We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Prediction: There will be many of Hollywood's sexier actresses attending Marine Corps Balls next November 10, thanks to Marine Corps balls.
Another reason today's Marines are the best yet, and deserve to have more strut in their stride:
In Vietnam, one of the guys sent a letter to the president of Hunts Foods asking him to send a case of Hunts Snack-Packs. The Hunts president wrote back that his son served in Vietnam and he was very pleased to send a case. Immediately, we were all writing to presidents of various food companies asking for a case of our favorite. My choice was for Ring Dings. Although squished and melted when a case arrived, I had a big chocolate smile all over my face.
But, none of us had the sense of one of today's Marines who sent a Youtube message to Hollywood actress Mila Kunis asking her out to the next Marine Corps Ball. She accepted the invite.
I bet more Youtubes are being sent now to other sexy Hollywood actresses. Beats Ring Dings. And, melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
Caroline Glick and her satire site Latma have done it again, thanks to the Beach Boys. The Audacity of Dopes monicker is gentler than the international band of failed flotillans deserve. They know exactly what they are trying to do. And it's not humanitarian. Only dopes would believe that. Only enemies of Israel's survival would try to put that one over. These purposeful aiders of murderers want to open Gaza to the import by Hamas of more weapons to kill Israelis, and any others around. Glick brings them the satirical ridicule they deserve.
This post may seem to some as “inside baseball” but it illustrates a wider issue of being diligently informed for civil discourse and for effectiveness in supporting a cause, while not shirking from calling out those -- even allies -- who dangerously undermine that cause.
Europe has a deeper and historic anti-Semitism than in the US, and its Jews are proportionately and politically weaker than in the US. In this sense, European Jews may be more dependent on the efforts of non-Jews to defend themselves and Israel. This defense – here or there -- is based on the increasing realization, among Jews and gentiles, that it is part of a wider defense of the West, its culture and security against Islamist jihadists. Europe has also been more accomodationist toward Islamist offenses and offenders, partly out of post-WWII pacifism and retreat from global responsibilities and partly from it placing its energy and trade interests paramount. Both the US and Europe have activist Leftist and pro-Palestinian communities, but in the US they are far more marginalized in both public opinion and government policy, and there is lower tolerance for them. In Europe, allies are harder to come by, which can lead to infiltration by some who are anti-Islamist jihad but anti-Semitic, and slower reaction.
There is a blog dispute between blog friends, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs blog and"Baron Bodissey and Dymphna" at Gates Of Vienna (GOV) blog, about the infiltration by some anti-Semites tarnishing of anti-jihadist English Defense League. Geller, an early supporter of the EDL, says she "did not want to write" her post exposing anti-Semitism infiltration within EDL but is required to go there as "I cannot and will not sanction anti-Semitic infiltration." Accordingly, subject to EDL leadership's promised purge of such elements, she has distanced herself from the EDL. The GOV bloggers have reacted with an Open Letter in which they criticize Geller as over-reacting. Geller's reply, in her typical fashion, minces few words:
There’s no arguing with the result of a Rasmussen poll of who was the “greatest founding father”, George Washington. But the choices to select from -- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington or James Madison? – excluded Patrick Henry and his key role in rallying the new Americans to rebel against Britain and then to enact the new Constitution’s Bill of Rights to further protect individual liberties and states’ rights.
A biographer of Patrick Henry calls him “the first American to sound his displeasure with big government.”
Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day. "Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. "The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century."
The friend who sent this clipping to me comments:
That those subject to celebration of the country's successes and positive points tend to then become more appreciative of the country (this is called patriotism) is shocking only to dyed-in-the-wool academics of the leftist slant....The line that the political right has been more successful in "appropriating American patriotism" can be stated in another way. The policies and publicity of many Democrat leaders has been more effective in showing them to not value the nation and its heritage as others do. But nobody at Harvard would say it that way.
Two weeks ago, my friend Gerald Robbins -- Turkey expert and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute -- brought us his quick analysis of the results of the election in Turkey. FPRI asked him to enlarge upon it for FPRI's readers. There's much more interesting detail and discussion of prospects and difficulties for Turkey.
A fascinating addition is Robbins' raising the possibility of "a bold, controversial move" to resolve the "long-festering" and violent Kurd rebellion. "If Mr. Erdogan can skillfully manage the process, he’ll be remembered as the person who settled the Kurdish issue, Turkey’s most burdensome problem." That may, also, help him recover from his proven "inane" regional policy of a bridge among the Arab and Iranian Moslems that has come a cropper as evident with his "badly miscalculated" dealings with Syria. Erdogan would be seen more as a venturesome uniter rather than an opportunistic dreamer of semi-Ottoman fantasies.
