What's the Rumpus?

The Dog Is Alive

2009-04-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

Stewdog is still alive and off leash. For some reason, and I can't seem to put my finger on it, I just have not been motivated to write anything about politics. I shall continue to bury my head, act locally to try to improve my neighborhood, and follow the Cardinals!

"Cousin Bill's Game of Chicken"

2009-03-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

Here. Enjoy.

Getting medieval on their hindquarters

2009-03-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Professor Michael Drout begins a crusade to defend the proposition that the study of the medieval history and literature is -- gasp! -- at least as important as the study of more modern or "contemporary" history.

The posse is forming. Hee Haw!

Marilynne Robinson interview

2009-02-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a fascinating interview with Marilynne Robinson in The Paris Review.

Robinson comments on religion as a way of orienting oneself toward the world and describes culture as the "skeleton" of meaning:

INTERVIEWER
Ames [the narrator of Gilead] believes that one of the benefits of religion is “it helps you concentrate. It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore.” Is this something that your faith and religious practice has done for you?

ROBINSON
Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I’ve found fruitful to think about. Religion has been profoundly effective in enlarging human imagination and expression. It’s only very recently that you couldn’t see how the high arts are intimately connected to religion.

INTERVIEWER
Is this frame of religion something we’ve lost?

ROBINSON
There was a time when people felt as if structure in most forms were a constraint and they attacked it, which in a culture is like an autoimmune problem: the organism is not allowing itself the conditions of its own existence. We’re cultural creatures and meaning doesn’t simply generate itself out of thin air; it’s sustained by a cultural framework. It’s like deciding how much more interesting it would be if you had no skeleton: you could just slide under the door.

And when was the last time you heard a critically-acclaimed contemporary author speaking favorably about John Calvin?

Robinson is a Christian whose faith is not easily reduced to generalities. Calvin’s thought has had a strong influence on her, and she depicts him in her essays as a misunderstood humanist, likening his “secularizing tendencies” to the “celebrations of the human one finds in Emerson and Whitman.”

Her book of essays is called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.

Withywindle on Booker T. Washington and a counter-canon of great Black Americans

2009-02-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

Withywindle's recent post responding to Eric Holder's canon of great Black Americans is a must-read:

And then Booker T. Washington. What to say? I object more to ignoring him, and his work for Black Americans; I’m not actually inclined to say Yay, Booker; Boo, DuBois. He shouldn’t be forgotten, but neither do I say that his is the one true path. Surely Washington and DuBois were the great complements, both necessary for the liberation of Black Americans?

But more than that: how can one look at Washington’s accommodations and not perceive the strength of character it took to make them? How can you look at the soft voice and think “Uncle Tom”, rather than recognize the iron will that made that voice soft? I am reminded of Gottfried Lessing’s Nathan the Wise - Nathan the Jew, an endlessly patient plaster saint of a man, whose endurance of Christian prejudice eventually redeems the Christian characters. Oh, joy, being effeminately virtuous for other people’s benefit – I’m told various Black Americans have tired of that role too. But there is a bit in the play worth focusing on:

"You found me at Darun – the child and you.
You did not know that Christians just before
Had murdered all the Jews that were in Gath –
Men, women, children; knew not that my wife
And sons, seven hopeful sons, were there among them,
And in my brother’s house, where they had fled
For safety, had to perish in the flames. ....
Three days and nights I’d lain
In dust and ashes before God, and wept
When you arrived. Wept? I had wrestled hard
At times with God; had stormed and raved; had cursed
Myself and all the world; had sworn a hate
Against the Christians, unappeasable. ....
Gradually my reason
Returned to me. She spoke with gentle voice:
'And yet God is: e’en this was God’s decree!
Up, then! and practise what you’ve long believed
To practise cannot be more difficult
Than to believe, if you but will. Rise up!'
I stood erect and cried to God: 'I will!'"

Nathan is not just a plaster saint, but a man who has known unappeasable hate, wrestled hard with God. Who can look at Washington’s life and think he was different? That his soft words were any less hard won than Nathan’s? My God, the man lived in a furnace all his life and burnt himself out for his people; and he is to be without honor in his own country? Not if I can help it.

Read the whole thing.

Sadly, this doesn't surprise me . . .

2009-02-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

When "liberals" make "outsourcing" jokes about Bobby Jindal, or impersonate Indian customer service representatives, or make Slumdog Millionaire cracks about Bobby Jindal, it's not ugly racism, it's . . . it's . . . um, help me out here.

Okay, now I'm angry!

2009-02-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

What the heck is wrong with the name Frank, Mrs. Obama?

The first lady said her daughters will have to wait until the end of April to get the dog, since her family is planning on going away for Spring Break.

The only thing left to pick is the name, and Mrs. Obama said she is not a fan of her daughters’ choices.

“There are names floating around and they're bad," Mrs. Obama said in the interview. "You listen and you go – like, I think, Frank was one of them. Frank! Moose was another one of them. Moose. I said, well, what if the dog isn't a moose? Moose. I'm like, no, come on, let's work with the names a little bit."

UPDATE: Thank you, Arethusa.

Looking backwards

2009-02-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

Alpheus explains why those "backward-looking" conservatives may have the right idea.

UPDATE: The always-thoughtful Withywindle continues the discussion here.

Of new languages and second souls . . .

2009-02-24T07:16:00.001-08:00

Here's Jeff Sypeck being brilliant, as usual.

Comedy Gold

2009-02-24T07:03:00.000-08:00

Student "protesters" at NYU occupy the student food court, and then proudly videotape the hilarious failure of their "revolution". I think my favorite part comes toward the end when they're videotaping the contents of their backpacks -- presumably to protect themselves against having their adolescent status symbols confiscated by The Man. As they sift through yards of Macbooks and headphones and cords and gadgetry, their whiny spokeskid suggests that the authorities probably won't want their bottles of water, because "they" only drink "corporate water."

UPDATE: From Stuff White People Like:

On the surface, you would ask yourself how white people could love a multibillion-dollar company with manufacturing plants in China and mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices. The simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

How's that change thing working out for you?

2009-02-23T16:33:00.001-08:00

Obama administration upholds Bush policy on detainees in Afghanistan.

Yeah, that's the ticket

2009-02-17T14:38:00.001-08:00

Aim high, Senator Burris.

Read Rod Dreher's post . . .

2009-02-17T12:26:00.000-08:00

on "God, the Sex Vote, and Human Dignity."

Go on. Right now.

An Open Letter to the Government of the U.K.

2009-02-12T06:49:00.001-08:00

From the International Free Press Society:

On Tuesday, February 10, 2009, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, leader of the Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom), received a letter written on behalf of British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. It informed Mr. Wilders that on traveling to the UK at the invitation of UK Independence Party peer Lord Pearson to screen the film Fitna and hold a Q&A in the Parliament on Thursday, February 12, 2009, Mr. Wilders should expect to be barred from entry into the UK for the following stated reason:

“The Secretary of State is of the view that your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society. The Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.”

