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.
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.”
In the Western world, beach bathing is a late 18th-19th Century phenomenon.
Bathing became fashionable because, like taking spa water, it was thought to be healthful. A form of "taking the cure" for neurasthenia or whatever.
Furthermore, before then nobody went to the beach anyway, and having a tan was for peasants only. It was a sign that you labored outdoors. Nobody knew how to swim, either (as in Italy today).
Native peoples, especially in warm climates, knew how to swim. The Front Crawl, aka Australian Crawl (now universally used for Freestyle racing), was adopted by Western Civ around the turn of the century, via Solomon Islanders who used this speedy stroke.
Here's a history of women's bathing attire. They definitely did not swim in these things. You would rapidly drown. Maybe they just got a little wet up to their knees, and splashed some water on their faces.
Even today, most people do not go to the beach to swim. They go to read, to watch their kids play in the sand and waves, to obtain some beneficial rays of the sun, to enjoy a sea breeze blowing over their near-naked body, to take a cooling dip, or to surf or body surf where there are good waves.
And how many places can one go out in public and exhibit one's gorgeous, erotic self in what is basically underwear?
Everybody has an opinion on pruning tomato plants. Here's my view of the subject.
First, I'll assume we are growing "Indeterminate" types of tomatoes, i.e. vine tomatoes as opposed to the tree-like ("determinate," aka "bush" tomatoes) ones often grown in pots. Left alone, vine tomatoes will grow 10+ feet along the ground, as you can often see in gardens in Bermuda, but we stake them.
Up here in New England (Yankeeland), we need to prune them because our short growing season doesn't allow much time for good fruit formation. We have to prune most of the suckers and plenty of their leaves, and we cut their tops off in July or August - all so they will put their energy into good fruit and not into further pointless growth.
Further south, diligent pruning is less important.
And even though I grow mine in fine soft soil, I fertilize them with liquid fertilizer whenever I think of it. I usually have lots of plants, but only ended up with 10-12 this year of around 5 varieties.
Here's the best site I have seen on indeterminate tomato vine gardening. For all of the effort, and despite our short season, it is well-worth it when you pick one on a hot day and eat it in the garden like an apple. A tomato should be hot, with little salt on it.
Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. No wonder pols have such an easy time fooling people with their BS.
We owe Club ABC Travel a plug today because they have been so kind and helpful to my in-laws this past week. Yes, they will discuss your tours on the phone with you. Good folks.
Because of ABC's volume, nobody can claim that they cannot afford to see the world in reasonable comfort if they want to and, if you are an inexperienced or unconfident traveller, they arrange everything for you. If you want to spend a little more money for organized trips, you can try Tauck for the highest-end version - but it's not necessary.
If you would rather have new wallpaper or a new TV or iPad, it's your choice - and your loss.
I'd rather be hanging out and trying to get lost in Budapest than sitting on my ass shooting farts into my couch while playing with a new iPad.
Life is short, and getting shorter every precious passing minute.
Often it's more fun for me to learn about things after experiencing them, than before. You have a reference point, and something tangible to tack information onto.
Weissbier is one example (aka Weissbrau or Weizenbier or Weizen or Hefeweizen or White Beer or Wheat Beer or Wheat Ale - technically an ale). It's an ancient brew, and there are several styles of it. What we sampled in Bavaria was the Southern German style. Never had a better brew, fresh and unpasteurized. Bready, fruity, and just bitter enough. Low alcohol content, so you can have some more if you're thirsty. It's a summertime beer. Here's the Wiki entry.
Blue Moon's Belgian White and Harpoon's UFO are the closest I've seen to it in a supermarket bottled beer in the US - but it's no match and has more ethanol than the fresh German stuff. Beer is not about booze unless you are in college. These beers are good with an orange slice to squirt into them, although they don't seem to do that routinely in Germany.
Have no fear, readers. I will never let myself become a beer snob, although my taste buds have already priced me out of the wine market altogether. I am fortunate to have a pub in town which gets fresh draft beers weekly from Germany, but I do not get there often enough because I work.
