Covenant Zone

Anarcho-Tyranny in the U.K. / Modernity-wide Psychosis

2009-07-08T02:29:00.007-07:00

I've been through some wars and other man-made disasters, and I've seen some of the worst that Man is capable of. There's no end to the evil things people can do, even things I see around me daily in this distant and dismal city here in Canada surprising me. I've also seen things and witnessed heroism and glory beyond the ken of the average man. What I see now, what passes for normal, what passes for The Good, is so disturbing that I conclude that the Modern world I love so much is sick in mind and soul. Yes, I have my pet theory, but that must wait. Below I hope you'll bear with the length of the post to witness some of what goes on in our shared reality, such as it is. This is a world of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as intelligentsia.

The world has come to this: after writing about George Washington's dignitas, some hack at the New York Times concludes with this:

Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system.

But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ref=instapundit

From the Washington Post there's the flip side of the fascism of the Left, not the Führer worship but the demonization of the petit-bourgeiosie:

Joseph Ashby, "Lunacy on Parade," American Thinker. July 07, 2009

Attempting to break the mold of mindlessness, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has unleashed the full fury of his intellectual prowess on Sarah Palin.

Cohen’s piece manages to slog out 770 words without squeezing out an ounce of substance. He does make one thing clear: he lies awake at night worrying about Palin. Here is a sample of his Pulitzer-worthy commentary:

…dumb as a mud wall…
…utter disaster…
…awful…
…allergic to briefings…
…uncorrupted by knowledge…
…unfit for office…
…a ditz…

And Cohen gets paid to write this. Remind me again why newspapers are a dying business?

I suggest that many people are not intelligent even though they seem on the surface to be so, having, for example, high degrees from prestigious universities, a fair indication, as a rule, of some kind of intellectual competence, and further, that many of them are in positions of high public and private authority, by which I mean here our intelligentsia. As impressive as the titles and positions might well be, and even are, we still have what comes out in the light of reality to be intellectual monkeys. We have trained idiots holding positions of power and authority. Sarah Palin is "dumb as a mud wall'? It's a metaphor, to be honest, but stale and inappropriate. It's not mixed, but it's colorless and stupid. Sarah Palin isn't mute, i.e. "dumb." But to the point, what's the criticism and what is it based on? We have here a circle jerk, to be crude but plain. Our intelligentsia sit in a circle and each reaches over and plays with the one beside him, each thinking it's satisfying. How smart is that? I don't care if each and every one of them is happy about it. What does it have to do with anyone else? It's disgusting and shameful, and who cares about their status? Wouldn't you think of them as all the more disgusting for it?

Like monkeys imitating, we see the little monkeys doing it too. It's painful seeing little monkeys imitating large monkeys jerking each other off. We see below some moron in england aping his higher-ups, he likely knows not why. He's doing what his superiours are telling him, however indirectly. Little pukes do what big pukes do. And that., dear reader, can lead to the end of the world. Many people aren't thinking, and they never will. They just do what the rest do, even if it leads to destruction. Few like being on the outside. They'll do anything and not think about it at all, so long as it seems to be popular with those they fear and want to curry favor from. They want to get along and feel righteous. I call it stupidity. Why would we think it anything else? Well, we could consider it insanity. Unfortunately, it's normal.

UK deports terror threats!

Anjem Chaudary? Abu Qatada? Abu Izzadeen?

Nope. Kylie Shirley, age 14, and other members of the First United Methodist Church of Okeechobee, Florida.

When news stories danced and twisted and turned in order to avoid identifying the perpetrators of terrorist acts as Muslims, I've joked about Methodists committing terrorism -- maybe some UK official thought I was serious.

This incident is the direct fruit of anti-terror laws that were framed specifically in order to avoid giving the impression that they were drafted in order to fight against Islamic jihad terror. Such laws focus on minutiae and side issues, and 14-year-old Christians snapping tourist photos end up getting deported, while real Islamic jihad threats continue to operate freely in Britain, thumbing their noses at authorities.

One wonders how many jihadists from Pakistan eased through customs while British officials were detaining, questioning, and deporting the Methodists from Okeechobee.

Absurd Britannia Alert: "Teens from Okeechobee church deported from England after running afoul of anti-terror law," by Carolyn Scofield for WPTV.com, July 3 (thanks to L.A.):

OKEECHOBEE — Kylie Shirley took one picture in England.
The 14-year old and a friend posed in front of a window. Behind them is the British Airways flight that carried them to Gatwick Airport in London.