With this edict, the government of the UK has broken faith with its own glorious tradition of enshrining freedom of speech, and embarked on an authoritarian course of setting the boundaries of political debate. With this action, the government of the UK has also broken faith with its neighbors in the European Union by taking the unprecedented measure of barring entry to a democratically elected representative, and, in Mr. Wilders’ case, party leader from another EU member state. In so doing, the government of the UK has additionally given lie to the organizing EU principle of “open borders” among member states, demonstrating a capricious will to close its borders against ideas of which it disapproves.

The British Home Office has further stated that in barring Geert Wilders from the UK it is stopping “extremism, hatred and violent messages” from coming to its country. The British Home Office is wrong. These things are already there. With this crude rebuff of Mr. Wilders, the Netherlands, and freedom of speech, the British government has all but ensured that such extremism, hatred and violent messages will continue to flourish in British soil, taking root and taking over.

Read the whole thing.

This is making me homesick . . .

2009-02-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

. . . A YouTube commercial for Trader Joe's.

(Via Ann Althouse)

On managing expectations

2009-02-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

Will Wilkinson on the stimulus package and managing expectations:

Expectations matter. A lot. Stable institutions in a context of trust are necessary for liberal prosperity. In this sense, the work of government is to manage expectations–to maintain a stable strategic framework within which plans can be formed and cooperative action successfully coordinated over the long term. That is why, for instance, I think quickly restoring a legal and administrative framework for functioning financial markets ought to be among the government’s chief priorities.

Yet I’m extremely suspicious of what strike me as intellectually contentious, ad hoc interventions into the economy aimed at expectation management. Countercyclical economic mood-control initiatives seem to me inconsistent with the maintenance of a general framework of stable rules — that is, they don’t take the importance of expectations seriously enough — while also smacking of illiberal state propaganda. It’s hard to draw a principled distinction between framework and ad hoc rules, but I think it’s intuitive enough. Steady, predictable expansion of the money supply seems like the good kind of expectation management, while fool-in-the-shower money supply management seems like the bad kind. Likewise, automatic stabilizers, such as the predictable increases in welfare and unemployment transfers during recessions, strike me as greatly preferable to freestyle panic-mode stimulus legislation.

Read the whole thing.

"The Meaning of Sarah Palin"

2009-02-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

Yuval Levin has written a great piece for Commentary about Sarah Palin's candidacy.

I particularly like his take on the over-the-top disgust with which "cultural elites" reacted to Palin:

Palin’s social conservatism had never been the core of her political identity in Alaska. She always expressed general support for traditionalist views in interviews and debates, and it was widely known that she had also chosen to proceed with her fifth pregnancy after discovering the child had Down syndrome—a discovery that in about nine of ten cases leads parents to opt for abortion. But Palin never went out of her way to raise abortion or other social or cultural issues, and in her first two years as governor had not sought to change state policies in these areas. She was a good-government reformer with social conservative leanings, not the other way around.

But this was not how Palin was received on the national scene. Instead, her views on matters of cultural and social controversy very quickly became the chief focus of media attention, liberal criticism, and pundit analysis. Palin was assigned every view and position the Left considered unenlightened, and the response to her brought into the light all manner of implicit liberal assumptions about cultural conservatives. We were told that Palin was opposed to contraception, advocated teaching creationism in schools, and was inclined to ban books she disagreed with. She was described as a religious zealot, an anti-abortion extremist, a blind champion of abstinence-only sex education. She was said to have sought to make rape victims pay for their own medical exams, to have Alaska secede from the Union, and to get Pat Buchanan elected President. She was reported to believe that the Iraq war was mandated by God, that the end-times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were nearing and only Alaska would survive, and that global warming was purely a myth. None of this was true.

Her personal life came under withering assault as well. Palin’s capacity to function as a senior elected official while raising five children was repeatedly questioned by liberal pundits who would never dare to express such views about a female candidate whose opinions were more congenial to them. Her teenage daughter’s pregnancy was splattered all over the front pages (garnering three New York Times stories in a single day on September 2). Some bloggers even suggested her youngest child had not issued from her, but from her daughter instead, and that she had participated in a bizarre cover-up. I attended a gathering in Washington at which a prominent columnist wondered aloud how Palin could pursue her career when her religious beliefs denied women the right to work outside the home.

Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.

To be sure, some criticisms of Palin were entirely appropriate. She had no experience in foreign or defense policy and very little expertise in or command of either. In a time of war, with a seventy-two-year-old presidential candidate who had already survived one bout with cancer, this was a cause for very real concern. And Palin did perform dreadfully in some early interviews. Some of her more level-headed critics did make their case on these grounds. But the more common visceral hostility toward her seemed to have little to do with these objections. Rather, the entire episode had the feel of a kind of manic outburst; it was triggered by a false understanding of who Palin was, and once it began, there was no stopping or controlling it.

The reaction to Palin revealed a deep and intense cultural paranoia on the Left: an inclination to see retrograde reaction around every corner, and to respond to it with vile anger. A confident, happy, and politically effective woman who was also a social conservative was evidently too much to bear. The response of liberal feminists was in this respect particularly telling, and especially unpleasant.

Read the whole thing, I beg you.

Everything's up to date in Kansas City ...

2009-01-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

Terry Teachout says so. Teachout says something about The Glass Menagerie that I've always believed, as well -- that it is the greatest of all American plays.

Tickets for next weekend, Sadeeq?

On anti-Americanism

2009-01-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Withywindle explains it all for you.

On the stimulus bill

2009-01-29T06:43:00.000-08:00

John Hood at The Corner has a round-up of negative reactions to the stimulus bill.

Comment Problems, or Conservative in Virginia Saves the Day

2009-01-26T14:56:00.001-08:00

Faithful reader Conservative in Virginia has had some difficulty recently in trying to post comments to this blog, but in typical self-reliant fashion, C. I. V. has managed to solve the problem. C. I. V. has given me permission to pass along the following solution for the benefit of our legions of readers:

"I searched and found why I couldn't leave comments on your blog. Or rather, how to fix the problem, not what caused it.

The word verification would pop up but not show an image. I added www.blogger.com to 'allow cookies' (actually, I think it's 'allow session cookies') and then was able to see the image, enter the word verification, and leave a comment.

If you get other complaints, you might point them to this discussion."

CIV

I pledge . . .

2009-01-25T17:04:00.001-08:00

. . . to vomit up the entire contents of my stomach if I ever have to watch this video again. [Cue inspiring Copland-esque chords.]

Um, yeah

2009-01-24T12:06:00.001-08:00

Glad we got rid of that whole "culture of corruption" thing now that the Republicans are no longer in power.

And I'm not even going to get into Illinois's other favorite son, Blago the Clown.

There's something sinister about President Obama . . .

2009-01-23T06:44:00.001-08:00

. . . I noticed it when I watched him signing things on television this morning.

That's right . . . he's left-handed. My father and youngest brother will be interested to know they have something in common with our new president.

I also noticed recently that Obama admires Marilynne Robinson's novel, Gilead, that he watched The Wire, and that Omar is his favorite character.

I disagree with almost everything Obama has stood for in his paper-thin legislative career, and I expect to continue to disagree with President Obama, but I just don't have the heart for the kind of demonization that became almost mainstream among left-leaning pundits and political observers whose disagreements with President Bush shaded off into spittle-flecked hatred and vitriol.

