"If life was harder, we would not be able to afford to act as foolishly and frivolously as we do. But it is madness to wish, as I see so many do, that misery could befall everybody so we'd have to be more circumspect and sober in our behavior. Nothing is stopping you from being sober and industrious. Why are you wishing to be forced to be that way?"
- Sippian Cottage
When I find $600.00 laying around to blow on on a docking station for my iPod, I'm getting this one. And why do I hear Barry White when I look at this picture?
Canadian journalist David Warren succinctly sums up my thoughts about the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
"Like the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Berlin, or the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing have been designed from the beginning as a celebration of the world’s biggest and ugliest totalitarian regime. There was no moral excuse for anyone who participated in bringing the games to Beijing; nor is there an excuse now for anyone assisting in the huge public relations enterprise. It should be realized, however, that the athletes themselves are relatively innocent. They are simply being used in a political stunt.
The exploitation of non-political people to make political statements is disgusting. Whatever the intentions of its idealistic promoters in the 19th century, the modern Olympic Games have become an exhibition of national chauvinism instead of amateur sport; even when they are held in free countries. But by now the Olympic movement has attached so many vested interests to itself, that we cannot hope for its elimination. The masses must have their bread and circuses.
My point here is that we didn’t need current events in Tibet to know that Canada, and other free countries, should not participate in the Beijing Games. For the current massacre in Tibet, like the massacre in Tiananmen Square 19 years ago, teaches us nothing new about the nature of the regime. It merely reminds us what that is. It is unfortunate that we needed reminding."
"America faces grievous problems; we are beset by unfulfilled hopes and awesome difficulties. Even so, that which distinguishes us from those awful political cultures in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, in which human beings are treated as mere aggregations of random clinical circumstance, to be dealt with according as said human phenomena further, or hinder, the surrealistic visions of totalitarian superpowers that acknowledge no role whatever for morality in the formulation of public policy - that difference, between Us, and Them, is the difference that matters. And any failure by beneficiaries of the free world to recognize what it is that we have here, over against what it is they would impose on upon us, amounts to moral and intellectual nihilism. To founder there is more incriminating of our culture than eristic scruples of the kind that preoccupy so many of our moralists."
- William F. Buckley Jr.
This is one of the coolest YouTube videos I have ever seen.
CWCID: American Digest is where I found out about it; DJ Earworm is the source.
"I said to Johnny Carson, when on his program he raised the question, that to say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around."
- William F. Buckley Jr.
Since it seems I have a reader who does not appreciate my opinion that we should support the Tibetans and walk away from the Olympics here are some comments from John Derbyshire at NRO. I especially like the comment about Taiwan as well as the observation that the Chinese are going to have trouble controlling free people:
Smash The Running Dogs Of Olympicism! [John Derbyshire]
The fuss over Tibet is getting interesting. I still doubt that a big Olympic flop could bring down the communist government of China, and of course Tibet might be forgotten again a news cycle or two from now, having no oil, and with a population insufficiently barbarous, and a religion insufficiently dogmatic to produce terrorists. Still, a boycott of the opening ceremony by leaders of free nations might actually come off. The French seem to be seriously pondering it.
All sort of other ideas for embarrassing the ChiCom gangsters are buzzing around. Some are suggesting, for example, that athletes simply not show up for the opening ceremonies. (They are not required to by their Olympic contract.) There is also the idea, which I rather like, that an entire national team might shave their heads the night before the ceremony to show solidarity with Tibetan monks and nuns, the bravest and most persecuted of Tibetan patriots.
At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It's not clear they understand this. They've been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.
Smash the Running Dogs [John Derbyshire]
This would really spoil the commies' Olympic fun:
Mr. Derbyshire: Frankly, I would enjoy seeing Taiwan declare independence on the opening day, if they really wanted to muck up the PRC's Olymipcs …
[Me] Not likely, unfortunately. The Taiwanese are a trading people & want to keep the status quo going. It would put an almighty wrench in the works, though.
This is a simply amazing, at times almost biblical post from Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest:
This is what happens when you allow the Olympic Games to be held in a communist country. I can't imagine why the monks would take advantage of this opportunity to give their communist oppressors the finger. But we shouldn't boycott the games because it would only hurt athletes, don't you know. Mr. Rogge wants to disassociate himself and the Olympics from politics. Good luck with that Jacques - let us know how that works out for you. In the meantime we should walk away from this cluster now (emphasis added):
"International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge poured cold water Saturday on calls for a boycott of the Summer Games in Beijing over China's crackdown in Tibet, saying it would only hurt athletes.