A few minutes later, guards confiscated her camera and cell phone.

Kylie and thirteen other members of the First United Methodist Church of Okeechobee were sent into a nearby room.

There immigration officials questioned, photographed and fingerprinted them before putting them on planes headed back to the United States.

"The guy from immigration came in and told us that we were going to be sent home and everybody started crying," says the 8th grader, who says England is her favorite country outside of the United States.

The church group was on a mission trip. They planned to help remodel the Islington Central Methodist Church and sightsee after that.

"When they were questioned about entry, we all gave the same answer," says Pastor Jim Dawson. "The answer was, we were here to do missionary work in a church."

The word "work" caught the attention of immigration officials.

Under the United Kingdom's tier system that's designed to deter illegal workers and potential terrorists, anyone doing any kind of charity or religious work must have a visa and Certificate of Sponsorship along with a passport.

The church group only had passports.

Dawson says they arranged the trip last year, before the rules went into effect. They booked everything through a travel agency in Tennessee.

The agency says it's the traveler's responsibility to know the rules.

So there they were, trapped in a room at Gatwick Airport, only allowed one phone call to the American Embassy.

William Shirley, Kylie's father, says within 20 minutes of going into the room, one immigration official told him they were already booked on a flight back to the U.S....

The group spent a year and a half raising money for the trip. Now they don't know if they'll ever get the $18,000 back....

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026851.php#respond

The case aboe is of a fool and a moron who doesn't get the tory at all. He's imitating others without a moment of thought of his own. He's usual. He's typical. He's ordinary and normal. That's a problem these days. It wouldn't surprise me to find the English national anthem changed to an old Sex Pistols tune. In fact, I think this should be it, at least till there is a reprisal of our Modernist revolution so suddenly halted in mid-stream.

Right ! now ! ha ha ha ha ha

I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Dont know what I want but
I know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passer by cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
No dogs body

Anarchy for the u.k its coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time stop a trafic line
Your future dream is a shopping scheme cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
In the city

How many ways to get what you want
I use the best I use the rest
I use the enemy I use anarchy cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
The only way to be !

Is this the m.p.l.a
Or is this the u.d.a
Or is this the i.r.a
I thought it was the u.k or just
Another country
Another council tenancy

I wanna be an anarchist
Oh what a name
Get pissed destroy !

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/sex+pistols/anarchy+in+the+uk_20123592.html

There are two kinds of people in this life: Modernists and primitives. The natural state of Humanness is a state of primitivism; and it's only in the past 250 years that Man has become Modern. Most aren't, and most will not become so in this period of history. Primitivism is normal. It's the way of Man. The monkeys of Modernity, our intelligentsia, are typical people of the typical sort. In my humble opinion, they are not special. They are just garbage. Removing them makes me happy, if only we could. We must do so if our revolution is to regain its course as the future of Humanness. It's not natural, this revolution. It's not the Human way of being. It's not going to et any sympathy from the primitives, even those sophisticated monkeys of the intelligentsia. They're up-scale Sex Pistols. They're going crazy and wrecking our world. They are nearly everyone, and unless we stop them because we believe in the just cause of Modernity, we will lose and be drowned. Us or them.

When a man loves a woman, if that's not too uncool.

2009-07-07T23:34:00.003-07:00

When I heard that the kind-of-Black-guy pop star was kaput, I got excited. Then I found out it's Michael Jackson. I packed my bags for the trip to the memorial, but then I realized I'd left a glove on the coffee table, so I turned around and came home instead. I didn't feel like moon-walking all the way to L.A anyway.

Thomas Lifson, "Jackson funeral: BO Poison." American Thinker. July 07, 2009

The true extent of the media hype surrounding the death of Michael Jackson has been exposed. Fox News reports on air that as the Michael Jackson memorial was starting, tickets were being handed out to bystanders, as embarrassingly empty seats inside the Staples Center signaled reality refusing to conform to media-generated expectations.

More: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/jackson_funeral_bo_poison.html

Obama, Osama, Michael Jackson, I get them mixed up. They're all special though, as I understand it, which is probably deeply. 'Cause I'm bad.
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-rama-come-moonwalk-with-me.html

Oh, you want good? Well, maybe this works.