I do consider Obama's position on particular issues -- on abortion, for instance -- to be immoral and unjust, and the fact that President Obama and I may have similar tastes in literature and entertainment won't change that. Obama's position on abortion amounts to support for one of the great evils of our time. But Obama himself? He's very wrong about a lot of things. But he's a man. He's just a man. I don't know how to hate him.

Maybe it's the contrarian in me . . .

2009-01-22T16:38:00.001-08:00

. . . but no, I don't think learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

More on the Roe anniversary

2009-01-22T16:30:00.000-08:00

Robert P. George on the delusions of Obama's pro-life admirers:

The Republican Party’s support for the unborn has brought into its ranks many disaffected rank-and-file Democrats, including a large number of Catholics and Evangelicals. I am one. Indeed, it overstates the matter only a bit to say that, as a result of the conflict of worldviews that began with abortion, the Republicans have become the party of the religiously engaged, while the Democrats have become the party of liberal secularists. Barack Obama is trying to win over religiously serious Catholics and Evangelicals, without altering in the slightest his support for abortion, including late-term and partial-birth abortions, the funding of abortion and embryo-destructive research with taxpayer dollars, the elimination of informed consent and parental notification laws, and the revocation of conscience and religious liberty protections for pro-life doctors and other healthcare workers and pharmacists. He will ultimately fail. We must see to it that he fails.

In this project, Obama is being served and abetted by a small number of Catholic and Evangelical intellectuals and activists who have been peddling the claim that Obama, despite his pro-abortion extremism, is effectively pro-life because of his allegedly enlightened economic and social policies will reduce the number of abortions. This is delusional. The truth is that Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to serve in the United States Senate or seek the Office of President of the United States. The revocation of the Hyde Amendment, the Mexico City Policy, funding limitations on embryo-destructive research, informed consent laws, parental notification statutes—all of which Obama has promised to his pro-abortion base—will dramatically increase the number of abortions, and will do so for reasons that have been articulated by the abortion lobby itself. It is the pro-abortion side that tells us that the Hyde Amendment alone has resulted in 300,000 fewer abortions each year than would otherwise be performed—and that is why they so desperately want it to be repealed. Yet the putatively pro-life Obama apologists claim that the man who pledges to repeal it is going to reduce the number of abortions. Let me say it again: this is delusional.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

"How, in this one issue, did I wind up on the side that's defending death?"

2009-01-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

Frederica Mathewes-Green on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the potential judgment of future generations:

So there are some reasons to think that the abortion question has not been settled, but has merely gone underground. That might be a necessary step. It has to go away so that it can be rediscovered, and seen in a fresh light.

I don’t expect that reconsideration soon: my Boomer generation will never see abortion as anything other than the wise and benevolent gift we bestowed on all future generations. We still control the media, the universities, and so forth, and it will take time for all of us to topple off the end of the conveyer belt.

But the time is coming when a younger generation will be in charge, and they may well see abortion differently. They could see it, not as “a woman’s choice” but as a form of state-sanctioned violence inflicted on their generation. It was their brothers and sisters who died; anyone under the age of 36 could have been aborted (and somewhere around a fourth or a fifth of all pregnancies, in fact, are aborted). A younger generation might feel a strange kinship with the brothers and sisters, classmates and coworkers, who are missing.

And I’m afraid that, if they do see things that way, they aren’t going to go easy on my generation. Our acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. The next generation can fairly say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They’ll say, “After all, they had sonograms.” And they may judge us to be monsters.

Maybe that won’t happen. Maybe future generations won’t think twice about abortion. But even we who have grown sick of talking about it still harbor some doubts. In particular, people who think of themselves as defenders of the weak and the oppressed must have many a quiet moment when they wonder, “How, in this one issue, did I wind up on the side that’s defending death?”

There’s a lot of ambivalence out there, and a lot of unspoken grief too, I think. So you never know. Pro-choice may have won the day—but sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. When that time comes, another generation will sit in judgment of ours. And they are not obligated to be kind.

Read the whole thing.

Yuval Levin on the Inauguration

2009-01-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

Levin comments at The Corner:

Tomorrow, no doubt, Obama will sign some papers putting the United States firmly behind international abortion efforts again, and will begin the work of enacting a massively wasteful spending bill, and our politics will begin again to take up the great arguments that have long given it shape: about the proper relationship of the state and the citizen, about America’s place in the world, about the regard and protection owed to every human life, about how we might best reconcile economic prosperity and cultural vitality, national security and moral authority, freedom, and virtue. These are divisive questions of enormous consequence, and they are neither petty nor childish. They are the substance of the political life of a healthy and thriving democracy, and Barack Obama, whether he likes it or not, has just thrown himself into the middle of them all. God bless America.

Read the whole thing.

ADDED: Rich Lowry comments on Obama's speech here -- and he identifies what I consider to be the best few lines of an otherwise mediocre speech.

Maybe Blagojevich missed his calling . . .

2009-01-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

Alpheus explains.

Poem of the Day

2009-01-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

The Wanderer

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Upon what man it fall
In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,
Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,
That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.
There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway voices
Of new men making another love.

Save him from hostile capture,
From sudden tiger's leap at corner;
Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

W. H. Auden

Free speech for non-artists?

2008-12-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

Noted Catholic apologist Jeff Sypeck advances the bizarre notion that freedom of speech and expression ought to be championed even for those whose work is not considered "art" by the glib book reviewers at the New York Times.

Taking on the "Choice on Earth" crowd

2008-12-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

Ross Douthat explains how Planned Parenthood massages their numbers to make it look like a quarter of a million abortions per year are only a tiny percentage of the services they provide.

"Killer Chic"

2008-12-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

"Hollywood's Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara."

Hear, Hear

2008-12-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

Jonah Goldberg decries the "ugly attack on Mormons" that was financed by opponents of Proposition 8 in California and countenanced by their "liberal" supporters.

PC Run Amok!

2008-11-25T06:43:00.001-08:00

The latest target? Those obscene costumes of Native Americans and Pilgrims that children have worn for generations.

On the problems and dangers of meritocracy

2008-11-23T10:41:00.001-08:00

Over at Athens and Jerusalem, Alpheus has posted a brilliant commentary on the dangers of meritocracy.

As Alpheus points out, one of problems with fetishizing meritocracy is that it tends to create groups of legislators/politicians who have been reading, and believing, their own press clippings:

And sometimes it's just dumb luck that separates the conspicuously successful from everybody else. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time, fail to be in the right place at the right time, make a bad decision at what turns out to be the crucial moment and there goes your membership in "the best and the brightest." People like to downplay the role of luck in life, but as far as I can tell, there's no force more potent in shaping human destiny. It's not a fact we should think about too much, lest we despair, but there it is.

So one thing that bothers me about the meritocracy is the illusion that these people really are better than the rest of us. And what bothers me most of all -- and what's most dangerous for everyone -- is the fact that the meritocrats tend to share the illusion. They tend to believe that there's nothing odd or special about the lives they've lived. They tend to think that they must be exceptionally smart, or exceptionally diligent, or exceptionally decent. Worse, because "the best and the brightest" are almost automatically those people who have lived relatively trouble-free lives, they tend to overestimate the gentleness and manageability of the world.

