Cancelling the New York Times

I read the Times since a kid (yeah, one of those uncool kids), and I have gotten my own daily NYT since a callow youth in prep school. It arrived on a huge library table, labeled by name, each morning as you entered the main building on the way from morning Chapel to the dining hall. (Back then, about half of us got the NY Herald Tribune and half the NYT, and each half viewed the other half as benighted.) It has been part of my daily morning life ever since, wherever I have lived.

 But I have had enough of their propaganda, their selective choice of facts, their tilting of front page stories, their condescension, the smugly virtuous attitude, their preference for sentiment over economic facts, the predictably party-line editorials, their writers' total ignorance of even introductory statistics (they seem to hire people who can write, but who don't know anything about history, math, economics, science, warfare, or anything else), and, finally, their embarassing op-ed team which is as deficient in common sense and in respect for the USA as it is in testosterone. The NYT is no longer the "newspaper of record," but a loyal agent (or "useful idiot"?) of the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, stuck in a combination of moldy rhetoric of the 1960s, the moldy statist politics of the 1930s, the cocktail party anti-American "radical chic" of the goofy, cocaine-addled NYC of the 1970s, and adolescent-style reflexive anti-traditionalism. Test it for yourself: How long has it been since you have been surprised by a NYT editorial? How long since a NYT editorial has provoked you to thought? Q.E.D.

For this post, I had saved about ten recent examples of the above, but decided that would be beating a dead horse, and their editorial on John Roberts pushed me over the edge: it was indistinguishable from a Scrapple Face satire of the NYT. They have a socio-political agenda, and do not let confusing facts or intellectual integrity get in their way...I guess they imagine that they are in the noble vanguard of something wonderful (!), but sometimes I think they aren't even aware of what they are doing, because their prejudice is second nature. They have become a joke, but they don't know it yet. I hope they are beginning to get the joke, because newspapers are fine things. "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

I kept putting the deed off, like delaying putting down a sick old dog, but I finally I cut the cord this week. But I cheat a little: I can read the Tuesday Science Times online, and I kept the delivery of the Sunday for the Book Review, etc. Plus folks email me pieces I should see. For those who need a New York newspaper to survive, try The New York Sun. They are equally good at letting you know what music, dance, gallery shows, restaurants, etc. you are missing, and they do not throw curve balls.

Well, I am not alone. I had an elegant dinner at the home of long-time NYC Democrats last night, prominent in NYC business and politics and charity, supporters of the arts, but old-style Dems - Moynihan Dems, JFK Dems. Smart, lovely, gracious, refined people who would not consider the Clintons to be socially appropriate, but might vote for them. The hostess confessed to me that she had cancelled their NYT too, and replaced it with the Sun. I was amazed. The same week, this story comes out. Other newspapers may blame their circulation declines on a number of causes, but everyone I know who has quit it has done so for the same reasons I have, and with a similar reluctance and a similar feeling of abandoning an old companion - but why begin one's day agitated by a newspaper's transparently biased and manipulative decisions?

To paraphrase Reagan, I did not leave the NYT; the NYT left me. I do not miss it, yet, anyway. Give me the whole truth, people of the NYT, with knowledge and fact rather than partisan opinion and propaganda behind it, and I will come back home to you, old gal.

Here's the hard part - Stop the ACLU's Trackback Party.

Unbelievable

Chirac's face on new Palestinian stamp. Atlas.

Told Ya So

Anyone who would live in New Orleans is a Total Moron and deserves these consequences. Make it a national park for ducks and gators, and ivorybills. Or a Disney thing to celebrate Cajun coonass culture - best food in the USA. Let the mighty Mississippi run wherever it wants to. Or, hey, move back in...there's always next year to ride your roof again.

Someone, please tell me why I should support such below-sea-level idiocy with my taxes...this isn't just below normal sea-level, it's below normal IQ level.

And for those Brit idiots who blame US-caused global warming for hurricanes, check here.

And for those scumbags like Rangel and Mr. Hillary who attack Bush for hurricanes, check here.

And hey, you ignorant emailers who never sucked the yellow fat out of a crawfish shell - learn about coonass.

Time to Cash in on your Blog?

Who wouldn't want to? WSJ has story today. We will entertain any offers over ten million for Maggie's Farm, as of today. Cash only. I told you we were cyber-sluts.

Update: 24 hours and still no emails with offers to buy...I do not understand that at all.

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.

P. J. O'Rourke

You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you may like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

From Dylan's Gotta Serve Somebody, on Slow Train Coming 

Bird Dog's New Nephew

Nathaniel is famous already with this Maggie's debut, with a Keith Richards hairdo and Yoda mannerisms, and getting used to a windy Cape Cod beach a couple of weeks ago.

