Tuesday, October 31. 2006
Remarkable - don't miss this: A German scientist did a comparison test to see how many people could tell the difference between the first and second picture. 3 things were different. Only 49 out of 8,000 were able to solve it. Can you? Click below: COMPARISON TEST
 Unanimity on global warming: Samizdata, Tangled Web, YARGB, and Maggie's Farm agree that the Stern Report, and the warming hysteria in general, is a government play for money and power. Now that people in the West are so relatively secure and prosperous, the socialists need a fresh angle.
In the mood for more Soros dirt? Atlas Laptops for wounded soldiers. Info at Sisu "John Kerry said WHAT?" Incredible. Michelle The top earning dead celebs. Businesspundit. Men spend six months of their lives ogling females. Is that all? (h/t, Carnival of the Insanities) Snoopie with the Jihad Christmas. Tasteless! Are we finished with tolerance yet? The decapitated 12 year old. LGF. I have no doubt that this is killing for the pure fun of it. Can angels see the color green? Platonic forms, and God. Evangelical Outpost The almost-dead buck: We posted this a year ago, but Howler reminds us of this goofy trick. Rather hilarious. Amnesty Int. gets one thing right: Protect the internet from governments - and the UN. Kirsten Powers understands an important concept. From a piece about Andrew Sullivan, about whom everyone always is talking (for no reason I can understand): It is a common criticism today that if you divine your truth from the Bible, that is unacceptable. But if you divine your truth from your own internal dialogue or from talking to friends or from a philosophy other than that which is found in the Bible, then that truth is okay. The criticism of devout Christians is founded on a faulty premise: that non-Christians come to conclusions about what they believe without the influence of some sort of philosophical teaching. Even atheism is in itself a philosophy. It's based on the premise that humans are random occurrences and that there is no higher moral power. But since that doesn't come from the Bible, it's considered "objective" and developing public policy based on that view is acceptable. Or Sullivan's brand of Christianity -- that interprets the Bible in a looser fashion -- is held up as being "objective" which of course it is not. Sullivan is just as fundamentalist in his view of the world as any fundamentalist Christian. They just have different conclusions.
Plenty of people are uninformed and make decisions based on what their friends think or party identification, and there is precious little conversation about how the public discourse is being destroyed by uninformed, lazy people who spend all their time watching Fear Factor and The Bachelor (which in my opinion is closer to the truth) and a seemingly constant conversation about how fundamentalist or evangelical Christians are the root of all the problems in the political system.
There must be a separation of church and state, for we are not, nor should we be a theocratic state. But a religious person has as much right to make a voting decision based on their faith in God as an atheist person has a right to make their voting decision based on their belief that there is no God.
Image above: Edvard Munch's "Vampire"
Monday, October 30. 2006
 Another good reason not to run marathons.
Stop The Mercedes? Blair Down at the bottom of a world full of lies: French news. No Pasaran Why Dems are losing the culture wars: USA Today Is boot-licking dead? It deserves another chance. Reasoned Audacity Ace liked Prestige. Might have to actually go to a movie. What he said: (Gay Patriot): While they’re campaigning on banalities and bromides, the Democrats are keeping their real agenda hidden from voters. For, if they make that public, they’d make it clear to voters that they haven’t changed since the American people voted them out of power in 1994. As the Journal puts it: “A Democratic triumph would produce a major shift in the national policy debate, and we can understand why Ms. Pelosi isn’t plastering most of this agenda on billboards around the country.” To see the type of agenda we’d expect from a Democratic Congress, read the Journal’s piece. And you’ll understand why the Democrats have been keeping their focus on the GOP — and neglecting to campaign on their own agenda.
The Camille Paglia piece, a quote via Clayton: What do contemporary intellectuals have to offer anyhow? What passionate engagement do they have to appeal to young people? Liberal secularism has become bourgeois and materialistic. It's snide, elitist, and politically marginalized. The chattering class clearly has no effect whatever on decision-making in Washington. Conservative radio hosts have been claiming that liberal criticism of Bush's decisiveness in invading Iraq mirrors the shilly-shallying of 1930s intellectuals during Hitler's rise. The intellectuals, with their cultivated internationalism, always counsel procrastination and leave it to the men of action to deal forcefully with fascist regimes.
Image: Hope this witch comes trick-or-treating to all of you (single) fellows tomorrow night.
 The Monster Mash.
It was a graveyard smash.
 Who knew that the Federal Reserve has programs to make it easy for illegal Mexicans to send their money back home?
Check this out: FRB Services. And the FRB's FAQs for Directo a Mexico. We are paying for this?
A new Episcopalian discovers that it's all about defeating "patriarchy," and about LGBT inclusion. Honestly, I had to think for a minute to figure out that LGBT thing; maybe I need to get out more. A quote: “The Church is the world’s greatest oppressor,” I reasoned, “but God is at work outside the Church, so our mission as Christians is to work to change the Church until it becomes like, you know, those places outside the Church.” It still seemed like I was missing something, but I figured I could think about it later. Bishop Robinson’s talk was, on its surface, all about LGBT inclusion, but he said it actually was about much more than that. At its most basic level, it was about the end of patriarchy, which to him explained why he met with such opposition. The audience nodded approvingly—civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and the sexual revolution were all part of a single struggle for liberation, from the Man, or something like that. Freedom, justice, and sex were all the same thing! I liked this idea. Being an Episcopalian, I thought, was going to be fun.
Whole piece at First Things.
 White trash in Europe? You bet. Der Spiegel, (via A&L Daily). Laziness, fast foods, cigarettes and beer...and excellent social benefits.