In fact, it's almost axiomatic that they'll tend to overestimate either their own abilities or the ease with which the world's problems can be solved. Because things haven't been that hard for them, have they? It's the rare human being who can resist judging everyone's experience of life by his own.

Read the whole thing.

Things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving...

2008-11-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

... the beauty and wonder of Liza Minelli.

Have we all gone mad?

2008-11-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

Ashlee Simpson, some celebrity I'm only vaguely aware of, has apparently named her newborn baby Bronx Mowgli.

Um . . . I have no words.

Unfortunately, the celebrity mania for giving children names that most people wouldn't even consider for their pets seems to be trickling down to the poor saps in flyover country. Cashew has two -- count 'em, two -- girl classmates named Addison. And, no, neither of them appears to have two daddies addicted to Bette Davis films.

For whom the bell tolls

2008-11-20T07:16:00.001-08:00

It had rained all day in Rome, and we had walked everywhere. We had visited at least eight churches, including Santa Maria della Vittoria, with Bernini's magnificent depiction of The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, and Santa Maria sopra Minerva, with Rome's only Gothic interior and Michelangelo's last finished sculpture. We had stared upward until our necks ached -- stared at the dome of the Pantheon, through which the rain fell steadily onto the floor tiles of the basilica, stared at beautiful ceilings and stunning paintings, which called us alternately to contemplate the majesty of the heavens and the humble humanity of even the saints among us. We had eaten and drunk well. At dusk, we had trudged to the top of "the wedding cake," that massive monument to Victor Emmanuel II that Romans apparently love to hate. We had the spectacular view entirely to ourselves.

Standing atop Rome in the moist twilight wasn't enough for us. We decided to cross the Tiber and explore the Trastevere before walking home. We crossed a bridge, passed through Isola Tiburina, and came out into a very small square at about 6:30 in the evening. What sounded like -- and proved to be -- an ancient bell was tolling as we crossed into the square. Who can resist the call of a tolling bell on a rainy evening in Rome? We peeked into a tiny church, San Benedetto Piscinula, where from somewhere behind the altar came the sound of Gregorian chant. We sat in the back of the church as about fifteen members of the religious organization that tends the church, the Heralds of the Gospel, robed and hooded, entered for evening mass. They sang all of the main parts of the mass in Gregorian chant.

It was very picturesque and charming. We felt part of an old past and a beautiful and ancient tradition, until -- during the consecration of the Eucharist, no less -- we were called back to the present by the tolling of a very different kind of bell. Now, I had watched Sadeeq silence his cell phone as we entered the church. He had apparently forgotten, however, to silence the cell phone alarm. His negligence became horribly clear when, as the priest recounted the Last Supper, Sadeeq's phone began its electronic and very loud chirping in jingle-jangle counterpoint to the chant that had recently filled the tiny church.

There was no way that I could pretend I didn't know him. We were the only two non-Heralds in the whole church, and we were sitting next to each other. As Sadeeq fumbled to shut the darn thing up, I suffered visions of arrest, inquisition, torture -- or at least withering stares. Not a single Herald, however, even turned around to look.

The dedicated young men who surrounded us probably ignored Sadeeq's tolling bell out of a sense of decorum. But it occurred to me, as they finished the beautiful service, that their refusal to acknowledge the cell phone alarm -- far from signaling their rejection of the modern world -- announced their participation in it. It was as familiar a sound to them as the tolling of the ancient bell of San Benedetto. What we had experienced at San Benedetto in Piscinula was not some quaint, lifeless fragment of history entombed in the past, but a living expression of religious devotion rooted in ancient tradition.

Bernini's vision of mystical ecstasy and Caravaggio's grittier depiction of saintly vocation exist together in this insanely beautiful city. So do the tolling church bell and the chirping cell phone. It would probably have been better had Sadeeq's cell phone remained silent, but I'm not sorry to have been reminded that Rome represents, not the dead past, but the living present shot through with monuments of past human striving. Rome is a place where man's reach exceeds his grasp, but -- as Robert Browning pointed out -- that's as it should be. It has us always looking up, but always tethered to the mundane and the ephemeral.

Rome is a place where people lived. Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Michelangelo, Pope Paul V, Caravaggio, Bernini. It's also a place where people live. Scooter-drivers, souvenir-hawkers, graffiti "artists," bankers, lawyers, priests, wielders of cell phones, singers of chants.

And therefore never send to know for whom the cell phone tolls. It tolls for thee.

Payback's a . . . uh, no fun . . .

2008-11-19T12:45:00.000-08:00

This video, and this Zogby poll, should give pause to anyone who endlessly repeated that statistic about the majority of Fox News viewers thinking Iraq was responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The Eternal City

2008-11-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

Ciao' !!

2008-11-18T14:09:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to welcome our illustrious leader back from her trip to Italy! I'm SO jealous!
Hope you had a wonderful and relaxing trip Kate.... and will look forward to seeing you
next week for Thanksgiving!

LA Wildfires

2008-11-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

I see your hair is burnin.
Hills are filled with fire,

The Doors LA Woman

Yes, it is that time again when the brush around LA catches fire and is fanned by hurricane force winds.
Thanks for your concern, CIV. We here in the San Fernando Valley are fine. We were in a clear window for most of yesterday, but we ran out of luck last night and have been in a nasty smoke cloud since. It is our snow day. Keep the windows closed and don't go out. This too will pass!

Stewdog.

The Office Of The WHAT????

2008-11-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

This post is brought to you by my 93 and 1/2 year old father, who called to point out the sign at the podium at Obama's recent press conference. . . "The Office Of The President-Elect".

The WHAT????? By what Constitutional authority is this "Office" established? What are its powers and limitations?

This man had enough trouble keeping his ego in check during the campaign. . .I think all bets are now off.

A Little Too Little Too Late

2008-11-08T09:20:00.000-08:00

I guess since they got their guy elected, it's okay for The Washington Post to come clean.

"Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, "There are a lot of things I wish we'd been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don't at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose..."

Okay, so I took that out of context just a tad, but you can read the rest.

They also admit,

"But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager."

And this...

"One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission."

Merry Christmas, everybody!

2008-11-06T07:32:00.001-08:00

It has begun. The FM radio station has begun their all-Christmas-music-all-the-time programming. Have you no sense of decency, consumerist holiday-mongers, at long last?

Well, this one's for you.

Amen to that

2008-11-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

Jonah Goldberg on an Obama administration:

Look, I expect to be one of the most severe critics of the Obama administration and the Democrats generally in the years ahead (though I sincerely hope I won't find that necessary). But Obama ran a brilliant race and he should be congratulated for it. Moreover, during the debate over the financial crisis, Obama said that a president should be able to do more than one thing at a time. Well, I think we members of the loyal opposition should be able to make distinctions simultaneously. It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that in a country where feelings are so intense that power can be transferred so peacefully. Let us hope that the Obama his most dedicated — and most sensible! — fans see turns out to be the real Obama. Let us hope that Obama succeeds and becomes a great president, for all the right reasons.

