With my new vehicle, I may just have to look into those carbon offsets after all. But before I do I'm going to finish reading this NYT's article which seems to indicate that offsets are B.S. - who knew?
Meet our latest addition - the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited 4X4. Since we moved to the country I can't begin to count the times I have wished for and even said out loud "I need a pick-up truck". There is always something big to haul or otherwise move around that is not easily accommodated with a mid-sized SUV or a four door sedan. Not to mention that I never thought I would ever hear myself say "I need a pick-up truck".
At least with this vehicle I will have a 3500 pound towing capacity as well as 4 wheel drive which will come in handy for M’Lady during her wintertime commutes on snowy country roads. Then, of course, there is the roof – which makes this the only 4 door convertible in the world. Everyone should have a convertible at least once in their life and this will be our first. The dogs are going to be ecstatic.
Did I mention that the doors come completely off, the windshield folds down and there are drain plugs in the floor? The finishing touch will be the decal for the windshield, which is installed upside down and says “If you can read this… Roll me over”.
If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration."
- John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), British philosopher, economist. “The Contest in America,” Dissertations and Discussions (1859).
William F. Buckley has weighed in on the Virginia Tech shootings with the most insigtful comment I have yet seen (emphasis added):
"So you are left with the most violent shooting attack in American history committed by someone you don’t have an apparatus for successfully disqualifying or isolating.
We need, then, to return to the paradox: The most modern scientific methods aren’t refined enough to discover the most dangerous people in our society.
Pretty soon we’ll forget, not the horror of what happened, but the presumption that we can discover and attack evil, other than by the cultivation of biblical rules for human behavior."
James Q. Wilson wrote this article for the Los Angles Times about why tightening gun laws in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings won't work:
"AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.
Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.
The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.
It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws."
JAMES Q. WILSON teaches public policy at Pepperdine University and previously taught at UCLA and Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including "Thinking About Crime."
Austin Bay is spot on with his analysis of Harry Reid's most recent comments about the war:
"It would be refreshing if Reid even had the courage of his defeatist convictions.
Thing is, his “convictions” aren’t convictions. They are political postures, and this statement is an example of his political game. He tosses a line to the Dems’ defeatist nuts then edges toward reality with an oily pirouette.
UPDATE: I am now listening to the tv (not reading a wireservice report) and it appears Reid added his caveat later. So he doesn’t even score clever points. It’s still an example of his political game. As soon as the going gets tough, Reid and his constituents waver. Pathetic. No, not merely pathetic, dangerous and demoralizing."
This quote is dedicated to Professor Liviu Librescu who was among those killed at Virginia Tech yesterday while providing his students an opportunity to escape.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."
- Ambrose Redmoon
Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who perished and those who lost loved ones in this senseless tragedy.
Peggy Noonan has written an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal about the current crop of presidential hopefuls:
"So what's going on here? "Can't nobody here play this game?" The presidency is an august office. Why are these candidates acting so small when the job they think they deserve is so big?
Maybe it's just that people have less dignity these days, and so candidates do too. A few decades ago personal dignity became equated with stiffness and pretension. There was nothing in it for politicians anymore. (It all might have started in 1968, when Richard Nixon went on "Laugh-In" and said, "Sock it to me." But that worked because he had actual personal dignity to spoof.) Maybe we've reached the point where anyone who'd run for president is almost definitionally strange. Maybe it's that the candidates so far are just the kind of people who'd make it to the top of the greasy pole, scramblers by nature whose main talent is energy, not judgment.
But I have a different theory. I think it's that all our candidates for president have met, or know well, too many former and sitting presidents. They've seen them up close, they know them, they have seen their flaws and mess and inadequacy. Knowing a lot of former presidents, and a lot of incumbents, will give you a too mortal sense of what the presidency is.
The problem with former presidents is that knowing them keeps you from being awed by the presidency. When you haven't met them, you have a more austere and august sense of who they are, and what a president is.
Candidates on the trail today would be better off keeping as their template for the office Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln--the unattainable greats. It's no good to just be thinking, At least I'm better than Clinton, at least I'm better than Bush.
Something to reach for even if you know it will exceed your grasp. But it's good to be reaching upward, not stooping."
With candidates declaring for the presidency two years in advance can we help but come to the conclusion that anyone that seeks this office should be disqualified from holding it?
"Save your neck or save your brother.
Looks like its one or the other.
Oh, you don't know the shape I'm in."
- The Shape I'm In by The Band
Please take a few minutes to read E.J. Dionne's column in today's Washington Post. The article has received high praise from many commentators and is worthy of your time. But the best comment I have seen was e-mailed to Katheryn Jean Lopez who shared it on The Corner:
"Long time Corner reader, first time emailer. There's a nice plug for Michael Novak by E.J. Dionne in today's Washington Post . Dionne calls Novak's March 19th piece in National Review "one of the best critiques of neo-atheism".There's something amusing about an Evangelical Calvinist professor emailing a Catholic editor of a conservative magazine on Good Friday to tout a Catholic theologian reviewing a new atheist author highlighted in a liberal newspaper. Ain't the Internet grand? "
I'll go one step further and ask "Where else in the world could you find this many people of differing viewpoints peacefully collaborating on and debating religious issues amongst themselves without government interference?"
“Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it. But free individualism uninformed by moral values rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.”
- Frank S. Meyer
"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared. Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish."
Needless to say, getting embarrassed by Olmert and Assad is bad enough but the slap down administered above is from today's Washington Post editorial. Now that's got to hurt!
At least Speaker Pelosi is consistent; she consistently over reaches, especially into areas where she has no business being to begin with. In doing so this time she has moved from the familiar confines of the House and has succeeded in making a fool of herself on the world stage. Since she has proven herself to be an idiot of the "useful" variety can invitations to visit from Moscow, Beijing and Tehran be far behind?
