Wednesday, July 4. 2007
On the ride home from Home Depot this afternoon, I heard a re-run of Hannity interviewing Rudy this past week. I know that many conservatives do not trust his conservative convictions, but I do. Very impressive: cheerful, optimistic, common-sensical, market-oriented, quick-thinking, and happy to talk about the American ideal of limited government. It might have been a high-class con job, but it didn't sound like it. His best sound bite in the conversation was "The Democratic candidates want to take America backwards."
President Calvin Coolidge began his Independence Day speech in 1926 thus: "About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful." What a great guy. Who gets credit for him, VT or MA? Read the whole thing.
 What is that photo in Camp Victory, Baghdad, all about?
It is good. Find out, at Gateway.
 We praise Sen John McCain for sticking to his convictions. Unfortunately for him, his convictions do not garner a great deal of support.
Hitchcock film techinques: Synthstuff A Victoria Cross and a Presidential Citation. Jim Miller. But the news is all Michael Moore and Paris Hilton. The great Artur Schnabel: Terry Teachout looks at Schnabel's life and career, at Commentary Re the UK bombings, a darn good question at SDA: How does a 26-year-old become a practicing neurologist? What is this, the Readers Digest version of medical school or just Mohammed Jamil Howzer?)
This was a great business concept. Talk about easy money. Coyote. Funny how people can't resist tossing a coin into a fountain. From the Weekly Standard review of The Dangerous Book for Boys: "If you see a girl in need of help--unable to lift something, for example--do not taunt her. Approach the object and greet her with a cheerful smile, whilst surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation." Ovid couldn't have put it any better.
The Scooter Libby manufactured outrage was totally predictable, as is the stench of hypocrisy. There is a fine line between a successful terror attack and one which looks bumbling and bungled. A good point, at neoneo Freak Show. Looks like the Coney Island side shows have moved to San Francisco. Old media vs. new media: Driscoll. With a bit of an inside view from an anonymous old media person. Women are perps of domestic violence far more often than men. Dr. Helen. Washington is not working? Who wants it to? Who wants "efficient government"? Mussolini was famous for it, but I prefer a paralyzed government most of the time unless they are killing our enemies. A quote from Jay Cost from a piece at Betsy: Washington is "not working" not because it lacks strong and effective managers. Washington is "not working" because it was designed not to work when there is an absence of political consensus, which there is right now. Washington "fails to work" more often than not because ours is a diverse nation with many competing interests, and our Founders feared the possibility that one interest might railroad another. They thought that the best way to preserve our republican form of government would be to make political change next-to-impossible without a political consensus.
 How easily we forget that the Declaration of Independence only predicted the USA in retrospect. The Declaration was the military and political alliance of 13 colonies, each of which was self-governing within the generous limits established by Britain. In the Declaration they proclaimed themselves to each be a "state," ie a nation, independent from Britain, and to join to remove British colonial control, by force of arms if necessary.
Each state coveted its autonomy, during and after the war. There was no US until 1789 when those independent 13 states, after much dithering, politicking, and ambivalence, agreed to cede some small amount of power, besides the power to run the Continental Army, to a united Federal government. They were all, naturally, and rightly, suspicious about the idea. But the State of New York, as I understand it, gets the main credit for insisting on the addition of a Bill of Rights before being willing to sign on to the document. Many delegates felt that enumerating all of those rights - and more - was unnecessary and obvious. Image: Weisgerger's painting of Betsy Ross presenting the flag of the Continental Army in 1777 - what was called the flag of the "Grand Union." Prior to that time, the Army had only State and militia flags and banners.
A quote from Peter Schramm's piece of the above title at Weekly Standard: Over fifty years ago, when I was just shy of my tenth birthday, my family fled Hungary during the failed revolution against the Russian Communists. Our family's story was like so many of the refugees from communism, complete with relatives arrested, property seized, and a nighttime dash to freedom. The decision to escape was an easy one to make (although not so easy to execute), but the question I had--the one I distinctly recall asking my father--was "where are we going." We could have stayed in Europe--and indeed, the Germans would have welcomed us as Volk deutsche because of our German surname--but this was not my father's plan. "We are going to America," he said. "Why America?" I prodded. "Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place."
Read the whole thing.
Tuesday, July 3. 2007
BondC explains it all (it is Right Wing Prof's food blog). I am working on perfecting my cold smoking, but with an electric smoker.
 "Out-of-touch solons," government "solutions," and grandiose plans. Democracy Project
Hey Bird Dog. Here are some good sauces. Captain Ed: excellent piece on education - and integration Big Mac is booming in Paris. Attack On holiday tonight and tomorrow. I plan to grill some burgers and to be served a few Coronas by a lightly-garbed sweetie who always needs to be reminded to bring me limes. The burgers will happen, but the other part is just a dream. Northern women don't seem to even want to try to understand men.
UK Moslem jihadist attacks cause PM Brown to ban associating the word "Moslem" with the word "terror." I suggest the Brits do what Tim Blair does, which is to term them all "Presbyterian terrorists."
Via Althouse: Scooter Libby emerged as the least absurd character in the entire drama, and yet he was the one who committed a crime. President Bush entered the stage like a character from another world, a world in which things make sense.
His decision to commute Libby’s sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.
A warning from John Adams, in a letter in 1814: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.
