Day By Day

Saturday, November 29, 2008

More Pennsylvania Pictures

Things that caught my eye.


This is a statue of Henry Clay, "The Great Compromiser". It overlooks Pottsville, up in Schuylkill County. Clay was born in Virginia and achiever political distinction in Kentucky. So why is he being honored by a Pennsylvania city? The answer, I suspect, lies in his determined promotion of a system of internal improvements, "The American System", that involved the construction of an elaborate network of roads and canals designed to knit the new nation together. One of the areas that most benefited from canal construction was the hard-coal region. It was the Schuylkill Canal that linked Pottsville and its coal industry to the urban areas where hard coal was consumed. So it is only logical that the foremost booster of canal development should be honored in Pottsville.



A few years ago we cut a tree in our yard [sob!]. Gradually the stump rotted away. This is all that is left. Sorta pretty..., for a fungus.



Fishing on the Susquhanna.



Just north of Reading in Berks County. The image isn't all it should be. I was in a moving car and the focus is a bit off, and the depth of field isn't what it should be. I just didn't have time to change lenses. But I'll be back, and next time I'll be prepared.

The Good President (continued)

Victor Davis Hanson explains why the Obama presidency, even if successful, will improve the reputation of George Bush.

[W]e will come, through the Obama prism, to see that Bush's sins were largely the absence of rhetorical skills, unfortunate shoot 'em braggadocio in 2003-4, the federal response to Katrina, and a certain administration haughtiness about the problems in Iraq between 2002-6, but not most of his policies that included prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind, AIDs relief in Africa, the removal of two odious regimes, and consensual governments in their places, a framework at home to stop 9/11-type terrorism, and good working partnerships with key allies abroad such as Britain, Germany, France, Italy, India, et al, and a pragmatism in handling rivals like Russia and China.

In short, given all that, Obama's victory (predicating on painting Bush as a Hoover/Nixon redux), more so even than perhaps a John McCain's, may do more for Bush's reputation that anyone ever imagined. And the Mumbai mess (over there, not here) will only empasize all this, as an array of old 9/11-era experts who used to warn us about radical Islam, then, in the subsequent respite at home, screamed that Bush fabricated a war against terror against bogeymen, and now in their third manifestation are paraded once more out to warn us about?—why, yes, radical Islam!
Read the whole thing here.

Just Because I Feel Like It

Here are some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time performing "Honeysuckle Rose".



Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! That's nice.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Explaining the Collapse

Megan McArdle has an excellent explanation of why the political response to the collapse of the credit markets is both inadequate and misdirected.

Everyone wants a villain: lefties want to hear that it was greedy bankers, or cold-hearted deregulators (or better yet, both!) who are entirely and 100% to blame; conservatives want to hear that it was poor people taking out loans they knew they couldn't pay off, and a pandering government that leaned on companies and the taxpayer to hand those irresponsible wretches free money.

Nature is not a novelist. Reality does not come packaged in narrative form, and rarely gifts us with either true heroes, or true villains.

It is safe to say that almost everyone involved in this mess, from the borrowers to the bankers, thought that they were getting away with something—at the very least, that they had found a way to get rich without working. It is an old saw that no one can be conned unless they are willing to believe in something for nothing, and the best cons generally get the victim to believe that he is putting one over on the con man.

It is trivial to observe that humans are imperfect; that is why institutions exist.

Read it here. Emphasis mine.

I would only add that institutions are created by humans, staffed and directed by humans, and therefore subject to all the frailties and foibles of humanity.

Bush, Obama, and India

Andrew McCarthy notes that India seems to be something of a blind spot for President-elect Obama and that the world's largest democracy, at least on the basis of his public utterances, has barely penetrated his consciousness. Fortunately, though, President George W. Bush has thought long and hard about India and has worked diligently for years, largely ignored by the MSM, to improve relations between the U. S. and New Delhi. In future years Obama and his successors will inherit and benefit from the unremarked labors of one of our nation's finest Presidents.

Read McCarthy's comments here.

And even the New York Times is forced to note how incredibly naive is Obama's stated policy toward the region, which focuses on Pakistan in hopes of enlisting the Pakistani government in the war against al Qaeda in exchange for better relations with India.

Reconciliation between India and Pakistan has emerged as a basic tenet in the approaches to foreign policy of President-elect Barack Obama, and the new leader of Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus. The point is to persuade Pakistan to focus less of its military effort on India, and more on the militants in its lawless tribal regions who are ripping at the soul of Pakistan.

A strategic pivot by Pakistan’s military away from a focus on India to an all-out effort against the Taliban and their associates in Al Qaeda, the thinking goes, would serve to weaken the militants who are fiercely battling American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

At least that is an improvement over Obama's promise, during the campaign, to invade Pakistan.

Read the NYT piece here.

Of course the NYT, with its customary mendacity, implies that reconciliation between India and Pakistan is original with Obama's foreign policy team. They don't note that when George Bush took office India and Pakistan were on the brink of nuclear war, and that determined and sophisticated diplomacy by the Bush administration was instrumental in convincing both sides to back down and to establish a framework for future cooperation. Bush has also drawn India into a number of regional agreements on security, on the environment, and on economic cooperation that have been enormously beneficial while at the same time establishing an agreement with the Pakistani government that allows us to take limited action against al Qaeda in the tribal regions of northern Pakistan. This agreement, forged with the Musharraf regime, has survived and even been expanded under the new Pakistani leadership and is a testament to the sophisticated and effective diplomacy of the Bush administration. In recent months it has paid off with a number of successful military strikes against al Qaeda facilities and leadership in the tribal regions.

Now Obama, unwilling to directly confront al Qaeda, seeks to enlist the Pakistani government directly in the fight promising better ties to India. That policy, however, is impossible. Whatever tentative agreements might be reached would be hostage to any incident such as what we saw this week in Mumbai. Bush's policy, which recognizes that building strategic and economic ties with India is immensely more important than "getting Bin Laden", is far superior to the silly fantasies currently issuing from the Obama camp.