Obama and the Commie Dwarfs

2009-07-05T23:53:00.005-07:00

I see Obama all over this story, but where's Sarah Palin? Where does she fit in here? We got yer Obama, yer Chavez, Ortega, Castro, Amadinejad, the creepy little priest, any number of scums like Howard Zinn, but where's Sarah Palin to wash it all away?

Earlier this year, in the face of strong public opposition, Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales declared that he would stage a referendum to have the country’s constitutional term limits law overturned, thereby allowing him to remain indefinitely in power. The people of Honduras had adopted the single, four-year--term limit as part of their Constitution in January of 1982. Significantly, the term limits provision is one of only eight “firm articles,” out of 375. By law, cannot be amended.

The Supreme Court of Honduras declared the Zelaya referendum unconstitutional, his own Liberal Party came out in strong opposition, and the public overwhelmingly opposed his power grab. Despite this, Zelaya, a leftwing politician with strong ties to Cuba’s Castro and Venezuela’s Chavez, scheduled the referendum for Sunday, June 28. At midnight, Wednesday, June 24, the strong-arm president gave a televised speech accusing his opposition of promoting “destabilization and chaos” by attempting to thwart his unconstitutional referendum.

As the situation in Honduras continued to deteriorate, the Zelaya’s attorney general called for his ouster; his Defense Minister resigned; he fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for stating that he would refuse to send out troops to put down public protests; the chiefs of the army, navy, and air force resigned; and the country’s Supreme Court ordered the nation’s army and police not to support the unconstitutional referendum.

Through all of this, Barack Obama abetted the Zelaya power grab through his calculated silence....

Full Story Here.

Obama's not the only one to give the people of Honduras a rough ride: the S.G. of the U.N. is in on it too. He's with Zelaya today flying in to help the past president reclaim his lost spot. Who? This guy, standing up for Zelaya, like Obama's doing.

The U.N. General Assembly president accused the United States on Tuesday of “demonizing” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the latest blast against Washington by the former Nicaraguan official.
“I don’t think anyone can doubt that in our part of the world, concretely here … Ahmadinejad has been demonized,” Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann told a news conference.
…
D’Escoto said that “the United States has been in the business of the demonization of people from (for)ever,” but had “canonized” former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

“And then we hear terrible things about Ahmadinejad,” D’Escoto said at the news conference on a recent trip to Syria, Finland, China, Bahrain, Switzerland and Iran to promote a U.N. conference in June on the world financial crisis.

D’Escoto said there had been “a big ado,” including protest letters written to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, when he went to a New York meeting attended by Ahmadinejad during the annual General Assembly summit last September. He did not say who had written the letters.

He said the “demonization” contrasted with the “great respect” in which Iran was held by its neighbors for hosting some 3 million refugees from Afghanistan.

D’Escoto also doesn’t want mass-murderer Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir busted because it would be “racist,”

He said it would “deepen a perception that international justice is racist.”

While he was at it, D’Escoto defends his statement accusing Israel of apartheid towards Palestinians because Jimmy Carter said it first.

http://faustasblog.com/?tag=miguel-descoto

Obama can nod and wink at Amadinejed, and D'Escoto can schmooze with him too. One big happy family.

Obama officials say talks with Iran still possible.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT The Associated Press
Sunday, June 28, 2009; 6:57 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is open to discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions despite protests questioning the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, U.S. officials said Sunday.

Ahmadinejad has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the United States for allegations of meddling. Last week, Iran expelled two British diplomats, and Britain responded in kind. Iran, which detained nine British Embassy employees Saturday before releasing four, has said it's considering downgrading diplomatic ties with Britain.

The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said he would make the U.S. regret its criticism of the postelection crackdown and said the "mask has been removed" from Obama's efforts to improve relations.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that Ahmadinejad is falling back on his government's usual strategy of blaming the West and the United States in particular for its internal problems.

"This is a profound moment of change. And what Ahmadinejad says to try to change the subject is, frankly, not going to work in the current context, because the people understand that the United States has not been meddling in their internal affairs," she said.