Among the likely winners of the Republican race (yes, that excludes Sarah Palin and Rand Paul), none have yet come even close to sewing up the nomination for president. That’s a good thing.
I’m a firm believer in the worth of long campaign seasons. Democrat or Republican partisans alone are a minority of the electorate. The crucible requires potential candidates to demonstrate their ability to craft a national coalition of their political party that will reach beyond to enough leaners (otherwise often called Independents).
The long campaign crucible, also, demonstrates the potential candidates’ ability to present themself and to encourage positive feelings with articulate, persuasive, sound proposals, while avoiding seriously alienating leaners or committing major gaffes that raise crippling doubts among the open-minded (not just opponent scalphunters).
At this point, there’s enough good to say about the leading Republican contenders to believe they’d all make fine vice-presidents, but as yet none have earned the higher expectation.
All will be in good stead as a better alternative than President Obama. However, that is not enough, for me anyway.
Charles Krauthammer is usually an astute analyst of issues and often crafts perceptive and practical resolutions. In his column Who Takes Us To War?, however, Krauthammer’s resolution of the current impasse between the president and Congress over Libya would take us from the frying pan to the fire. Further, Krauthammer (acceptably since this isn’t the focus of his column) ignores the real underlying issue, how to wage war.
Krauthammer describes the impasse between President Obama and much of Congress and the public over his handling of the US involvement in the half-baked “kinetic’ operations with NATO in Libya. But Krauthammer advises to make the problem even worse by creating additional laws via a new grand commission to govern presidential-congressional relations over issues of armed actions. Such would, like all regulations, spew forth added complexities and wrangling, and possibly invite the courts into adjudicating matters of national security that to now they have avoided as properly “political” issues to be worked out between the president and Congress.
Krauthammer calls President Obama’s neglect of consulting with Congress over Libya and denying that we are actively involved in hostilities as “transparently ridiculous” and a “show of contempt for Congress and for the intelligence of the American people.”
Things came to a head today in the House, by bipartisan majoritiesrejecting both a resolution of support for the president’s course and a cut-off of funds for hostile operations. Congressional inaction leaves the president to proceed and leaves critics of his unilateral actions and the underarmed NATO campaign to fume.
Actually, no blood relation to Andrew Breitbart, today’s investigative PR Superman at leaping tall piles of Leftist BS. Zisha (stagename Siegmund) Breitbart was a poor Polish Jew who in the early 1900s was heralded by schtetl dwellers, and by gentile audiences in Europe and America, as “Superman of the Ages” and “Iron King” for his feats (and tricks) of strength.
But of all the speculative theories surrounding the creation of Superman, one exceedingly likely influence has been virtually ignored—a real-life Jewish strongman from Poland who 1. was billed as the “Superman of the Ages”; 2. advertised, on circus posters, as a man able to stop speeding locomotives; 3. wore a cape; 4. looked—with his chiseled movie-star face, wavy hair, and massive upper torso—like the future comic book idol; and 5. performed his death-defying feats in 1923 and 1924 in Cleveland and Toronto, Siegel and Shuster’s [the conceivers of Action Comics Superman] respective hometowns, when they were impressionable nine year olds.
Master German filmmaker Werner Herzog made a biopic of Zisha Breitbart's life in 2000, Invincible. Herzog takes some film liberties, but “Herzog did accurately portray Breitbart as a sensational popular variety artist and a proud Jew who inspired hero-seeking Jewish children—likely among them Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster.”
Here’s the trailer for Invincible.
Zisha Breitbart died in 1925 from the after-effects of a rusty nail in one of his acts.
Breitbart’s funeral, an Orthodox ceremony, was attended by thousands of Yiddish and German-speaking Jews as well as gentiles from the circus and variety stage world. One moving obituary quoted a passage from Zechariah: “Wail, O Cypress, for the Cedar has fallen.”
If you have sons or a bunch of boys on your block, you've seen these nerf wars. Now, pops and moms in boring office jobs have something better to do in those last minutes of the workday. (H/T: the son of Mark Safranski, the Zenpundit)
Anti-Semitism is an escape from reality, misdirecting attention to real problems by inventing another cause as coming from Jews or Israel. We’re familiar with this behavior in the Middle East but it is also evident elsewhere, as in Greece. When history isn’t known, constructive futures cannot be built as the old hatreds and sins are blithely repeated.
A memorial to one of the major heroes of Greece’s victory against the Italian invasion in 1940 – Jewish Colonel Mordechai Frizis -- stands outside the National Military Museum in Athens. Many leaders and members of the Greek resistance during World War II were Jews.