How nerdy are you? Test here. (h/t, Mr. Free Market) Hiding the cross at William and Mary. Michelle. YARGB wonders whether they want to make sure that the chapel is welcoming to vampires. In seriousness, though, what is more welcoming to all people than a cross? "I never had energy independence with that woman." Flat-out lies from Clinton. Faith and Reason. Dinocrat. With a link to Godel's proof of God's existence. School board member speaks the truth, without realizing it. Coyote From a piece at Atlas, with a killer quote: The invaluable Brussels Journal recently translated an interview with the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from the Belgian paper De Standaard. A Dutch gay “humanist” (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), Mr. van den Boogaard was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
Sunday, October 29. 2006
Jerry Lee Lewis on YouTube. The dark side of environmentalism. Trailer of the movie at Samizdata. I'll take one of these and one of those. Twins with different colors. AOL news Astonishing pool trick shots. Eight ball san at RTLC The Big Pharaoh raped a girl, but he has an excuse. Is multiculturalist submission reaching a dead end in the UK? TCS NYT working overtime to defeat Joe Lieberman. Sister Toldjah The states, by ideological impact. Willisms Auster is fed up with the Admin's approach to Iraq: So, Steyn’s question should not have been, “Where is the offense in all this?” His question should have been, “Where is the strategy that can lead to victory?” And that would have brought the president up short. He would have started talking about the love of freedom that beats in every human heart. Or he would have said that we are training the Iraqis so that we can hand over the endless job of insurgency-management to them. Both answers would have shown that we have no strategy to achieve victory and that this war is a fraud. All we are doing is staying in place, keeping total chaos from engulfing Iraq, and getting lots of American men killed and maimed in the process. But that is not war, and that is not victory.
Saturday, October 28. 2006
As usual, when Dust My Broom posts a blues mix, it's pretty darn decent. Last night he included a recording by Roy Buchanan, the guitar legend. (He also has Marcia Ball, the New Orleans piano player and blues belter who I saw in CT a year ago. She is a firecracker.) Roy's bio here. Amazon has some Buchanan recordings.
Thanks to our Aliyah Diary guest author for bringing to our attention Armand Laferrere's essay The Huguenots, the Jews, and Me. Laferrere's piece explains some of the history of the growing links between Protestants and Jews in a hostile world. The book by Matthew Levitt is Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. Levitt, now deputy assistant secretary for intelligence in the Treasury Department, is interviewed here. Levitt's "Hamas" (AZURE 26, Autumn 2006, reviewed by Leiter) and Laferrere's "The Huguenots, the Jews, and Me" are conceptually
related.
Laferrere's deeply personal essay describes a worldview established by the Reformation, refined by Calvin, and later articulated by Max Weber. This worldview, Laferrere writes persuasively, connects the French Huguenot (Calvinists) and himself to the Jews. Laferrere explains this in terms of the French Catholic persecution of the Huguenots. But Weber teaches us another perspective.
Weber, an economist and sociologist, connected the economic/social rise of capitalism (i.e. the rational group/societal pursuit of economic gain) with Calvinist revision of a religious worldview, a revision begun radically by Martin Luther in his shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, but refined by Calvin. The latter emphasized worldly gain as a sing of salvation, emphasized group/societal wealth along with individual asceticism and modesty. That is, Weber argued, Calvinist "religious" beliefs influenced the
new economic belief and actions of capitalism. In fact, Weber cites Ben Franklin's recasting of Calvinist values into very secular anodyne proverbs about work.
How is this connected to the book, "Hamas"? Levitt argues that the contemporary Western constructs of "religion," "charity," "political versus militant" wings of an organization do not hold for Hamas (nor for Hezbollah, nor for militant Islam, including the Iranian regime). Rather, there is a more seamless fabric of beliefs that cross Western boundaries such as "religion" or "politics" or "economy." A quote from Leiter's review: "...It is in this context that Levitt makes one of his most important contributions to our understanding of how terror works. Fungible funds, it turns out, are only part of the problem. The crossover between dawa and terror, he shows, extends to works of charity themselves. Ambulances are used to transport suicide bomb belts, schools are used to hide weapons, and charitable organizations are used as recruiting centers for terrorists. Hospitals are used to procure ingredients for bombs, such as the nitric acid and hydrogen sulfide used to produce nitroglycerin explosives, and hydrogen peroxide to make an explosive called tatp, which is favored by Hamas. Dawa-supported doctors use their freedom of travel privileges to smuggle suicide bombers into Israel. Likewise, libraries supported by the Hamas dawa are used for the dissemination of radical sermons glorifying death and murder, and in what is perhaps the most potent symbol of the link between dawa and terror, mosques are used for storing weapons and hosting operational meetings. In short, Hamas offers a holistic religious doctrine that treats good works toward coreligionists and terrorization of the enemy as two sides of the same coin."
Ironically, Weber makes an argument that with the rise of Protestant/capitalism, the societal (Catholic) compartmentalization of religion (otherworldliness) and secular become woven together. In fact, a change in religious worldview results in a change in secular action (in contrast to Marx's argument).
Clairvoyantly, the editor of Ha'Aretz, Carlebach wrote in 1956, shortly before his premature death, that the West did not comprehend the way of thought of Arab societies and how different is this way of thinking from the heirs of Western Enlightenment. Carlebach did not use the perhaps more precise concepts nor terms used by Weber, but he seemed to get the basic idea. And, Carlebach argued, if the West didn't get the difference in thinking about human relationships, then it didn't get the great struggle brewing between Islam and the West.
Levitt's book is a conceptual contribution to a Weberian understanding of the worldview of Hamas and related societies. To understand them better is understand the dedicated (mortal) enemies of not only the Jewish States, but also of a way of thinking and being and living together shared in the West.