The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability, Rice said.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062800672.html

Claudia Rosett has some good insight into the news from Honduras, particularly the Sandinista thug now in charge fo the U.N. Here's a bit of her piece, link to follow:

Zelaya — according to the AP – is traveling in a Venezuelan jet. And accompanying him is the last thing Honduras, or any other other embattled democracy needs: The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockman.
D’Escoto sums up just about everything wrong with the United Nations. As head of the 192-member-state General Assembly for its 2008-2009 session, he has been empowered to swan around the world, swaddled in the UN flag and purporting to speak for the poor, the oppressed, and the “international community.” In truth, d”Escoto is a Nicaraguan Sandinista retread, oozing hard-left dogma, praising some of the world’s worst despotisms and agitating from his plush UN offices in midtown Manhattan for massive transfers of wealth from the world’s leading democracies to his pals in tyrants’ cockpits of places such as Iran.

I mention Iran in particular because d’Escoto made a five-day visit there in March, with his expenses apparently paid by the Iranian government. He returned to New York to hold a press conference trashing free countries such as the U.S., and praising Iran’s regime as one enjoying “great respect.” For more detail, here’s a link to my column at the time for Forbes.com , covering D’Escoto’s performance on that occasion.

[d'Escoto embracing Ahmadinejad at the UN]

D’Escoto took special pains to denounce the U.S. for having “demonized” his buddy, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – whose rigged “relection” as president on June 12th, as we all know, has inspired massive protests inside Iran itself.

Wielding the credentials of president of the UN General Assembly, D’Escoto enjoys the pernicious position of being a prominent official who is responsible in theory to everyone, but in practice is accountable to almost no one — while serving at the pleasure of a General Assembly which is dominated by unfree states. The GA’s most powerful voting bloc is the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, which overlaps with the so-called Group of 77 — a UN caucus organization which actually includes 130 members, who chose as their chairman for 2009 … wait for it… Sudan. That’s the kind of crowd behind d’Escoto.

Nicely written piece. Read it all here: http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-last-thing-honduras-needs/

And who is this winner?

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, M.M., born in Los Angeles[1] on February 5, 1933, is a Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest.[2] He is the current President of the United Nations General Assembly; taking up his one year term in September 2008 and presiding over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

D'Escoto was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Maryknoll congregation, before engaging in politics. He was a key figure in the founding of the Maryknoll imprint, Orbis Books, in 1970, and was an official with the World Council of Churches. As an adherent of liberation theology, he secretly joined the Sandinistas.

He served as foreign minister in Daniel Ortega's FSLN government from 1979 to 1990. ... While foreign minister, he received the Lenin Peace Prize for 1985-6....

[Elected to head the U.N.] D'Escoto designated^[13] 15 senior advisers : Brother David Andrews CSC (USA), Ms. Maude Barlow (Canada), Mr. Mohammed Bedjaoui (Algeria), Mr. Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Mr. Kevin Cahill (USA), Mr. François Houtart (Belgium), Mr. Noam Chomsky (USA), Mr. Ramsey Clark (USA), Mr. Richard Falk (USA), Mr. Michael Kennedy (USA), Ms. Eleonora Kennedy (USA), Mr. Olivier De Schutter (Belgium), Mr. Joseph Stiglitz (USA), Sir John E. Sulston (UK), Mr. Howard Zinn (USA).

More, if you can stomach it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_d'Escoto_Brockmann

UN Watch has this on the "special advisors":

And now this: UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, former Nicaraguan FM and unrepentant Sandinista, has named a rogues’ gallery of anti-Western crackpots and 9/11 conspiracy theorists as his “Special Senior Advisors.” The indefatigable Matt Lee of Inner City Press has the story here.
Now advising the head of the UN’s parliament are Professor Richard Falk, cheerleader for the theory that 9/11 was an inside job; Ramsey Clark, tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes, and Noam Chomsky, the anti-American guru who lends his name to Holocaust deniers. ...

http://blog.unwatch.org/?cat=47

What part of this are we supposed to like? Where's the part about Sarah Palin? Why is this all about Obama and the seven Commie dwarfs? What kind of country do we have here, anyway? Where's Sarah Palin?

[As Ralph Waldo] Emerson (1803 - 1882) sagely noted, every hero becomes a bore at last. The danger for the celebrity entertainer Barack Obama may lie not so much in his inane and perfectly commonplace juvenile politics, i.e. his "liberalism," as in the fact that he is beginning to bore the audience.

When the audience becomes bored by its heroes it begins to lust for something new - and that something new can always become the horrific spectacle of sudden fall and disintegration. It's all show biz after all - and the show must go on.

