I am off to sea again - see y'all on Monday, God willing. Try to have as fine a weekend as I will. The stripers are biting off Montauk. Stripers, not strippers.
Respect: Why it's not a bad thing to be named Gambino. I think I'll change my name from Junkie to Gambino.
Rick Moran outdoes himself. One quote:
Strip aside the rhetoric and the mesmerizing presence on the stump and you are left with a rather ordinary, rather inspid liberal with visions of a planet united and America a slavish partner to the goals and aspirations of the bureaucrats at the United Nations – the US an emasculated presence while our own vital interests take second place to those preaching the gospel of universal brotherhood.
This has been a dream of the new left for 60 years. And Obama, the word made flesh of that dream, is just the man to fulfill that destiny.
The loony hypochondriacal Mold Scam. The world is full of mold. The outdoors is full of mold. Mold Rules the earth. It will probably inherit the earth.
Are guys really better at Math? Stop looking at that gal on the right. She's good at math and navigation.
Definitely Divine Providence. Insty
Berlin Yes, Baghdad No. WSJ. As I seem to recall, we occupied West Germany and Berlin, didn't we?
Liberals plan to return to The New Deal. There will be some serious reaction if they try to pull this stunt. h/t, Driscoll
Health Care 2008: A Political Primer. New Atlantis
Things just aren't all that bad on Main Street. Unless you work on Wall Street.
"Underrepresentation" and "overrepresentation." Thompson. I am deeply, deeply concerned that straight men are underrepresented in costume design.
Fathering autism. WaPo. Everybody wants to blame. Tony Snow knew better.
Hey. What the heck is a "community activist"? Is that a, like, job? Or what is it? Quote from Malanga, at City Journal:
Community organizing’s roots stretch back to the 1930s and Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation and author of Rules for Radicals. But it wasn’t until President Lyndon Johnson’s ambitious plan to end poverty through massive federal spending that the Alinsky model—grassroots organizing, neighborhood by neighborhood—really took off. Starting in the mid-1960s, the federal government directed billions of dollars to neighborhood groups, convinced that they knew better than Washington what their communities needed. The federal funds, eventually supplemented by state and local tax dollars, helped create a universe of government-funded community groups running everything from job-training programs to voter-registration drives—far beyond anything Alinsky could have imagined. Some 3,000 local social-services groups were soon receiving government funding in New York City alone. Many were new, but the money also helped turn traditional charities that had operated on private donations into government contractors.
Those who led these social-services groups became advocates, unsurprisingly, for government-funded solutions to social problems. To defend and expand their turf, organizers began heading into the political arena, wielding the power they had accumulated in neighborhoods to build a base of supporters. In New York, operators of huge social-services groups like Pedro Espada in the Bronx and Albert Vann in Brooklyn won election to state and federal posts after heading up large, powerful nonprofits. By the late 1980s, nearly 20 percent of New York City Council members were products of the government-funded nonprofit sector, and they were among the most strident advocates for higher taxes and more government spending. In other cities, too, from Chicago to Cleveland to Los Angeles, the road to electoral success increasingly ran through the government-funded social-services sector. Spending directed to these groups boomed through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Normal, competent folks don't go into politics. It's a well-known fact. They do real jobs that produce money and do not cost us money.
Photo from Theo is a favor to cheer up our blog pal Bruce Kesler who used to post at Democracy Project. It's a long story.