 From Hansen. A quote:
It is stereotypically easy to identify authoritarians who seek restrict civil liberties during war in the name of "national security." But it is much harder to take on crusading special interest groups, district attorneys, court justices, and liberal Senators who ignore, twist, or subvert our constitutional freedoms under the liberal clarion call of helping minorities, stopping the war, or championing the underclass. If we are to lose our civil liberties, it won't be all of sudden due to Patriot-Act zealots in sunglasses and flattops, but rather insidiously and incrementally by egalitarian professors, moral crusaders, muckraking journalists, and government utopians all unhappy that constitutional justice is too little and too late for their ever impatient desire to ensure heaven on earth.
Their utopia is my Brave New World nightmare, and I am sure that VDH agrees. Read the whole thing (h/t, Jules).
 Coffee: The more you drink, the better. WebMD. (h/t, Dr. Bob)
Former radical Islamist: "I was a fanatic. I know their thinking." Daily Mail Repubs move on border enforcement. Surber. It's a winning issue. Hitchens: The London bombers were targeting women. (h/t, Tigerhawk) Inflation police in Zimbabwe. (h/t, Memeorandum). This mess will end badly. Brits skeptical about warming hysteria. Good for them. Always be skeptical about the science du jour, because science always changes. Prof B. reminds me of the Mitt Romney dog story. Dumb story. Half the hunting guys I know drive long distances with their dogs in the back of the pick-up. No difference. I see traces of the Pathetic Fallacy here. What if we hadn't gone into Iraq? Where would things be? Wallison at TCS Howard Zinn: Have an Unhappy Fourth! Moonbattery
A brief look at the history of travel by Culver at History News Network. A quote: Americans were long suspicious of leisure – it was for the wealthy and effete, not the hardworking and respectable. A brief respite from work to recover one’s health was acceptable; leisure as a way of life was not. Recreational travel was meant to be constructive, educational, or redemptive, such as nineteenth-century Chautauquas or visits to national parks. Mere hedonistic fun was a danger to morals and a healthy work ethic. While many Americans discarded their fear of leisure during the twentieth century, and even embraced it as a way of life – for an example of this, see retirees – academics continued to view tourism with suspicion.
Read the whole thing.
Dr. X has discovered the real reason for Moslem rage against Salman Rushdie. Her name is Padma.
 With the new server, Maggie's Farm should load noticeably faster, and pages should load faster, and it should speed up further over the next few days.
Still some problems if you access via AOL.
Cold-smoked these hunks of pork with cherry yesterday. One chunk came out a bit black on one side, and I don't know why. I think the rub makes the crust the tastiest part. 
Monday, July 2. 2007
Beverly "Bubbles" Sills died at 78. Una Voce Poco Fa (1976), from the Barber of Seville.
 We have written so much about Jihad Denial that we are sick of writing about it. I'm just as happy to let S,C and A take on the subject, (with reference to the UK attacks) with Dr. Sanity's help.
However, I do object to the references to "Leftist stupidity." That is not an argument - it's an ad hominem - and it does not do justice to the political calculation behind Jihad Denial. Fact is, "jihad" just doesn't fit "the narrative." Especially Jihad by doctors. That's all there is to it. Like the New York Times, they just try to minimize or ignore facts that get in the way.
I am pleased that Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence. It was insane, as was the entire case from the beginning.
I took the photo below yesterday during a delightful sail on Long Island Sound. The Bauer Island sandbar is clearly indicated on nautical charts, but this is the second-best way to find it. The wiser and now more experienced skipper must be a grand fromage in Rye, NY, because a Rye Police boat came several miles into Connecticut to offer assistance and ferrying services! "Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment." Gwynnie
. “Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience." Theodore Roosevelt . "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." Aldous Huxley . "If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way." Mark Twain 
 Larry Auster notes that there is no response in the UK to Moslems in the news yesterday advocating and justifying further terror in the UK.
Every time I think the Brits are just about to grow a pair, they let me down.
This little FICA review came in over the transom today, full of facts which the youths ought to be aware of:
Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:
1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month - and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to "put away," you may be interested in the following: --------------------
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent "Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social
Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
--------------------
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking" deciding
vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.
-------------------
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
-------------------
Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract, the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!
And I might add that none of the people controlling SS in our government
are dependent on it in the least. Congressmen have a completely separate fully funded retirement system. There is no decrease in their pay level at retirement.
 Dalrymple thinks about why Australian academics are in love with the idea of genocide of their aborigines. A quote:
...if you are unhappy in a country like Australia, you have to consider the possibility that the problem lies with you rather than with the conditions that surround you. This is a disagreeable thing, particularly for an intelligentsia, which is deprived by it of a providential role for itself. What does an intelligentsia do when a country is already as satisfactory in its political arrangements and social institutions as any country has ever been? Intelligentsias do not like the kind of small problems that day to day existence inevitably throws up, such as termites in the woodwork or conflict at work over desk-space: they like to get their intellectual teeth into weightier, meatier problems. What could be a weightier problem than a prosperous, fortunate country that was founded upon genocide? Clearly, if it was so founded, an intelligentsia is urgently needed to help it emerge from the dark moral labyrinth in which it exists, hitherto blindly. For only an intelligentsia is sufficiently used to thinking in abstractions to be qualified to act as guide to the nation.
Read the whole thing. Photo: Australian Aborigine with didgereedoo
Our host installed a super-duper new server today, so we have been down. It may take AOL a while to catch on, and for full function to reappear.
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