Maggie's Farm

Thanks to Powerline, the text of Bush's speech to the Boy Scouts, here. Why does the far Left detest the manly virtues? I do not even want to waste time wondering about that.

And, for something completely different (turn on your speakers): http://www.michaelhodges.com/stuff/funny/2008cc1.swf

Tort Reform and Guns

The trial lawyers always seem to be hunting for their next target for rape and pillage, and in the past few years they have had the gun industry in their sights. Their pattern is to destroy a business, line their pockets, and move on, regardless of the justice in it - as happened with the silicone implant issue. Heck, even if the trial lawyers lose, they can leave a business staggering or bankrupt from the legal bills, which can run into the many millions.

However, gun ownership is a venerable and important American tradition with more ardent friends in congress than breast implants had. The Senate has a bill to provide immunity to the gun industry, especially the gun manufacturers, against liability for illegal use of guns by gun-possessors. This makes tons of sense to me. After all, if you kill someone with a Home Depot axe, can the victim sue Home Depot and the axe manufacturer? (Remember, if you ban guns - which you won't- you will have lots more murders with axes and knives - as in England.) Story in Opinion Journal.

The Unions Disintegrate

Like most CEOs, I do not hate unions. I do hate the idea of govt employee unions, because they play games with the taxpayer's money - their neighbors - which is a disgrace, but unions have been a good thing over history, and brought blue-collar folks into the middle class. That is a very good thing. America needs a strong, blue-collar population, but globalization threatens that. And nothing can be done about it - it's a done deal via the power of history. Despite all of the hoopla about college education, etc., America needs people who want to work, and who are not scholars. And we have enough scholars - and more than enough 100 IQ citizens going to college who do not belong there in the first place, who are there to buy a piece of paper and do not care if they are scammed in doing so by getting a high-school education for $100,000. I see these people every day - they know nothing. 

Watch the labor "movement" blow itself up - Why? Because many or most do not really approve of the political direction of the AFL-CIO as compared with their desire for growth - as if a business. We are in the post-industrial, post-union era, obviously. Everything in industry becomes obsolete over time, and now, at Walmart, you have more opportunity for advancement to the top than you will ever have in the average union job, because you are "a union worker" - ie a person looking for blackmailed hand-outs - and not an entrepreneurial  "person" who wants more difficult challenges and opportunities. Just the identity of being a "union worker" almost eliminates you from consideration for management, no matter how talented you may be. Times change. Unions are out: opportunity is in.

For me, even though I can and do work with unions, that is still a good thing, because there is tons of talent and energy among those guys and gals, and I do not care whether they have read Virgil. (But I want my friends to have read Virgil, so we have something to talk about besides fly-fishing.) If anything is needed, it is unionization in the Third World, including China and India. That would shake things up...but would supposedly commie China allow unions? Doubt it. It's a quasi-socialist Police State terrified of the potential power of its "subjects".

Donald Trump may be a slippery self-promoting egomaniac, or he may be an inspired, self-made franchise (but not a self-made man, since his dad had a real estate empire too). Whatever Trump is or isn't, he knows real estate, and he can be articulate. So when he says the proposed UN renovation is a boondoggle, I would tend to believe him. (No offense to CT's Chris Burnham, a good fellow but not a real estate guy.) Story in NY Sun.

Three Excellent Bits

1. Steyn: "...you can't assimilate with a nullity - which is what multiculturalism is.So, if Islamist extremism is the genie you're trying to put back in the bottle, it doesn't help to have smashed the bottle."

2. Goldberg at Town Hall: "Britishness, for all its faults, was once seen around the world as a distinctly valuable and admirable quality. Decency, respect for law, intelligence without so much bloody abstraction, propriety, manners: These were the attributes invariably attributed to the Brits. Since Powell's speech, however, the British have turned their backs on all of that. Their popular culture is vastly more coarse than America's. Worse, they have seized the kingdom's leading institutions and scraped out the best traditions and customs like so many tumors."

3. Thompson Redux: Life After the Left, on FrontPage: I realized there was nothing at all “amazing” about the Left’s non-chalance toward the Iraqi vote. It was way too late for astonishment.These were the same people who scorned Ronald Reagan for daring to call the totalitarian gulag state of Lenin and Stalin an evil empire.