Nathan Szajnberg, MD
Jerusalem
 Forever young? For women (maybe men, too) 40 is the new 30, and 60 is the new 40. Daily Mail
830. A new record Scrabble score. An ESV Bible trick. Middlebrow. Cool. Why won't France send the army into the banlieus? Too many Moslems in their army? Brussels Journal (h/t, Dino). Great idea - a multicultural army. Will Bin Ladin win the American election? From a piece by Scheuer in Wash. Times (h/t, Env. Republican) Bin Laden, his lieutenants and their allies are no doubt pleased by the destruction of the Spanish and Thai governments and the exhilarating message it sends to the worldwide Islamist movement: The infidels are weak, politically divided, terrified of using full military power and think we can be appeased. In short, war works; keep at it.
Even so, bin Laden, et. al, know the biggest prize looms just ahead — the chance that the Republican Party will be ousted from one or both houses of Congress. There are many factors contributing to this possibility: the Foley abomination, other corruption cases, the trumped?up "crisis" over First Amendment rights and the administration's ill-informed and ham-fisted handling of the Iraq and Afghan wars. If the Republicans are ousted, pundits on both sides of the aisle will find the causes strictly in America's navel.
But what will bin Laden and his Islamist allies think? Well, if Republican defeat comes to pass, they will first thank the Almighty — "Allahu Akhbar!" or "God is the greatest!" — for tangible proof of approaching victory. In Spain, Thailand, and Britain — where Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered the fate of Messrs. Aznar and Thaksin for the same reason, but is leaving gracefully — al Qaeda and its allies see politicians winning power who argue: "The military option has been tried and it has failed. We must seek other-than-martial means to defuse the Islamists' appeal and power." As in Europe and Thailand, this has been the refrain of Sens. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Rep. Jane Harman, and a swath of Republicans who value their seats more than U.S. security.
If Americans vote for what sounds like sweet reason from the Democrats, bin Laden and company will rejoice. What they will hear is the death knell for any prospect of effective U.S. military resistance to militant Islam. With the Republicans out, the Islamists will be confident that Democrats will deliver the best of both worlds: less emphasis on military force and a rigid maintenance of U.S. foreign policies that are hated with passion and near-unanimity by 1.3 billion Muslims. If Osama approved of music, he would be whistling "Happy Days Are Here Again!"
From Sailing Anarchy: "Hydroptère, the radical 60' hydrofoil trimaran hauling ass. For those who haven't seen it, it is a pretty fascinating thing. Take a look at the "shock absorber" foils." 
The Wood Pile Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther--and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went down. The view was all in straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather--
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled--and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay. Image is Robert Frost's New Hampshire farmhouse.
Friday, October 27. 2006
We need to create a blogroll category for media-watchers. Here's one dedicated to keeping an eye on the NYT: Timeswatch.
National Health Service update. Protein. Equally poor care for all, as only government could provide. Religion is thriving around the world. Atheists are puzzled. Dinesh D'Souza Dirty old toad-suckin' dog. NPR. Shoot, I ain't sucked a toad since I was in collidge. Government cheese milk. Someone in govt made a good decision, but it looks bad. Milk sold to feed catfish. From Anchoress, in a piece on the Michael Fox campaign advts: The sufferings or privileges of a person’s past should have no bearing on whether or not you will deign to give them an ordinary measure of respect, and victimhood should never confer instant credibility (or unquestioning moral authority) on anyone, and I will not accept the empathetic and well-meaning gesture of my correspondant. I am still the exact same person I was last week, when he considered me more than worth a good tussle, and I will be damned if anyone is going to kid-glove and soft-focus me. Put up yer dukes, pally…you and me ain’t done fighting by a long shot, and don’t you dare freaking pity me and just roll over, or I’ll hammer you senseless.
How can you distinguish Christian love from pitiful submission and dhimmitude? From a piece at Dhimmi Watch: The Protestant Lutheran Church in the German city of Hannover organized an exhibition to acquaint the Germans with Islam. The exhibition, entitled "The Faces of Islam," was the work of the female students of the Protestant Studies Institute in Aachen. On Palm Sunday in 2006, a Protestant church in Bochum, Germany celebrated Muhammad's birthday and invited the local Turkish community to attend the service. A Turkish music band played Sufi music during the service, in which Protestants and Muslims joined together in honor of Muhammad. In the UK, church leaders wanted to invite the families of the London suicide bombers to a national memorial service in honor of the victims. Two senior Church of England bishops believed that extending the invitation to the bombers' families would acknowledge their own loss and send a powerful message of reconciliation to the Muslim community. Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, urged the nation to unite and turn would-be suicide bombers into friends by building "an inclusive circle of love."
In a similar vein, Fjordman warns against "naive compassion" in relation to Islam, in a piece titled Thou Shalt Hate Chrsitianity and Judaism. A quote: The First Commandment of Multiculturalism is: Thou shalt hate Christianity and Judaism. Multiculturalists also hate nation states, and they even hate the Enlightenment, by insisting that non-Western cultures should be above scrutiny.
From Sailing Anarchy: "We recently sailed in a race from St Simon Island GA to Ameilia Island FL with my 70 year old father, brother in law and brother last weekend. We won the race.
