Sunday, July 8. 2007
 A letter from Canon Andrew White, an anti-war "liberal's liberal", as quoted in a piece on the subject of the medical bombers by Rick Moran:
Dear Friends, Just over two months ago I wrote in my Update that I had the worst meeting in my life. I said I have seen the Devil today. I met this awful man in Amman prior to our last major meeting in Baghdad. I referred to him as the Devil and I even refused to continue the meeting and told the Sheikh who had brought him to me never to let me meet him again. He told me that they were going to start killing in the UK then the USA. One sentence I remembered but did not understand was “those who cure you will kill you”. I did not understand this then but in the last two days since the terrorist activities in the UK were brought to a head I was not surprised when there were reports that those arrested were all involved in the health services. Those terrible words “those who cure you will kill you” suddenly made sense. The litany of planned killing was horrendous. I do not know why I was told this by an Iraqi Sunni living then in Syria. I passed on this information to our FCO. I then learned that this person was a senior Al Qaeda figure and so was indeed bent on the destruction of innocent lives. I will never forget this meeting. It remains the worst I have ever had. I hope I never have one like it again.
 More lunacy from Planet San Francisco, with comments from Dr. Sanity. (Photo on right is a recent piece of SF "art" from her piece.) Looking back fondly on Stalin and Mao, I guess.
Robert Heinlein. The prophet of Southern California. Reason Can a society be too broken to be fixed? Darfur, at SC&A Blogs are an "early warning system" for pols? SDA. Well, maybe sometimes sorta kinda. Justice Thomas is a self-hating minority member? Whoa. Gotta disagree with Mod. Voice on that statement, as do many highly self-respecting black commentators. We were are all imbued with some Liberal Condescension towards black Americans, and it is tough to get rid of it and to treat them like normal people. If I were a black man, which I would not mind being at all, I would hate this kind of thing. Marcus Luttrell: He says that his Christianity got in the way of a prudent military decision. Flopping. Quote: "It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life," Luttrell writes. "I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I'd turned into a (expletive) liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jack rabbit."
The Farm Bill. Boring topic, relatively speaking. But it is, in fact, the lowest form of vote-buying and corporate welfare. I refuse to believe that modern farming carries any more risk than any other form of business. Plus nowadays they have crop insurance, can hedge prices, buy and sell futures, etc etc. These folks aren't your grandfather's farmers. Telegraph reviews AK-47. A History of the People's Gun. Big Brother reads blogs in the UK. A creepy story from Mr. Free Market Hunting and fishing decreasing in popularity. Should anyone care? Env. Economic The Two Americas: Soft America and Hard America. Buddy noted this 2003 piece by Barone. The Tridentine Mass is back. Frivolity ensues. Thompson dazzles Young Repubs. AOL News
 Isaiah 66: 10-16
10Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her— 11that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. 12For thus says the Lord: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. 13As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. 14You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants, and his indignation is against his enemies. 15For the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to pay back his anger in fury, and his rebuke in flames of fire. 16For by fire will the Lord execute judgment, and by his sword, on all flesh; and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
The neighbors down the road have some nice ones this week: 
Saturday, July 7. 2007
 I will be able to recover my usual sanguine approach to life once I dump this comment on ye olde blogge.
How can it be possible to earn an undergraduate degree without having studied calculus, chemistry, economics, Plato, statistics, Classical History, Shakespeare, and physics? The sheer ignorance of supposedly "educated" (at great cost and parental sacrifice) Americans never ceases to amaze me. I know why this is, too: it is market-driven. Give those young brains-full-of-mush nice dorm rooms and eliminate standards for what a degree means, and the applications will flow in. People aren't stupid: they know they are just buying a piece of paper. And yes, I know that many serious kids do not approach college that way, but today I have had several encounters with recent grads of fancy schools which were beyond appalling. Some smart people, from outside the education establishment, ought to sit down and re-think the whole idea and purpose of "liberal arts education" in America. American college education is a scam on the same dimensions as the scam of investment management. And now I feel much better. Thanks for listening!