And, parenthetically, we might note that the NYT falsely implies that General Petraeus' shares Obama's enthusiasm for a Pakistani based approach to regional diplomacy. What they are referring to is the narrow consideration that cooperation from Islamabad would be a great boon to our military efforts in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda. Of course, Gen. Petraeus recognizes this and would welcome such cooperation. But to confuse the tactical considerations of the battlefield with regional diplomacy is at best duplicitous. Presidents, as George Bush understands, are far more than military commanders in chief. They have to take into account of a wide range of considerations and give each appropriate weight in making their decisions. During his eight years in office President Bush has performed admirably in this regard.

He has achieved an unofficial agreement with Islamabad that allows us considerable freedom of action in pursuing al Qaeda and interdicting its operations within the tribal areas. And, simultaneously, we have been instrumental in stabilizing relations throughout the entire region while building solid institutional frameworks for future cooperation. That's quite an accomplishment, but maintaining it will require sophisticated and sensitive negotiations. Let us hope that Obama and his minions will be able in the future to build on the significant achievements of the Bush administration.

The Good President


Don Surber, an eminently sensible man, knew this year what to be thankful for -- President Bush! He writes:
Bush may leave the White House with the lowest approval rating of any president who served two terms.

That doesn't matter.

A safer world does. And that is why I am grateful for the presidency of George Walker Bush.

Read it here.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!


Have a very Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The Civil War in Four Minutes

Also from Spinning Clio, The Civil War in Four Minutes.



Neat! Marc is one smart guy. Check out his blog here.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

So Much for Objectivity

I have watched with dismay as the historical profession has slowly but surely been taken over by left wing ideologues and Democrat partisan hacks. Witness the rush to proclaim President Bush the "worst ever". Now Robert Dallek, before the man has even taken the oath of office, has proclaimed Obama to be one of the great ones, comparable to the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan.

Read it here.

Sheesh!

Hat Tip, Marc at Spinning Clio.

Bill Clinton's Third Term

Iowahawk reveals the next Obama appointment:

Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post

WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.

"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."

Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.

Read the whole thing here.

Misdirected Anger

Tom Sowell, one of the wisest men in America, explains why focusing public anger on the CEO's of major corporations is not only misguided, but dangerous.

Read it here.

Bush was Right -- Victory in Iraq (continued)

Michael Yon reports from Iraq:
[E]very indicator to me is that we are winning the Iraq war at an ever-increasing rate.... AQI is being defeated.... This is shaping up into a strategic defeat for al-Qaeda, not just AQI. I first started writing this in about July 2007; people thought I was nuts. Now it’s being widely recognized that al-Qaeda global is being devastated. (Though they will continue to kill us, and especially be a problem in places like Afghanistan.) The loss in Afghanistan and also their crimes against humanity are sending shockwaves through the Arab and Islamic world. If anyone hates al-Qaeda more than Americans, it’s Iraqis and some others who have suffered under them.
So, Bush was right again. By invading Iraq he made it the central front in the Global War on Terror, and victory there has had huge beneficial consequences throughout the Arab and Islamic world.

The Iraq phase of the GWOT is winding down.
I believe that by the end of this year, there is a very high chance that a reasonable observer will be able to say, “The Iraq war has ended.” This does not mean that we will not take a small number of casualties each month, but that the war will end and we can switch to helping Iraq stand, and truly start to bring more of our folks home.
The remaining military problem is the Shiite militias which are increasingly being marginalized even within the Shia population. That means that the biggest problem we currently face is the cadre of professional journalists. The election has removed one motive for partsian journalists to systematically mis-represent what is happening in Iraq. Their boy won. But there remains a second motive -- careerism.
I am in daily contact with journalists in Iraq and some of them do not want to let the war go. The war has lofted them into positions that they did not previously have (like me, for instance), and some of them do not want to let it go. I can see it. On the one hand, it’s clear they want it to end, but on the other, it’s the highlight of their careers. I have not discussed this with the journalists, but I have noticed the pattern in their communications. They seem almost worried that it’s ending....
Finally, the pace of change in Iraq is so great that it is hard for observers to get their minds around it.
When the war was on full-steam there was so much to report that it was impossible to keep track. And now that peace is breaking out, it’s equally impossible to keep track of all the progress.
Make not mistake about it. This phase of the GWOT is over, and we and the Iraqi people have won. It is impossible at this time to calculate accurately the long-term consequences of the War of Iraqi Liberation, but the outlook for progress in Iraq and throughout the entire region are immense, and the man who made it possible was George W. Bush.

Read Yon's whole piece here.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

More Misery in Zimbabwe -- Now It's Cholera

Things just keep getting worse in Mad Bobby Mugabe's racist, Maoist, anti-colonial Hell on Earth. Now on top of all the other troubles there is a cholera outbreak.
The situation in Zimbabwe may soon "implode" as a cholera outbreak spreads and basic services collapse, South African leaders and a group of international statesmen warned yesterday.

On the eve of talks in South Africa between Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and opposition rivals, South African leaders sharply upgraded their crisis assessment and warned of Zimbabwe's imminent collapse if urgent action was not taken.

About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south to seek treatment in South Africa.

....

The cholera epidemic has been caused by the collapse in the water and sanitation infrastructure. Cases have been reported in nine of the country's 10 provinces. Fatality rates are well above the international emergency rate of 1% due to a lack of drugs and medical assistance.

Read the whole thing here.

The Faded Dream

California was once the embodiment of the American dream -- the golden State where anything was possible. Well, it sure ain't that any more. Californians are leaving in droves seeking refuge in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, even to the socialist states of Oregon and Washington.

