Wednesday, January 12. 2011
Aways use your enemy's hand to catch a snake.
Persian Proverb
Major snow dump overnight - lost power for a while, lost my links. I'll post this, instead:
Giffords Shot: Now, A Word from Our Gun Control Sponsors…
Rhode Island Governor Bans State Officials from Talk Radio
Dem Congressman: If Violent Rhetoric Didn't Cause This Shooting -- It Will Cause Next One!
Dr. Torrey: A Predictable Tragedy in Arizona - We emptied state mental hospitals starting in the 1960s without providing adequate treatment alternatives.
And "Dr." Matthews
Video: Slain girl’s father says attack the price of “a free society”
OK, that's enough of today's items on the shooting. The original news story should have been "paranoid pothead goes on shooting rampage."
But within hours of the news report, people began to exploit the sad story for their own purposes. Twisting the facts, inventing false narratives, "letting no crisis go to waste" (not that this represents a crisis). It's like Tawana Brawley all over again, the flat-out lie which Al Sharpton rode to seemingly perpetual fame and fortune. Propaganda designed to create a consensus view, or at least a thinkable view regardless of the facts. A snow job:
snow job
n
Slang chiefly US and Canadian an instance of deceiving or overwhelming someone with elaborate often insincere talk
Even the worthy Dr. Torrey did it, above. This kid would not have been hospitalizable, much less long-term hospitalizable, against his will, anywhere in the US. Well, I might be wrong about that: apparently he had been making death threats.
The only sane comment I saw this morning was the slain girl's father. He gets it. Well, this guy gets it too, at Am Thinker via Lucianne, The Media Has Declared War:
Newsrooms and hospitals have one major thing in common: the "hush" is the loudest thing anyone ever hears. The "hush" is the moment when normal activity stops cold for an announcement of major events that will entirely reshape any usual activity. While both newsrooms and hospitals stop on that kind of news -- and then, following it, race into a whirlwind of overdrive -- the similarities end there.
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Comments:
In the crosshairs of the trigger-happy MSM: Sarah Palin
In the crosshairs of the trigger-happy MSM: the 1st Amendment
In the crosshairs of the trigger-happy MSM: anyone who defies the imposition of socialism in America
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Otherwise, the blizzard of exploitation is disheartening, if not sickening.
It's a winter wonderland out there; a perfect day to be 6 or 7 years old.
Tuesday, January 11. 2011
 A Bird Dog pup (pupette, actually) has asked me to help her fill out her college education by listing some things she ought to know and read, but cannot fit into her college schedule as she has mapped it out.
Music to a Dad's ears, of course. Father knows best.
Well, I will just focus on one piece of her request here and now (because it went well beyond entertainment - this is just the fun part). She is a theater rat and reads plays daily for fun. She knows most of Shakespeare pretty well, and loves Pinter too (!). But she says her knowledge of films prior to her era is very limited. "What films should I know?," she asks. (I call them movies because I am a knuckle-dragging clinger.)
Ain't it great when the youths acknowledge their ignorance?
I told her I had once, for fun, made a list of my 100 essential movies (and I am not much of a movie fan), but it went away when my ancient Mac died ten years ago. Naturally, my list had some John Wayne, Gone With The Wind, Bridge Over The River Kwai, Swept Away, Streetcar, Waterfront, Mr. Blandings, Wonderful Life, the hideously painful Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, some James Bond and some WC Fields, Citizen Kane, Days of Wine and Roses, some Jack Lemmon like 7 Year Itch, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Harvey, Billy Budd, the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol ( which she has seen countless times), and, as one item, all of Charlie Chaplin. I don't want to try to make my list again, and, for a person who is more of a reader than a movie person, I got well over 100 with my list of basic flicks.
If you google "100 essential movies of all time," you can get all sorts of obscure lists by critics. She did take the time from her Christmas-break reading and ski trips to New Hampshire and constant NYC trips to watch Amarcord today, which definitely is on my list.