In the middle of a 60 feet deep channel between two islands separated by about two miles was a six point buck swimming at about three knots."10/27/06 
If this is what you like, vote for a Dem on November 6th: (from And Rightly So) The following is just a sampling of Nancy Pelosi’s voting record on issues that are critical to mainstream Americans. Pelosi voted: NO on the Border Security Bill
NO on making the Republican tax cuts permanent
NO on eliminating the marriage penalty
NO on eliminating the death tax
NO on creating Health Savings Accounts
NO on the Defense of Marriage Act
NO on the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (and NO on its reauthorization)
NO on protecting the Pledge of Allegiance
NO on banning partial-birth abortion
NO on requiring a photo I.D. to ensure only legal voters vote
NO on the Patriot Act
NO on authorizing domestic tracking of terrorists
* NO on military tribunals and new interrogation rules for terrorist detainees
Any breed of cattle can be - and is - made into hamburger meat, including old Daisy herself, when her milk production slows down. But today we'll just look at two of the historically popular American beef cattle. The Shorthorn is a relatively minor breed now, but when it was brought from England in the late 1700s it became popular. It had its origins in Roman times. This is a bull: 
The Longhorn was brought to the New World by the Spanish, and was the main Western breed until replaced via hybridization, and by other breeds like the Angus and the Hereford, by 1900. Now it only exists on refuges and there are few breeders, but its gene pool might have something to offer today's breeders. 
Legal humor. Consent: the YouTube. (h/t, Overlawyered)
Re the BBC, from a piece in View from the Right: You’ve probably seen the news about the BBC admitting its left-wing bias. Unfortunately, to describe the BBC as biased is a huge understatement. The sheer cold malevolence toward Israel, toward America, toward traditional Britain, toward the West, toward God, toward existence itself that emanates from the BBC newsreaders and reporters is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It chills the soul. Soviet newscasters were mere grumpy apparatchniks by comparison.
Re Jihad, from a piece on Monday in Belmont Club: Just a few hours ago, Sky News published an interview with a Taliban commander in Pakistan who stated his intention to attack Europe. Iraq is mentioned — of course — but not as the casus belli, simply as another theater in a larger campaign. A Taliban commander has told Sky News that the militants are for the first time plotting to attack Westerners in Britain and the rest of Europe. ... Referring to Tony Blair and George Bush, Mullah Amin said: "It's acceptable to kill ordinary people in Europe because these are the people who have voted in the Government. "They came to our home and attacked our women and children. "The ordinary people of these countries are behind this - so we will not spare them. We will kill them and laugh over them like they are killing us and laughing at us." He said Taliban fighters were learning from the Iraq insurgency in their use of remote-controlled bombs, landmines and suicide bombers. He said: "They are our best tactic."
And the casus belli isn't about Afghanistan the nation-state at all either; nobody is fighting for the political independence of a country in the Western sense. It about the clash between the sacred space of Islam with the secular space of Europe. Two-tour Afghan veteran British Army Major Jamie Loden wrote a 25,000 word master's thesis on "The Need For An Ideological Response To Islamic Extremism", described in an interview in the Guardian. Major Loden understood that there was a large element of infidel versus believer in the whole mix; that events in Helmand province and "Leicester and Bradford" were inextricably related. He talked to me about the radical thinker Sayyid Qutb, about shariah law, about the difference between Shia and Sunni jurisprudence. Having addressed Islamic extremism through the library and through the bullet, he believes that US and British strategy is wrong from the foundations up. "You can improve homeland security from a purely physical point of view, you can increase security at airports, but that isn't exactly addressing the issue. Yes, it's making terrorist attacks harder to conduct... It's not addressing the rationale for it." The west had to give more support and publicity to Muslims who were trying to reform Islam from within, he said. The implications of extremism spread way beyond the Middle East. He talked of the notion of "sacred space", the notion that land conquered by Muslims in God's name must remain Muslim and, if lost, recovered. "That means Spain, bits of France... all over the place." Loden said there was a more risky interpretation of the sacred space doctrine which said that land where Muslims had a political majority was actually Muslim land. "So when you have the debate in Leicester and Bradford about separate education, separate areas of the town, you know, communities being allowed to apply their own law - then you are in fact going down a fairly dangerous path."
and It may have been the low cut dresses of American women that first planted the seed which was to grow into al-Qaeda's ideology but it was the blood shed by Marxist torturers that watered it. Qutb and later Osama bin Laden saw Marxism and secularism as agencies of the Devil; but to destroy them it was first necessary to destroy the world's system administrator: the USA. One of the real ironies of the War on Terror is that the most hated targets of al-Qaeda, the culturally liberal — the gays, feminists, entertainers, civil libertarians, artists and novelists — are its most vocal critics. It is only slowly dawning on al-Qaeda's pet hates that the Global Jihad is exactly about them and their whole belief system. Salman Rushdie knows it; Sayyid Qutb knew it. Some parts of Europe are beginning to know it; most will never admit it even to the second the blade is drawn across their throats. But the second greatest irony that the surviving non-Muslim believers in Europe — the Christians, Buddhists and Jews — have not only had to bear the intellectual brunt of defending liberalism up to now, but are now being asked to give up the public profession of their own faith in order to preserve it.
Thursday, October 26. 2006
 (Image shamelessly borrowed from Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.)
Our News Junkie made a good point the other day when he mentioned distraction as the Dem election strategery. Like good attorneys, politicians can always find a case to make for themselves, regardless of its relevance - or honor, or honesty. That's their job, and that's why politicians are among the most despised professions in the US. The problem, in a mid-term election like this, is that the nation is prosperous, the economy is great, everyone has a job, the bad guys are on the defensive and leaving us alone here, the old folks have their free medicines, the Dow is up, and all is rosy in America the Beautiful. The Iraq War has turned into little more than an aggressive policing, and they may build a fence to protect us from the Mexican invaders. So clearly the Dems, with their allies in the MSM, have come up with the only logical strategy, or "theory," as we lawyers term it. This theory appears to be "Distract the moron voters:" Don't talk about the economy - talk about Mark Foley.
