Saturday, September 15. 2007
 Sandy Berger, aka Sandy Burglar, is back. What exactly did he steal? RWNH. In politics, as in the mob, this is what is called "loyalty."
Mysterious weight loss. Never Yet Melted Banning religious books from prisons. Anchoress. I guess they want to get rid of the Korans, but decided to be even-handed with Christian stuff too. Another example of moral-equivalence insanity. My opinion? Fill the prison with Bibles. Joking about 9-11. The James Brolin video. there must be something wrong with that guy. Photo: For Melissa fans, I stumbled into this Melissa collection (I forget where I found the link) at the fine New England ex-blog called Ex-Donkey Blog.
Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!  Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!
I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.
The hospitals were fun
in certain ways, and an honour or so,
but on the whole fifty was a mess as though
heavy clubs from below
and from—God save the bloody mark—above
were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love,
what was you loafing of
that fifty put you off, out & away,
leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day,
nights naught but fits. I pray
the opening decade contravene its promise
to be as bad as all the others. Is
there something Henry miss
in the jungle of the gods whom Henry's prayer to?
Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue
sins, son, worse than you.
Here is a bio of Berryman.
Hinky-dinky
Parley voo
Cheer up the face
The war
Is thru
Burma-Shave (1930)
Another lost piece of roadside Americana, the Burma-Shave advertisements were placed one line at a time on small board road signs along country highways, with a spacing of maybe 200 yards and the last sign was always Burma Shave. At the height of the campaign, there were 7000 of these on the roads. See http://www.quiltbus.com/burma.htm , and also here, for the story.
Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease? Synthstuff Why one must take science research with a grain of salt. Dr. Helen. I want a new pastor. Mr. Free Market LaShawn on mammary breaks. "Al Qaeda is the enemy of Allah." Gateway on Abu Risha's funeral
Friday, September 14. 2007
Junior Wells and Buddy Guy with the great Sonny Boy Williamson song which should be, or is, the theme song of Maggie's Farm (after Dylan's Maggie's Farm, of course). "Don't start me talkin', I'll tell everything I know..."
 Fred Thompson hits the right notes for me when he talks about federalism, a topic of little interest to either of the George Bushes, nor to any Dems.
A quote from Edwards' piece at TCS: There has been a void in the Republican presidential race. The GOP candidates have spoken about immigration, taxes, social issues, and the war in Iraq. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain have also spoken frequently about Ronald Reagan in order to position themselves as the political heirs to the great president. The candidates, however, have overlooked a central idea that animated Reagan's view of government. That was federalism, the constitutional principle that the federal government's responsibilities are "few and defined" as James Madison put it. Reagan believed that the federal government had grown too big and swallowed up too many activities that, in the words of the 10th Amendment, should be left to the states and the people. Education, welfare, food stamps, and other such activities were not properly federal roles in his view. Here is Reagan kicking off his run for the presidency on November 13, 1979: "The federal government should do only those things specifically called for in the Constitution. All others shall remain with the states or the people ... The federal government has taken on functions it was never intended to perform and which it does not perform well. There should be a planned, orderly transfer of such functions to states and communities."
Sadly, accomplishing that goal was another story. Read the whole thing.
Megan Cox Gurdon in the WSJ on A Wrinkle in Time. (h/t, The Corner) A quote: Of course I wasn't the only reader to find Ms. L'Engle's work of science fantasy initially disconcerting. Famously, 26 publishers rebuffed the manuscript before the author found a benefactor in Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1962. Winning the Newbery a year later secured the book's place in the pantheon of children's literature, and since then innumerable schoolchildren have experienced the dazzling weirdness of a story that starts with quantum physics and ends with a child's love overcoming vast powers of evil. "It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice," Ms. L'Engle said in her Newbery acceptance speech. "And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant. Coming back to the book 30 years later, it's striking how true the same process is for the reader. A child is inclined to take away very different lessons from a novel than is an adult. For one thing, "A Wrinkle in Time" is infused with Christian faith to such a degree that, were it newly published today, it would probably be relegated to the religious section of the bookstore.
 So says Hillary Clinton.
Yikes! Is our country that bad? Warshawsky in American Thinker discusses. If it's so bad, how come everyone with grit in the world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity? Maybe if we change it and make it less amenable, they will stop wanting to come?