"We believe that the boycott doesn't solve anything," Rogge told reporters on this Caribbean island. "On the contrary, it is penalizing innocent athletes and it is stopping the organization from something that definitely is worthwhile organizing."
Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet on Friday—the most violent riots there in nearly two decades—left at least 30 protesters dead, according to a Tibetan exile group. China ordered tourists out of Tibet's capital and troops patrolled the streets on Saturday.
On a six-day tour of the Caribbean, Rogge expressed condolences for the victims and said he hopes calm will be restored immediately. He declined to say whether the committee would change its stance if violence continues or more people are killed.
"The International Olympic Committee has consistently resisted calls for a boycott of the Olympic games," Rogge said."
Victor Davis Hanson dissects the story of Barack Obama and Reverend Wright at NRO:
Rush Limbaugh made these comments about Geraldine Ferraro on his show this afternoon (emphasis added):
"George Neumayr who writes today in the American Spectator on this whole Ferraro flap, has a great point. "Since liberalism is not based upon natural justice but willfulness, [liberalism] never fails to devour its supposed beneficiaries. Ferraro's condescension captures the tone of paternalistic liberalism perfectly. Its 'victims' should know their place and plot their ascent according to the progressive charts set up by the white liberal establishment," meaning Obama has reached too far here. So even though this is the party of affirmative action, the party that tells us that this equals fairness, when this fairness affects them, guess what? Somebody like Geraldine Ferraro says he's only there because he's black. That's what she said -- and now, she's mad that people are upset at her. Now, you could look at this in any number of ways. Obama is receiving 90% of the black vote in the Democrat primary. Why is that? Are the differences between Obama and Hillary on policy so different? They're not. Why are most women voting for Hillary? What is the party of segregation? You tell me. What is the real party that segregates people and puts them into groups and makes victims out of them?
It's the Democrat Party, and now they're being done in by their own policies, by their own beliefs. They end up eating themselves with this. Of course we're helping out with the Rush the Vote and the continual chaos that we're causing, but they're doing a lot to help this along themselves. I mean, to be honest here, Hillary Clinton wouldn't be where she is but for the fact that she has "Bill Clinton's wife" on her résumé and that she's a woman. Obama would not have received the kind of attention he's received from the media for who he is, would he? We can't ask this question? We're being told we can't ask the question. Geraldine Ferraro can't say this. But it looks to me like most of the blacks are voting for him, most of the women are voting for her. That party is segregated. There's no policy difference, so what's going on here? "
"Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle."
- Jsn on Daily Kos
CWCID: Instapundit
Please join me in welcoming David Mamet to the conservative fold. It seems that Dave has had a "Road to Damascus" moment regarding his political belief system. He recently published an essay in The Village Voice which reads, in part:
"This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms."
I don't bake bread - for any reason. M'Lady is the bread baker in our clan and she makes a wonderful sour dough French loaf when she has the time. But that's the point - who has the time to bake bread? There's all that kneading and letting the dough rise...
One of the small things we do not have readily available to us are the superior loaves we used to obtain at The West Side Market, at one of the many old neighborhood bakeries or one of the newer artisan bakeries. The bread you buy in the grocery stores around here does not deserve the name. So what is one to do?
Here is the answer – No Knead Bread.
Here is the recipe:
Recipe: No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.
Since I do not bake bread I decided that if I could make a loaf this good anyone could. And here is the proof:
The crust and texture of this bread is fabulous and it is very easy make. You will not be disappointed.
Update: Our young miss e-mails the following:
No Knead Bread – Optional Recipes
WEIGHT VS. VOLUME - The original recipe contained volume measures, but for those who prefer to use weight, here are the measurements: 430 grams of flour, 345 grams of water, 1 gram of yeast and 8 grams of salt. With experience, many people will stop measuring altogether and add just enough water to make the dough almost too wet to handle.
SALT - Many people, me included, felt Mr. Lahey's bread was not salty enough. Yes, you can use more salt and it won't significantly affect the rising time. I've settled at just under a tablespoon.
YEAST - Instant yeast, called for in the recipe, is also called rapid-rise yeast. But you can use whatever yeast you like. Active dry yeast can be used without proofing (soaking it to make sure it's active).