Don't talk about the Dow - talk about Obama (What's he ever done? You'd think
no-one has ever seen a smart black guy before. Well, I have met plenty.
Ever notice how the MSM applies the (racist, almost; condescending,
definitely) term "articulate black politician" anytime a black guy speaks
grammatical English?) Well, he loves Jesus, and God guides him, which is
just great...in a Dem.
Don't talk about illegal immigration - talk about Vietnam Iraq. It's a debacle
illegal war morass defeat whatever. Oh, and Rumsfeld is a moran.
Don't talk about jobs - talk about corruption - woops, that knife cuts both ways...
never mind. Well, how about embryonic stem cells? Yeah - let's try that. We
care about sick people, unlike those evil, cruel, heartless Repubs who want to
kill our women and children.
Don't talk about Islamic terrorism - Bush seems to have stopped it in the US, for the
moment. Talk about global cooling warming weather whatever. Yeah,
maybe Gore is onto something: Let's run against the weather! Well, but dang
- the weather has been really nice lately.
Don't talk about Iran - talk about WalMart (huh? everyone loves WalMart). Woops.
What else we got? All of the above seasoned with the usual and time-honored "Scare the blacks," "Scare the old folks", "We care," "Let the dead felons vote," "Scare the women who want abortions," "Saddam wasn't all that bad," "Time for a change," and "Promise the suckers more freebies." The MSM is clearly on board with this plan, as expected. My message to the Dems: Tell me plainly what you are FOR, and what you want TO DO, and I will decide how to vote.
 Australia's top Imam explains why women are the cause of rape. LGF.
I will grant him one point: sexy women do elicit erotic thoughts, and they know it, and they do enjoy that magical witchcraft. But where is the Imam's expectation of civilized behavior on the part of Moslem gentlemen... or is that not part of modern Islam? Image presented for scientific purposes only. Middle Eastern scholars claim that this sort of devilish thing is what is hiding under all of those burkhas.
Going around. Mark Foley's plan for his future: To turn over a 
new page. The media's plan for the remainder of the election season, from ABC: Betsy. It isn't funny. France's support of genocide in Rwanda. What a screwed-up country. RTLC. Meanwhile, at home in France, the Intifada continues with 50,000 police (an army?) preparing for violence. More on these disgruntled "youth" at Gateway/ Updated events at No Pasaran. Latest from Jib Jab: The Great Sketch Experiment. Steyn sees western Europe wasting away. (h/t, Daily Pundit) Hostility and paranoia in American Moslems. Moonbattery Why Dems are dangerous with defence: IBD (h/t, Dinocrat) Mitt Romney smacks down obnoxious, arrogant reporter. Good stuff. Sister T Crime pays at the UN. Simon
 The ACORN scandal, and the Foley: the hand of the evil one seems to be behind them all! Wizbang.
More details on the Real Foley story at Gay Patriot. We looked at Soros here.
Steyn at the White House, with some stellar colleagues. Report via Powerline. The NYT is insane not to hire him - but they are insane.
This came in over the transom, but I see it referenced here: FROM A RETIRED SDPD Officer now living in Pennsylvania:
I respectfully submit the following commentary on illegal immigration for
your benefit and consideration. I was not only born and raised in
California, but was a San Diego police officer from the late 60's through
the early 90's. More specifically, I was a police supervisor from 1976 on,
and was head of the police department's anti-gang unit during the latter
70's. There is a saying, "As California goes, so goes the rest of the
country." In the matter of illegal immigration, Pennsylvania's leaders
would better serve its citizens by not following California's lead. It
would be my pleasure to discuss any of these issues with you or answer any questions you may have.
In the mid-70's the City of San Diego ordered all its police officers, me
included, to stop detaining - or even questioning - the illegal aliens we
frequently encountered in the course of our duties. Ignore the issue of
illegal immigration altogether, the directive said. The reason for this new
order? The city had come under ferocious attack for its long-standing,
reasoned policy towards illegal aliens. Along with the threat of lawsuits,
such words as "racism", "xenophobia", "bigotry" and "discrimination" were
being bandied about by shadowy, strangely-aligned illegal alien advocacy
groups from both sides of the border. The common denominator linking these leftists was their alliance with the American Civil Liberties Union. And they all kept to the same script, as they do even today; they would never acknowledge that the only issue on the table was illegal Mexican
immigration. None of the city's leaders at that time - or since then, for
that matter - had the stomach for the vitriolic, in-your-face gutter fight
these belligerents were looking for. Against all common sense, the city put
its head in the sand and capitulated to the inflammatory rhetoric of a few,
loud militants....to the detriment of its own citizens' best interests.
By the late 70's, the unabated flow of illegal aliens into San Diego
resulted in the melt down of its criminal justice system. The jails were
filled beyond capacity, and - because of an ACLU lawsuit - under a court
order to start releasing criminals, including illegal aliens, into the
streets. Prosecutors and the courts were overwhelmed, unable to keep up
with the load. Mexican street gangs comprised of illegal aliens were on the
rise in all parts of the city. The police department responded to this
crisis, in part, by instituting a policy wherein only violent offenders and
felony suspects actually went to jail. Those arrested for misdemeanor
crimes, including illegal aliens with no local address or identification,
were issued "citations" on the spot and told to appear in court at a later
time. That policy, of course, only served to exacerbate the already
sky-rocketing crime rate. And though there was indisputable proof that the root cause of the crisis was illegal immigration, none of the city's
leaders had the personal courage to actually do anything about it for fear
of being tagged "racist" or "bigot". It was around that time San Diegans
were beginning to hear those slurs from a new quarter - the Mexican
Consulate's office.