Teleologicus, Jun 30, 05:47 AM at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/real_vs_an_authentic_world.html

Sarah Palin is like my mother, (assuming that I'd had one,) a normal and ordinary and decent woman like most others back home. Do we really want celebrity Commies for leaders instead? This just ain't right.

Fourth of July Palinism.

2009-07-04T13:53:00.004-07:00

Don't tread on us.

[T]he Gadsden Flag "the most common symbol displayed by right wing terrorist organizations."

What is America?

When I was younger, America was a nation, the best on Earth, home of the brave and the land of the free, my home, a great place. Today I'm sick at the thought of it. Our natural president, Sarah Palin, is subject to insane hate-campaigns.

Our current office-holder bows down to foreign kings who set up terrorist acts against our people and our nation; he glad-hands drug-dealing, terrorist supporting Banana Republic dictators; schmoozes with Caribbean Communists; plays Stepin Fetchit like a second-rate warm-up comedy act for a stripper on the European stage; and bellies to the bar to slag his family in the hope of a few coins dropped his way for amusing the town hoods by way of sucking jihadis at Cairo. Our official leader blows off dying kids battling for democracy in Iran and blows Latino thugs in the the hope of gaining a wad or two by dumping on Hondurans. The man is facing hondos of his own. All down. This scum-bag is finished. In six months he's made many of us hate our own government more than we've ever hated anything else in life. He's not America. He's the end of the fasces.

Sarah Palin is the beginning of the renewal of America's beautiful Revolution. Four years from now it'll be long past time for many American citizenship-holders to leave. They won't have anything worth staying for anyway, but they'll have many good reasons to go. They'll be so deeply hated they won't be safe staying. Middle-class people will visit them and give them the belated message that America is for free people, that our nation is independent, that we live our own lives and the government is going to shrink to minimal. Maybe Sarah Palin will take office. If not, there will still be a palin nation for the president who comes.

The Greek word palin, as many must know now, means "return." Yes, we will return our nation to its origins, renewed and more beautiful than before. The intoxicated losers in the house of our nation today will find a reckoning coming. They'll find themselves held responsible for the damage when the parental people return. This party won't last. Then we'll rebuild.

The Gadsden Flag has been used throughout modern politics as a symbol of disagreement with the current governmment. This flag was most notably used during the Tea Party protests of 2009. The flag is often associated with the Right of revolution.

This current use of the flag has caught the government's attention.... Ironically, some authorities now label the Gadsden flag as "Extremist" .... Reports from Louisiana say that a man was detained by police for driving with a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker on his vehicle.^[3] A 2009 unclassified report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) to Missouri law enforcement called the Gadsden Flag "the most common symbol displayed by right wing terrorist."^[4]

Sarah Palin is the America that's going to come back to bite the Left. Our country. Don't tread on it.

N.B. Left hate-graphics: http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/06/wonkette-goes-after-trig-palin-again.html
N.B.: [A] Department of Homeland Security report, "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment"

A Blind Man Teaches How To See

2009-07-03T08:38:00.004-07:00

A ray of light for a dark world, through the eyes of a blind man who gets to see his wife for the first time: "When I found out there was a chance I would get my sight back the first person I wanted to see was her."

"The doctors took the bandages off and it was like looking through water and then I saw this figure and it was her," he said today.
"She's wonderful and lovely. It was unbelievable to see her for the first time."
...
"I feel fantastic getting my sight back,' he said. 'I can't really describe it -- it's beyond words. I was blind for 12 years and when my sight came back everything had changed.
...
"Getting my sight back has changed my life. It is such a precious gift and you don't really appreciate it until it is taken away.
"I have been so fortunate that my sight has been returned. I find it such a simple pleasure being able to see what is going on in the world."

The article in the Daily Mail carries much detail on the remarkable operation that restored sight to the former builder: amazingly, he owes his renewed vision to a tooth implanted into his eye!

The process requires a living tooth as an implant because doctors suggest there are chances the eye would reject a plastic equivalent.
So a canine - which is the best option due to its shape and size - was taken out of Mr Jones' mouth.
A patch of skin is then taken from the inside of the cheek and placed in the eye for two months, where it gradually acquires its own blood supply.
The tooth segment is finally transplanted into the eye socket. The flap of grafted skin is then partially lifted from the eye and placed over its new sturdy base.
Finally, surgeons cut a hole in the grafted cornea to let light through.