 Venus is back. Her opponent deserves credit for hanging in there, but Venus looked great. Her coverage of the court is mind-boggling.
How a teacher should behave, if he wants the students to behave. The Gore shark jumping. Blue Crab. Still confused about the meaning of "shark jumping"? It's about Fonz. Japanese hutzpah. Playing the WW2 victim card. It never ceases to amaze me how effective the victim card is in concealing blatant aggression. A smoking rebellion begins in the UK. I hope it spreads. Tangled San Francisco. I cannot believe this. Horrifying. Is it something in their water? Maybe a Haldol deficiency in their Starbucks? More on rights and needs and wants. Reisman. Twisting reality to fit the Leftist narrative. I love these examples, but they are endless.
 Our Aliyah Diary author has been truant from Maggie's for too long. He has not yet completed the lengthy and arduous aliyah process required for becoming an Israeli citizen, but his Hebrew and his riflery are getting better and better, I understand. He files this report of his visit to a fellow physician in the Bedouin village of Rahat last week.
An afternoon and evening in Rahat, guest of a gentle Bedouin Professor A., who was my Virgil in a tour through the fringes of Hell. A Bedouin town, one of seven built by the Israelis in the early 70’s, Rahat, meaning water-hole, a place to gather for shepherds, so too to gather-in the wandering Bedouin. A town of several thousand, located geographically at the northern tip of the Negev desert, but in other ways, located someplace between here and the fringe of Bombay. I begin with my leaving. Too late, too tired, I see what A., driving his VW diesel Passat, does not: a man, perhaps a father, red broomstick whipping over his head, full-armed whacks on three children to get into the yard. The youngest, a girl perhaps five, has arms upraised, futile, trying to fend off the next blow. He does not always swing; at moments he motions threateningly, stand at the steel corrugated gate. Then, he lets loose once more on the girl’s back and the gate is closed to the outside world. A. says a few moments later that it is better to tour Rahat at night: the darkness hides what should not be seen. I have spoken about courage among Israeli soldiers at Ben Gurion University, thinking at the back of my neck how there are Bedouin colleagues in the audience. Awad has invited me to his home afterwards. Dinner, early. Awad studied medicine in Rumania during the era when the Israeli Communist Party gave scholarships to Arab students to learn in Soviet medical schools. He lived there some six years, got a degree and a Slavic wife, L. It is an evening all in Hebrew. L. is flaxen, angular-faced, has a large wart punctuating the end of her left eyebrow. Seems a Slavic trait – a punctuated face. A. and I enter the house and I barely notice at my right, sitting beneath a tent suspended from the house, is an ancient woman, a white cotton shawl over her head, the left margin clamped at the left corner of her lips. She is there when I arrive; she remains there six hours later. We pass her once more, A. and I. He says nothing, nor does she. She is his mother. Read the rest on continuation page below.
Continue reading "Aliyah Diary: A visit to Rahat"
Cartoon on temporary loan from Theo: 
No Second Troy Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being as she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Friday, July 6. 2007
Re Mayor Bloomberg's Learning for Dollars scheme, Heather MacDonald notes (my bold print): Give the Bloomberg policymakers credit for one thing: The cash-for-responsibility plan violates the greatest taboo in the poverty industry. It implicitly recognizes that the long-term poor are held back more by their own behavior than by social inequities. Talk to any inner-city teacher and you will hear how difficult it is to get parents involved in their child's education, or students to bother with homework. Countless schemes for tutoring and job training sit on the shelves unused because the "clients" never show up. Free medical advice is wasted because patients don't return for follow-up visits, if they bother following the doctor's instructions at all. After the urban riots of the 1960s, political scientist Edward Banfield observed that the central trait separating the poor from the prosperous is future orientation. His insight has never been improved upon. The middle and upper classes defer gratification and invest effort in self-improvement, Banfield wrote in The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of our Urban Crisis; were the underclass to do so, they would not long stay in the bottom economic tier. In unveiling his "conditional cash transfer" scheme on June 18, Bloomberg predictably eschewed Banfield's bracing honesty. The poor fail to "plan for the future," the mayor said, because they are "so focused on surviving." The idea that the residents of Brooklyn and Central Harlem are engaged in a "struggle," as Bloomberg put it, against starvation and depredation is a fantasy. Many teens who will be enrolled in "Opportunity NYC" likely wear the latest sneakers and carry pagers and cell phones. Their problem is motivation, not the unforgiving demands of a subsistence economy. Nevertheless, Bloomberg should be congratulated for implicitly acknowledging the behavior issue, however misleading the rhetoric in which he couches it.