In the early 80's, San Diego taxpayers learned that Mexican children were
entering the United States daily to attend local public schools. At the end
of the school day, these children would walk across the border and return
to their homes in Mexico. Outrage over the fact California taxpayers were
paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the public education of
foreigners was lost to those now familiar screams of "racism", "bigotry"
and...because they were children..."mean-spiritedness". The local school
boards said it wasn't their problem to address, that laws prevented them
from asking such intrusive questions as, "Who are you and where do you
live?" when enrolling students. And, they added, what harm was there really in educating those poor Mexican kids. They also said they needed a lot more tax money to hire new Spanish-speaking teachers because, inexplicably, more and more of their students didn't speak a word of English.
Continue reading "Illegal Immigration"
The department store is the ancestor of the mall, and of WalMart . From a piece in Washington Monthly: Department stores emerged as the Wal-Marts of their time, known for low prices, convenience, and controversy. When the first stores opened in the 1870s and ’80s, they were cavernous, no-frills storerooms that stocked a hodgepodge of items once available only from specialty merchants. The different merchandise lines were known as “departments.” At these one-stop Victorian shopping destinations, the sales staff might not have known silk from twill, or how to trim a jacquard vest, but the prices were low, and one could pay in cash—an innovation at a time when most retailers required annual credit lines that were extended only to wealthy regular patrons.
Not everyone was a happy customer. Established venders feared being driven out of business, and indeed many Main Street tea merchants, booksellers, crockery stores, and glassware dealers did lose patrons and close shop. Other early critiques were less about cents than sensibility. In 1897, Scribner’s lamented the big stores’ tawdry sales events; banal and homogenous goods; and appeals to customers as crowds, rather than as selective individuals. Mark Twain found maddening the stores’ practice of heaping goods of no practical relation on adjacent tables for customers to simply rummage through. Of particular offense was the sight of an autobiography of President Ulysses S. Grant strewn alongside the rugs and teapots at John Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia. Clemens, who had co-published the book, blasted Wanamaker as “that unco-pious butter-mouthed Sunday school-slobbering sneak-thief.”
Wednesday, October 25. 2006
Due to my work time schedule change, I will be posting at random times during the day for a while. Sorry, if you counted on my early AM posts. Who needs government? The Czechs seem quite fine without one. Libertarians must love this story at TCS. MSM uninterested in lefty vote fraud. Am. Thinker. Caucasophobia - The Accepted Racism. Gates of Vienna In my opinion, the Dem strategy is to distract from our booming economy, with anything they can think if: Michael Fox, Foley, Iraq - ANYTHING! It could work. Politpundit Not nice. Even if you're very nice to Mr. Putin, he still insists on his interests. What a meanie. Am. Thinker. And what sort of idiot would expect otherwise? Newsweek recants on the global cooling emergency. Remember? It was only a few years ago. The cause was air pollution. The Krugman touch never fails. The Conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid The appealing Mary Carey finds trivial cause to quit CA gubernatorial race. Why? Her Mom jumped off a building. A blog we have somehow missed. NewsBusters. And a new blog from Zimbabwe. h/t, norm Re veils, at Mr. Free market. A quote: When the true believers start rioting because someone has ‘dissed’ their increasingly absurd religion I just wonder what the police response will be? Will they stand idly by, “not wanting to inflame racial tensions further” or will they smash people’s skulls in as the thuggish Metropolitan Police did to old whitie when we went to Parliament Square to protest against the Hunting Bill?
The worst digital cameras, here. (h/t Protein) The new camera gift guide - it's all 10 megapixels now, even for point-and-shoot. Isn't capitalism amazing? And, speaking of capitalism, what is the best way to protect an industry? To permit competition - of course. Look at the City of London: The Economist . (h/t, BusinessPundit)
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet Communist oppression. Gateway has a good remembrance, with a letter.
These three dudes are the modern masters of farce, absurdist and semi-black humor. They all have no trouble making fun of earnest silliness, and all of their humor is dead serious. A friend turned me on to the Brit Tom Sharpe, who has never been afraid of political correctness. But I never knew about his Wilt series, which is on the way to me from Amazon at this moment. I had only read his two which were set in South Africa. The mental hospital staging a Zulu War as a therapeutic theater piece with the patients taking sides with real weapons is just unbelievable. But so are the people with the rubber suit fetishes. Peter de Vries, a long-time editor at The New Yorker and Editor of Poetry magazine, and long-time resident of Westport, CT now, alas, dead, wrote a number of droll, warmly satirical novels, most of them about life in Fairfield County. He is the most religious atheist writer I can think of. Adultery, social climbing, book clubs, alcohol abuse, horny adolescents, existential crises, wonderful misfits, nouveau riches, do-gooders, old-time eccentric grouchy Yankees, wacky preachers, and hearty golfers are the grist for his mill. Favorite De Vries quotes: "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be," and "It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." One more: "I was baptised, but it didn't take." Can you label this genre "comic seriousness"? Carl Hiaasen - bio here - prize-winning Florida journalist and co-songwriter with the late lamented Warren Zevon, has a feel for the dark side of South Florida culture (is there a bright side?) which he illuminates with such characters as Skink, the one-eyed ex-Florida governor who lives in the swamp, eats only road kill, and trusts only vets for medical help. My favorites are Skin Tight, Double Whammy, and Tourist Season.
When asked by Parliament members why be believed so much in America, Tony Blair said: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in, and how many want out."
Tuesday, October 24. 2006
 The results of Australia's gun confiscation and oppressive gun laws: NOTHING... except people can no longer defend themselves.