Victor Davis Hanson, a native-born Californian who remembers the old days, writes:
California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteries—and squandered that gift within a generation. Compare the vast gulf from old Governor Pat Brown to Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did not invest in many dams, canals, rails, and airports (though we use them all to excess); we sued each other rather than planned; wrote impact statements rather than left behind infrastructure; we redistributed, indulged, blamed, and so managed all at once to create a state with about the highest income and sales taxes and the worst schools, roads, hospitals, and airports. A walk through downtown San Francisco, a stroll up the Fresno downtown mall, a drive along highway 101 (yes, in many places it is still a four-lane, pot-holed highway), an afternoon at LAX, a glance at the catalogue of Cal State Monterey, a visit to the park in Parlier—all that would make our forefathers weep. We can’t build a new nuclear plant; can’t drill a new offshore oil well; can’t build an all-weather road across the Sierra; can’t build a few tracts of new affordable houses in the Bay Area; can’t build a dam for a water-short state; and can’t create even a mediocre passenger rail system. Everything else—well, we do that well.

Read it here.

It used to be said that trends began in California and spread from there to the whole country. Let us hope that such is no longer the case. The California dream has become a cautionary tale.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Fools!

So the auto execs flew in to Washington on corporate jets..., so what?

The WSJ prints this reaction:

The real story is how journalism in this country is so incompetent when it comes to any stories that deal with economics, that the best they can come up with is a "gotcha" story about CEOs and corporate jets.
What is wrong with a company like GM having a private jet for executive business? If anything, this meeting in Washington is the most important one in the company's history. Its entire business future depends on it. If you are a GM employee, would you really want the CEO stuck in Cleveland and missing the hearing that might decide the fate of the company because he missed his connection on Continental?
This story goes beyond lunacy, because it is a glaring example of how journalism has failed to accurately report the things that were happening that caused the financial meltdown. The majority of the major stories seem to follow the same themes: exuberant corporate bonuses, corporate excess and the wacky things that corporate America does (AIG going to a spa). If the media did their job, we would be a lot more informed as to why we are in the situation we are in right now. I'm still waiting.
Read it here.

Exactly. I remember a time long ago when we supposed that journalists who covered a beat were reasonably well-informed on the subject of their stories. Those days, however, are long gone. With a few exceptions, all we have left is semi-educated dolts trying to sound knowledgeable on matters about which they have not a clue.

Of course the only reason the idiot press focused on the planes was the fact that a few loathsome Congresscritters decided to make an issue of it.

Sarah!

I suppose by now everyone has seen the Sarah Palin "Turkey Slaughter" interview. If not, here it is.



There has been a lot of silly commentary, especially on MSNBC, where pundits have taken it to be proof of Sarah's moral as well as intellectual inadequacy [here].

My personal reaction..., 'bout the same as Mark Steyn's:

I didn't think I could like Sarah Palin more than I do, but the nancy boys at MSNBC bleating all over the screen about the Great Turkey Carnage is hilarious....

After she's sworn in in 2013, I hope President Palin arranges for a ritual turkey slaughter to be going on behind her at every press conference, if only during David Shuster's questions.

Read it here.

Byron York posts responses from NRO readers here. I particularly like this one:

City people think that farms are "where life happens." Nonsense. Farming is about killing stuff. I don't even raise livestock or poultry and I have to kill stuff.

I can get crops to grow by simply putting seed in the ground. The rest of my job is to kill, kill, kill. Kill weeds. Kill insect pests. Kill vertebrate pests. Whether by herbicide, pesticides, shooting, trapping, stomping, you name it — I spend far more time killing than I do making something grow. Mother nature takes care of the growing. I have to remove the competition. There have been days when I've trapped 50+ pocket gophers and shot 100 ground squirrels - before lunch. They needed killing, and the next day, more of them were killed because they needed killing. At other times, I've shot dozens of jackrabbits at night and flung them out into the sagebrush for coyotes to eat.

And none of that starts in with helping neighbors slaughter steers, lambs, chickens, etc.

That's farming: killing. Lots of it.

I grew up around farms. He's right.

One of the things I really, really like about Sarah is the kind of reaction she provokes in her critics. They really are unhinged.


Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Goldberg Rule

"When Bill Maher agrees with you it's a sign you took a wrong turn somewhere." [here]

Bush Was Right -- Kyoto

The first in a series:

Now that the election is safely over and the Democrats are poised to take charge, the MSM has belatedly begun to take a more realistic reassessment of President Bush and what he has done. On issue after issue it turns out that President Bush was right and his critics wrong. We can thank God that we elected a man with sufficient inner fortitude to withstand the gales of misguided criticism directed at him and to hold fast to what he knew was right.

Remember all that venom spewed by the environmentalists and transnationalists over the subject of Kyoto? Conveniently ignoring the fact that the Clinton administration had blocked American participation in the international suicide pact, lefties of all stripes roundly denounced President Bush for refusal to adopt the Kyoto Accords. Much of the poison was spread by European governments that had already adopted Kyoto standards and insisted that the United States join them in their mad rush over the precipice.

Well, that was then and now is now. It turns out that the Kyoto standards were not only impractical, they were a terrible burden on the economies of developed nations [something that President Bush in his wisdom understood and tried to warn us about]. For years now, while blathering on and on about the need for America to adopt Kyoto standards, EU nations have quietly failed to meet their own agreed goals [here]. Their denunciations of Bush have been, to say the least, duplicitous. This year Italy and Poland have already signaled their willingness to abandon the treaty and now German German Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined them.

Italy and Germany agree that measures to cut greenhouse gases shouldn't weigh on the economy, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a press conference Tuesday, indicating government support for tough new measures in Europe is waning.

Any new European Union decisions on climate change and energy "must be taken in such a way as to not weigh on industry" in Europe, she said at a press conference televised live by Sky Italia.
Read the whole thing here.

Note that Chancellor Merkel's statemend carries the implication that President Bush was right in his insistence that the international regulatory standards being proposed would place an intolerable burden on advanced economies and that his refusal to join the mad rush was indeed the course of wisdom.