She goes on to explain why, despite the above, it's a bad plan. Whole thing at The Weekly Standard.
 Good clean fun!
We already know that those Islamists are fun people with a great sense of humor, and the gift of being mature enough, and emotionally secure enough to laugh at themselves, so our cuz across the pond Theo has a contest. If you have time, give it a whirl your own self. Image of the now- famous Rage Boy (he is very very angry) borrowed from Snapped Shot.
"Men," a sergeant told his people aboard ship before our invasion of the island, "Saipan is covered with dense jungle, quicksand, steep hills and cliffs hiding batteries of huge coastal guns, and strongholds of reinforced concrete. Insects bear lethal poisons. Crocodiles and snakes infest the streams. The waters around it are thick with sharks. The population will be hostile toward us." There was a long silence. Then a corporal said, "Sarge, why don't we just let the Japs keep it?" From William Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness. (h/t, Buddy)
 Some musicians are in touch with reality. Cramer
What about Moslem doctors in the US? Jules Genocide or disease? Disease wiped out vast numbers of American Indians, although that does not fit "the narrative." (h/t, Assistant Village Idiot) Squanto was alone because, when he returned from his European travels, all of his kin had died either from influenza or from the common cold virus. He must have had a tough immune system. Who knew that running and jogging were right-wing activities? Ya can't make this stuff up. No blog has better folksy old-timey photos. Fake massacres widely reported. Real massacres not reported. Powerline. Our press has no shame in their anti-American crusade. Quoted at Cafe Hayek: ...the whole idea of "sharing prosperity" seems to imply that prosperity is some kind of aggregate to which we all have some claim, much like members of a family. What justifies looking at society as a family? If it is, Prof Summers can just send me a monthly cheque without the need for legislation.
Offshoring of jobs: Has it peaked? Dresner Al Gore: Ignorant or Dishonest? Reisman. We need to add George Reisman to our blogroll. Taxes and the Dems: From a piece at Kudlow: ...you can’t have capitalism without capital. The process works for “rich people” and the middle class.
Whenever Democrats wage war against the rich, the middle class becomes the collateral damage. This may be the law of unintended consequences, but it is something this Congress fails to understand.
Quote of a quote at Rhymes with Right: Those who enter Mexico illegally have committed a criminal offense, and under 1974 law are subject to two to five years in prison.
Excellent case study of the contradictions, hidden subsidies, and insane economics when a state (MA in this case) tries to control insurance pricing. Squaring the Boston Globe Photo: 1959 tugboat for sale. Nice. You can live on her, but she ain't the Mirabella V.
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube." Ayn Rand, borrowed in toto from SDA
 At 247', Mirabella V is the world's largest single-masted sailboat. She can do 20 knots under sail: that lengthy waterline helps with boat speed.
Best of all, you can lease her, with crew, by the week - but it's a bit pricey for the average workin' stiff at $300,000 per week. Summers in the Med, winters in the Caribbean. Details and great photos at Mirabella V.
Thursday, July 5. 2007
Shhhh. Don't let them know about the EU Treaty. It's ultra ultra secret.