Today, except for scant history writing (see Jewish Resistance In Wartime Greece), they are forgotten. A few weeks ago I corresponded with a knowledgeable gentile Greek-American friend who was surprised at the extent of Greek Jews’ involvement in the WWII resistance. This isn’t unusual. As Andrew Apostolou, a Senior Program Manager for Freedom House, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year:
Instead of the Holocaust being treated as a moment for moral and historical reflection, it is portrayed as an opportunity for national self-congratulation because of the rescue of a small number of Greek Jews. The genuine heroism of Greek Christians who saved Greek Jews from the Nazis in such places as Zakynthos and Athens is used to obscure the collaboration and indifference that helped condemn tens of thousands of Greek Jews to death in Salonika and northern Greece.
Instead, today’s Jews in Greece are scapegoats (a person or group made to bear the blame and suffering for others’ actions) among many Greeks for the economic implosion of their welfare state. Remaining synagogues or newer memorials are vandalized and swastikas painted on them. (Latest instance.)
If you are not yet aware of Playing For Change, which brings local international musicians and singers into a mix of favorites, here's a recent addition to its playlist. We earlier brought you Playing For Change's amazing work. Since, Playing For Change has continued to produce wonderful music. You can (I do) get lost for hours and return hours in Playing For Change's playlist on Youtube.
As I have twice before (here in June 2010 and here in September 2010), I asked my friend Gerald Robbins, the Turkish-speaking expert and a Senior Fellow at Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, to comment on this past weekend’s parliamentary elections in Turkey.
In brief recap of prior posts:
Turkey’s AKP political party and its leader Prime Minister Recep Erdogan have held parliamentary power since 2002. Their program has been a combination of several elements: successfully encouraging economic development in the interior which has also benefited the usual coastal economic centers, and pursuing a gradual turning from the secularist path set almost a century ago for modern Turkey by Kemal Attarturk. AKP’s Turkey turned to a more Islamist focus aligned with Ottoman-like pretensions of influence throughout the Middle East. Turkey’s former closeness with the West via NATO membership has become an empty promise, as shown in its refusal to allow Western forces to enter Iraq via its territory in 2003 and subsequent footsy with radical states in the Middle East and support for anti-Israel propaganda and actions. Facing strongly entrenched business, secular and military interests, like a frog in slowly warming water, these interests have had their power sapped (coopted in the case of many traditional business interests, whose social-democratic/statist linkages make them particularly susceptible to AKP blandishments and programs).
The various academic fields of –ists and –ologists try to decipher why and how individuals and groups do things, and the effective ways to get them to do them better or differently or to do other things.
I’d suggest that the further they get from coercion, material or otherwise, the weaker their prescriptions.
With one exception, that is, persuasion. The field of persuasion is what I focused upon in my doctoral studies of organization and decision making, as offering the most direct and directly measurable avenue to offering improvements that are accepted and acted upon.
Reducing a complex subject, full of tautologies, persuasion is getting someone to do what they want to do. One does that by listening, observing and understanding the person’s wants and offering information with comfort that they find useful which will lead them to rearrange their priorities.
A corollary to that is understanding why individuals choose attitudes and behaviors that are less constructive to their own wants. This article by a leading social psychologist says that we form narratives of ourselves and the world that are often misleading.
Personally, I believe that we all are exposed to roughly equal proportions of good and bad things in our lives, although of differing dimensions, and we each choose which to focus upon. The happier among us tend to focus on the good things more than the bad.
None of this is to contradict deep psychoanalysis, discursive or medicinal, for very serious problems. However, for most of us, the functionally dysfunctional common to humanity, the more direct path is through understanding our and others’ narratives.
The academic –ists and –ologists tend to go well beyond that -- often based on controlled experiments with college students from which they overgeneralize -- into how to influence or control groups of people, adding such magnitudes of mathematical and knowable uncertainties that they blunder about in faith-healing based on catering to whatever their powers that be desire.
Once one gets too far away from eternal verities, from moral lessons that have been, in effect, empirically tested across hundreds and thousands of years by all people and peoples and found to point in the right direction, one enters into the experimentalists that have no more respect for us than rats and no more object than controlling the rats.
They haven’t been too successful, so they increasingly turn to coercion. The resistance of individual constructive independence and relationships eventually wins out, although after great costs along the way.
If one chooses to be conscious and resist ill temptations, to be in control of one’s own narrative, however, the “I” rules and saves oneself and the world from great pain.
You may have noticed, and be thankful, that Maggie's Farm has not participated in the WeinerWanker festival. Indeed, I'd forgotten that I'd exposed Congressman Anthony Weiner's putziness last February 25. The current posts at Don Surber and then at The Other McCain reminded me. A "putz" is commonly described as someone with a pattern of behavior as a fool. Those who elect them or defend them are a fool's tool.
I could go on with the verbal connections, but the deeper thrusts needn't further penetrate. Or, need they?