As for John McCain, he is an American hero and arguably the best candidate we could have fielded. I will in the days to come offer no small amount of criticism about his campaign. But where his campaign may have lacked qualities that would have helped it win, the candidate never lacked for honor and integrity. Thank you John McCain for your sacrifice, commitment, and honor.

God bless America, and may He guide Obama to be the best president possible.

If Obama wins...

2008-11-04T18:42:00.000-08:00

I'm going to Rome.

Seriously. Sadeeq and I leave Saturday for ten days.

I plan to drown my sorrows in art, architecture, food, wine, and history.

When in doubt . . .

2008-11-04T18:18:00.000-08:00

. . . watch Fred and Feathers.

Believe in the power of the Wonderdog

2008-11-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

Take heart, ye Rumpusers of little faith. Tis I Wonderdog come forth to bring ye tidings of great joy. Look ye upon the smiling visage of the noble McCain. Glance ye upon the extended thumbs. A happier warrior never was. Ah, and what dost this image foretell, oh great Wonderdog, ye may ask? Ah, if ye questioneth, ye are of little faith...

Believe...in the power...of the Wonderdooooog...

A Matter Of Interpretation

2008-11-02T19:42:00.001-08:00

In The Wizard Of Oz, there is a scene when the Wicked Witch sky writes "Surrender Dorothy" (Which, by the way, would be a GREAT name for a musical act).

I see the 2 words as subject to 2 different interpretations:
1. They should surrender Dorothy
2. Dorothy should surrender herself.

I vote #1. Any other thoughts out there?

(Anything to get my mind off of this election tonight)

"Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors!"

2008-10-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the very first sign that we are born into a world not of our own making -- a world in which our freedom is circumscribed by history, tradition, culture, family -- is the fact of our naming. We receive a name, rather like Hester Prynne received her famous letter, as a kind of mark that, however brightly embellished, cannot be thrown off lightly, even when it is lightly given.

We answer with our names, not only to the question, "What is your name?" but also to the question, "Who are you?" Some names, of course, seem to answer the latter question more thoroughly than others. Massed behind "I am Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill" are centuries laden with history and teeming with ancestors both heroic and "interesting." Behind even the humblest of monikers, however, is some small acknowledgement of a place in the world, some slight concession to the claims of family, society, and history.

For precisely that reason, a person's decision to reject his given name for a name of his own choosing can be a powerful gesture, signaling rejection of an oppressive past and liberation from all those circumstances that place limits on personal autonomy and freedom. I'm sure that that is how Chris McCandless, the pathetic real-life figure at the center of John Krakauer's Into the Wild, perceived his own decision to slough off his given name in favor of the transcendentally callow sobriquet, "Alexander Supertramp." The excerpts of McCandless' letters and other writing that are included in Krakauer's book suggest -- in rather trite prose -- that "Alexander Supertramp" perceived himself as radically free, as a latter-day Thoreau or Emerson. Like so many other bright romantic kids, "Alexander" seems to have forgotten that there's an undercurrent of monstrous selfishness in Emersonian philosophy. The shadow of Ahab falls across "Alexander Supertramp's" youthful musings, and "Alex" is as oblivious, or indifferent, to its hovering presence as Ahab himself is to everything except his pursuit of the White Whale.

"Alex" died of starvation in Alaska, lashed to the white whale of his own choosing. Like Ahab, he beckons us -- not into the wild, nor into the deep, but to an altogether more familiar, if no less powerful, place.

Here is the last piece of writing to contain his signature, attached to the door of an abandoned bus where he had made his shelter:

S. O. S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS MCCANDLESS. AUGUST?

At the moment when he "stood alone among the millions of the peopled earth," and his radical freedom became a horror rather than a joy to him, "Alexander Supertramp" clutched at the cast-off token of his connectedness, his given name.

"Obama accepting untraceable donations"

2008-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post explains.

Very sad news

2008-10-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

Dean Barnett, R.I.P.

I used to listen to Dean filling in for Hugh Hewitt whenever I could. I loved his humor, his intelligence, and his great chowdah-head accent. I knew about his lifelong struggle with cystic fibrosis, and I have long admired his courage. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends today.

Obama and Biden excommunicate another news agency ...

2008-10-27T15:29:00.001-07:00

One of the reporters asked Biden about the nearly 2 million dollars that his office has paid to various family members' companies. The Obama-Biden response? Off with their heads!

Have you been on pins and needles wondering about Barack Obama's take on the Jennifer Hudson tragedy?

2008-10-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Well, the wait is over. This should put to rest any lingering doubts about Obama's readiness, don't you think? And he's so steady and statesman-like in the way that he deals with cynical, hard-boiled journalists like Mario Lopez. Perhaps this is the "testing" that Joe Biden was referring to? If so, I'd say he passed with flying colors.

A World Gone Mad

2008-10-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

I go away for a week and no new entries from KM or WD? What the . . ?

If that isn't bad enough, this report suggests that Al Franken could actually become a U.S. Senator. I give up.

"Who's Playing the Race Card?"

2008-10-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Not John McCain, says Charles Krauthammer:

If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.

And Obama has shown no hesitation in doing so to McCain. Just weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a pre-emptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.

What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I once believed him.

The interesting question is what effect the Obama campaign's preemptive deployment of the race card has actually had on voting. I don't think it helped him in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, for instance. Which voters, if any, are actually swayed by this kind of dishonesty? Maybe its just a way to keep one of Obama's strongest constituencies -- the press -- on his side. The media love a good controversy, even a manufactured controversy, about race. They like to preen and strut and pretend it's Maycomb County, Alabama, in the 1930's, and they're Atticus Finch. Obama's race-baiting rhetoric lets them play out their little moral-crusader fantasies, and they love him for it.

Off The Leash

2008-10-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

You'll all have to get by without me for a week. Headed to the land of my birth. . .God's Country. . Missouri.
Ma and Pa celebrate their 60th he same week Ma turns 90. Pa is still ahead of her at 93 1/2. Not sure if they will be around for 70/100 so best go back now. Weather looks to be marvelous and the trees will be turning.
Maybe I should register to vote in St. Louis. My McCain vote in MO means more than my throw away out here in SOCAL.
But wait. . that's voter fraud and not right.. . . no it's only registration fraud, and not a problem. Right?

California's Proposition 8

2008-10-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the California referendum to ban same-sex marriages in the state is likely to be approved by California voters. According to Wikipedia, if the measure passes, "it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will have the following text: 'Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.'"

A question for my Rumpus "lawyer acquaintances" out there: Will voter approval of this proposition make it harder for the California state legislature to approve same-sex marriage in the future? If so, will the go-through-the-courts strategy of same-sex marriage supporters become a victim of unintended consequences?