Is it possible to know? Bad Astronomy Blog (h/t, Flares). I don't know why the author had to put the Creationism stuff in the piece - probably grinding some axe - but otherwise interesting.
How are we doing in Iraq since January? AQ Feeling the Heat, at Flopping.
 It's a trite old slogan now. You all know where it's from. But like most things that are truly useful, they fade into the background until they are essentially invisible, a plain sort of wallpaper perhaps; and people only point out whatever shortcomings such things have. Only Europeans are bigger ingrates than Americans. We seldom appreciate anything we have; they don't appreciate the things they have, and don't appreciate us, either. An example: I could search the internet for half a second and come up with millions of documents, scholarly and rant-like alike, telling us all how bad the Interstate Highway System is. All the evils it generates. Try finding out the sum total of what it's added to the betterment of our country, and by proxy, the world. I submit to you that no one bothers to even attempt it, because the benefits of the thing are so enormous and so far-reaching that you couldn't even begin to quantify it. So everyone just takes the benefits of it for granted and rails about a swamp that got filled in, or pollution - a little real, mostly imaginary. But then, it's much easier to complain about your cable bill than to turn the TV off, ain't it? I want you to read an entire blog. You heard me, the whole thing. William Kamkwamba's Malawi Windmill Blog I'd like to think that guy is just like me. But it would be presumptuous of me to claim it. But I'd be proud if someone said it about me, that's for sure. I'm going to head a lot of people off at the pass right now. His accomplishments have nothing to do with Gaia-love windpower one-world eco-blathering World Bank recumbent bicycle Earth Day carbon footprint nonsense. A man, aided by friends and family, is able to use his active mind and his efforts to improve the quality of his family's life through his own exertions. That, and he is able -- and allowed-- in a small way to lay his hands on the things he needs to do it. It boggles the mind what that man could do with access to a library and a Home Depot. Please take heed: I said library and not university. A university is now generally simply an intellectual bootcamp, where you are taught that no one needs what William, and many like him, desperately and manifestly do need; things that you take for granted because you have the dough for a 600 dollar phone toy with no inkling of how it, or anything else for that matter, gets to you. They talk a good game about helping people like William in the abstract, as part of a faceless horde. Reality intrudes quickly, though, and they don't do much of anything that helps any individual like William, and generally do a great deal to harm or hamstring him. I fear many might be sanguine about returning such as me to the local equivalent of where William is now -- reading a dogeared book in the dark, slapping at the malarial mosquitoes -- as long as they can call it "progress" on the trust-fund circuit. Also take heed: I said Home Depot and not an Al Gore celebrity self-congratulation extravaganza. They fly over people like William and me, look out the private plane's window and say: No one needs what they want. Please have my concubine feed me another lotos blossom.
I feel better about the world because William Kamkwamba's in it. You want to help him? Start by getting out of his way.
 The world revolves around Super Joe. Protein Wisdom on Joe Wilson and Scooter.
Obama, Clinton redistribute cash to poor campaign rivals. If it's warm, it's global warming. If it's cold, it's plain weather. Tim Blair Soaring state and local debt: The credit card approach to government has taken hold. It's quite clear that it's about getting re-elected. You buy stuff without raising taxes. However, in some towns, cities, and states, 30-40% of tax receipts go to debt payment. Only politicians would run things that way. China's public self-criticism: It is a good sign. Dino George Will on the Supreme's school integration case: Breyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the Equal Protection Clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful. This repulsive practice merits Clarence Thomas' warning in his opinion concurring with last week's ruling: Beware of elites eager to constitutionalize "faddish social theories." Often, they are only theories.
As Roberts said, Seattle and Louisville offered "no evidence" that the diversity they have achieved (by what he has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race") is necessary to achieve the "asserted" educational benefits. Evidence is beside the point. The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."