Man, that movie is rich in memorable imagery, and as Italian as anchovies in olive oil.
So help me out. What's on your essential movies-to-see-to-be-culturally-literate list? (please do not feel that you need to list 100!).
Why spend 2 million for the simple cottage we posted yesterday, when you can spend just 8X more for a special ski house with plenty of space for all of your friends?
OK, so it isn't most peoples' idea of quaint little Stowe. I suppose you could buy it just to dynamite this wedding cake.
Monday, January 10. 2011
(I hope this is my most inane post of 2011)
I don't get to malls very often, I am happy to say. Basically never, but I did join the Mrs. to check out Teavana on Sunday afternoon. We had run out of good tea. They had one of the Help Wanted signs. The place was busy. Help Wanted signs all over the place.
Well, it was a bit of an adventure for me. "Bird Dog Goes To The Mall." Your editor goes to lots of places, and loves to bang around NYC, but not malls or shops unless Home Depot counts. Nice clean mall with natural light and Palm trees all over. Packed with people, but I tried to avoid taking their photos. The main thing I noticed was the small-d democratic nature of the populace there. All types, all colors, every apparent level of evident prosperity or lack thereof, all languages, all ages, strolling, laughing, window-shopping, and joking around. A day off work. In the tea place, I heard German, Japanese, Chinese, French, and something I could not identify.
An agora. People having fun, spending money, looking at stuff. Too bad they couldn't have built a similar phenomenon on the town's streets, but perhaps people like the feeling of enclosure and predictability.
More Mall Adventure pics below -
Continue reading "Help Wanted: A Mall Adventure for Bird Dog"
Heather MacDonald: Restoring the Social Order - Twenty momentous years of conservative policy success in cities. She begins:
Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency since the early 1990s. You’d never know it from members of the opinion elite, however, who have rarely recognized these successes, much less their provenance. So let’s recapitulate an epic battle about the foundations of social order, a battle that had not just a clear winner but also a clear loser: the liberal policy prescriptions for cities that many opinion makers and politicians still embrace. New York has been at the center of this battle because so many of the bad ideas that wreaked havoc on cities hatched there. Fortunately, so did many of the antidotes.
Manhattan, early morning, from the Whitestone Bridge
The New River Valley Outdoorsman. It's good fun to read his posts, in the left-side column.
"Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation."
Kin Hubbard
Sunday, January 9. 2011
Had a fine New England hunt today with Gwynnie, another pal, and the new pup. We did manage to bag a few birds. This enthusiastic young Lab (only his third real hunt) puts on a good point. I think it would be a shame to train the point out of him, but some folks like a Lab to flush the bird right away.
More photos on continuation page below:
Continue reading "New England Pheasants "
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields"
Krauthammer via Protein:
Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration’s bold push for government expansion – a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders’ intent.
White flight from the Dems
US jobs report an ‘utter mess’
The Distraction Of Birthright Citizenship
Shrinkwrapped: Sex and War; Political Correctness and Perversion
Surber: Believe in global warming, collect $2.4 billion
Related, via If it were only about the science:
What it really shows is the extent to which the politics of global warming is driven by an already existing culture of fear. It doesn’t matter what The Science (as greens always refer to it) does or doesn’t reveal: campaigners will still let their imaginations run riot, biblically fantasising about droughts and plagues, because theirs is a fundamentally moralistic outlook rather than a scientific one. It is their disdain for mankind’s planet-altering arrogance that fuels their global-warming fantasies – and they simply seek out The Science that best seems to back up their perverted thoughts. Those predictions of a snowless future, of a parched Earth, are better understood as elite moral porn rather than sedate risk analysis….
"Moral Pron"? Cool phrase.
Why the Left Loves the Lies of Climate “Science” - Climate science's only product is political because its only patrons are politicians.