Photo: Weissbier is typically tasted from tall 0.6 L. slender glasses or tall slender mugs. Sometimes I like beer in a mug, sometimes in a glass, sometimes from ye olde long-neck bottle.
I believe that no honest work should be beneath any American. I also believe that all kids should work, and earn their own money. Kids learn more about how to, and how not to, negotiate the world from work than they do from school. Make your mistakes when young, and learn from them, as everybody needs to. Any paid work will do, but the more "menial" the better.
Except for the most spoiled brats who want to hang out during the summer or to be indulged in "enriching experiences," most kids want to work. It's a step towards adulthood and independence, and moping around the house or driving to the beach in the Beemer is a spiritual death for teens - or a sign of spiritual death.
Summer "vacation" is for the teachers. What do kids need a vacation for? They've been in school, for heaven's sake. School isn't "work work," as Whoopi Goldberg did not say. School is a piece of cake, compared to work. It's a delight, a joy, and a privilege - and it sure beats working an industrial loom in New Bedford at age 11. And, heck, teaching is real difficult too, compared to running a business. Right?
That one-in-four is the one with initiative and drive. Watch that one, because if you can make something happen in your teens with all of the forces creating headwinds today, Bravo. Or Brava, as they say in NYC.
Here. When you train and enable adults to be children, they will act like it. Just like in Wisconsin. Many will revert to childhood if they can get away with it. Those made of sterner stuff will not.
They are marching and berserking for "socialism." They don't realize they already have it, along with the typical Socialist terminal case of the Gimmes.
Euroland people need to grow up and accept the reality that life is difficult and challenging, and that no adult is entitled to anything. You are supposed to man up, in life. Or woman up, as the case may be. Reagan would have fired them all for shirking their duties to the public who hired them and who pays their wages from their own toil, and rightly so.
If you want to be a serf, expect to be treated like one.
This isn't a particularly exciting post, just a follow-up.
A few years ago I wrote The Sound of Many Faucets Running, a look at the new dollar coins. Coins last much longer than bills, y'see, therefore using much less energy to replace, thereby saving the planet from catastrophic meltdown.
While my post was fairly routine, I have to admit that if we had to switch from dollar bills to coins, I thought my idea bordered on the brilliant.
In the basement of a Baltimore vault the size of a soccer field, 1 billion dollar coins are just sitting there. Thanks, Congress.
And the planet thanks you!
Actually, there appears to be a bit of gray area as to why they tried to foist these on us in the first place. From the original article:
The U.S. Mint is spending about $12 million on a pilot project to promote the presidential dollar coin by appealing to Americans' duty to protect the environment while saving the government money.
But now it's:
NPR’s Planet Money reporters recently investigated the $1 presidential coin program, which was a Congressional effort to get more $1 coins into circulation while also trying to be educational.
That's right, folks. They're educational. We're doing it for the children!
And, of course, it would be downright criminal not to include the Shoshone woman who help guide Lewis & Clark on their expedition:
At the same time, the legislation mandated that a certain number of Sacagawea coins be made in conjunction with the presidential coins, which has now amounted to one Sacagawea for every four presidents.
Spokespersons for the Mohave, Navaho, Pima, Yuma, Washo, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cree, Crow, Dakota, Osage, Seminole, Comanche, Wichita and Apache tribes could not be reached for comment.
At the moment, the program is still moving forward, and NPR projects that by the time it’s finished, 2 billion coins could be sitting in the Fed’s vaults. Next up for minting is our 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes.
The Nikko Blue hydrangea and its variants are classic plants in Yankeeland. Mine are in their full glory today.
Hydrangeas are the sorts of things that make a house a home.
Here are three important tips for those who grow hydrangeas of any type: first, they like moist (but well-drained) soil, hence their name. Second, full-day direct sun is too much for most of them unless you have irrigation. Third, prune them with caution: you have to first determine whether they are macrophylla or paniculata, etc. Prune them wrong and you get no bloom. Better yet, don't prune them at all unless you have to.
(More general shrub pruning info: Except for hedging or shaped shrubs, mature shrubs can or should be pruned at ground level - not from the top - removing 25-30% of the woodiest growth to keep the plant young and vigorous. This is especially important with shrubs like Lilacs. I will try to dig out my old pruning posts. Always study the correct pruning technique for a given plant before attacking anything with a sharp tool. Never prune young shrubs.)
