apparently for many people, not thinking about something can be a way for the mind to think about it. From the Science Times article: Snap judgments about people and places can be remarkably accurate, and there is no substitute for simple logic and reflection in determining questions like which alarm clock or cellphone is the best value. But many more important decisions — choosing the right apartment, the optimal house, the best vacation — turn on such a bewildering swarm of facts that people often throw up their hands and put the whole thing temporarily out of mind. And new research suggests that this may be a rewarding strategy. In a series of experiments reported last week in the journal Science, a team of Dutch psychologists found that people struggling to make complex decisions did best when they were distracted and were not able to think consciously about the choice at all.
 The Vatican Speaks on reciprocity: Excellent point from the Vatican. Dinocrat, Democracy Project, and LGF got on that report right away.
China's media censorship on the rise. CSM Why the Left should hate Chavez: Vargas Llosa at RCP Al Quaida's benefits package: Austin Bay at TCS.
"What's their co-pay?" Which Ad won the Superbowl? Using functional MRI to observe brain response. Very cool and very creepy. Edge. Includes link to the ads, if you missed them. Not Lincoln-Douglas: Lieberman and Dodd debate Iraq. Calif. Yank.
Thursday, February 23. 2006
A re-post from our dusty archives -
Lanchester in The New Yorker reviews two books on the subject of happiness. Interesting stuff. A Quote:
He (McMahon) points out that the Founding Fathers, who queried, crossed out, and haggled over every line of the Declaration, let the “pursuit of Happiness” stand unedited and unamended. But he also points out that the eighteenth-century understanding of “pursuit” was rather darker than it might seem now. Dr. Johnson’s dictionary defined it as “the act of following with hostile intention,” and McMahon adds that “if one thinks of pursuing happiness as one pursues a fugitive . . . the ‘pursuit of happiness’ takes on a somewhat different cast.”
The legacy of that ambiguity is with us still. We are pursuing happiness to this day, and it is by no means clear that it is a happy process. The self-help section in any bookshop is easy to mock—indeed, it sometimes seems that the titles of self-help books are almost mocking themselves—but there is nothing to mock about the people standing in front of the shelves looking for guidance. In fact, the advice in self-help books is, by and large, pretty good. The trouble is that it is very difficult to take.
Read entire.
The notion that art has a political function is a hold-over from the Hitler and Stalin years, when overt, unsubtle propagandizing was at its height. The notion that art is meant to unsettle the comfortable bourgeoisie is mainly a product of the juvenile and narcissistic 60s. Indeed, the notion that art is a "personal statement" is a modern and, I feel, vain concept. However, it does fit well with the desire for instant celebrity and fame: "It's all about me." In support of Free Speech, I post two infamous, blasphemous and hideous examples of recent "art." What do you think? I think they are high-school level attention-seeking and tasteless examples of adolescent rebellion against the grown-ups. But Free Speech protects jerks - as it should. Riots? No. Sadness? Yes. And hey - the "controversy" fills the galleries. Mind you, the American newspapers have no problem with these forms of "personal expression" - because they know the Christians won't behead them. There happens to be a little item that says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..." The first is "Piss Christ." 
This one is The Holy Virgin with Elephant Dung: 
Who, if anyone, is running the White House? Someone is asleep at the switch. Who is running PR? Who is running the "War Room"? From this side of the news, it looks like nobody - or everyone has been on vacation. Time for a staff change - quick. Since the election, there has been no even half-decent political management down there. Wake up, people!
Dr. Weinberg: Ms. Thomas, I'd like to begin by asking you a few questions.
Helen Thomas: I ask the questions here. I am the Deanette of the Washington Press Corps!
Dr. W: Well, please just indulge me for a minute. What city are we in now?
Helen Thomas: Washington DC. Where else would anybody be?
Dr. W: Excellent. And what year is this?
Helen Thomas: 1974. Everyone knows that.
Dr. W: And who is the President?
Helen Thomas: Richard Nixon, the lousy rat bum warmonger fascist pig - that's who!
Dr. W: You seem a bit upset...
Helen Thomas: I am gonna get that Republican wiretapping SOB.
Dr. W: Nixon did wiretapping?...Not that I recall...maybe J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy...oh, never mind. Let's move on...
Helen Thomas: Exactly right, Professor. Move On - that's the ticket. But don't you dare criticize my Bobby. (the tape mercifully but mysteriously cut at this point)
 T'was in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
"Shelter From The Storm," from 1975's Blood On The Tracks.