Obama's not really telling the truth about the Illinois Born-Alive Infant Protection Act

2008-10-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Robert George and Yuval Levin comment on Obama's obfuscation of the facts regarding his role in opposing the Illinois BAIPA:

Obama's case against the bill did not revolve around existing state law, as he seemed to suggest last night. The law Obama referred to in the debate was the Illinois abortion statute enacted in 1975. But at the time of the debate about the Born Alive Act, the Illinois Attorney General had publicly stated that he could not prosecute incidents such as those reported by nurses at Christ Hospital in Chicago and elsewhere (including a baby left to die in soiled linen closet) because the 1975 law was inadequate. It only protected ''viable'' infants-and left the determination of viability up to the ''medical judgment'' of the abortionist who had just failed to kill the baby in the womb. This provision of the law weakened the hand of prosecutors to the vanishing point. That is why the Born Alive Act was necessary-and everybody knew it. Moreover, the Born Alive Act would have had the effect of at least ensuring comfort care to babies whose prospects for long-term survival were dim and who might therefore have been regarded as ''nonviable.'' As Obama and the other legislators knew, without the Born Alive Act these babies could continue to be treated as hospital refuse. That's how the dying baby that Nurse Jill Stanek found in the soiled linen closet got there.

Obama, who in 2003 became the chairman of the state senate's Health and Human Services Committee, argued not that existing law did everything the newly proposed measure would do, but that the born-alive bill would put too much of a burden on the practice of abortion.

''As I understand it,'' Obama said during the floor debate, ''this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.'' This, he argued, was too much to ask of a doctor performing abortions, and it could also, as he put it, ''burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.''

To address the concern of Obama and others who believed in a sweeping right to abortion, Illinois legislators in 2003 amended the bill in Obama's committee, inserting language clarifying that the bill would in no way affect the legal status of a human being before birth. It applied only to a child born alive. Identical ''neutrality'' language in the federal version of the bill had persuaded every single pro-choice legislator in Congress to support the measure. But Obama opposed the bill anyway, and his fellow Democrats followed their chairman's lead, killing the legislation in committee.

Read the whole thing.

Alpheus on Joe the Plumber

2008-10-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Here:

My advice to the Republicans: stay with this guy. Reveal him as the middle-class martyr he's becoming. This is the best chance McCain and company have had to throw a spotlight on the Left's double standards and utter viciousness.

Hear, hear.

UPDATE: Instapundit has a round-up of posts on the attacks on Joe the Plumber, who had the audacity to ask Barack Obama a question.

UPDATE II: From Ed Morrissey:

And Joe Wurzelbacher didn’t give a speech or make a commercial. He asked a question. He stood on a rope line, and Obama picked him to ask it. The Tanning-Bed Media seems to feel that they have a duty to expose every last part of Wurzelbacher’s life, but that asking Obama to explain his political partnerships with Tony Rezko and William Ayers, and his long friendship and financial support of rabid demagogues Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, are not just out of bounds but downright racist.:

So what have we learned from this episode?

Thou shalt not offend The One by asking him a question. Of any kind.
Anyone who questions The One will have to undergo a public pillorying of a kind unseen since the Red Scare, or perhaps the Inquisition.

The Tanning-Bed Media will happily participate in any inquisition, as long as it keeps them from investigating irrelevant issues like Obama’s ties to the Chicago Machine, William Ayers, ACORN, or his record on protecting infanticide.
Don’t ask questions. Don’t check the records of people running for political office, but do check the records of those who dare violate Rule #1. No dissent will be tolerated. Our political and media masters have spoken.

UPDATE III: More at The Corner

More on the 95% Illusion

2008-10-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

A reporter askes about the specific tax rates that will go down as a result of Obama's plan. Here's the exchange:

So when Plouffe reiterated the 95 percent claim, I asked him a simple question aimed at clarifying whether Obama's tax plan was about cutting rates, or merely handing out government checks. "What rates would actually go down"? I asked.

"Middle class people are going to see, systemically, their taxes reduced, and small businesses," Plouffe responded.

"But what rate would go down for lower-income Americans?" I persisted, seeking more information.

"We'll have to get you the exact details on that," Obama's campaign manager told me.

I followed up, recapping the claim he had just made moments ago: "Well, you said that there's going to be a tax cut on 95 percent, so what rate would go down?"

He replied, "I'll have to get you the exact rate differential."

The conclusion:

In fairness, politicians long ago began to use the tax code as a tool for crafting social policy rather than merely as a way to raise revenue. Republicans and Democrats alike have abused terms such as "tax credit" and "tax rebate" to make their policy goals more palatable. But Obama is getting away with defining tax cuts so broadly, that future candidates will simply claim any form of increased government spending as a tax cut. Under Obama's logic, higher food stamp allowances and expanded state funding of the arts could be dubbed "food tax credit" and "arts tax credit" respectively, and also qualify.

If Barack Obama can effectively claim that his plan cuts taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then the term "tax cut" has no meaning.

The "culture of corruption" ain't a two way street

2008-10-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

Stephen Green on the "hottest sex scandal you never heard of."

Obama and the Supreme Court

2008-10-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Rubin comments on Obama's dreadful answer to the debate question about criteria for Supreme Court appointments.

Joe the Lawyer

2008-10-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here's another Joe:

I’m Joe the Lawyer.

After dropping out of high school and spending 4 years in the USMC (1963- 1967), I met the woman of my dreams, married, borrowed $500 to buy our first house, did college and law school at night while working full time, had 3 children, educated all of my kids through college (total cost $340,000…none tax deductible), started my own law practice with $25,000 of borrowed funds 32 years ago, have consistently employed between 2 and 11 employees the entire time, never missed a payroll and have earned about 175,000 to $250,000 per year over the last 10 years.

The American Dream, right?

Well, not having worked for a big corporation or a state or federal govt entity, I’ve had only my own savings to accumulate in a 401K for my retirement. I’m now 64, have a mortgage of about $750K (refinanced for college expenses) and can’t retire on my 401K (especially now with the recent market downturn) unless I sell my house (if I can find someone who will buy it) and severely reduce my standard of living.

So, my strategy (assuming my health continues good) is to work until I’m 70, earn as much as I can (this year I’ve worked an average of 60 to 65 hours per week), pay down my mortgage as much as possible and save, save, save. Sure, I’ll make more that $250,000 this year but I’m working the equivalent of 2 jobs.

Not sure where I went wrong here. Started with nothing; married 40 years; 3 kids grown, educated and off my payroll; and can’t retire until earliest age 70. Obama wants to tax me some more, further extending my working life.

$250,000 per year seems like a lot until you look behind the number. Thinking of letting my 6 person staff go, keeping only my secretary and cutting back on all expenses. Then, even if my taxes go up, I ought to be able to save more.

Of course, 6 jobs will be lost.

2008-10-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

-- John Donne, Meditation XVII

I have a plan...

2008-10-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Here's what I took away from tonight's debate:

Senator Government wants to take away Joe the plumber's money.

There it is. There's your next three weeks, McCain campaign. Say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

Say it soft: Sarah Palin motions at tomorrow's rally for the cheering crowd to be silent and take a step closer. She then looks around surreptitiously, cups her fingers around her mouth and whispers..."Did you hear? Senator Government wants to take away Joe the plumber's money...pass it on."

Say it loud: Sarah Palin begins her next rally with a rousing pronouncement -- "Senator Government wants to take away Joe the plumbers money!" Crowd then chants in rousing unison -- "Leave Joe alone! Leave Joe alone! Leave Joe alone!"

You get the idea. And by the way, I'm dead serious.

Scott Nokes gets medieval on their, um, behinds . . .

2008-10-14T17:59:00.001-07:00

Professor Nokes rightly decries the rehabilitation of the term "retard" or "retarded" among anti-Palin extremists.