First Snow

We've been down at the Harbor for the past few days and so missed the first snows in Pennsylvania, but yesterday, heading north toward the mountains, passing through Dutch country, we saw strange sky ahead of us.



Yep, you got it. We were driving head on into a snow squall. Here's what it looked like from the inside.



After a few minutes we passed through it and the way was clear from then on all the way home. But during the night the snow caught up to us. This morning I looked out the front window and this is what I saw.



Brrrrr....

Lies of the Left -- Krugman's Half Truth


Last weekend on ABC's Sunday morning talk show George Will, commenting on the Obama administration's promise to create a new "New Deal", opined that the first New Deal, rather than bringing America out of the Great Depression, actually exacerbated it by discouraging capital investment necessary to generate economic growth. Nobel prize winning economist turned partisan hack, Paul Krugman, was there to contradict Will and argue that investment actually rose through the New Deal years so the New Deal actually worked. Democrats immediately seized on the exchange as evidence that conservatives just don't know what they are talking about and are misrepresenting the nation's economic history.

Actually, it was Krugman not Will, who was misinterpreting the past. Russell Roberts, over at Cafe Hayek explains that, while in a very narrow sense Krugman is correct -- both gross and net investment rose after 1932 when FDR was elected to his first term -- but the larger picture tells a very different story.

Will is right on what matters. The sum of all investment in the 1930s is NEGATIVE. (You can see that by looking at the graph [above] and noting that the area below the zero line is much greater than the area above it.) That is, the positive years don't make up for the negative years. Net investment in the 1930s is negative. That is, gross investment between 1930 and 1939 does not make up for depreciation. It's not even close. Will is right--the investment climate in the 1930s was lousy.

So score one for George [the insufferable twit] Will and note that once again Paul Krugman has used his considerable economic skills to support a liberal narrative that is, in the end, a gross and self-serving distortion of the nation's history.

Read Roberts' piece here.

UPDATE:

Researchers at UCLA just released findings of a study that blames FDR's policies for prolonging and deepening the depression.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA [National Industrial Recovery Act] and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

....

"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won't happen again?"

....

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Read the whole thing here.

Note: Nobel laureates are lining up on both sides of the question. We are constantly told to trust the judgment of the "experts", but when the experts cannot agree on the fundamentals, and when their judgment is clearly shaped by partisanship, what is the layperson to do?

Egregious Frummery

Johnny Mac's defeat seems to have touched off a civil war in conservative ranks not unlike that ensuing amongst Democrats after Carter's humiliation in 1980. Various groups have emerged trying to define or re-define "conservatism" according to their own beliefs and biases. One of the more amusing of these is described by Jerry Pournelle:
I note that Ramesh Ponnuru and a gang that includes the egregious Frum want to reform Conservatism, and have formed a sort of Conservative Leadership Council. He's also trying to backpedal from the egregious Frum's trashing of Sarah Palin for not being an intellectual elitist. This gang of comparatively young people who think they know conservatism is very interesting, but so far I have seen little evidence that they know what being conservative means, and if their notion of good judgment is to look to the egregious Frum as an example, I do not think they will be very successful.
Read it here. [HT: Instapundit]

"The egregious Frum"! I like it and will use it.

David Frum, perhaps after George Will the most insufferably snobbish pundit claiming membership in the conservative ranks, has long been telling all and sundry that the conservative base is a farce. I first encountered him through his book "Dead Right," published in 1994, which declared that the Reagan revolution (properly considered of course) had not been all that "conservative".

Nice timing, David.

Until recently the egregious one found employment at National Review Online where I read him from time to time. From thence he has departed to strike out in new directions with a group of like-minded dissidents. Read about it here.

This should be fun. I like it when pseudo-intellectuals fight. They're so bitchy!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Franz West at the BMA


Also this weekend "She Who Must Be Named" and I spent some time at the new Franz West show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibits are certainly eye-catching and there are some cute ideas on display, but I must confess that I just don't get what all the excitement is about. It all seems sorta adolescent to me.

One of the docents and I got into a long discussion as to whether or not the museum was subverting the artists' intentions. West always held that many of his works were meant to be inhabited -- that you could step inside them and experience them as an environment, but at the BMA they were strictly off limits. She finally admitted that the restrictions were not imposed by the museum, but by the private collectors who had lent the pieces.

Fair enough, but that raises the whole question of just how authentic museum exhibits are. Works are artificially presented and the decision of how they are to be seen and experienced is being made not made by the artist himself, but by patrons, collectors and museum directors. This points up an important understanding. Contrary to the romantic myth of the individual genius that informs so many works of art history, the manufacture and presentation of art has always been a collaborative enterprise [for a wonderful treatment of the subject read Lisa Jardine's magnificent interpretation of Renaissance culture, Worldly Goods -- it's one of the best history books I have ever encountered].

The West work isn't, to my mind, very good, but it shows flashes of ingenuity and viewing it gave me something interesting to think about -- and isn't that really a large part of why we go to galleries and museums in the first place?

We weren't supposed to take pictures of the works -- the picture above is a partial view from outside the exhibit hall. Here, however, is a posting by someone who took a camera into the opening reception and snapped away with abandon. Next week we will be back there attending a director's tour and I'll try to get some better pictures then.

Nuns With Guns -- The Church Militant


Yesterday I had lunch with an old friend -- a professor of religious studies who is currently working on a study of the breakdown of Protestant-Catholic amity in early nineteenth-century America, something about which I have written in the past. During our discussion the terms "confrontational practice" and "the Church militant" came up and I immediately thought of this picture. When I got home I made a point of looking it up and here it is. You just don't get any more confrontation or militant than this.

Afternoon at the BMA

This weekend "She Who Must Not Be Named" and I went with a group of friends to the BMA for the latest Shriver Hall Concert. The performer was Richard Egarr, famed conductor and Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music (he has been called "The Bernstein of Early Music"). He is an extremely talented keyboard artist and this was his instrument of choice.