A great way to keep blacks unemployed - Ebonics is back, and Michelle has the story. I will hire anyone of any color, shape, age, culture of origin, etc. but I won't hire anyone who speaks ebonics. Or who cannot speak or write appropriate English. Sue me! The only conceivable motive for this nonsense is to keep people ignorant, poor, and dependent. The only thing as stupid is bilingual education. Learn proper English - it will serve you very well in life. Lots of good books written in it, and blogs too. And it is easy to learn - babies do it.

Cell phones on airplanes? I am in favor of it - it is damned inconvenient not to be able to talk during flight. The CSM.

Canada's Moslims: More worried about themselves than terror. Classic manipulative victim maneuver that all can see through. Thanks, LGF. Story here.

TWA Flight 800 - with every mystery, the conspiracy nuts come out of the woodwork. Here is a good summary of the tragic 1996 explosion/crash.

Counting Coup

This Karl Rove story seems to me to be nothing more than the Dem's anger-driven desire to take a Bush scalp. It's a tempest in a teapot, but a wholesome outlet for the press and the resentful who have not recovered from the election. Funny how mad they can be at Bush, but not at Al Zarquawi. Hmmmm. Hey, Dr. Bliss, explain this to us.

The Folk Song Army and Stone-Age Economics

Unfortun-
ately, the people who need to read Kling's piece at TCS, dealing with Africa and poverty in general, will not. He reminded me of one of the few of Tom Lehrer's great songs which I don't have stashed away somewhere. By quoting Tom, Kling reveals himself as a highly intelligent, highly sophisticated, excellent fellow, and reveals his age too. Lehrer holds up remarkably well over time:

"We are the Folk Song Army.
Everyone of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares."

His point is that the economically uneducated still believe in a stone-age, pre-currency and pre-growth economics - ie a zero-sum game economy. If you have it, then I don't. Bird Dog jumped on the story in this blog last week. Kling goes on to explain:

In fact, redistribution can be counterproductive. It can serve to foster dependency while keeping entrenched bad leadership and harmful policies. An article in Der Spiegel notes that "today there are increasing numbers of Africans who call for an end to this sort of support. They believe that it simply benefits a paternalistic economy, supports corruption, weakens trade and places Africans into the degrading position of having to accept charity. 'Just stop this terrible aid,' says the Kenyan economic expert James Shikwati."

Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South Africa's President, believes that abuse and exploitation by Africa's political elites plays a major role in the continent's underdevelopment. Mbeki recently wrote,

"Merely handing more aid money to African governments only reinforces the pattern of abuse. The key to development lies in a dynamic private sector. For a country to produce more, private individuals must generate savings and plow those savings back into the production process in the form of new and improved techniques, processes and products."

Read the whole thing, and forward it to your economically ignorant friends who also think they live in the stone age. (Photo of Lascaux art from the Lascaux website.)

Four Dumbest Things of the Week re Radical Islam

1. Terrorism is caused by poverty and hopelessness. Balderdash. Bin Ladin has - what - $50 million and how many wives with American Express cards? The NYT buys it, and even Blair seems to, and of course the Left buys any simplistic Marxist view. This terrorism is caused by a religious perversion which denies the humanity of, and indeed hates unto death, those of different faith - see prescient  joke posted earlier this week, which seems less funny now.

2. The Crusaders were evil. Not really. They were sent by their clergy to re-open access to Jerusalem as a pilgrimage site, after it had been occupied by invading Moslem armies and closed to Christian pilgrimage. Put it in historical context - pilgrimages were a big deal back then, and everyone, from peasant to prince, dreamed of walking in Christ's footsteps. Many still do, but now we can. No ancestor-guilt, please - it is neurotic, as I am sure our Dr. Bliss would say.

3. Don't make them even madder by trying to get rid of them. Huh? Is that rational? Appeasing people who want to kill you? What do you do when rattlesnakes come into your house? Give them the house? Never try to "understand" people who want to destroy you - they have written themselves out of the civil realm and must be dealt with differently (unless you have behaved in deeply evil ways yourself - which we ain't done.). Think "Hitler".