If you didn't read it, yesterday's post on Dem. Strategy is a must-read. Scroll down a tad. A normal female (if a blogger can be normal) happily straightens it out for you: the looniness of sexual harassment extremism. One quote from And Rightly So: It seems to me that women who file these charges have an ISSUE with themselves; they have little self confidence and take that out on others. They use their “status” of being a woman to punish men. For being men. Men look. They like to be around us. They are social creatures too, who thrive on attention and conversation. If a man is paying attention to a woman she should take that as the ultimate compliment and accept it for what it is: Human nature. Not turn it into something unnatural and negative and phoney. Women should be proud of what and who they are, the power they do indeed have over men, instead of using it against them.
Quit or Stay?, from Orson Card: Well, dumb-guy Bush and his team have been leading us in the best-run war in American history -- not a flawless war, but one with far fewer and less costly mistakes than the norm. (Dear Furious Letter Writers: Don't even bother arguing this point with me until you've studied the mistakes made in all our other wars so you have some kind of perspective.)
I agree with everything he says. Saved us a lot of writing by doing it for us. A Hitchen rant on why the world isn't lining up with the Danes. Via Daily Pundit The sane go to jail. Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi - true journalistic heroes. Captain's Quarters. Boston has a long and proud history of corruption, once you get outside Chestnut Hill and Cambridge. But the Bulgar Brother's story is hard to believe. Wizbang has a nice summary, and link to the new book. Not just a slick news/blog update, but the pictures are amazing. Cotillion.
Wednesday, February 22. 2006
Jesus cartoons all over, but no riots. And has Google blocked searches for Mohammed cartoons? (No, reports a careful reader) Blogcritics "Hands are OK" - US grammar school art class bans kids drawing human images. LGF. WFT? Summary of the Ilan Halimi horror story in France: NY Sun
The New York Sun figured out what The New York Times and the Dems won't say: This is about the unions.
We have all figured it out by now, but Henniger articulates it best. It's the Japanese water torture - you drip drip drip on everything until people just get "tired of the Republican experience." Meanwhile, the Repubs tie themselves in knots trying to respond - but that's not the point! Quote from his WSJ op piece (H/T, Soxblog): Absent any fresh or positive message for voters, why not try winning by turning politics under the Republicans into an experience of unrelenting discomfort? The substance of any given issue falls in importance. Connecting Jack Abramoff to George Bush personally was always a stretch. So what? The most telling evidence of a strategy of discomfiting the body politic was the January bonfire over terrorist wiretaps. Here the opposition shrieked for days about a "constitutional crisis" even as polls were indicating public support for the Bush program, including 28% who would OK tapping anyone's phone "on a regular basis" to catch terrorists.
Read the entire piece. He gets it, like totally.
The Port Operations story: The Admin. wants to positively engage a moderate Islamic nation - friends and allies - for a task which has nothing to do with port security. The UAE are not Jihadists. What's the issue? Fear-mongering Repubs, and Dems grabbing any opportunity to erase their image as weak-kneed appeasers. Ridiculous. YARGB discusses. Confed. Yank also. Bush is right with this one: Don't smear all of Islam with the same brush for demagogic purposes. Amazing rock and roll stuff found in Bill Graham's basement: Synthstuff The Press Corps wants to bring Bush down. Good piece by Buchanan at RCP. (H/t, Soxblog and Anchoress). I am deeply offended by this: Larry Summers goes down for thought crime. Comments from Driscoll. Comment summary at New England Repub. These academics are as bad as the Jihadists. Or the Inquisition. Is this America??? SISU addresses the fascism of the Left - a favorite topic here at Maggie's. This is one serious black eye for Harvard, and one more confirmation of everything Horowitz has been saying. Harvard alums should let the Corporation know that they have gone off the deep end. New Zealand Christians offended by free speech. Of course they're offended. RTLC. Everybody should be offended occasionally by free speech. Since when is hurting someone's feelings a crime? Or am I old-fashioned? Lots of speech is rude, crude, unkind and insensitive. Too bad. I can take it. Come to think of it, if you really want to see Hate Speech On Parade, try the Daily Kos.