The United States is Obviously the Most Benevolent World Power in the History of the Planet. RWN Zawahiri on the Democrats, at Atlas: "You must be patient and steadfast," he says. "Rejoice, for victory is near, with Allah's permission, and the herds of crusaders have begun to split up and their sole concern has become searching for a way out."
Arctic Monkeys make more sense to me than Al Gore does: "It's a bit patronising for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world," said Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, explaining why the group is not on the bill at any of Al Gore's charity concerts. "Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting. It'd be a bit hypocritical," he told AFP in an interview before a concert in Paris.
Photo: Our friend, webmeister, and master sailor Chris was messing with boats yesterday in CT, and took this photo of Hotspur while doing some work on her mast. He tells us: Hotspur is an old Holland 40. She is an old IOR (International Offshore Rules) boat built in the mid-seventies, designed by Ron Holland, who has gone on to design Mirabella V. She use to be called Secret Affair and was famous for finishing first and being orange. She stood out in the races. As Secret Affair she raced against the best, like Ted Turner. Her sister ship, Imp, is very competitive in Europe. Imp is known for her weird green hull. There are only two Holland 40's still racing in the world. Currently Hotspur is referred to as the big blue boat, or the boat to beat on Long Island Sound. The crew is unique - not pros, just all friends of the skipper who love to sail.
This blowback against “globalization from above” has spread to every corner of the Earth. It now threatens to kill sensible, moderate steps toward the freer movement of goods, ideas, capital, and people.
What is the best way to help poor countries? What William Easterly in Foreign Policy terms "the ideology of development" entails sending in development experts to tell the country what to do, and it is all the rage these days among economists, organizations like the World Bank, and commentators like Thomas Friedman. Easterly says: Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer to all of society’s problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and despotic rulers. It shares the common ideological characteristic of suggesting there is only one correct answer, and it tolerates little dissent. It deduces this unique answer for everyone from a general theory that purports to apply to everyone, everywhere. There’s no need to involve local actors who reap its costs and benefits. Development even has its own intelligentsia, made up of experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations.
The problem is is that such top-down impositions of "reforms" and development plans have never worked anywhere. What does seem to work is for nations to find their own paths to prosperity, organically, from the inside, out. As Easterly notes: Unfortunately, Development ideology has a dismal record of helping any country actually develop. The regions where the ideology has been most influential, Latin America and Africa, have done the worst. Luckless Latins and Africans are left chasing yesterday’s formulas for success while those who ignored the Developmentalists found homegrown paths to success. The nations that have been the most successful in the past 40 years did so in such a variety of different ways that it would be hard to argue that they discovered the “correct answer” from development ideology. In fact, they often conspicuously violated whatever it was the experts said at the time. The East Asian tigers, for instance, chose outward orientation on their own in the 1960s, when the experts’ conventional wisdom was industrialization for the home market. The rapid growth of China over the past quarter century came when it was hardly a poster child for either the 1980s Washington Consensus or the 1990s institutionalism of democracy and cracking down on corruption.
I think this is an important essay. Read the whole thing at Foreign Policy. Addendum from The Editor: Closely-related. Jonah Goldberg via Driscoll argues that wealth does not come from material things: National prosperity is a reflection of a civilization - its laws, culture, knowledge, attitudes, morals, values, and personal and business habits. Buildings and dams and armies of bulldozers are the least of it. To quote Goldberg: A potential lesson for the World Bank may be that building roads, dams, and factories in the third world is a fool’s errand until those nations have the intangible capital required to maintain such things. The Marshall Plan’s success in rebuilding Europe after World War II stemmed not from the U.S. footing the bill for concrete and bulldozers but from the intangible capital locked in the hearts and minds of everyday Europeans.
This helps explain, I believe, why some parts of the world, like much of Africa, parts of the Middle East, much of Central America and parts of South America are rich in resources and opportunities and yet remain poor by modern standards. It's the culture.
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