4. Britain's psychotically PC immigration policies: you cannot open your door to snakes who are hostile to your gentle culture, and then bitch when they bite you. Rome already tried that, and socio-politically, Italy has been a mess ever since. Remember, the barbarians did not so much attack as simply migrate into the empire. If you want a gentle, civil culture, you need tough borders and boundaries, a shell, just as we do in our personal lives. Freedom, gentility, and civility are not birthrights: some things in life must be fought for. What is happening in Europe is properly called "invasion," not immigration. We have the battles of Tours and Lopanto, redux. Hey, cousins - save yourselves before it's too late. We are already calling it "Londistan" and "Euristan."

Wow. I think Blair gets it.

"Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe's social model," Blair told the European Parliament last month. "But tell me: what type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the United States; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy -- skills, R&D, patents, IT -- is going down not up."

Funny that he didn't also mention that their politics is being taken over by Islamicists. Powerline.

The Court and Politics

Posted at 8 AM: I am heading down to Maine in about an hour, but I wanted to register one thought first: This Supreme Court has handed the Repubs more ammunition than they want or need to correct the course of the Court, or for the 2006 elections, for that matter. McCreary County, and Kelo, have given regular people fits. Respect for religion, and Right to Property - what could be more basic to the lives of Americans? The lefty-elitist hubris of this Court will lead to its correction, in good time. The fight to protect our freedom from government power is endless, as is the fight to protect freedom from external powers. It's a damn shame that we ever have to think about the former, but we do. Show me a government, and I'll show you a sponge for money and power over the individual, and it will mainly be run by phonies who couldn't do much in real life, except schmooze and BS.

Comment from Editor

Some relevant links from New England Repub, and Scott at Powerline, and NH Insider, and Intell. Conservative.

Second comment from Editor

Why does a Texan, even though he lives in CT now, say he's going "down" to Maine? Also known as "down east"? First correct email answer gets a Maggie's Farm t-shirt.

Congrats

One XL Maggie's Farm t-shirt to RT of Portland, Maine: You go "down east" because the prevailing winds carry your sailing ship northeast along the Atlantic coast easily, especially on the Boston to Maine stretch. If not downwind, at least on a reach. Sailing from Maine to Boston or New York usually involves much more tacking and is a more arduous, upwind trip. Thus, in Maine, the older generation still goes "up to Boston."

Steyn Views Europe's Decay

Steyn on the world economies and demographics: "... the GDP per capita Top Five are, in order, America, Canada, Australia, Belgium and the United Kingdom. And if you make it territories with over 20 million, the Top Four is an Anglosphere sweep. In other words, the ability to generate wealth among large populations does indeed seem to be an "Anglo-Saxon" thing. That being so, which is more likely? That Blair will transform a Europe antipathetic to Anglo-Saxon ways? Or that Europe will drag its Anglo-Saxons down with it? A political entity hostile to the three principal building blocks of functioning societies - religion, family and wealth creation - was never a likely bet for the long term."

Read entire excellent piece at Steyn Online.

Rove's Speech

Ex-Donkey has more of the text. Not bad.

The LA Times vs. Reality

From Immigration Blog, signs at LA Immigration protest:

printed: "Fight the Right! Fight Capitalism!" (apparently from the "Party for Socialism and Liberation") alongside an ANSWER LA sign
homemade: "Racists get out of Aztlan"
scrawled on a T-shirt: "F*ck the Minutemen; F*ck the S.O.S.; F*ck the police too"
homemade: "Stop anti-immigrant facism! All workes [sic] unite! Smash all borders."
homemade: "One world for the workers without borders"

Who would have thought Bush would be on their side? Read entire here.

McCain: "A (media) whore desperate for attention", plus sodomy

Sounds about right. In New England Repub. And NE Repub again, on "where will we commit sodomy if the govt takes our houses?" What fine bloggers those guys are.