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.
Once the political power of the climate movement, aided by an indulgent and largely unquestioning press, had pushed the climate agenda into the realm of serious politics, failure was inevitable. The only question was whether the comprehensive green meltdown would occur before or after the movement achieved its core political goal of a comprehensive and binding global agreement on greenhouse gasses.
and
It is a waste of time to talk science with Al Gore. It is a waste of time to listen to him at all. That, apparently, is what the world at long last is beginning to understand. The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.
These days, he can’t even get his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone.
As Mead points out, the entire enterprise was close to insane from the beginning, despite all of the money to be made from it.
Off topic: Mead, Steyn, and VDH are so hot these days that it is difficult not to simply link all of their stuff.
That's the title of a fascinating essay by Aaron at FP. (link fixed). A quote:
... a moral resurrection was essential. This meant not merely an overhaul of the Soviet political and economic systems, not merely an upending of social norms, but a revolution on the individual level: a change in the personal character of the Russian subject. As Mikhail Antonov declared in a seminal 1987 essay, "So What Is Happening to Us?" in the magazine Oktyabr, the people had to be "saved" -- not from external dangers but "most of all from themselves, from the consequences of those demoralizing processes that kill the noblest human qualities." Saved how? By making the nascent liberalization fateful, irreversible -- not Khrushchev's short-lived "thaw," but a climate change. And what would guarantee this irreversibility? Above all, the appearance of a free man who would be "immune to the recurrences of spiritual slavery."The weekly magazine Ogoniok, a key publication of glasnost,wrote in February 1989 that only "man incapable of being a police informer, of betraying, and of lies, no matter in whose or what name, can save us from the re-emergence of a totalitarian state."
A rescue from the "spiritual slavery" of Socialism.
I like this guy's cooking method. And ditto to him re the ribeye - it's the best cut of a dead cow. Those thick Costco ribeyes are dynamite. Have to be rare, though. If I'm just making one, I do it on a max-heat cast iron pan on the stove, and open the door so the smoke can try to exit. Why bother with the grill for just one fairly small steak?
I like crust on the outside, raw in the middle. You can throw them in the pan frozen, and it's easy to get that result in 20 minutes but you might have to cover it for a few minutes.
Gin for the martini, not vodka - and three olives - not one. After all, that's your vegetable course.
It felt like it had been the longest week of my life. I was filling in at some big apartment complex while the building's handyman was on vacation, and I ran my tail off all week long fixing things. I came home that Friday and did something I'd never done before, and have never done since:
I flopped into my easy chair.
Normally, I plunk myself down in front of the computer and get caught up. But I was so beat that I just wanted to hit the La-Z-Boy and relax.
Out of boredom, I turned on the TV.
It was kind of a bizarre sight. On a completely empty highway, a white SUV was cruising down the fast lane going about 45 miles per hour, trailed by a zillion police cars. It eventually turned off and as it drove through the neighborhoods, people stood on the side of the street with signs reading "Go, OJ!", "We Believe In You!", "Run, OJ, Run!"
As I said, it was pretty bizarre.
And thus started a nine-month journey as I watched every word of testimony and every cable talk show that evening, VCR at the ready for overlapping shows. And yes, I was there, a few weeks after the trial ended, watching the final talk show on the trial's aftermath, and when they signed off, that was the last of the 'OJ Special' shows.
So I obviously consider myself something of an expert on the subject.
The other day there was an article on Hot Air claiming that OJ was going to 'fess up and admit to Oprah that he did, indeed, kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. It's probably a hoax, but we'll see.
You might agree with some of the comments:
The verdict had NOTHING to do with the murders. It was a racial vindication that a black man could kill two white people and get away with it if the jury was black. It’s called jury nullification and it’s happened many times throughout history. It doesn’t make it any less disgusting but it is a fact.
They didn’t believe he was innocent, they just refused to process the facts of the case. They went into this jury duty with a pre-determined outcome.