Ain't that gorgeous? Well..., I think so!

Here he is performing.


And what is he playing? Bach's Well Tempered Klavier -- the whole thing! Two and a half hours of harpsichord preludes and fugues during which I transitioned from mildly interested, to distracted, to drowsy, to (and this surprised me) fascinated and wholly involved in the performance. Harpsichord is a very limited instrument, compared to the Pianoforte [or even the Clavier for that matter], and the real challenge for both composer and performer is how to achieve a wide range of effects. The harpsichord experience of Bach is entirely different from what you get with a piano and slowly it had begun to sink in to me just how brilliant Bach and his interpreter were, and what a tremendous achievement the Well Tempered Klavier is.

All in all, time very well spent.

Here is an approximation of what we were hearing -- the guy is pretty good but not quite in Egarr's class and he doesn't have the same instrument, but these selections from the Clavier will give you some idea of what we experienced. It will also illustrate just what "tempered" is all about.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Be Afraid..., Be Very Afraid!!!!!

Tigerhawk writes:
...this is the most terrifying paragraph you are likely to read all year:
World leaders holding an emergency meeting to combat the economic crisis agreed yesterday to a far-reaching action plan that, over the next 4 1/2 months, would begin to reshape international financial institutions and reform worldwide regulatory and accounting rules.

Then there is this:
The Europeans got "virtually everything" they sought at the summit, French President Nicholas Sarkozy crowed afterward at a news conference.

I can smell it now, a global "Sarbanes-Oxley" law that neither replaces nor is consistent with American securities regulation or generally accepted accounting principles.
Read the whole thing here.

I have long thought, with Niall Ferguson, that only three things could bring the global march toward prosperity to a screeching halt -- a global pandemic, a world war, or a wave of protectionist legislation. Now I have to add a fourth -- this.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:

The only way I can see to justify this horrendous agreement is as an alternative to economic nationalism, allowing responsible leaders to head off popular demands for protectionism, which would in the aggregate probably be worse than this monstrosity.

That assumes, of course, that national leaders are wise enough and strong enough to resist protectionist pressures.

Friday, November 14, 2008

The New Working Class


You've heard of Joe the Plumber, and Tito the Contracter. Meet Ingrid the Mechanic. Check out the rest of the crew here.

More Pennsylvania Pictures -- Cabelas

An old friend of mine, originally from Pennsylvania but for many years now safely ensconced in an elite New England academic setting, came to visit a few days ago. We drove around for a while and stopped in Cabelas over on Rte. 78 at Hamburg. Here is a bit of what we saw once we entered the store.

The place was packed, especially the gun section where ammo crates were stacked six high. The line at the checkout stand was ten deep. Obama isn't in office yet and already he's having an effect on this region.

One of the most interesting things about the place are the taxidermy displays -- they are impressive and just keep getting better each year.


Something to warm the cockles of Sarah "Mooseslayer" Palin's heart.


Gotcha!


Steady in the ranks


Some real [fake] mooseslayers


And not to forget -- the aquarium. Thats a Muskie, I believe.

My friend, once a conservative but now far left in his politics, proclaimed the place a quintessential insight into Central Pennsylvania's soul. Soon afterwards he jumped into his Prius and headed back to the comfort of the Ivy League.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Ubertwit


Picture of a twit's twit.

My candidate for most ridiculous writer for a major publication is Nancy Gibbs, who writes for Time. Here's why:

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I'm not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people's faces. We are the ones we've been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.

Read the whole sickening thing here, that is if you have a strong stomach.

Maybe I was being kind in considering Time to be a major publication. The magazine's revenues dropped 35% this year [here] and it is on the brink of collapse. I can't decide whether tripe like what Ms. Gibbs spews is part of the problem or merely a symptom. Either way this is disgraceful.

Flores Hobbit Update


Tonight Nova broadcast a show about the Flores Hobbit. I had not been following the continuing and sometimes vicious debate as to the fossils' significance, but John Hawks has. He live-blogged the show and added expert commentary at the end. Whether or not you caught the show, it is worth checking out here.

Anything for an excuse to repost this picture.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

McCain Steps Up

Finally!

Reuters reports:

Asked by Leno about commentary from pundits across the political spectrum who judged the Alaska governor to be a drag on the Republican ticket, McCain, 72, denied she had hurt his campaign.

"I'm so proud of her and very grateful that she agreed to run with me. She inspired people. She still does," McCain said. "I couldn't be happier with Sarah Palin, and she's gone back to be a great governor, and I think she will play a big role in the future of this country."


And regarding the vicious rumors being spread by self-styled "campaign insiders" McCain said:

McCain suggested such criticism amounted to sour grapes from people claiming to be campaign insiders.

"I think I have at least a thousand, quote, 'Top advisers,'" he said. "These things go on in campaigns, and you just have to move on."

Read the whole thing here.

It's good to see McCain finally doing the right thing. My only question is, what took him so long?


Intellectuals

Thomas Sowell has some fun with the assertion of Nick Kristof [uberidiot at the NYT] that the ascension of the O marks the end of "anti-intellectualism" in America. He points out that the nation's intellectual presidents are not always ones recognized by the intelligentsia as one of their own.
President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him.

Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin.

Similarly, no one ever thought of President Calvin Coolidge as an intellectual. Yet Coolidge also read the classics in the White House. He read both Latin and Greek, and read Dante in the original Italian, since he spoke several languages. It was said that the taciturn Coolidge could be silent in five different languages.

The intellectual levels of politicians are just one of the many things that intellectuals have grossly misjudged for years on end.
He then goes on to catalogue some of the more egregious errors in which American intellectuals have indulged themselves over the course of the past century -- it is a damning indictment.

Read the whole thing here.


Sunday, November 09, 2008

The Cultists

Peter Hitchens, Christopher's younger, smarter brother writes:

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
Read it here.