Evils of the ACLU Darr in Intell. Conservative: For years the American Civil Liberties Union has pushed its agenda as to what the Constitution "really says," and what freedom "really means" through judicial extortion.  In 1978, the Supreme Court exempted the ACLU from the "ambulance chasing" prohibitions that apply to nearly every other lawyer in the country.  Over the years this has enabled the ACLU's legions of pro bono attorneys to specifically target various organizations they feel are vulnerable to their lawsuits, dredge the ranks of the "offended" until they can find someone who will agree to let the ACLU stick their name at the top of a case, and then attempt to force a group's acquiescence to their demands by threatening a costly legal case they usually cannot afford.  Many who have dared to stand up against the ACLU might have won the battle in the court room, but lost the war as their organizations were driven into bankruptcy under crushing legal bills. However, in the last few years the tide has started to turn.  Alternate civil liberties groups, such as The American Center for Law and Justice, conservative radio commentators, and even some in the media, have drawn attention to the ACLU's pattern of abuses, fanatic beliefs and outright hypocrisy.  For the first time the ACLU is faced with legitimate public outcry over their tactics, and slowly those who once would quietly give up their freedoms have been instilled with the will (and pro bono legal support) to fight.  In addition, despite the efforts of obstructionist liberals in Congress, the court system is being given a much needed infusion of new judges who recognize that their interpretation of the Constitution should in some fashion be similar to those who wrote it.  The ACLU understands its days of forcing Christianity, traditional values, and freedoms out of American public life are numbered.  Out of a sense of desperation and frustration toward this new threat, the ACLU has recently begun to change the target of their court cases to include the leaders of public groups and the private individuals who are leading the charge against them. The best known case involves popular talk show host Sean Hannity.  While interviewing volunteers of the Minuteman Project last April in Arizona, Hannity inadvertently crossed the US/Mexico border for a few minutes then immediately returned.  It was a simple mistake and easily understood in light of the pathetic security of our borders.  However the ACLU, which led the good fight by trying to obstruct the Minutemen and goad them into conflicts while enabling the rampant invasion of illegals into our nation, decided this was an offense that could not be tolerated.  Apparently upset at Hannity's drawing interest to the good work of the Minutemen, Arizona State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, under the auspices of the ACLU, demanded Hannity's arrest.  It is quite obvious that Sinema and the ACLU were not motivated out of a sense of respect for immigration law or fairness, but out of personal hatred toward Sean Hannity.  The ACLU does not like what Hannity has to say, so what better way to silence him than by having him embarrassed and thrown in jail.  But this is a larger issue than just the ACLU trying to embarrass Hannity.  It is indicative of a terrifying new trend from the ACLU, where they are attempting to hold individual citizens legally liable for doing nothing more than thinking they are wrong.  With large organizations starting to resist them, the ACLU must now found a new defenseless target unable to afford to fight them: private citizens. There are several other cases in recent weeks which further illustrate this trend.  In Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, the ACLU has called for the arrest of school teachers and administrators because the ACLU does not feel they adequately exorcised all Judeo-Christian influences from their classrooms and cafeterias.  Read entire: Click here: The ACLU is Going Down, and Taking a Few of Us With it

Go Outside and Play

with your family (in It Takes a Church), but don't worship nature - that is idolatrous (Prager):

In every society on earth, people venerated nature and worshipped nature gods. There were gods of thunder and gods of rain. Mountains were worshipped, as were rivers, animals and every natural force known to man. In ancient Egypt, for example, gods included the Nile River, the frog, sun, wind, gazelle, bull, cow, serpent, moon and crocodile. Then came Genesis, which announced that a supernatural God, i.e., a god who existed outside of nature, created nature. Nothing about nature was divine.

Yes, Prager is persuasive as always, but why do I feel God on the top of Whistler? Or on a trout stream? Is that a pagan sentiment? Or awe of God's creation? Prager makes me wonder about that. Surely He who created the giraffe intended us to admire it before eating it, even if not invested with a divine spark. Or maybe the ancient pagan can never be fully removed from us.

Welfare State Demographics

It's not a crisis yet in the US, but in Euroland it is. Ponzi schemes can only work if you have growing, working populations. If anyone but a government pulled this crap, they would be in jail. A piece in The Economist goes through the details of the population declines in Western countries, and the consquences.

Termite Non-Profits: The International Committee of the Red Cross

I have been assigned the cheerful task of following up on anti-American or America-undermining non-profits. The ACLU and Amnesty International are no-brainers - they have been dramatically outed recently.

The ICRC has no direct relationship with the American Red Cross, but is 35% supported by US tax money. I cannot copy excerpts from the Senate Republican Policy Committee report, but you can read the whole report here:
Click here:http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Jun1305ICRCDF.pdf

Why am I paying for this?