TIMING - About 18 hours is the preferred initial rising time. Some readers have cut this to as little as eight hours and reported little difference. I have not had much luck with shorter times, but I have gone nearly 24 hours without a problem. Room temperature will affect the rising time, and so will the temperature of the water you add (I start with tepid). Like many other people, I'm eager to see what effect warmer weather will have. But to those who have moved the rising dough around the room trying to find the 70-degree sweet spot: please stop. Any normal room temperature is fine. Just wait until you see bubbles and well-developed gluten — the long strands that cling to the sides of the bowl when you tilt it — before proceeding.
THE SECOND RISE - Mr. Lahey originally suggested one to two hours, but two to three is more like it, in my experience. (Ambient temperatures in the summer will probably knock this time down some.) Some readers almost entirely skipped this rise, shaping the dough after the first rise and letting it rest while the pot and oven preheat; this is worth trying, of course.
OTHER FLOURS - Up to 30 percent whole-grain flour works consistently and well, and 50 percent whole-wheat is also excellent. At least one reader used 100 percent whole-wheat and reported "great crust but somewhat inferior crumb," which sounds promising. I've kept rye, which is delicious but notoriously impossible to get to rise, to about 20 percent. There is room to experiment.
FLAVORINGS -The best time to add caraway seeds, chopped olives, onions, cheese, walnuts, raisins or whatever other traditional bread flavorings you like is after you've mixed the dough. But it's not the only time; you can fold in ingredients before the second rising.
OTHER SHAPES - Baguettes in fish steamers, rolls in muffin tins or classic loaves in loaf pans: if you can imagine it, and stay roughly within the pattern, it will work.
COVERING BETWEEN RISES - A Silpat mat under the dough is a clever idea (not mine). Plastic wrap can be used as a top layer in place of a second towel.
THE POT - The size matters, but not much. I have settled on a smaller pot than Mr. Lahey has, about three or four quarts. This produces a higher loaf, which many people prefer — again, me included. I'm using cast iron. Readers have reported success with just about every available material. Note that the lid handles on Le Creuset pots can only withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees. So avoid using them, or remove the handle first.
BAKING - You can increase the initial temperature to 500 degrees for more rapid browning, but be careful; I scorched a loaf containing whole-wheat flour by doing this. Yes, you can reduce the length of time the pot is covered to 20 minutes from 30, and then increase the time the loaf bakes uncovered. Most people have had a good experience baking for an additional 30 minutes once the pot is uncovered. As these answers demonstrate, almost everything about Mr. Lahey's bread is flexible, within limits. As we experiment, we will have failures. (Like the time I stopped adding flour because the phone rang, and didn't realize it until 18 hours later. Even this, however, was reparable). This method is going to have people experimenting, and largely succeeding, until something better comes along. It may be quite a while.
"Is this how we are perceived in the world? In New York recently I got in a cab and, having said where I wanted to go, was asked where I was from. "London."
My wise-guy cabbie grinned and said, "Yeah? You Shia or Sunni?"
- Nigel Farndale in The Telegraph
CWCID: Mark Steyn
M'Lady and I have been watching this snow drift increase in size all day long. Rest assured that it is built upon a window box - but it's impressive none the less.
We hope you are spending this evening somewhere safe and warm. We will be enjoying snifters of Grand Marnier later "to take the edge off" the storm - especially since the US Weather Service says "ROADS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN PLOWED...AND ROADS EXPOSED TO DRIFTING SNOW WILL LIKELY BE IMPASSIBLE THIS EVENING."
M'Lady and I have been monitoring the weather report since last night in anticipation of a fair amount of snow. Well, it's hhheeerrreee!
This is what greeted us outside our door this morning.
And this is a view of the pond. We have yet to see a snow plow.....
I can only hope the Indians are on the radio this afternoon.....
This sounds about right to me. The economy according to Paul Mirengoff of Powerline:
"After five years or so of strong job growth, the economy has slowed and private-sector employment has fallen for the past three months. The fall is due primarily to job losses in the construction and manufacturing sectors. However, as Rea Hederman and James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation point out, wages have continued to grow at a solid pace, and the unemployment rate (4.7 percent) is still historically low. In short, “the economy is clearly sluggish, but America is hardly in an economic emergency.”
In this context, Hederman and Sherk argue that Congress should resist the responses proposed by various Democrats – not just the utterly counter-intuitive idea of raising taxes during an economic slowdown, but also extending unemployment insurance eligibility from six to nine months and restricting free trade. Unemployment insurance, they note, is designed to provide workers with insurance against the risk of involuntary job loss, not to stimulate the economy. Studies have found little evidence that increasing benefits boosts the economy. Moreover, “paying workers to stay unemployed for a longer period of time does little to promote economic growth.” Meanwhile, nearly every serious economist agrees that free trade helps the overall economy.