Brooks on health care: Buckle Up for Round 2
WaPo blames Israel for Palestinian barbarity (updated: NY Times too)
Reason: Defending the Right to Offend
Truth in America: Am Spectator
Best of Left-Wing Hate From 2010
Acts 10:34-43
10:34 Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
10:35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
10:36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all.
10:37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:
10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
10:39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;
10:40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,
10:41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
10:42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.
10:43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
Home sweet home. Even got central heat. Gas heat.
And my 27 year-old Brooks tux still fits me. Trousers were let out an inch a few years ago, though. Darn good investment: 4-5 times/year, ready whenever needed. Sharp-dressed man, is Bird Dog. When he wants to be, that is. Which is rare.
Saturday, January 8. 2011
I have been sorting through my file of images, and found some that are worth posting before discarding. I suppose some have been used in past years. I don't recall where most of them came from.
I may need to do this for a few Saturdays, to clean out the files...
Steal them at will.
More below the fold -
Continue reading "My first fun and useful image dump"
Ethnic dining? A bit of England in New York City: Tea & Sympathy.
 From Mark Steyn's Dependence Day:
Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world. It starts with the money—it always does. But the money is only the symptom. We wouldn’t be this broke if we hadn’t squandered our inheritance in a more profound sense.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind (from Act ll, Scene 7 of As You Like it, 1600)
Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing, &c.
Friday, January 7. 2011
I happen to know two people who are venturing to Haiti next week, one acquaintance and one friend, to do good works, mostly of a medical nature. They do not know eachother.
Haiti is in a state of anarchy. It was anarchy before the earthquake, which is why it could not deal with an ordinary catastrophe. They tried socialism, but how do you do socialism without producers to take money from? There have been hundreds of NGOs in Haiti, and billions of dollars given, and it all goes into a black hole. Nothing happens. God knows where the money ends up. Switzerland or the Caymans, probably.
Haiti is the sort of disastrous place that draws people who want to do good works. As the whole world grows more prosperous, there are fewer and fewer outlets for such folks. For non-profit types, going to work in Haiti is analogous to getting your combat medals.
In my view, Haiti's problem is the culture - not earthquakes or cholera or the endemic rape or Voodoo or hurricanes. The Dominican Rep, next door on the same island, is flourishing, lovely, and generally civilized and safe despite their rural poverty.
- How do you transplant a new culture to a population of 10 million poor people?
- How do you persuade businesses to invest in a totally corrupt and violent place?
- How do you create an honest and well-intentioned government in an anarchic place where flagrant corruption and violence are the rule?
- And who asked you to do that, anyway?
I advised these folks to read Graham Greene's classic The Comedians, but they had done that already.
So I advised them to watch Masked and Anonymous.
 A reader suggested that I stop by Lepcis Magna (aka Leptis Magna, aka Neapolis) while visiting North Africa.
Not a bad idea, but I have seen tons of Roman ruins from England to Pompeii to North Africa, and they're all about the same: an arena, a forum, a bath, a few monuments and lots of columns, etc. The ones in Carthage were cool.
I prefer seeing Greek things, and it seems like it would be a shame to go through life without seeing ancient Egyptian things in situ.
Where I want to poke around, from the Romans, is Ostia.
We posted on a visit to Ostia a few years ago.
 At Washington Times:
What was most remarkable about this was the almost hysterical opposition from congressional Democrats and left-wing commentators. In what should have been a united celebration of the nation's foundation document in a period of partisan rancor, liberals instead reinforced the view that they are profoundly uncomfortable with the essential truths underlying American freedom.
I hate to say it, but it appears to be so. If it is so, I say it's a big deal. The Constitution is our secular Bible, and designed to protect us citizens from State power. It was - and remains - radical and revolutionary.
Statists and elitists hate it, and prefer to forget why it was written. They think they know how I should arrange my life and feel somehow anointed to do it for me. I resent their attitude immensely.
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Moe Lane at RedState: 