"Christers"

An antique insulting term for believers, unearthed recently and coming back into fashion by Christian-haters and, presumably, Christ-haters. Bird of Paradise researched it. Call me a Christer - fine with me.

ACLU Thuggery

Darr in Intell. Cons. The ACLU turns into Brownshirts - It's not your father's ACLU:

The ACLU is out of control.  They can no longer even be pretending to support freedom, the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  What once may have been an organization dedicated to high ideals has now degenerated into a literal threat to our liberty.  They are going beyond just trying to prosecute every Boy Scout troop and are now moving on to either sue people just like you and me, or actually have us arrested and subjected to criminal prosecution.  How ironic it is that a group who thinks terrorists should not be in prison feels that those who disagree with them should.  Sounds a little like the ACLU is no longer endorsing civil liberties but political prisoners.

Read entire.

The Tug of Peace

Yes, eliminating the ancient, time-honored Tug Of War will definitely teach kids the lovely sensitive lesson of not competing. Sure. What a fine, progressive idea. The world is upside-down. What good is life if you don't try? Losing is not a problem - losing happens, and it isn't such a bad thing, either. You learn to deal with losing and disappointment, or you will remain an infant, and will never accomplish anything you might wish to. This self-esteem crock of BS has got to go. Dr. Bliss - old pal, old buddy - please do something authoritative on the subject. Who are these termites who want Americans to be spineless whining weenies? I will tell you one thing - anyone without the will to TRY HARD, and to discover their limits, will do nothing in this life. Gay and Right has the story: Click here: GayandRight: Political correctness gone mad...

In DC on Tues. with nothing to do?

Hey - that includes all of you politicians. An interesting conference: Libertarianism in Pop Culture. Wish I could make it.  Click here: Libertarianism in Contemporary Pop Culture

Deano: Crazy, or Crazy Like a Fox?

Larry Elder makes a case to call in the men in white coats, (in Town Hall), as have many others, but Dean isn't crazy. Nor is he a calculating fox, although clearly he hopes that being provocative might help with fund-raising.

The truth is that he is simply miscalculating something. In the Northeast, there are millions who think and feel and speak exactly as he does. I encounter them everywhere in our Blue States, from Nantucket to Maine to Boston to Hanover to Newport to, of course, NYC. Trust me, you Red-Staters out there - his views and words are entirely ordinary, and I doubt he knows what the fuss is about, since he's right in sync with everyone he knows. His miscalculation is that you can't take that kind of self-righteous, sneering, arrogant, nasty, condescending talk and juvenile name-calling nationwide. It doesn't play in Peoria. But it plays just fine up here, I'm sorry to say.

CT Forces More Folks to move to FLA

Fairfield Co., CT: The only problem with living in New England is their Democratic legislatures. As a native Texan with central CT (Manchester) family roots, the weather up here is wonderfully variable; the folks are either interesting like the Yankee Farmer, or well-educated like The Barrister or genius writers like Bird Dog; the land is the old land of our fore-fathers; and the earth is our rock-studded, plow-breaking, back-breaking Yankee soil, and here in southwestern CT, in Fairfield County, we have the big boys, the ambitious smart guys, who work in NY but pay the bills for the State.  But with every such tax increase, we have more people spending 179 days of the year out of state, in Florida and a bit in NY pied a terres or hotels for work, not to mention business travel (and vacations in the Seychelles for bonefishing and Patagonia for trout and London for the kids or grand-kids, etc.), to protect their inheritances and to help their families. Thus leaving more burden on the poor citizens with dry-cleaning shops and tire stores who loyally stay and must fish hatchery trout at home I suppose, or God knows what they do for fishing (not bluefish hopefully), or do not have the spare cash for a Jupiter Island home. Which I Thankfully do. Or, who knows, maybe they are so hard up that they do Redneck Golf and do not fish at all, which is a pathetic soul-destroying waste of time, in my opinion. But anyway - Hey, Hartford - you ain't getting a penny of this from me. We count those days, carefully, and our estate planners are way smarter than you, which is why they have real jobs in the real world, and you do not, or barely. Did you ever hear of "laptops?" So sorry, Hartford. And if you think CT is bad, read about RI, on Anchor Rising, here.