Obama's "tax cuts"

2008-10-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

What they really mean.

Massive voter fraud by ACORN

2008-10-13T20:45:00.001-07:00

Ho hum.

Heh

2008-10-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

From Jim Treacher:

Media Bubble, Oct. 8 -- John McCain's bid for the Oval Office suffered another stunning blow yesterday when the Arizona senator referred to Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, as "my opponent." The campaign-shattering remark came during a vicious, Hitlerian speech before an audience of drooling right-wing drones in one of those states in the middle, possibly rectangular.

"I believe that we should do things one way," McSame sneered, his shrunken, twisted body and hideous visage producing overwhelming revulsion in all sane people who beheld him. "But my opponent feels we should do things a different way."

In a comment appearing simultaneously on every single blog, newspaper site, and message board on earth, a number of private individuals completely unattached to the Obama campaign replied: "On behalf of concerned Christian conservatives everywhere, this is the sort of eliminationist rhetoric we've come to expect from the evil, cancer-riddled liar John McPain. We get it, old man: Obama opposes you, therefore he must be destroyed. This sort of disgraceful hate-mongering might be a big hit at your next cross-burning, assuming you live that long, but America knows better. The NVA should have finished the job, you miserable piece of garbage."

Be afraid of me . . . Be very afraid

2008-10-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

I am a Republican. I will be voting for John McCain. It follows, therefore, that I am a racist, sexist, bigoted, bloodthirsty, hate-mongering, tongue-speaking, snake-handling, mouth-breathing moron. Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich said so.

I hereby resign from polite society.

Good luck with your brave new post-partisan world.

"A proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire department heads."

2008-10-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Despite the bias and the vendetta of the Alaska 'Troopergate' witch hunt, they had to use those words in the report. To me, that is the be all and end all. In fact, that would be an appropriate headline for an article on it, but CNN's doesn't even use the quote and headlines their web page article as "Palin Abused Power".
As with everything else in this campaign, her enemies will jump on it and her supporters will dismiss it. I fear that some of the independents might be swayed by it.
Let's see. . if my family was physically threatened by someone who could legally carry a gun and shoot people, and had the lack of character that this rogue trooper has exhibited, I would do everything in my power to make sure he was canned. So I salute the actions of the Palin family, and I look forward to the proper Alaska investigation to clear her. . . . . of course it will happen after the Obama Regime has taken over, and I am in a reeducation camp.

October Surprise

2008-10-09T19:54:00.001-07:00

Might we have an example of a lack of judgment on the part of Mr. Obmaba that will stick?

History

2008-10-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

"Well the world looks just the same. And History ain't changed. . "
The Who We Won't Get Fooled Again

AH. . I repeat my theme song of the Obama Generation.

I slept through most of my High School history classes. I blame the fascist basketball coach/history teacher William Frein, of Bishop Duborg High School (Cavaliers we battle for the Red and White. . we fight for nothing but the right) who would slam my desk near my head when I fell asleep as he droned on about the Roundheads.

But tonight. . history was real. I watched a movie entitled To Kill A King. It was about a guy named Charlie, who has some sort of relationship with a gal who had a drink named after her. . .who followed some Queen named Liz who would later be played not once, but twice by Kate Blanchet, but I digress.

Charlie winds up losing his throne to a bunch of thugs with hats that look round. . I'll call them roundheads. But the guy who heads them and thinks that whacking the King will make everything better.. . .when push comes to shove. . is really no better at all.

So I see the Republicans as the King and the Obamites as the Cromwells and when the roundheads really see that the Emperor has no clothes. . we'll. . . I just don't see much good in it for him.

"I'll move myself and my family aside. . if we happen to be left half alive. . . . I'll sign all the papers and smile at the sky. . . . because you know that the hypnotized never lie".

The Obama National Anthem

2008-10-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

There is only one song in my mind tonight:

We Won't Get Fooled Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hail Obama!

2008-10-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

The age of the Gulag Obama is official after tonight. We are in an age where we pick our presidents on an American Idol standard, and tonight it was the prom king against the Principal. Uncle Fester was out of breath and out of touch. They both were giving stump speeches throughout the night. The "town hall" format was abysmal because it allowed Tom Brokaw, of the Keith Olberman network, to pick the questions, and then allowed the candidates to do their boring, boring (let me say it again, Joe Biden, ) BORING stump speeches throughout the night.
McCain is no lawyer, and as such, he didn't come back on points that he needed to defend.
We are screwed.
I'm following the left and getting a bumper sticker "1/20/13 Countown to Obama's exit".

We are about to elect the most charismatic candidate since John Kennedy. .. and the most out of touch, liberal, unaccomplished, egotistical, untested, unqualified president since. . .. .well. . . before George Washington. All this in an age of challenges that rival the Depression and the World Wars.
God Save Us All!

Okay...it's time for a

2008-10-06T22:31:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm in a bad mood. My Angels lost tonight in a manner that would be too cruel a punishment for low-lifes and scallywags...and perhaps even the drowners of puppies and Roman tax-collectors. Without getting into too much detail, it involved a booted double-play ball, a ridiculous bloop double, and a botched suicide squeeze; all at the hands of the most despicable band of putrid scum to ever don ballcaps -- the Boston Red Sox. Water-boarding? Pshaw! You don't know torture until you've seen Reggie Willits hung out to dry down the third-base line!

Therefore, let the rant begin! (Warning: This post may be unsuitable for those who are easily offended by whining, complaining, and venting for venting's own sake)

Tina Fey can take her one-trick monkey impersonation of Sarah Palin and shove it right up her "who's on first?" orifice! That bit's getting old, brother! Okay, okay, we get it...she talks hokey and says things like "galdarnit"...good one...let's move on now, shall we? That gag's got whiskers on it. It was funny for a minute but don't let it go to your head. Yes, you were hot for a nano-second but so too was that "where's the beef?" lady and "Joe Isuzu". Congratulations, Ms. Fey...you'll receive a lifetime achievement award in the one-hit-wonder hall of fame and the presenters will be the geriatric band members from "Aha" and Dana Carvey in full "church lady" regalia.

The women from "The View" need to stop the incessant chatter. I've never watched the show but just the snippets I've seen on political shows is enough to make the Venus de Milo reach for the remote.

Anyone and anything associated with the names Fannie and Freddie should be taken to the edge of a cliff and summarily dumped. Not so fast there, Ms. Flagg! Whoa there, Krueger -- in the truck!

Barack Obama, William Ayers, the Reverend Wright and Tony Rezko need to be put into one of those two-dimensional square mirror things from the movie "Superman" and sent aimlessly spinning into outer-space. And let's squeeze Rosie O'donnell in there just for the heck of it!

I'd like to do one of those have your friend get down on all fours behind Keith Olberman and then push him backwards things...

I'd love it if John McCain were to say at the end of tomorrow night's townhall debate, "Senator Obama, Joe Biden was right...you certainly are articulate and clean."

Every time I watch Barney Frank, I keep waiting for him to morph into some kind of frightening rabbit man. Has anyone else had this strange vision? I seriously see the ears forming above his head and the whiskers forming around his twitchy nose. Then he starts talking while holding a carrot and munching it with his nibbley mouth. (I'm not so sure this one is a rant so much as a cry for help.)