Some truth about the stem-cell issue. Yes, of course it is being demagogued. What isn't? Here's the science. Shrinkwrapped Hamilton College, post-Churchill, is seeking some sanity. Inside Higher Ed Voter ID in Missouri. Quote from a piece in Opinion Journal: People in the good state of Missouri need photo identification to cash a check, board a plane or apply for food stamps. But the state Supreme Court has ruled that a photo ID requirement to vote is too great a burden on the elderly and the poor. Go figure.
Moose are taking over Yankee-land. A conservation success, but a serious driving hazard. Hunting them is a bit like shooting a Holstein cow in a field. You make sure to kill them near a road: they are heavy. Are you scared yet? Quoted via Junk Science: Obligatory eye-roller: "Global warming and your health" - "Global warming could do more to hurt your health than simply threaten summertime heat stroke, says a public health physician. Although heat related illnesses and deaths will increase with the temperatures, climate change is expected to also attack human health with dirtier air and water, more flood-related accidents and injuries, threats to food supplies, hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, and stress on and possible collapse of many ecosystems that now purify our air and water." (Geological Society of America)
 The challenge of being politically conservative is that one seeks political power to reduce, or devolve, power to the people and to their localities.
In the famous words of Bill Buckley, "The job of conservatives was to stand athwart history, yelling, stop." It seems to be almost impossible to do, practically. And in democratic systems, everything is about the politically practical. It's accidentally built into the DNA of the system, (although giant American federal bureaucracies handing out money and rules never was intended - or even envisioned -by our founders who detested the giant European bureacracies and centralized state systems, as in France). Not everyone respects that heritage of ours. This week, I heard a voter quoted on the radio "Bush is focused on Iraq, but what is he doing to take care of me?" We have all heard such statements, because that attitude is pervasive, and, I believe, enormously destructive. So how do conservatives hold on to power when the population has been trained for two or three generations of Left-tinged rule to reflexively expect "government to fix it" - whatever it may be? There is only one way: to fill the nation with vigorous, optimistic, freedom-oriented, inspiring, courageous talk about the American way of life and the opportunities available to everyone to go out there and try to build whatever life they envision. Reagan knew how to do that. Bush has not the talent, nor the taste, for dramatic rhetoric - and neither did his dad. The subject comes up because of two blog pieces over the past week addressing the "totalitarian" impulses of the Left. We have often written on that topic at Maggie's Farm. Sisu from a piece titled "Simply an affirmation of naked power": The totalitarian impulse runs deep and dark in our species. Curious how often it seems to ooze up through the cracks on the left side of the aisle. We've always distrusted the motives - beyond maintenance of raw power - of our own entrenched "progressive" Massachusetts Senator Edward Ted Kennedy.
Dr. Sanity, from a piece entitled "The Political Left and their Totalitarian Dreams": What interests me is the transformation of the Democratic Party into a tool that every major enemy of this country--from the North Vietnamese, to the Soviets, to the Syrians all the way up to the present day-- has been able to use to advance their objectives at the expense of America. As Feldman notes, this does indeed give new meaning to the term "opposition party".
It also give new clarity to one of the issues that I have talked about on this blog repeatedly, and that is the complete betrayal by the political left in this country of the values and freedoms upon which the U.S. was founded.
I do believe that the Left has totalitarian dreams - a morally lost person can decide that the ends can justify the means if he cares about the "common good," and is certain that he's right. That is referring to the Left: I do not believe that all Dems have similar dreams, but I do think that they almost always favor policies which expand the federal state and its power - always for the "common good", mind you. C.S Lewis, as quoted by Samizdata: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Power, unlike money, is a zero-sum game. Every incremental increase in federal governmment power and authority over our lives is at the price of a bit of individual and local power and autonomy. And with that price goes a bit of the human spirit and a bit of what makes America unique in the world.
The appropriate age for marriage is eighteen for girls and thirty seven for men. Aristotle
Monday, October 23. 2006
 Why do champagne bubbles follow little chains of bubbles upwards, instead of randomly bubbling? That question has finally been answered, just in time for holiday season. They follow little fibers of dirt and dust. Live Science. Yes, Veuve Clicquot is the official champagne of Maggie's Farm: time to stock up for Halloween.
Men imagine that women are flirting with them, when they aren't. Damn, no wonder I always screw it up. Villainous Company Are we ready for a Mormon leader of the Senate? Of course. Why not? But did you know that Harry Reid is a Mormon? Socially-responsible warfare? Only the Brits could come up with that notion. Jawa. I like the idea of recyclable, lead-free bullets. Obedient German drivers: Blair Religious bias in the law? Must Catholic organizations provide abortion services on their medical plans? NY Sun Welfare reform hasn't preserved the family. That makes it a failure? LA Times. It got people to become independent and proud of themselves. That is success. No govt program will get people to marry. Grammar back in educational fashion? Let's hope so. Althouse. Not that we write complete sentences here - we use telegram style. The truth about activism, from a piece at Classical Values: ...I think it is so important for non-activists to understand that when they are dealing with activists, the apparent issue at hand is never the issue, but is only part of an agenda, and nearly always temporarily expendable. If you are willing to waste a huge amount of time going to the mat over one of these issues, thus forcing the activists to "lose," the issue will be set aside but another one will spring up in its place. Likewise, if you decide to let them have their way on a particular issue in the hope that they'll go away, rest assured that they will not. (Thus, the removal of Robert E. Lee's name from a particular street or building only clears the way for a new campaign to demand the removal of some other dead white slaveholder's name from something, and the process will continue ad infinitum, even after George Washington has long vanished from the dollar bill.)