An "alternative" Ann Arbor, MI newspaper, The True Voice of the People, issued a front page editorial yesterday entitled "Dump The Jihadists." The centrist-Marxist newspaper, which is influential among liberal-arts students and faculty at the University of Michigan, stunned this academic town with its revolutionary strategic u-turn, along with a kind of cultural insensitivity normally reserved only for Christians, employers, landlords, car dealerships, Capitalist Pigs, Republicans, Walmart, the NRA, FOX News, the military, guys who play sports, beer-drinkers, non-vegans, housewives, cops, whites, and Israel. This was their editorial yesterday, which we fearlessly reprint: Dump the Jihadists It is time for us in The Movement to reconsider our support for Jihad. I know that this editorial will rankle many of our readers who seek World Peace and Justice, but let's try to be rational for a minute. Extreme Islam is opposed to women's rights. They jail and hang gays. They hate blacks. They kill Jews. They have absolutely zero class consciousness. They are so religious Marx would cry, and we cannot wean them off Mohammed and onto Marxism-Leninism. They treat criminals worse than our fascist USA or fascist France or fascist China. Their Sharia Law is in total contradiction to what we aspire to. They have an unsavory, oil-based, capitalistic tendency which is abominable. They are as multiculturally enlightened as a rattlesnake. And "Green"? They don't know from green. Let's be honest with ourselves. We only love the Jihadists because they are anti-US and anti-West, and because of our wish to see Bush damaged. And for no other reasons. It's our nihilistic, adventurous streak which causes us to glamorize these people, but they are not heroic Lenins or Stalins or Fidels or Maos. Our emotion derives purely from the old "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend." But where would these Jihadists take us? We'd be the first to lose our heads in a nation run by them. These people are exposing themselves to be semi-civilized religious fanatics, and they would carry us in the wrong direction - not towards the Revolution we all seek, but towards the Theocratic Fascism we have valiantly fought for so many generations. We hereby pronounce the Jihadists to be Counter-Revolutionaries. We did not come to this weighty decision lightly, but our Editorial Board concludes that it's time the Left said "Dump the Jihadists. " It's time for us to move forward towards better, saner, and more progressive allies, like Chavez and Fidel and Sanders and Hillary. If we do not eliminate Jihad, The People's Revolution will never have a chance in the world. Yes, we all wish to see the US humiliated and weakened in the world, but let's not forget why: our goal is to advance the People's Revolution. And Bourgeois Freedom is the only medium in which we can effectively work for our goal. A successful Jihad could set Our Cause back 1000 years, as it is doing in Europe right now. Politics makes strange bedfellows. We might not like the demonic Bushitler, but it's time for the Left to get on board with the so-called "War on Terror" for the moment, tactically, or our dream of Universal Justice, provided by a Benevolent State, could have no future at all. It's time to be smart, and not blinded by our anger. (And yes, this is satire.)
Improbable things happen frequently because there are lots of opportunities for them to occur. Dr. Charles Bennett, NASA
Tuesday, February 21. 2006
Best, most sober, and thoughtful piece I have seen lately about Islam's clash - not so much with Western Civilization, but with modernity. Covers everything from the cartoons to Moslem men's relationships to women to war. Gerecht in The Weekly Standard: This is all about internal Muslim evolution, about coming to terms with the centuries-long absorption of both good and bad Western ideas. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Israeli-Palestinian peace process can somehow soon resume. When al Qaeda's princes--bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--rail against the intrusion of Western democracy into the Muslim world, they know what they are talking about. If it succeeds, democracy will eventually kill them off. It will pull fundamentalist believers--the pool that bin Ladenism must draw from to survive--into the great ethical and spiritual debates that can best happen when free people fight it out in elections. Only Muslims--only fundamentalist Muslims--have the power to kill off bin Ladenism. Historically, there is no reason to believe this will happen under the dictatorships that gave birth to Islamic extremism in the first place. Like Christendom before it, the Muslim Middle East will have to work out its relation to modernity. The faster democracy arrives, the sooner the debates about God and man can begin in earnest. It will probably be for both Muslims and Westerners a nerve-racking experience. But we have no choice, since continuing autocracy will only make the militants' message stronger and judgment day, as in Iran, a possibly bloody revolutionary event. The electoral victory of Hamas should not give us pause. It should give us hope and encourage us to push for real elections where our national interest stands to gain the most--in Egypt and Iran. We should also not neglect to defend vigorously Christian, Muslim, or Jewish satirists, be they clever, banal, or ugly, wherever they may be found. Both elections and satire are basic to the evolution of the Muslim world.
Read the whole thing.
More on Summers and Harvard. NY Sun. Is he so traumatized by being mau-maued by the feminists that he cannot defend himself? More from Horsefeathers. A tougher Summers: Christina Hoff Summers on Crying Wolf over Sexual Harassment. NRO. Some surprising facts re male vs. female abuse Killer freakin' robots! Ace Three arrested in Toledo for terrorism Why Sharia Law is uncivilized. From the highly multiculturally-sensitive Wizbang. Newspapers are still making $ - and moving onto the web to do so. IBD The F-14 Tomcat is retired. One Hand Clapping
Q: How do I protect my cockatoo or canary from bird flu?