Did I mention that the Red Sox were putrid scum?

I'm Feeling Safer Today

2008-10-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

OJ will be off the street!

Barney

2008-10-03T08:51:00.001-07:00

I like you. You like me. Just keep me away. From Bill O'Reilly!

Nice dust up between Barney and Bill!

Jonah Goldberg on Biden's gasbaggery

2008-10-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

Biden just makes stuff up:

What struck me the most about the debate – and it probably helped having quintessential Obamaphiles in the room – was how Biden’s “gravitas” is derived almost entirely from the fact that he can lie with absolute passion and conviction. He just plain made stuff up tonight. I read a long list tonight in my debate with Beinart here at Wash U, we can visit the details tomorrow.

Just a few: Flatly asserting that Obama never said he’d meet with Achmenijad; that absolute nonsense about spending more in a month in Iraq than we’ve spent in Afghanistan (“let me say it again,” he said as if he was hammering home a real fact); the bit about McCain voting with Obama on raising taxes; his vote in favor of the war etc.

It’s amazing how the impulse to see Biden as the more qualified and serious guy stems almost entirely from his ability to be a convincing b.s. artist. I’m not saying Palin was always honest or unrehearsed, but when she offers up a catchphrase or a talking point, you can tell. When Biden spews up a warm fog of deceitful gassbaggery the response seems to be “what a great grasp of the issues he has!”

More Biden "inaccuracies"

2008-10-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

Whatever, Joe.

"Joe Biden's alternate universe"

2008-10-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

Michael Totten comments on Joe Biden's strange claim that the U. S., along with France, kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

Who said it?

2008-10-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.

I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people.

So let me make it clear, I am a strong supporter of the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in housing, but nobody who invests in them should come looking to me for a nickel--nor anybody else in the Federal Government.

Go here to find out. (Be prepared for some classic and amusing Bill O'Reilly blowhard schtick.)

Debate

2008-10-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

The only thing that I didn't see in this debate, was the wringer that Sarah used on the mop with which she cleaned the floor with slow Joe. Expectations were low, and this was a knock out.
McCain ought to re think pulling out of Michigan. He is back in this race, thanks to her.

Bonus point: Watching Piper carry Trig!

Double Bonus Point: Having a split screen tv and watching the Cubs implode.

"Pelosi paid husband with PAC funds"

2008-10-01T11:01:00.001-07:00

New boss, old corruption.

Creepy...

2008-10-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

Kids sing for Obama.

Yikes! Do those angelic faces singing praises to Obamafuhrer look similar to this?

And this? Double yikes!

And...this? Triple yikes!

UPDATE: Ann Althouse has a small round-up of reactions here.

The Ifill Tower

2008-10-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Not only is Tomorrow's VP debate moderator boring and lacking, but it seems to me that she has a clear conflict of interest, what with her new book coming out about the Age Of Obama!
(This is the dawning of the Age of Obama. . .The Age of Obama. . . . Obama... Obaaaaammmmaa)

If the McCain camp knew, they shouldn't have agreed to her. If they didn't know, then that's incompetence.
Regardless, she should have affirmatively disclosed this and gotten the OK before this was set up.

Who's moderating the next Presidential debate? Barney Frank?

I'm Not Going To Pick A Fight With People Who Buy Ink By The Barrelful

2008-09-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

Sara Palin was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt today. Funny how gracious and engaged she sounded when she wasn't being hounded by a jackal! Hugh has Posted the transcript here.

"Every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true."

2008-09-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Glenn Reynolds quotes a source from a major newsroom:

We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae.

I'm shocked, shocked.

I Called Government!

2008-09-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

I have made exactly 2 political phone calls in my life to someone other than the local trash collector or my representative on the City Council (I suspect they are one and the same at times). The first was during the LA Riots when the LAPD completely failed us. I asked the Governor's office to send the National Guard. They were there the next day, but with all due modesty, I suspect that my call wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back.
The other was tonight, when I called the local office for Congressman Berman (I think it is he and not Brad Sherman but since the US House's web site has crashed, I can't verify where the lastest episode of Gerrymandering has left me).
I simply asked that they pass a reform plan. I also requested that he ask Madame Speaker to keep her opinions to herself and not engage in petty politics the next time around.
The drop in the stock market today is 50% less than the entire projected cost of the 'bailout'.

The Gang Of Four

2008-09-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

I saw Pelosi, Reid, Frank, and Dodd on the tube today. . all just so happy with one another. I wanted to puke. The thought of these tools with a Democrat pliable president is just frightening.

P.J. Faces His Mortality

2008-09-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

I have been wondering why we haven't seen much (if any) of P.J. O'Rourke this election season. Seems he caught a spell of the Big C. He waxes poetic about mortality in this op ed piece, in his inimitable style:

I still cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain. Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!" "Damn organic chemistry!" "Damn chaos and coincidence!"

Another bad moment for Obama

2008-09-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

Here.

Obama's bracelet moment

2008-09-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

It looks like he forgot the soldier's name.

Master Debaters

2008-09-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Debate was engaging and well done by both candidates. I think that McCain will get a 3 point boost from it. He appeared mature, experienced, and downright presidential. The split screen was Obama's enemy. He was seen smirking, shaking his head, and generally acting like an impatient 15 year old. He often talked over McCain, perhaps thinking he was on McLaughlin.
I found it interesting that so much time was taken up by the economy when this debate was supposed to be solely on foreign policy. I can understand it in light of what is going on, but it is generally agreed that McCain is stronger on Foreign Policy and Obama on economic issues. If they had stuck to the script, I think that the debate would have been even more in McCain's favor.
The #1 job for a president is Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces. Obama is woefully unprepared for that position, and dangerously naive in his world view!

Democratic Infomercials

2008-09-22T07:38:00.001-07:00

First we have Al Franken, a Democratic Senatorial Candidate, helping to write an anti Republican script for SNL.
Then we have a hilarious SNL skit with the subject matter of incest in the Palin Family (har har de har).
But these were just a lead up to the Emmys last night. I didn't watch them because there are about 4 shows total that interest me and I figured it would be a night of anti Republican barbs. Apparently I was right.
I did walk in the room to see the insufferable Kathy Griffin making a Palin comment, but missed the rest of the Daily Kos- like slam fest.
TV's big awards show insults about 40% of the voters in this country and wonders why ratings are down.
At least the Oscars got it right years ago when they finally told the Don Quixotes of Hollywood that they can shut up or stay away. Are you listening in TV Land? Didn't think so.

May I Be Frank(en) With You?

2008-09-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

Minnesota has Mr. Air America, Al Franken, running for Senate. Hard to believe that isn't a joke. Seems that Al had a hand in writing a sketch for SNL that was critical of McCain. The Politico article discusses how this raises further questions about NBC's bias. To me, it raises the question of whether the McCain Campaign should be given free air time on NBC. . equal time you know.
"Senator Franken". Now that's not funny.

Does Biden Have A Catholic Problem?

2008-09-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Seems that Joe's abortion politics aren't sitting well with the Catholic voters. Hmm. . perhaps an exorcist is in order?