There are two phrases which drive me nuts. One is "root causes," and the other is "The common good." Expensive consultants have advised the Dems that "the common good" might be a good theme for them. They even imagine that wrapping themselves in a virtuous, John Stuart Mill-sounding cloak could help bring Christians on board. After all, who is against "the common good"? But there are many ways of looking at the common good. I know what the Dems mean by it: they want to increase dependency on the Federal govt, and therefore on them. In fact, our Bird Dog wrote on this subject one week ago: Is a nation a family? We can expect more of this "It takes a village" stuff over the next two years, I believe. As Hillary Clinton now-famously said in 2004: "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that (tax relief) short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." From a piece by Zoll in The Christian Post (h/t, News for Christians): Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America — then repeated the phrase 29 times.
Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America — then repeated the phrase 29 times.
The whole thing here.
Nancy Pelosi said this, re the chance she will end up as Speaker (h/t, Driscoll): "The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children."
More insanity from Britain: criminal charges for an error in voluntary recycling. Tangled Web. Good grief. This in a country where cops cannot chase a thief, because the thief might fall down and hurt himself, but dropping an envelope into the container of plastics - that's a Crime Against Humanity! Doubling the width of the Panama Canal. Publius A Soros connection behind the Foley outing? Jawa Riot Season in France to begin with a parade. Gateway The terrorism-welfare connection, in Europe. Instapundit. Makes sense: if you have a job, you don't have time to burn cars. Jeff's excellent temper tantrum: Yes, we know the feeling. More bones found at ground zero. Bare Knuckle. Not to be insensitive, but you have to wonder - did Rove put them there? Captain Ed on the Calame "apology" for publishing the NSA secrets: Instead of acting as Chief Apologist, Calame should take his job a little more seriously in the future. The Times blew an important national-security program just to pump up its anti-Bush credentials, regardless of the fact that the program operated within the law and never abused the information it gathered. Calame dislikes the administration as much as the rest of the people at the New York Times, and in the guise of detached analysis endorsed the publication of a non-story in his zeal to undermine the White House using any means at their disposal. Everyone else knew that this story had no merit; it took the Times and its public editor four months to figure it out. That should tell you everything you need to know about the New York Times.
Michelle extracts these morals from that whole story: Lesson No. 1: Never trust the Times' headlines.
Lesson No. 2: Never trust what's printed under the Times' headlines.
Lesson No. 3: Never trust what comes out of the mouths of the Times' editors and reporters.
Avoid the newspaper of wreckage, and help keep American safe.
Can facts have any impact on the tragedy of Chronic BDS? (Bush Derangement Syndrome). Doubtful. Willisms notes: When the elections in November come and go, and Bush hasn't invoked martial law, suspended the Second Amendment, or had himself crowned king, what are the chances that Vidal and Lear, et al., will have their Emily Litella moment in public and admit they were less-than-correct? No one ever seems to call them on it - and when they do, the Vidals of the world have already lurched on to their next paranoid fixation or faux political outrage. They blog and they comment because this is a cry for help - they know deep inside that there is something wrong with their worldview, and this is why they will never take up arms to save the state from itself. There is still some small functioning part of their brain, that quietly tells them 'it is an odd fascism indeed that lets you blog, comment, own guns, assemble in peace and travel. Er, maybe it isn't fascism, after all?'
The truth shall set ye free, but first it shall make ye miserable. Soren Kirkegaard (h/t, Stumbling)
Sunday, October 22. 2006
Que balas! The campaign against Chavez. Canadians try burning weed in Afghanistan. Soldiers feel effects. Sandmonkey Re the BEEB, Sunday Mail quoted by Powerline: It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism. A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror. It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air. At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians. Scrap The Constitution! It makes it too hard to turn us into France. Am Spectator. Good grief. They never quit. Cindy Sheehan paid by the Kerry campaign? Would not surprise me. Driscoll Quote from David Brooks, via Althouse: ... Oakeshottian conservatism can never prevail in America because the United States was not founded on the basis of custom, but by the assertion of a universal truth — that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain rights. The United States is a creedal nation, and almost every significant movement in American history has been led by people calling upon us to live up to our creed. In many cases, the people making those calls were religious leaders. From Jonathan Edwards to the abolitionists to the civil rights leaders to the people fighting AIDS and genocide in Africa today, religiously motivated people have been active in public life. They have been, in their certainty and their willingness to apply divine truths, fundamentalists — if we want to use Sullivan’s categories. You take those people out of American politics and you don’t have a country left....
Conservatives need to relearn the lessons of Burke and Hayek — that the world is complex, and efforts to transform it will have unintended consequences, most of them bad. But if American conservatives give up their optimism and their universal creed, they will once again be a small sect at the fringes of political life.
 The news piece here.
The YouTube here.
That chair is smart, but is it comfortable?
 Is this contrived, or is it a good idea? A list of the 100 things I want to do before I get too old or die (without impossible fantasies like conducting the New York Symphony, or having some beers with Bob Dylan, or hunting grouse with PJ O'Rourke, or owning a pied a terre in Manhattan, or owning my own G IV, or spending the night with Sharon Stone).
I do have a list of the 7 places I wish to visit or re-visit, next: Scotland for grouse shooting and whiskey tasting, Turkey, Alaska for ptarmigan hunting and to see the tundra, Wales, Sicily, Tuscany, Patagonia for fishing. But a life-time To-Do list? Probably a good idea for someone like me. If it's not on my list, I never get to it. So I will add this to my To-Do list: "Make a lifetime To-Do list." I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. Image: Yes, that is Sharon. Meant to do an image of a Red Grouse, but liked this better.
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