Nat? Gnat? Nate? Yoda?

May the Force be with you, little fella.

Smallest robots built by Dartmouth researchers.  

Positive review of Stones new album: A Bigger Bang. In The Week.

Soros is back. Is this guy an American citizen and, if so, why?

Why engineering is a lousy career path, by Kern at TCS.

The Krugman Report, by Luskin.

Merkel's failure: Not much of a politician, I guess. NYT

VDH on Katrina Reporting:

There you have one of the media's favorite devices for disguising opinion as news, one on display in the coverage of the disaster in New Orleans. At the very height of the disaster reporters solicited opinions from people about what was happening and why, and unsurprisingly, the majority of poor black people asked said Bush and the federal government were to blame, a perception echoed by Democrats and black politicians for obvious partisan reasons. These perceptions of reality were then reported day after day, and not long after there followed the “scientific” poll to solicit even more perceptions based on the earlier perceptions publicized by the media. The result is then reported as news, and thus through the magic of media alchemy subjective perceptions become facts in the minds of many.

Read entire predictably good piece.

Darkness at Noon

Hitchins has done us a favor by highlighting Arthur Koestler in Slate magazine. Koestler was a Hungarian Jew who spent much of his life searching for something to believe in: Marxism, Zionism, hedonism, and who ultimately committed suicide. His disillusionment with Marxism resulted in the anti-Stalinist Darkness at Noon which is, or was, on every high school reading list.

A couple of quotes from Hitchin's piece:

From the first page of Darkness at Noon you become aware that the daily realization of impending execution is a powerful stimulus, both to reflection and to fatalism. Koestler's chief character, Nicholas Rubashov, is modeled on those former Bolshevik intellectuals who made full "confessions" of fantastic and abominable crimes at the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. And, because Koestler had by no means forgotten what he had learned about the dialectic, he decided to place Rubashov in a dilemma from which he himself had escaped. What if the opponent of Stalin is still half-convinced that Stalin is morally wrong but may be "historically" right? He may decide to put his name on the confession and hope that history will one day vindicate him. His last duty to the Party may, in other words, be suicide.

Another:

Orwell's more widely read Nineteen Eighty Four, which has many points of similarity with Darkness at Noon, makes the same terrifying point that the fanatics don't just want you to obey them: They want you to agree with them.

One more:

Throughout the novel, Koestler is at pains to stress the similarity of totalitarianism to religion and to make the related comparison between dissent and heresy. It was actually his co-editor, Richard Crossman, who came up with the title The God That Failed for the anthology that included the ex-communists Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright, and many others. Memorable though the title proved to be, a better one might have been Another God That Failed. For the rest of his life, Koestler swung between various forms of rationalism and pseudo-science. He was one of those people who is so intelligent and polymathic—and, one suspects, so easily bored—that no topic could detain him for long.

Read the whole thing.

Rita Update

Go to Stormtrack for details. And scroll down a bit to see his school bus posting.

More Tax Revenue

Since our so-called conservatives have become big-govt conservatives, Kudlow offers the solution.

Why Citizens Need to be Armed, Part 18

Right equals Might explains it, in NO

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

Walt Whitman

Sunday Fishing

A teaser which will keep you following Maggie's Farm: Last Sunday morning, 6:30 AM. I am out in the garden in the semi-dark, working, digging, weeding, transplanting, drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee and content to be alive. Along comes John and a bunch of my best buddies in his politically incorrect Suburban. "Hurry up. Get in the car, as you are." I guess I missed his call - I do miss some calls. So I grab my camera (without battery), and do so, of course, guiltily aware of missing church and church picnic, etc. Photos, and mysterious story of a death at sea, to follow...

Bush Hates Texas

With his nefarious Pentagon Racist Hurricane Joy-stick, he is aiming Rita towards Texas. I guess Rove - Bush's Brain - is trying to make amends for aiming Katrina towards black New Orleans. What a sneaky guy that Rove is to aim a minor storm at the whites. Like he can fool us.