Instead of taking these desperate measures, Hederman and Sherk recommend that Congress lower taxes on businesses. American businesses pay a 35 percent tax rate, much higher than that in most developed countries. The high tax rate “makes America less attractive to investors and puts American businesses at a competitive disadvantage internationally.”
Quite apart from the present state of the economy, our business taxes should be brought into line with those of our competitors. The current situation should provide the impetus to get this done. Unfortunately, the Democrats would rather push for counter-intuitive, counter-productive approaches. "
When this album first came out I listened to it because it was beyond "hip". I have recently re-visited Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band but now through the prism of an abiding love for John Coltrane. Both of these artists stretched the musical boundaries and, forty years on, continue to do so.
"Moonlight On Vermont" anyone?
We have recently been visited by a winter blast and though we did not get as much snow as out friends to the north, we did get quite a bit of ice. Our pheasant weather vane was not amused ...
I have to say that I have never seen/noticed individual blades of grass encased in ice before ...
And now we are preparing for another foot of snow predicted for Friday and beyond. Another chapter in what seems to be an endless winter. Spring is 15 days away - must make it to spring ... must hold on ......
"Welcome to the "Re-create 68" website, your virtual activists' Convergence Center for the Denver Democratic National Convention of 2008. This website was created for all the grassroots people who are tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party.
R-68 agrees with the proposition, POTESTAS IN POPULO, "all power comes from the people." What stands between the people and power are the party machines. The parties were devised as a means to represent the people. Today they represent nobody, not even party members, but only party bureaucracy. The people have been left without appropriate institutions for their representation. We intend to create those institutes!
Join us in the streets of Denver as we resist a two-party system that allows imperialism and racism to continue unrestrained. "
You just have to love these people! We're a long way from August but I would love to see a re-enactment of Chicago circa 1968 - wouldn't you? Bring it on!
"The Palestinian Hamas movement hailed a deadly attack on a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday night as "heroic," without claiming responsibility for the strike that killed eight.
"This heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Another spokesman, Taher al-Nunu, blamed the attack on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli government.
"We have warned before about the responsibility of the escalation in Gaza and warned of Palestinian anger," Nunu said.
Hundreds of Palestinians poured into the streets of Gaza City as news of the attack at a west Jerusalem yeshiva spread, firing automatic rifles into the air in celebration."
This will never be over until someone "wins". From American Digest:
To: The Palestinian People
From: The People of Israel
Re: Final Notice Before the Termination of Our Relationship
Date: "To Be Determined"
(To be filed in your "Permanent Conduct Record")
AS YOU KNOW from our repeated meetings over many years, we have repeatedly done our best to accommodate your incessant demands regarding employment, compensation, housing allowances, health benefits, and other items of mutual interest as we have endeavored to work together on "Project Peace in the Middle East."
We have, with your agreement and assurances of a better performance, given you time, money, professional help, medication and a more than reasonable offer of land for you to live in while you work out "your issues." In the course of these meetings we feel we have been more than forthcoming in our attendance to your "special needs."
From time to time we have accepted your written word that, given adequate resources, you would be working internally to resolve "your issues." We note, for the record, that at no time has your word proven to be worth the paper which we both so ceremoniously signed. Indeed, it has been our bitter experience that the working out of "your issues" most often involves explosive episodes on the streets of our country.
It has come to our attention, through a continuing rain of the body parts of our citizens onto our streets, that "your issues" do not seem to be resolvable through considered and mutually agreeable negotiations. The outcome of these 'negotiations' in the recent past seems to us to be one of we give and you take and then you kill us. We have decided that this is not a peace project that we wish to continue.
Indeed, it would seem to be the case that your "central issue," although internally generated within your institutions and religion, seems to be the eradication of the state of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people here and abroad.
We mention 'abroad' since it would seem to us that your goal is to first create a base that includes the entire state of Israel, kill the Jews within those borders, and then use that land as a base to kill Jews throughout the world. Perhaps we are wrong in this but we find that a people is best known by the company they keep.
As Jews we have had a similar experience with this "central issue" as a "final solution" towards the middle of the last century. We discovered, after millions of us had been slaughtered, that mollification, negotiation, and submission was not a successful policy. Indeed, we created the state of Israel around the central concept of 'Never again.'
Please note that after no little reflection and soul searching, we have decided to return Israel to this concept as the foundation of our internal and international policy from this moment forward.