One of the most dismaying aspects of this campaign has been the extent to which normally intelligent people were willing to suspend their disbelief. Years ago Carl Sagan warned us that we were living in "demon-haunted" times. He was warning about religious belief, but the real danger, as Hitchens reminds us lies, not in religion per se, but in the unreasoning secular cults that have grown up in its absence.

O'Rourke on the Republican Collapse

P. J. O'Rourke is a funny guy, but more importantly he is very smart and perceptive. His message for Republicans is, "We Blew It" and he is absolutely right. He writes:

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.

What follows is an excruciatingly accurate analysis of the ways in which conservative politicians and pundits have failed to live up to their promises. This will come as no news to rank and file Republicans who have been abandoning their leadership for years now, but it is sobering and in a way energizing to have the whole sorry story laid out clearly before us.

Read it here.

In addition to being very funny and smart and perceptive. P. J. is a very wise man. He is currently battling cancer. Let us pray that he wins -- men like him will be needed in these troubling times.


Saturday, November 08, 2008

The Dog that Isn't Barking

It's time to ask the obvious question: "Why isn't John McCain speaking out in defense of Sarah Palin?"

Could it be that he supports the people who are sliming her? And if so, why? I suspect that there was a lot of tension between the McCain and Palin camps during the campaign and that Sarah, recognizing that her handlers were hurting her interests, refused to go along. But, hey, that's what you get when you pick a "maverick". They aren't good at following orders.

In a sense it is delicious to see McCain once again hoist on his own petard. After a long career of subverting the leadership of his own party, he has no right to expect people to follow his direction.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Steele on Obama's Useful Idiots

Shelby Steele, one of the most perceptive commentators on American culture out there comments on the Obamination.
"When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society ... seduces whites with a vision of the racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist ... would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally."
Read about it here.

Exactly -- that's why I have long held that the Republicans, not the Democrats, are the post-racial party. Democrats still see politics through the prism of race, and are willing to vote for a man not because of the content of his character [about which they know essentially nothing] but because of the color of his skin -- and then they declare that such bigotry marks them as enlightened people.

Faugh

More Pennsylvania Pictures

My, my, my, it's the weekend already? More Pennsylvania pics? Sure, glad to accommodate.


Philly center city taken from City Line Avenue. I still call it "City Line" although on the maps it is now called "City Avenue". A friend of mine who lives in the neighborhood tells me that the name was changed to emphasize the unity of the entire Philadelphia metropolitan area, downtown and suburbs all together in one big revenue pool. In other words, it was part of the city's attempts to grab more and more money from the suburbs to subsidize the bottomless financial suckhole that they call the City of Brotherly Love.




And now some shots of Center City itself. First the twin peaks of Liberty Place.



And a single peak, "Two Liberty Place". Made me think of a rocket getting ready for a moon shot.


The old and the new. I liked the way I was able to position the cross, even though I had to stand in the middle of the street ignoring traffic to do so. Good thing my wife wasn't there to see my foolishness. I would never have heard the end of it.


And of course the Comcast Center - the building with the hole in it. Actually these new glass blocks bore me. I'm far more impressed by the old stuff, but I'll have to save that for another time.

John Leonard is Gone

John Leonard has died. Can't say that I will miss him. He was a talented writer and perceptive critic, celebrated by the country's intellectual establishment, but in the end he was a moral imbecile. His defense of communism and its fellow travelers in the West consisted of saying that they were motivated by the best of human values, even if the consequences of their choices were unfortunate. What crap! His popularity and influence testifies to the moral bankruptcy of America's intelligentsia.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

RIP Michael Crichton


Michael Crichton died yesterday, and last night I pored through his website looking for something appropriate for a memorial posting. I finally decided on this -- a famous speech he delivered to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, way back in 2003. It's subject: "Environmentalism as Religion". Not only is it an excellent treatment of a topical subject, one with which I generally agree, but it reveals the kinds of thought processes that informed this excellent, impressively intelligent, and exceptionally sensible writer.

UPDATE:

Here is a wonderful article on Crichton's attitude toward science and technology that illustrates why I consider him to be an eminently sensible commentator.



Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Now the Truth Can Be Told

Writing in the WSJ, Jeffrey Shapiro admits:

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Read the whole thing here.

What disingenuous crap! (And I am one who still feels that Dubya has been a fine President, maybe even a great one.) Shapiro is a Democrat, a former Kerry staffer, whose motives in writing this are all too transparent.

First, he waited until the election was safely in the bag and Obama elected to tell the truth. To come clean long after the damage to Bush and to the country as a whole has been done reflects no honor on the truth-teller.

Secondly, he fails to identify the culprits. Instead he blames all "Americans" and "the country". Honesty would have meant fingering the real liars -- Democrat operatives and their toadies in the MSM. By diffusing the blame, he essentially allows the originators of the vicious libels to escape scot free.

Finally, and most perfidiously, he is issuing this protest in order to advance the argument that antagonism to future presidents, especially to the "One" will be detrimental to the country and that those who attack Obama will be shamefully disloyal to America.

Yes, the attacks on President Bush were disgraceful, but so too is special pleading like this.

Lawyers..., faugh!

UPDATE:

Another Democrat operative, David Greenberg, comes forward after the election to admit that there was massive misrepresentation on the part of his Party and its MSM toadys.

In the weeks before Election Day, we heard regularly that John McCain was running the sleaziest campaign in a generation, if not in American history. That claim might strike some as another case of journalistic weakness for hyperbole. After all, we've also heard claims that this was the most important election of our lifetimes (as if the outcome of the 2000 race hadn't altered history), assertions that the Internet changed everything this year (though Obama surely would have won without it), and effusions about young people's unprecedented engagement (an echo of 1992, when youth turnout actually spiked—as it did not this year).

....