A: If you keep a cockatoo or canary as a pet, slaughter it immediately. The proper way to do this is to grab its body in your fist, walk it into the kitchen, place it on the cutting board, and lop its head off with a knife. Pretty much any knife will do. Bird necks are about as tough as celery. Read the rest here.
From a piece by McClay at First Things, on Columbia's Religion and Liberalism Conference (H/T, MassRight): We often fail to remember what a socially conservative coalition, by our standards today, the New Deal era Democratic Party was, with its essential contingents of Northern Catholics and Southern Protestants. In today’s Democratic Party, white Southern Protestants are largely gone, and the Catholic vote has split, and is trending more and more toward the Republicans. Much of the latter change can be attributed to rank-and-file Catholic disaffection with the Democratic party’s decision to give issues of cultural “values”—and most particularly issues that relate to the individualistic concerns of sexuality and expressive freedom, and abortion rights in particular—a prominence and energy that they felt it was no longer given to larger economic and political issues, and that offended them deeply. This emphasis has not yet cost the Democrats their entire Catholic constituency, but it has cost them a very large part of it, and perhaps the most commitedly Catholic part of it. The trend shows no sign of reversing in any decisive way. Many Catholics who now routinely vote Republican clearly still do not feel at ease about it. But with each passing election, they are less reluctant. The loss of its morally and socially conservative but politically progressive Catholics has been a calamity, then, for the Democratic Party, and has seriously undermined its claim to be the vehicle of an effective and humane progressive politics.
Read entire.
Hey, New York Times: More on the Russians moving Saddam's WMDs Who's organizing all the the loony tunes riots? Moonbattery figgered it out - and it's not Rove - but it's funny. A spineless Sweden slowly collapses. Michelle. Two generations of decadent socialism has broken this nation's spirit. Maoism at Harvard: We must all study diligently Correct Mao Thought. Am. Thinker on the latest Larry Summers ridiculousness. Veritas?
A re-posting from Monday: Our Chickensh-t Press: If our Leftist press portrays Cheney as the devil incarnate, how come they aren't afraid of him? And if the Jihadists are just misunderstood peaceful folk, how come they are so afraid of them? The press is supposedly giving the Jihadists a pass on the cartoons, etc, because of "sensitivity"!!! Huh? The press isn't sensitive to anyone except Hillary Clinton. "Sensitivity" is just a euphemism for "scared." They are pure chickensh-t. Captain Ed gives them hell, here.
 I have read about 100 articles about climate over the past year, from the scientific to the pop science. That doesn't make me an expert. But it's enough to throw out a few facts and opinions.
Facts: Climate changes over time, with or without humans. Since the beginnings of agriculture, humans have impacted climate. We live in an interglacial, during a time of retreating ice sheets - but still in what is technically an ice-age - meaning polar ice caps. During most of the planet's history, there have been none. We are in a cold spell. Short-term variations and swings of climate mean no more that short-term swings in the stock market. Carbon material in the air probably does contribute to net warming. In the past week, YARGB has done a post on the hockey stick graph - often used to inspire climate terror. And yesterday, Libertarian Leanings posted Sound the Alarm...Again, in response to the newspaper's hysteria about Greenland ice sheets. Michaels, who has been a real scholar in this area, points out that the articles on the glaciers fail to mention that ice is accumulating in Greenland faster than the glaciers are melting. Opinion: Climate and climate-modeling are incredibly complex, and if carbon material in the atmosphere plays a role in the current interglacial warming, so be it. It won't be enough to prevent the return of the next glaciation. It hardly matters what we do in the US anyway - that hybrid car might make you feel virtuous but it does nothing...the manufacture of the batteries spills tons of CO2. And countries like Russia, China, India and developing countries are dying for the chance to burn oil the way the US and Europe do - and they will. Thus nothing meaningful will be or can be done, except maybe some very expensive, feel-good cosmetics. Eventually, nuclear power will replace carbon sources, but climate is not the main reason to do that. Energy independence, and economy, is the reason to do that. At some point, oil power will look the way horse power looks to us today. I refuse to worry pointlessly about it, nor will I worry about an asteroid hitting the earth. As long as there are billions of people on earth, we will effect climate, and everything else, somehow. (Image: Wooly Mammoth in New Jersey, summertime, a few thousand years ago, by paleo-artist Moravec.)
It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved. Niccolo Machiavelli
Monday, February 20. 2006
Who knew that Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist? Volokh As predicted, media ignores story of Iraq's enriched uranium. I guess it's not a Dem talking-point, is it? Newsmax Minnesota Dems go over the edge: their efforts to block pro-war advts. What about diversity of opinions? Why acting so fascist? Powerline insists it's a prototypical story about the Left's fear of debate, and their capture by their extreme wing. Could be.
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