Friday, November 16. 2007
 From Will There Always be an England? in New Criterion, a quote:
Lee Smith, in an article in The American Prospect a couple of years ago, accurately summed up Tariq Ramadan’s “point of view”: Ramadan is a cold-blooded Islamist who believes that Islam is the cure for the malaise wrought by liberal values. His revision of the jihadist paradigm—peaceful but total—is brilliant in its way, and he may well turn out to be a major Islamist intellectual, far surpassing even his grandfather’s influence. His cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it’s still jihad. There’s no reason for Western liberals to try to understand that point of view. That gets to the nub of the issue—both with respect to the reality of Tariq Ramadan’s agenda and what we in the West should think of it. It was not a popular “point of view” at Oxford. But then political realities have always had a difficult time surviving in that rarefied air. On the High Street last month we saw a church placard announcing that they were “praying” to be a more “inclusive” congregation. And remember the Oxford Union in 1933: “Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country.” To have resolved otherwise would have been to exhibit what one confrence-goer stigmatized as “cultural essentialism” and a lamentable tendency to demonize “the Other.” How comical Tariq Ramadan and his friends must find these effete moral gymnastics. “An open mind is the best way to look at the world.” It’s such emollient advice, especially if you are bent on making sure that you alone will decide what counts as openness.
I believe that one reason the Left has contempt for Conservatives is for our coarse, knuckle-dragging lack of such effete gymnastics.
 Is Santa saying "ho,ho,ho" a new taboo? Wizbang. Ya can't make this stuff up.
From a piece at Surber: "Arizona Republic reports: “you must be a legal resident to get a driver’s license” — in Mexico." Excellent site for those in, or who wish to be in, the music business. h/t, Worstall More people killed by wind energy in the West than by nuclear power Warmongering, fascist Boy Scout fund-raiser for troops blocked in Cambridge. Cambridge is so sophisticated, isn't it? NYT warns: Resort owners affected by...snow? Smoking bans were just the first step for the Health Nazis. Samiz. Harry Reid,via Breibart: "Every place you go you hear about no progress being made in Iraq," said Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid. ..."It is not getting better, it is getting worse," he said.
How badly does the press want Hillary? Really bad. The truth about those poor Polar Bears. Jim Miller Ivy League profs overwhelming donate to Dems. Big Surprise. It must be because they are so much smarter than me. CBS says Rather has gone off the deep end. Reagan was a racist politician? There are so many logical holes in this guy's argument that I don't have time to address them. h/t, Dr. X Photo: Man's best friend, from Theo
Unlike Hell's Kitchen which we posted about two weeks ago, NYC's Chelsea neighborhood has been on the gentrification upswing for over 30 years. Now, it's as pleasant and cheerful as any neighborhood in the city. While it's known as a heavily gay area, it seems just more youthful than anything else. Tons of young professionals, and cozy 1800s townhouses. A darn civilized place to live in. A street scene, last weekend: 
Thursday, November 15. 2007
As everybody knows by now, NY Gov. Spitzer dropped his vote fraud plan, AKA drivers' licenses for illegals, and Mrs. Clinton "changed her mind" six minutes later. I guess that is what they call "practical politics." 80% of Iowa voters opposed the notion. In my opinion, the damage is done, because now we know what they want, if they could only get it. And I have no doubt that Spitzer got an earful from Hillary on the phone.
 Henninger on the '60s, in the WSJ. The Long Goodbye. Good stuff. Comments on the piece by Scott at Powerline.
Of 1968, Henninger notes: The year began with sales of the Beatles album, "Magical Mystery Tour." In retrospect, it was a premonition. In late January, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and crew members. A week later, the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet offensive. On Feb. 27, Walter Cronkite announced on CBS News that the U.S. had to negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War. On March 12, Sen. Gene McCarthy defeated incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, aided by antiwar students that Sen. McCarthy called his "children's crusade." Two weeks later, LBJ announced on TV that he would not run for re-election. One week later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was only April 4.
Read the whole thing. Link above.
 Working for Murdoch: Buzz Machine
Nature vs. nurture re race is no longer taboo at the NYT. Auster Jules after one year of his blog: "I also discovered it’s a colossal pain in the ass, like owning a restaurant." Indeed. Only idiots like us would even try to do it. John Thain goes to run Merrill. Moslem wetsuits. Gates Blame the doctors. Overlawyered Rangel on "our voluntary tax system." Conspiracy Ira Levin died, author of This Perfect Day. Cafe Hayek
 Feeling like a fraud or impostor is not a "syndrome," but it's a not-uncommon feeling, and sometimes it's a symptom.