But unlike those exaggerations, the line about McCain threatens to stain a man's name for history. And when viewed without partisan blinders or presentist lenses, the charge doesn't hold up. Indeed, it says more about today's political culture, which has grown unusually high-minded, and the emotions that Americans invest in presidential elections, which are unfailingly intense, than it does about McCain himself.

....

Indeed, McCain's campaign probably wasn't even the dirtiest of 2008—a prize that belongs, arguably, to Obama himself for ascribing racism to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the days between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
Read it here.

Again there are ulterior motives at work in this admission of truth. Greenberg works for the Clintons and wants to portray Hillary as being, along with McCain, a victim of a vicious and unscrupulous Obama campaign.

Funny how Democrats only tell the truth when it is in their interests to do so.

Lileks' Screedblog

James Lileks, one of the best writers on the web, has reinstituted his "Screedblog" where he rants and raves about whatever offends him. He's funny, perceptive, and is often at his best when he is most offended. Check him out here.

Congratulations and God Bless

Narratives

Years ago, when the OJ verdict shocked white America, I analyzed the outcome in terms of competing narratives. The “Dream Team” constructed a narrative that was built around the charge of Black victimhood. OJ, they implied, was a Black man of exceptional abilities who tried to get ahead, only to be slapped down by White America. Marcia Clark and the prosecution countered this with their own victimization narrative. Nichole Simpson, they argued, was emblematic of all women victimized by male brutality. My conclusion at the time — the race card trumped the gender card.

Earlier this year we saw this same competition played out again with the same result. Obama played the race card early and often. He was portrayed as young Black man of exceptional abilities, striving to get ahead, but being opposed by the White establishment. Hillary competed with her own victimization narrative — she was emblematic of all women trivialized and demeaned by men. Both sides proclaimed that they were collecting on a bill long overdue. Their election would be a partial payback for centuries of racism, or alternatively sexism.

Once again the race card decisively trumped the gender card.

Then in the general election the narratives changed. Republicans have frequently run on the Reaganesque themes of American greatness and opportunity, but that was not available to them. The combination of an unpopular war and economic difficulties blunted claims that Republicans were the best caretakers of the country. But even more important, nothing exemplified the openess of American society more than Obama himself — a black man, the son of an immigrant, who overcame all obstacles through the power of hope and audacity, rose through academic ranks, acquired the proper credentials, and now aspired to the highest office in the land. He, not McCain who was born to wealth and privilege, was the best representative of America’s narrative of opportunity.

And, there was a generational narrative — a replay of the old themes that dominated the Sixties. In this story Obama represented a rising generation that lacked experience, but possessed a higher moral and spiritual consciousness than that of their parents. Nothing symbolized this more than the Will-I-Am commercial in which young celebrities chanted “O-bam-a, O-bam-a” over and over. This was designed to appeal to youthful sensibilities and simultaneously to repel and disturb the older generation. Obama was the “One”, the “Lightworker”, the spiritual figure who stood in contrast with the corruption and moral compromises of politics as usual.

But more than anything, Obama was a black man. His election, many liberals felt, was the natural conclusion to the long civil rights struggle. It would heal America’s deep racial divisions, unify the nation, and finally solve what foreigners and academics saw as the fundamental American “dilemma” [a nation that claimed to stand for equality practiced radical inequality]. That was the formulation of a Scandinavian Marxist, Gunnar Myrdal, who in 1944 published “The American Dilemma”. This enormously influential book became one of the founding texts of modern liberalism and was entirely embraced by foreign and academic critics of American culture during the Cold War. The election of Obama would finally provide an effective answer to the charge that America was fundamentally flawed because it was a thoroughly racist society.

Against this the Republicans could only offer traditional American suspicion of the credentialed elites who had come to power in the middle decades of the Twentieth Century. Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin were common folk, populists standing up to the disdain of the holders of advanced academic degrees. And, more importantly, the McCain campaign developed the theme of America’s slow drift toward European-style social democracy [socialist technocracy fused with democratic procedures -- an always unstable mix, because in the end the technocrats disdain and ignore popular opinion].

And finally, the Republicans were forced back on the old Cold War narrative of radical subversion of American democracy. Obama had to be opposed because he represented, not just an out-of-touch intellectual elite, but more seriously he was a stalking-horse for anti-American radicals who had begun their “long march through the institutions” back in the sixties and now were on the brink of taking control of the government. The trouble with this story was that many, especially the poor and young, were the product of those radical institutions and had no great love for either America or capitalism. To them “citizen of the world” and “the welfare state” sounded just fine.

And so now we embark on uncharted and turbulent seas. We have chosen as a navigator a well-spoken young man about whom we know very little and whom we have much reason to suspect.

Years ago, when the OJ verdict shocked white America, I analyzed the outcome in terms of competing narratives. The “Dream Team” constructed a narrative that was built around the charge of Black victimhood. OJ, they implied, was a Black man of exceptional abilities who tried to get ahead, only to be slapped down by White America. Marcia Clark and the prosecution countered this with their own victimization narrative. Nichole Simpson, they argued, was emblematic of all women victimized by male brutality. My conclusion at the time — the race card trumped the gender card.

Earlier this year we saw this same competition played out again with the same result. Obama played the race card early and often. He was portrayed as young Black man of exceptional abilities, striving to get ahead, but being opposed by the White establishment. Hillary competed with her own victimization narrative — she was emblematic of all women trivialized and demeaned by men. Both sides proclaimed that they were collecting on a bill long overdue. Their election would be a partial payback for centuries of racism, or alternatively sexism.

Once again the race card decisively trumped the gender card.

Then in the general election the narratives changed. Republicans have frequently run on the Reaganesque themes of American greatness and opportunity, but that was not available to them. The combination of an unpopular war and economic difficulties blunted claims that Republicans were the best caretakers of the country. But even more important, nothing exemplified the openess of American society more than Obama himself — a black man, the son of an immigrant, who overcame all obstacles through the power of hope and audacity, rose through academic ranks, acquired the proper credentials, and now aspired to the highest office in the land. He, not McCain who was born to wealth and privilege, was the best representative of America’s narrative of opportunity.