Because we are a reasonable people we have decided to issue this memorandum in order to give you one chance to reform yourselves and become fit to be included in the human race. Should you choose not to pursue this path, we will at least have a record that you were notified in a fair and timely manner before termination.
"Never Again" was our first principle and is now our final position. This memo serves to note the end of all negotiations with the Palestinian People.
Your problems and your issues as of this date are yours and yours alone. You must solve whatever bipolar instability and manic-depressive disappointment and psychotic tendencies towards homicidal violence plague your society among yourselves. You will not, from this date forward, use the People of Israel as targets for your own internal demons.
Your "issues" will no longer be allowed to become our "episodes."
Should you choose "act out," even once, we, the People of Israel, hereby notify you that we are prepared to and shall, without any further notice, over-react towards all Palestinian people and interests within our sphere of influence.
Bear in mind that we have not in recent memory over-reacted against your unremitting efforts to exterminate us. We have been patient and measured in our responses, cognizant of a watching world and not wanting to seem, even for a moment, to be as savage and violent as those who have been waging a coward's war against us for decades. We have, at all points, been as honorable in war as possible -- even when the wars in which we were engaged were not fought by honorable adversaries but by cowards and murderers.
As you know, our military power, both conventional and nuclear, is immense. We won't detail here the helicopters, missiles, tanks, aircraft, and troops which we can mobilize and move to the west as far as the shores of the ocean if we wish.
Mere mention of these items has not gotten your attention.
The restrained use of these items has not gotten your attention.
Because we are weary of having our streets used as your martyr's mausoleums, because we are extremely angered when we must place the shredded bodies of our children into body bags, because we would feel a lot better getting up in the morning if we knew we'd be coming home at night, we have decided we must, regretfully, engage in methods which will, finally, either get your attention or leave you without the capacity for attention in the first place.
This then is your single choice:
If you know of those among you who seek to kill even one of us by any means, you would be well advised to render them incapable of killing anyone immediately. Should you wish to ever have a bit of land to call your own and you are aware of an organization of any kind that seeks to take our land outright, you would be well advised to render them powerless forthwith.
Should you fail to do so and, as we stated above, even one more of our citizens should be killed by the cowardly methods you have perfected over the years, we will conclude that your entire society values martyrdom more than life and peace and will endeavor, to the utmost limits of our ability, to supply you with same.
We will begin our program of over-reaction without delay and without reference to our allies or world opinion. We will deal with that in the days that follow the completion of our strategic exercises in what you quaintly term "the occupied territories." Please notify those whom you consider your allies that, should they chance to intervene, we have sufficient resources to deal with them expeditiously.
Should individual Palestinians feel that these terms are unrealistic, we would advise them personally to seek an exit visa and to remove themselves as far from 'the occupied territories' as is feasible and as quickly as possible. When we over-react to the west we will not be checking ID cards.
Please reflect upon these conditions as seriously as we have in drafting them.
Remember, in the final analysis, we are a people with no little experience in stunning victories.
Sincerely,The People of Israel
CC: USA, EU, UN and others whom it may concern"
====
"They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies."
- Dave Barry
Gerard Van der Leun posts this over at American Digest. My comments follow.
"In my email this evening, a retired top executive from a major multi-national corporation looks at the laboring of our political mountain that has, again, brought forth midgets. He is not amused.
What a dreadful situation. The whole process has perplexed me for years.
We often hear someone put forth the premise that the U.S. President is "the most powerful person in the world" (However arrogant that may be.). Yet we require very little of the actual candidates for the office.
No major corporation would hire most of the individuals that have run for the U.S. presidency in my lifetime - at least not before they became President.
On top of that, our political dialogue is not about the kind of person a candidate should be, and the basket of traits that a candidate should possess, but focuses on all manner of irrelevant crap.
How about an I.Q. estimate for starters?
How about their success "outside" the political sphere?
What about some basis for determining the moral character of the candidates not tied to idle gossip?
What is their global view? What is their knowledge of other other languages and cultures? How profound is their grasp of history? Of Geography? Economics? Technology?
What would seem to be a magnet for the best and brightest is instead something they avoid like the plague - for understandable reasons, of course.
Still, it drives me crazy. I would love to see a meaningful national debate on the qualities America should demand of it's leaders.
I guess our news organizations must not think it's very important."
The last sentence of the post is quite telling. What the news media declares "news worthy" is, in large part, the problem. The debates have devolved into media set-ups to either ambush candidates or, at the very least, provoke verbal combat between them with the moderators acting as a combination picador/matador.