Stupid judge. Stupid, stupid, stupid jurors.
Wasn’t the composition of the jury all black females? Not that it would make any difference in their decision-making of course.
The jury was not all black. It was, however, all dumb. In fact, it was what they call a “downtown jury” meaning they are stupid and prosecutors are less likely to get convictions.
Actually, these people are as wrong as wrong can be.
As much as I hate that wind turbines have become this symbol of youthful "green action" and as much as I love birds....
They kill an estimated 40,000 birds a year -- compare that to the hundreds of millions that domestic and feral cats kill, 174 million killed by power lines, 1 billion killed by windows, 70 million killed by pesticides, 80 million killed by cars, and 50 million killed by lighted communication towers. I know you're targeting the hypocrisy of the green movement, but there are better hypocrisies to target.
You might as well be protesting windows here, BD.
If you want green hypocrisy and stupidity, check out the green plastic hard hats distributed at "Power Shift" and all the students who drove across the country to go the event (as I'm sure you'll be excited to target young, misinformed enthusiasm). A ton of my friends went to that inane, completely masturbatory event... Ridiculous. This is the kind of thing I hate: http://i.imgur.com/UTHSn.jpg
Or even look at the "greenwashing" of GE, AEP and Exxon.
Turbines are not effective energy in urban areas, but are entirely helpful in at least reducing nuclear waste in rural ones. You would need something like 1700 turbines to generate the same power as a nuclear power station, but doesn't that make sense in a smaller setting?
In 1932 Yale accepted seventy-two per cent of its applicants. In 1940 Harvard accepted eighty-five per cent. Of the four hundred and five boys from Groton who applied to Harvard between the years 1906 and 1932 only three were turned down.
He concludes:
When my kids get “literature” in the mail from a college claiming that it will help them enter into the fullness of their humanity and teach them to insure in perpetuity the life and health of the world, I will stop using the word “racket” to describe “higher” education. But until that time I’m afraid I will be an accomplice to something I cannot wholly admire—if also, I hope, an enemy within it, a kind of Trojan horse.
Only the prosperous could afford fancy private higher education before WW 2. It is getting so that few can afford it now. At $50,000+ per year, they are back to looking for the rich kids again whose parents can pay full freight.
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.”
An attempted palinization of Michelle Bachmann, by Taibbi
In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.
It doesn't matter who you are: if you raise your head up over the trenches, they do this to you. And they are rougher on Conservative women than on the men - although Taibbi would have written a similar hit piece on Reagan - "ignorant and batshit crazy" - I'm sure.
I home, and there we to bed again, and slept pretty well, and about nine rose, and then my wife fell into her blubbering again, and at length had a request to make to me, which was, that she might go into France, and live there, out of trouble; and then all come out, that I loved pleasure and denied her any, and a deal of do; and I find that there have been great fallings out between my father and her, whom, for ever hereafter, I must keep asunder, for they cannot possibly agree. And I said nothing, but, with very mild words and few, suffered her humour to spend, till we begun to be very quiet, and I think all will be over, and friends, and so I to the office, where all the morning doing business.
Plus sa change, plus c'est la meme chose. Sam is frequently figuring out how to deal with Mrs. P's complaints and discontents. He liked to hang out with jovial, cheerful folks between business or government deals, often returning home late from the theater or from taverns in a well-lubricated condition.
One can spend many enjoyable hours keeping up with Sam's diaries, which are more interesting - and better-written - than any Tweets or Facebook posts you will ever read. He did love life, and entered fully into it with a sense of fun and with enough discipline to make it work.
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.)
In the Western world, 
Everybody has an opinion on pruning tomato plants. Here's my view of the subject.
Often it's more fun for me to learn about things after experiencing them, than before. You have a reference point, and something tangible to tack information onto.
I believe in work. 
This isn't a particularly exciting post, just a follow-up.
From Mead's brilliant analysis of 
I remember it well.
It's summertime, and I like to post a few light-hearted summertime items on occasion.
It's been quite a while since we've had a Pepy's Diary post, but this piece of 
Seemed to me, today, that our economy is stuck in a great molasses spill, but this time the molasses is from the government. 