I've lived all over the US, and traveled all over Italy. The gold standard of pizza is New York's, developed by its Neapolitan immigrants to perfection. At least it used to be before all those fu-fus moved in with their taste buds permanently deformed by the chain crap elsewhere, and then added more fu-fu crap on top. Jon Stewart takes Donald Trump to task for taking Sarah Palin to a chain pizzeria, and proves Trump is another fu-fu crapper. If Trump ever visits Alaska, I hope Palin feeds him a mooseburger made from veggies.
The one mistake that you'll see in this video is that Stewart's slice is not dribbling hot olive oil down his arm, olive oil being one of the secrets to good pizza. At least, get your notepad ready, Stewart points out some of the good places in NYC to go for pizza. They used to be on almost every block, but the fu-fuers have chased them out. -- After decades, I found a place in San Diego that was almost up to snuff, but that neighborhood became yuppified and its pizza fu-fued.
The Memorial Day choice is not about whether to BBQ steak, chicken, hamburgers, or franks, although that's what it has become to most Americans.The Memorial Day choice is, rather, about choosing to remember and honor those who served in our military with fatal consequence in order to preserve our freedoms to choose.
Even if you haven't lost someone you knew, visiting a military cemetery will quickly acquaint you with many you would be proud to have known.Just knowing a few names, their service branch, and the year they died will set your mind to at least imagining their lost opportunities so that you can have some.
Just take a moment to raise the flag in their memory and to honor them.Take a moment to explain to your children that this day is to respect those who made their life more secure.
Then your BBQ will be more savory, flavored with love of freedom and gratitude for those who gave their all and everything.
A few links, just in case Bird Dog didn’t return in time. I heard he got arrested at Walgreens for developing the TRUE photos of what he’s been doing, or having done to him. Transgender? Does this mean Bird Dog is now Bird Bitch?
Kennedy explained that he needed tutors because he "had spent so much time . . . knowing people who could help him become president that he knew very few . . . who could help him be president." ...Mr. Kempe's point is that Kennedy's indecisiveness in the early stages of the crisis produced the wall itself, an exponential increase in East-West tension, and, in the half-century that followed, other fateful consequences that included the Cuban missile crisis—and, though Mr. Kempe doesn't say so, the Vietnam War, along with social and strategic spores that lodged in the American psyche and darkened world opinion with results yet to be revealed. It also provided, as Mr. Kempe puts it in the final sentence of this mind-shaking work of investigative history, an example "of what unfree systems can impose when free leaders fail to resist."
If you want to understand the “right of return” issue, read this to know its genesis. The early, narrow work by historian Benny Morris is often cited by pro-Palestinians, ignoring his fuller following work. In this piece, Morris shows how the pro-Palestinians also ignore the first half of the 1947-8 “civil war,” facts being inconvenient to their narrative.
The above Rapes gang-bang just took a few minutes to gather. Perverted politics.
“Real leadership is rare,” says retiring Sec. Of Defense Robert Gates, who served under 8 Presidents, at the US Naval Academy graduation:
Gates told graduates that great leaders have some of the same qualities: conviction, self-confidence, moral courage, integrity and common decency.
“Above all, remember that the true measure of leadership is not how you react in times of peace or times without peril,” Gates said. “The true measure of leadership is how you react when the wind leaves your sails, when the tide turns against you.”
At constant fertility, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than either Turkey or Iran, and more than German, Italy or Spain….The right way to read this projection is backwards: Israelis love children and have lots of them because they are happy, optimistic and prosperous….Europeans, Turks and Iranians, by contrast, have very few children because they are grumpy, alienated and pessimistic….
A new survey commissioned by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans found that 80% of respondents were found to have "little" or only "some" knowledge of the military holiday while just 20% of respondents claim to be "very familiar" with the day and its purpose.
No Democrat votes for any budget proposal -- Why Dems don’t want to present a budget: “The Peterson Foundation's Solutions Initiative brought together six think tanks -- two conservative, two liberal and two centrist -- and challenged each to present a detailed plan to solve our fiscal crisis-in-waiting, using the same uniform assumptions.” Read on
Before 1700s, dogs were considered vicious and disease-ridden
"Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens."
Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Law on Hiring Illegal Immigrants: “The decision did not involve an even more controversial immigration measure passed by Arizona lawmakers. That measure requiring police to check the immigration status of individuals in certain circumstances remains under separate legal challenge, and could likewise eventually reach the Supreme Court.”
The latest report by media watchdog group Just Journalism compared the coverage of Israel to the coverage of the “Arab spring” countries—Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia—during 2010. The group found that the attention given to the Arab spring countries (before the uprisings) was almost nonexistent….Israel was scapegoated as the root of Middle East unrest for years, while the oppression and corruption throughout the Arab world were largely ignored.