Sometimes feeling fraudulent it can be a reflection of reality: many do not feel that they know all they should, or have all of the skills they believe they should have, to present themselves as sufficiently expert in something - and they might be right. That's the point Right Wing Prof is making in his piece about the "impostor syndrome" in academics. Feeling like an impostor can be simply the result of a forceful self-critique. For example: "Here I am applying for a job teaching literature, and I can't remember a darn thing about Beowulf." Similarly, many people puff themselves up, polish their presentations to the world, to conceal their flaws and weaknesses and to exaggerate their strengths. It often makes sense in life to do so - to put one's best foot forward - but at some point it can also leave a person prone to feeling that his life is an act or a sham, with only the illusion of substance or authenticity. For examples, "I know I'm a coward, but I need the world to see me as brave," or "I know I'm no genius, but I need people to think I'm a sophisticated intellectual." (Related: our recent post on masquerades and Social Signaling) Getting one's confidence in line with one's personal reality, one's potential, and one's achievements, without false humility and without false advertising, is not always easy. There are also more neurotic reasons for a person to have, as a symptom, a feeling of fraudulence, such as masochistic self-doubt or failed narcissism, but I won't go into those right now.
"Stake my future on a hell of a past
Looks like tomorrow is coming on fast
Ain't complaining 'bout what I got
Seen better times, but who has not?
Silvio, silver and gold
Won't buy back the beat of a heart grown cold
Silvio, I gotta go
Find out something only dead men know
Honest as the next jade rolling that stone
When I come knocking don't throw me no bone
I'm an old boll weevil looking for a home
If you don't like it you can leave me alone
I can snap my fingers and require the rain
From a clear blue sky and turn it off again
I can stroke your body and relieve your pain
And charm the whistle off an evening train
I give what I got until I got no more
I take what I get until I even the score
You know I love you and furthermore
When it's time to go you got an open door
I can tell you fancy, I can tell you plain
You give something up for everything you gain
Since every pleasure's got an edge of pain
Pay for your ticket and don't complain
One of these days and it won't be long
Going down in the valley and sing my song
I will sing it loud and sing it strong
Let the echo decide if I was right or wrong
Silvio, silver and gold
Won't buy back the beat of a heart grown cold
Silvio, I gotta go
Find out something only dead men know." "Silvio," from 1988's reviled "Down In The Groove." The album contained only a handful of original Dylan compositions, with this particular song credited as a co-writing effort between Dylan and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter (though Hunter was responsible for virtually all the lyrics). Dylan must have liked it, though, since it became a staple of the Neverending tour, appearing in almost every show in the mid-90s. Performances diminished in frequency by 1998, and the song has only been played on rare occasion since. The youtube below is from the song's heyday: a summer 1996 performance at the Prince's Trust benefit concert in London.
The revolting, oily Sidney Blumenthal is back working for the Clintons again. This is the sort of Kos-like shrill hysteria, enraged derangement, fear-mongering, and distortion which is his stock in trade, from a piece at Salon: Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government's departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.
 From Opinion Journal on Tuesday:
A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality." OK, "hokum" is our word. The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility. Much as they always have, Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder continue to climb into the middle and sometimes upper classes in remarkably short periods of time.
Whole thing here. Chart is from the article.
How much good news can people handle? What you won't get from the MSM: Gateway
Why are my Sugar Maples different colors this week?  
Wednesday, November 14. 2007
We stumbled into our cousin Theo's new semi-secret soft-porn art photography site. Our refined, sophisticated, intelligent, discreet readers will not want to check out Daily Totty, which appears to be under construction. Do not go there - I checked it out for you. You can click on the photos to biggify them, but I strongly advise you not to do so, because it is not appropriate for stolid, Christian, and morally pure New England Yankees.
 Howard Dean makes up his own theology. Everybody goes to heaven? That's not the deal, as I understand it.
Who told the Indians that Thanksgiving should be a time of mourning for them? Can you believe that Newsweek did this? If they really want to sell magazines, they should just switch to real porn instead of political porn. The rich are a pinata. Corner Two links to Rick in one day? What's a little vote fraud among friends? Vagina dentata. Sheesh. h/t, Vanderleun Gore goes to Kleiner Perkins. A part-time job. I'll bet it is. The strange war on homework. Am. Thinker The insane hatred of the Left towards Bush. Berkowitz in Opinion Journal. "You've got to be carefully taught," right? Oil speculation has driven gas prices. What is an "involuntary father"? Whatever it is, should it pay child support? Dr. Helen "Stewardship" of the people. Brits called upon to control their people more thoroughly. Moonbattery. This is totalitarianism, or monarchy, by bureaucrat, and Brussels is the new Versailles. A website to help people with disabilities - Disaboom. h/t, Slower Pace
If Warren Buffet wants to pay more taxes, nobody is stopping him from sending in a check. The Feds welcome donations, but get none from the mega-wealthy - including offshore Soros and offshore Kennedy. If you do not feel you are sufficiently taxed, don't complain - just ACT. Send it in, and give your conscience some relief. Taxes are not progressive enough. h/t, Dr.X. (By the way, if it needs to be said, I disagree with this link, entirely. I am in favor of a flat tax of 13% on everyone, with no deductions and no increase above 13% except in wartime.)