And, there was a generational narrative — a replay of the old themes that dominated the Sixties. In this story Obama represented a rising generation that lacked experience, but possessed a higher moral and spiritual consciousness than that of their parents. Nothing symbolized this more than the Will-I-Am commercial in which young celebrities chanted “O-bam-a, O-bam-a” over and over. This was designed to appeal to youthful sensibilities and simultaneously to repel and disturb the older generation. Obama was the “One”, the “Lightworker”, the spiritual figure who stood in contrast with the corruption and moral compromises of politics as usual.

But more than anything, Obama was a black man. His election, many liberals felt, was the natural conclusion to the long civil rights struggle. It would heal America’s deep racial divisions, unify the nation, and finally solve what foreigners and academics saw as the fundamental American “dilemma” [a nation that claimed to stand for equality practiced radical inequality]. That was the formulation of a Scandinavian Marxist, Gunnar Myrdal, who in 1944 published “The American Dilemma”. This enormously influential book became one of the founding texts of modern liberalism and was entirely embraced by foreign and academic critics of American culture during the Cold War. The election of Obama would finally provide an effective answer to the charge that America was fundamentally flawed because it was a thoroughly racist society.

Against this the Republicans could only offer traditional American suspicion of the credentialed elites who had come to power in the middle decades of the Twentieth Century. Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin were common folk, populists standing up to the disdain of the holders of advanced academic degrees. And, more importantly, the McCain campaign developed the theme of America’s slow drift toward European-style social democracy [socialist technocracy fused with democratic procedures -- an always unstable mix, because in the end the technocrats disdain and ignore popular opinion].

And finally, the Republicans were forced back on the old Cold War narrative of radical subversion of American democracy. Obama had to be opposed because he represented, not just an out-of-touch intellectual elite, but more seriously he was a stalking-horse for anti-American radicals who had begun their “long march through the institutions” back in the sixties and now were on the brink of taking control of the government. The trouble with this story was that many, especially the poor and young, were the product of those radical institutions and had no great love for either America or capitalism. To them “citizen of the world” and “the welfare state” sounded just fine.

And so now we embark on uncharted and turbulent seas. We have chosen as a navigator a well-spoken young man about whom we know very little and whom we have much reason to suspect. Once again the race card has trumped all others.

I fear we have not chosen wisely. I hope we have chosen well.


Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Scary

Jonah Goldberg explains why he is scared of Obama, and why you should be too [here].

Get out and vote.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Awesome!

I hadn't realized this until I read about the City Council of Bournemouth, UK banning all Latin phrases on the grounds that they are elitist and discriminatory [here], but it turns our that "Audio, video, disco." translates as "I hear, I see, I learn."

Guess what my new motto is going to be!

Apparently it's already been appropriated by a blog, which now seems to be out of business, nice pictures though. [here] No matter, I'm going to use it anyway.

Clouds Over the Harbor



Got up in the morning, looked out my window, this is what I saw. Fortunately, there was a camera handy.

Vigilantes

Now this is interesting:

SHALBANDI, Pakistan: On a rainy Friday evening in early August, six Taliban fighters attacked a police post in a village in Buner, a quiet farming valley just outside the lawless tribal region of Pakistan.

The militants tied up eight police officers and forced them to lie on the floor, and, according to local accounts, the youngest member of the gang, a 14-year-old, shot the captives on orders from his boss. The fighters stole uniforms and weapons and fled into the mountains.

Almost instantly, the people of Buner, armed with rifles, daggers and pistols, formed a posse. After five days, they cornered and killed their quarry. A video made on a cellphone showed the six militants lying in the dirt, blood oozing from their wounds.

The stand at Buner has entered the lore of Pakistan's war against the militants as a dramatic example of ordinary citizens' determination to draw a line against the militants.

Read the whole thing here.

Incidents like this suggest that the same tactics that were used to marginalize and isolate the Iraqi militants could be effectively applied in Afghanistan, at least that's what General Petraeus seems to think. The problem, of course, is Pakistan where American troops cannot operate openly.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Eye of the Beholder


Different strokes folks, different strokes.... Saudis crowd the stage to get a glimpse of the winner of the national "most beautiful goat" competition.

Hey, whatever turns you on....

Read about it here.

High Flyer


Peregrine Falcon over Florida. Taken by my brother. Damn, everyone is getting into this photography game.

Obama Will Kill the Coal Industry

Terrifying words out of the mouth of "The One"



All you folk in the coal states, vote for Mac, vote for Mac, vote for Mac. These lunatic enviros have to be stopped.

Letting Things Slide

Mark Steyn on the corruption of our national institutions:

Demanding proof of identity at polling stations, requiring address verification for credit-card contributions, getting hung up on foreigners donating to candidates, enforcing deportation orders . . . To raise such footling technicalities as "the law" is racist and so, in a squeamish politically correct culture, we let it slide, even as it corrupts the integrity of the democratic process and the defining act of a free society.
Read it here.

The left and its Democrat patsies [perhaps the better term is "useful idiots"] have launched a decades-long assault on the institutions of a free society. Now they are seeing, in this election cycle, their efforts begin to bear fruit. The change they prattle on about has already happened. Our electoral system has been thoroughly corrupted, as have our institutions of learning and our major media.

One of my favorite stories as a child was "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet. In it a character asks, "Neighbor, how stands the Republic?" to which the reply is, "Rock ribbed and copper sheathed!" That may once have been true. It no longer is. I fear for our republic and for our liberties.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

More Pennsylvania Pictures

Take comfort in the thought that no matter how this election turns out, Pennsylvania will still be the Gorgeous Commonwealth.









Sarah and Barry Kick A**

Simply Awesome, from G4TV. Actually I can see Sarah doing this [in high heels yet], but Barry is a stretch. It is interesting that they chose not to include John McCain who actually is a war hero.