A day or two ago The Barrister posted Kay Hymowitz on "Freedom Fetishes," which addressed the conflicts within Libertarianism. A good case in point is Moderate Voice's piece on legalizing prostitution. A pure Libertarianism might suggest, as the latter piece does, "Why not? No-one is harmed, consenting adults, etc., so who cares?" What's the correct answer?
A tip of the old camo cap to David Thompson, who found a site about New York's 1939 World's Fair. I know that my Gramps took my Mom and my uncle to see it all. Lots of images at the site. Here's a postcard of the Underwood Typewriter exhibit: 
 Bush's speech last night on Iraq via Surber here.
"Democratic Europe, RIP" Gates. Lance Morrow of Time quoted at Blair: The worst times, as we see, separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized. This is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started.
Bullying, intolerance,guns, code language, and "peace studies": Lessons in tolerance for the Intolerant, at Classical Values. A quote: Recently, I noticed an insidious movement called "Peace Studies" which among other things redefines the word "violence" to mean opposition to socialism. Last week Andrew Sullivan called it "ideology masquerading as scholarship" and praised Bruce Bawer for "putting his finger on something": We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it's opposed to every value that the West stands for -- liberty, free markets, individualism -- and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we're talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. I don't think this is happening merely under the media radar. It's happening under everyone's radar.
I can't wait for my annual duck/goose/grouse trip to Lake Winnipegosis in just a few days. 
Thursday, September 13. 2007
From Bruce Thornton's Fighting at a Disadvantage in City Journal: Even a cursory survey of world history explodes these romantic clichés and noble-savage fantasies. The West’s sins have been the sins of humanity everywhere. But the goods of the West—political freedom, consensual government, human rights, rationalism, and respect for the individual, to name a few—are unique to the West and account for its success. Just ask the millions of non-Western Others who every year risk their lives to migrate to Europe and America, even as virtually nobody goes in the other direction. Indeed, the ignorance of history makes multiculturalism possible. People who have never learned about the uniqueness of ancient Greece will make a bestseller out of a book like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, which argues that the West’s ascendancy is an accident of geography and the distribution of plant and animal species. Such people won’t think to ask why the Greeks flourished, inventing consensual government and political freedom, when they shared the same climate, plants, and animals as the Egyptians and Persians. In the post-9/11 context, and before it, multiculturalism predisposed many in the West to look on Muslims primarily as fascinating Others, victimized by Western racism, imperialism, and colonialism. We rationalize Islamic terror and place the blame for it elsewhere—on ourselves. We saw such self-flagellation in the days after 9/11, when numerous Western intellectuals, most notoriously ex–University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, blamed the terrorist attacks on American crimes and rationalized 9/11 as the “justice of roosting chickens,” as Churchill’s speech was titled. The therapeutic sensibility that now dominates our public thinking reinforces this tendency to excuse Islamic terror.
Read the whole thing. (h/t, Sissy via a comment)
A farmer and his daughter, a traveling salesman, a Catholic, a Jew, a Protestant, a lawyer, a psychiatrist, a preacher, an Irishman, an Italian, a Pole, a mute parrot, a talking dog, two British spinsters and a milkman all walk into a bar.
The bartender says "What is this, some kind of joke?"
After considering the comments, and thinking the issue over, I decided to exercise my editorial prerogative and take down the News Junkie's flag girl post.
 Remember that famous lady who sued Winnebago after she put her RV into cruise control on the highway, then walked to the back for a cup of coffee?
She claimed that Winnebago had not made it sufficiently clear to her that cruise control couldn't drive the vehicle. When some people do idiotic things that defy the most elementary common sense resulting in "accidents," they see dollar signs. When most people do dumb things, however, they just blame themselves and leave it at that. What is the difference between those two categories of people? Read about Slate's Emily Bazelon at Overlawyered. How can any manufacturer anticipate every moronic thing a person might do with a product? They would need to hire teams of morons as product testers. Are such cases really about personal responsibility, or are they just about a class of greed-intoxicated people who are comfortable with ripping off businesses and their insurors? Image: A Winnebago of the sort that cannot drive itself down the road. For that, you need the more expensive model.
Re illegal immigration: Somebody must think I am an idiot if they think I would fall for this manipulative horse poop. Using kids to achieve one's political goals is close to child abuse. And why isn't the kid with his mom, anyway?
"Our conversation was short and sweet
It nearly swept me off-a my feet.
And I'm back in the rain,
And you are on dry land.