But we can not lay all of the blame on the Fourth Estate. We are the consumers of media and citizens so it is our decision if we will let this continue. Does this process promote selection of the best and brightest? Based on recent results most everyone would agree that it does not. Therefore, perhaps we should consider a formal interview process, as the post mentions, where we could rationally consider a candidates qualifications or lack thereof, for the position. If we removed a great deal of the attendant media generated hoopla and gotcha politicking associated with running for office it might become more attractive to the types of candidates we want in office.
I believe we will continue to see a shift away from the main stream media to the new media during presidential campaigns, enabling the candidates to communicate more directly with the voters instead of through a MSM filter. The real question is are we, the voters, ready?
Now this is just plain whacked! It may also explain how we won the Cold War.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the students of Virginia Tech as well as the victims of other "gun-free zone" shootings. By now, I think it has become abundantly clear that evil does not follow the rules. And as a result, sometimes those well meaning rules put us at an even greater disadvantage.
I sense that this PostSecret is from a student who finds herself at a crossroads - between survivor and victim.
She has been exposed to a brutal reality and we can debate how best to keep it from happening again. But the fact remains that evil ignores the rules. I would submit that having a plan to exit every room you enter should not be viewed as paranoid. It should be viewed as practical common sense. Whether you choose to go to the next level by arming yourself is a personal decision and a decision many are not willing to make - so an exit strategy is a viable alternative. Then again, only worrying about "when the gunman comes" is not productive.
It may also be instructional to consult someone with vast experience and who better than the Marines. Their rules are fairly straight forward "Be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet." Does this apply to civilians too? Only if you want to be the survivor and not the victim.
Another fine post from Wretchard at The Belmont Club republished in it's entirety:
Hugh Hewitt interviews Jonah Goldberg about his book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History Of The American Left From Mussolini To The Politics Of Meaning. Hewitt goes over the evolution of liberalism from its impeccable fascist pedigree with Goldberg, a kind of spoiler of the book. But what's really interesting was this exchange:
HH: And you know, it’s the same temptation over and over again, and it’s one abroad in the land right now, which is why I want to pause on this, which is Rousseau believed that man was good, you know, that the state came along, or that society came along and screwed things up, but that actually, that men were innately good. And that’s simply not a conservative view, Jonah Goldberg. It’s anti-conservative. It’s also anti-theology in most senses.
JG: Right. I mean, I think the fundamental difference, the difference that defines the difference between American, Anglo-American conservatives and European welfare states, leftists or liberals, is Locke versus Rousseau. Every philosophical argument boils down to John Locke versus Jacques Rousseau.
HH: Yup.
JG: Rousseau says the government is there, that our rights come from the government, that come from the collective. Locke says our rights come from God, and that we only create a government to protect our interests. The Rousseauian says you can make a religion out of society and politics, and the Lockean says no, religion is a separate sphere from politics. And that is the defining distinction between the two, and I think that distinction also runs through the human heart, that we all have a Rousseauian temptation in us. And it’s the job of conservatives to remind people that the Lockean in us needs to win.
This exchange captures the link between the 20th century struggle against Communism and Fascism and the 21st century's epic battle against radical Islamism. The key difference between those ideologies and the Lockean view is where they put God -- or if you prefer Ultimate Legitimacy -- in relation to society. Both liberal fascism and Islamic fundamentalism put God on earth; both are theocracies in the sense they believe that God actually rules temporally. In the first case the Deity takes the form of an enlightened vanguard; in the second case Allah rules through the Caliphate via Sharia law.
But the price of putting God on earth is dragging Him through the mud of politics. If one truly believes that God looks like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama one eventually comes to the view that the Almighty isn't everything He's cracked up to be. By contrast, locating God outside of politics is, to use a current buzzword, "de-weaponizing" the numinous; removing what is too great and awesome for our complete understanding from the sphere of political manipulation.
That doesn't mean the Lockeans remove God from the Universe. On the contrary they keep him there. But when God is invoked, it is always as our understanding of Him rather than as God Himself. In other words human organization can never attain to the sanctity of the Koran or the Communist Manifesto. It never becomes a divine instituion. It is only ever a government -- by the people, of the people and for the people.
And only if we keep it so shall it never perish from the earth. The words "My Kingdom is not of this world" preserves both God's Kingdom and our freedom. We may come to God, through the perils of life and danger of damnation. But we arrive before Him as free beings. Sans the muttawa and sans the scourge of political coercion.