Mirror neurons might help to explain empathy, and even autism. h/t, Flares Almost everybody is diagnosed as Bipolar nowadays. h/t, Dr. X
 Gagdad Bob and I are fans of the chemist and polymath Michael Polanyi, which I guess means that we are fans of epistemology.
Bob comments, in Probing the Vertical Unknown: Polanyi compared scientific theories to the cane of a blind man. Imagine if you suddenly lost your sight and had to explore your surroundings with a cane. At first you would be very aware of the sensations of the cane in your hand. In a sense, your world would be very "cramped" and up close. But with time, the cane would begin to be an extension of your hand, so that you could "feel" things beyond your hand by essentially ignoring it.
In other words, if you focus on the hand, you specifically lose "sight" of what the cane is touching. Eventually the hand's "touch" would extend as far as the cane. Polanyi called the "hand knowledge" tacit and the "cane knowledge" focal. He also called it from ---> to knowledge; however, he felt that all meaningful knowledge shared this from ---> to structure. It doesn't mean that the knowledge isn't "real." But there is no way to conceptualize it in the absence of an active subject who evolves by converting more and more focal (to) knowledge into tacit (from) knowledge, thereby expanding the space in which he lives. For example, various scientific canes have allowed us to "see" all the way back to the origins of the cosmos, just as psychoanalytic canes allow us to peer into the unconscious.
Clear, or not? Epistemology slides into metaphysics, and metaphysics mercifully slides into "Where are my sneakers?" and "What's for supper?" Polanyi viewed "knowing" as an art, and believed in objective truth but respected its elusiveness. Most of his philosophy of science is in Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Image: A star "nursery" from the Hubble telescope
 A negative hotel review from Rick. Tropicana. For starters, I would not be caught dead in Las Vegas. Second, if taken there dead against my will, I would stay at the Bellagio.
A fast food calorie counter.
Merry Christmas. NY Gov. Spitzer will collect sales tax from internet sales. 8.3%, if you can believe that. Aren't internet sales out-of-state? No? Bush supporter elected PM in Denmark. Denmark?!? Hmmmm. Maybe the world is waking up and smelling the chai skim latte. Rich Lowry has it right. From Quiet Victory (h/t, Ace): Forget the briefings from generals, the intelligence evaluations and the Pentagon status reports. There is a handy indicator for whether the war in Iraq is going well — its relative absence from the front pages.
Clintonian terror tactics to keep the press in line: CNN's Wolf Blitzer has been warned not to focus Thursday's Dem debate on Hillary. 'This campaign is about issues, not on who we can bring down and destroy,' top Clinton insider explains. 'Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull 'a Russert.'' Blitzer is set to moderate debate from Vegas...
ie, No tough questions or you are screwed. Russert's question was a "character attack"? That is a lame spin. Related: Camille Paglia on Queen Hillary's Disruptive Court
 Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Tom Paine, in Common Sense (1776), as quoted by A Jacksonian in a comment here.
Tuesday, November 13. 2007
Why I think Hillary will win. I am by no means as pessimistic as Mr. Armey, but he makes good points with which I agree. In fact, I believe McCain or Rudy could beat her relatively easily. Without the MSM carrying her water and covering her tracks, and her last name, she would not even be in the running. She is a wholly media-made celebrity product, like Crest toothpaste and Paris Hilton. Where's the beef? I think the country is "ready" for a woman, black, or anything-else President (I know I am - but I do not like to vote for a potential Commander in Chief without military service) - but I don't think it's ready for a socialist with a rotten personality and a dubious moral compass.
From Prof Deneen, Giving a Damn. A quote: Can it be any coincidence that within a decade of the supposed renewal of political philosophy in America - the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971, perhaps the most intricate theoretical justification of the welfare state ever penned - that the welfare state in America, and increasingly throughout the world, was being dismantled? The American welfare state increases in scale especially during those decades when our thicker communities are being dismantled or abandoned ("The Great Society" - in the singular). As Tocqueville predicted, it would be the ascent of individualism itself that would give rise to the felt need for a "tutelary State" to compensate for what had once been provided - albeit unevenly, informally, unequally - within the thicker webs of familial and local life. The dismantling of the welfare state is seen as a victory by the Right, but they are often uncognizant of the corresponding dismantling of communal forms that their valorization of individualism - especially the individualism of the marketplace - effectively undermines. The Left believes that the battle can be won by getting the correct philosophical articulation of Rawls's thesis, and are fundamentally oblivious to the wholesale dismantling of any real commitment to civic concern that has been a consequence of their wholesale efforts at achieving individual liberation and autonomy. Contemporary liberalism and conservatism (so-called) alike are fundamentally incoherent.
This echoes some of Dr. Bliss' comments a week or so ago on The Problem with Women. Link is above to the whole essay.
'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.' Theodore Roosevelt 1907
The new counter-insurgency aircraft, the A-67 Dragon, is similar to the P-51, observes A Jacksonian, who compares their specs and capabilities. A restored P-51 below: 
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