You made it there somehow
You're a big girl now.
Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence,
He's singin' his song for me at his own expense.
And I'm just like that bird,
Singin' just for you.
I hope that you can hear,
Hear me singin' through these tears.
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we've shared can't last.
I can change, I swear,
See what you can do.
I can make it through,
You can make it too.
Love is so simple, to quote a phrase,
You've known it all the time, I'm learnin' it these days.
Oh, I know where I can find you,
In somebody's room.
It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way.
A change in the weather is known to be extreme
But what's the sense of changing horses in midstream?
I'm going out of my mind,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we've been apart." "You're a Big Girl Now," a song that needs little introduction, from none other than Blood On The Tracks. A performance from April 1997 is below, from a show just three days before the one The Dylanologist, tender of years, witnessed in Wayne, NJ along with Bird Dog.
The Herald should run a weekly Friday or Saturday feature entitled something like "Bay State Life" or "Notes from a Cabinetmaker," written by this guy, along with the photos he finds. It would sell newspapers. I guarantee it. You could get him for cheap, because he is an undiscovered jewel: tasteful, hip, wry, dry, but tender and sentimental at the same time.
From "Crazy Ann:" Democrats claim Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress on the surge was a put-up job with a pre-ordained conclusion. As if their response wasn't.
Democrats yearn for America to be defeated on the battlefield and oppose any use of the military - except when they can find individual malcontents in the military willing to denounce the war and call for a humiliating retreat.
It's been the same naysaying from these people since before we even invaded Iraq -- despite the fact that their representatives in Congress voted in favor of that war.
Read Coulter's entire summary of the history of logical inconsistencies regarding Iraq, at Human Events. The story tells of the setting of a new low for the concept of "loyal opposition."
Brit Tories consider a ban on HDTV, along with controls on kitchen applicances, to save the earth. (h/t, Gay and Right). Meanwhile, climate scientists increasingly skeptical about global warming fears. Photo above: an "ultra-modern" American kitchen of the 1920s, which is still probably too electrically-powered for the Tories (photo via Dr. X.). Yes, the Tories. Sweden's Islamic crime wave. Free Republic. A quote: The boys explain, laughingly, that “there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you’re robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you’ve succeeded, it simply feels good.” “It’s so easy to rob Swedes, so easy.” “We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to.” The immigrant youth regard the Swedes as stupid and cowardly: “The Swedes don’t do anything, they just give us the stuff. They’re so wimpy.” The young robbers do not plan their crimes: “No, we just see some Swedes that look rich or have nice mobile phones and then we rob them...”
I guess the Swedes take their "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" seriously. Orwell Update: The EU has a "Justice and Security Officer." He is worried about what words people use. Samizdata. Want some more EU Disease this morning? This quoted at No Pasaran: The head of the Council of Europe - a mainly human rights watchdog based in Strasbourg, France and not an EU institution - branded the protesters bigots and said they were a threat to Europe's values.
"It is very important to remember that the freedom of assembly and expression can be restricted to protect the rights and freedoms of others, including the freedom of thought, conscience and religion," secretary general Terry Davis said.
Who was it who said "1984 (or was it Brave New World?) was intended as a warning, not as an instruction manual."? Is Iraq Al Quaida bait? It's a theory. Am. Thinker Good news for the planet: Earth may survive the death of the sun. Brit troops sent to Iranian border. Polipundit Denialists. Germans and 9-11. Moonbattery. The Europeans have an historical weakness for denial, don't they? The Conservative advantage in syndicated opinion columns. (h/t, Memeorandum) Totten on Ramadi today. Lots of photos. A quote from Oxford Medievalist on Hsugate: While the story is still very much alive, which is surprising since it involves Hillary, I'd point out that, if it were any other non-Clinton politician at the center of this scandal, his or her candidacy would've been sunk by now.
Yes, we have learned to have no standards for the Clintons: they have taught us well. Many Hsu links and much info at Gateway.
Many Christians misinterpret Jesus' promise of the "abundant life" to mean perfect health, a comfortable lifestyle, constant happiness, full realization of your dreams, and instant relief from problems through faith and prayer. In a word, they expect the Christian life to be easy. They expect heaven on earth. This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality. From Rick Warren's A Purpose Driven Life. John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a collection of his favorite quotes from the book.
Wednesday, September 12. 2007
From Flopping, who has a few more good 'uns: 
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