Semicolon Wars

It seems like a fine thing to have a debate raging which has nothing to do with politics. Where do you stand on the semicolon issue? Some love 'em, some hate 'em, and, difficult as it may be to believe, some people are actually indifferent to the subject. I happen to enjoy colons, semicolons, ellipses, dashes, parentheses, and any other things on the keyboard, but I sometimes wonder whether some of that is pure laziness, or lack of time for editing. From a piece by Butterworth in Financial Times:

Big deal or not, there is really only one use of the semicolon that is “more or less mandated”, says Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of About Town, a monumental account of The New Yorker magazine (whose history is marked by fractious debates over the placement of commas). And that is to separate series elements containing commas (for example, “The cities represented were Albany, New York; Wilmington, Delaware; and Selma, Alabama). The other principal uses, says Yagoda, are discretionary: “That is I might, with total grammatical correctness and without changing my meaning in the slightest, choose any one of the following: 1. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; and that is why it is worth examining.’ 2. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash, and that is why it is worth examining.’ 3. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; that is why it is worth examining.’ 4. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash. That is why it is worth examining.’” Deciding which of the four to choose is strictly a matter of sound and rhythm, says Yagoda - that is to say, personal style. “Writers who like (consciously or unconsciously) to stop and pause, and/or who are under the influence of Hemingway, choose 4. Those who like balanced rhythms might choose 3. Those aiming for a ‘transparent’ style might choose 2. And those who are a little bit enamoured with the sound of their own voice might choose 1.”

Read entire.

Teal are small ducks which, in migration, appear as fast, low-flying small flocks. Duck hunters know well how quickly they can appear over the reeds using their ground-hugging radar, and be past you before you know they are there. Early migrators, both species of teal have moved from their northern marsh breeding grounds to their homes in Central and South America by the time fall hunting season begins in the northern US. I doubt that we will bag any teal in our trip to Manitoba during the first week of October - they will be south.

The Blue-wing is the second most common duck in North America - after the mallard. (The blue wing patch is only visible in flight.) One of these days, we will get into the subject of duck plumage, an interesting subject because ducks have two plumages, breeding and non-breeding (or "eclipse.") Duck photos tend to show the colorful breeding plumage of the males, as in this photo, rather than the drab eclipse plumage which beginning birders and hunters find confusing.

During migration, both teal species are found in fresh-water or brackish ponds and marshes, often standing around on mud flats, looking bored but content. More on teal here.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

New Orleans refugees finding better lives

From neo-neocon:

Some telling statistics: for two-thirds of those people whom Ladov and his friends flew to Denver, it was the very first time they'd ever been on an airplane. And all of those evacuated to northwest Arkansas were given the following choice: stay in that part of Arkansas, move back to New Orleans, or relocate elsewhere. Ninety-five percent chose to stay in Arkansas, an extraordinary percentage.

Read entire Kindness of Strangers

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated failures.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

Country Pie

Ophelia gently blew through here yesterday, resulting in a literal windfall of nearly-ripe and ripe peaches. Peaches ripen in late Aug-Sept. up here in Yankee-land. The yard guys must have eaten a dozen yesterday, juice running down their chins, (I don't spray 'em), but there are a couple of bushels more, on the ground and on the tree. Plenty enough to spare some to the squirrels and possums and box turtles that love 'em.

So the splendid youngest daughter made her dad a peach pie. Wow. Crust from scratch, too. Nothing better. Can't dare dilute it with ice cream...plus I didn't see any in the freezer. Now to yard work and maybe fishing later.

(Listening to: Sweet Melissa, Allman Brothers)

This photo reminds me of John (Gigolo-John, AKA "Gig-John") Kerry's most famous quote during the campaign: "Whom among us does not love NASCAR?" 

9th Court of Appeals finds Pledge unconstitutional.

God just doesn't seem to get the message that He is unconstitutional, and unwelcome in the Modern America of the ACLU and California's 9th Court. Isn't it true what they used to say, that "A gentleman always knows where he is not wanted"? Can't God tell that they just want him to go away? God is a downer, man. Obsolete Creator. Creation is done. Now it's our turn, right, Brother Cain?

But why doesn't the 9th just go all the way and declare America unconstitutional? Then they can declare the Constitution unconstitutional (or has that already been done by the Supreme Court?), at which point they will have achieved their goal.

We shouldn't elect a President; we should elect a magician.

Will Rogers

Fair Chase

Ducks Unlimited, along with other hunter-conservationist groups, has begun a "Hunt Fair Chase" promotional program. "Fair Chase", for you non-hunters, refers to the ethics of hunting. Yes, man has a weapon and the animal does not, but there are many ways to apply ethics and respect to the ancient and honorable tradition.

For me, one of the primary ethics is to support conservation measures, and to do it - not to wait for the government to do it. That's why I love Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy, and a few others.

The General principles, as expressed at the DU website:

Fair Chase allows the hunter to pursue game, using hunting skills, knowledge of wildlife & outdoor savvy, without putting the game animal at an unfair disadvantage.  The principles of fair chase encourage hunters to: show respect to landowners & managers; respect wildlife; obey game laws; show courteous to other hunters and those that don't hunt; clearly identify your target; and remain ethical and safe at all times.