As incredible an account as this story is, it still seems like there's a book's worth of drama left unexplored here: how did the blinded builder meet the woman who became his wife? How does she feel about suddenly being seen by her beloved husband? What was it like to look into her eyes for the first time, and to see her looking at him? He's in a position to dare to describe the most joyous side to the human experience: what it's like to experience the love we can summon for one another.

Clouded as our lives tend to be by tragedy and suffering, it takes an act of will to continue to see through all that misery to the splendor our world also has to offer. When our heart aches from seeing good men suffer, when our soul cries in despair from the weight of the injustice suffocating our earthly existence, we need the humble perceptions of the Mr. Jones' of the world as much as we need food and drink; if ever anyone could make a difference through a blog, and hope to teach today's cynics how to look a second time at what's really going on around them, it's this middle-aged husband from south Yorkshire.

For all the power of our language, no mere words alone can faithfully paint a proper picture of what it means to live life; presumably this is why we have stories. After all, what does it mean to say that life is worth living, what does it amount to, to merely say that the secret path to finding Happiness is to search for the Good, when through stories like this one, we can show it.

And, hopefully, through such stories we pessimists can come to appreciate the great garden of wonder we still get to walk through, no matter our difficulties; where even a simple rock can offer a world of detail to marvel over, providing we leave ourselves open to observing it all.

For a Canada in which we may once again freely measure, represent, debate and enact a shared reality

2009-07-01T14:00:00.006-07:00

It's "Canada Day", and while I have not made much time recently for blogging, this will soon change. But to that end, maybe it's time for a little stock taking. Where are we, as a nation, going, given the political culture of this country? A recent Mark Steyn piece provides a useful glimpse, if only for a moment on a beautiful day not to be completely wasted by our culture's political insanities: Blazing Cat Fur: Hey Jennifer Lynch- Coming to a newstand near you....

Canada, it seems, has become a country where the policing of those who might say things mildly critical of the reigning religion are told to shut up, or else lose their jobs, reputation, etc. It's a country where parliamentarians cannot respond rationally - they cannot even begin to recognize - arguments that "human rights" commissions are actually destroyers not defenders of real human rights.I could and will in future expand on the Gnostic religion that is so afraid of hearing criticism, or even alternative conceptualizations, of its world view - lest the Gnostic's trips into an unreality where his Utopian desires must not, or so his faith tells him, be obscured by the lesser men who have come before him, be indeed exposed to some of the resistant facts of a fallen world that is not and cannot be as our Messianic or Maternal visions would remake it.But for the moment, for those who want to take up the question seriously, I will take my time for reflection and point you towards Tom Bertonneau's latest in the Brussels Journal, for he so ably takes up the task of elucidating the Gnostic mentality, its hysterical reactions to criticism, to those whose common sense presents stumbling blocks to the great visionaries. He takes us further in understanding the Gnostic's need for a puritanical speech code.

But, as Bertonneau concludes, a refusal of a political religion to come to terms with contrary realities cannot last forever. The world, as it actually is, wins out in the end. So this period in our national history may be coming to some kind of collapse into a future we cannot know and which we must prepare ourselves to meet, should we wish to live in a nation bound by covenants and not just one or another's dark and destructive will to power:

One can predict, generally, that the radical spasm through which Europe and North America are now passing will eventually remit. De-creation can only be called creation for so long before the fraud becomes undeniable and the masses become disenchanted with their formerly charismatic leaders.

The trouble for all of us is that, in the meantime, in “the weird, ghostly atmosphere of a lunatic asylum,” as Voegelin writes, the agitating elites can wreak enormous harm.
[...]
Quite apart from election results, the extremism and intolerance of those currently in power polarizes the society increasingly, day by day, with no terminus of the process in sight; nor will their polarizing activities cease, should they lose their majority. Gnostic propaganda is nowadays organized as a colossal communications-network. Certainly American society is therefore in the rhetorical phase of a civil war, or perhaps in the policy phase, now that liberals have the votes to justify their schemes and do as they please. Even if the USA did not advance to some kind of actual civil war, the damage to civic institutions and to trust among people will have been, as it already is, profound and lasting.

One might agree with Voegelin, who was writing sixty years ago, that, “the end of the Gnostic dream is perhaps closer at hand than one ordinarily would assume.” But this need not mean that the aftermath will resemble the status quo ante, or be in any way familiar to those who, during the period of nightmare, held fast to the truth of the soul.

...a thought with which to marshal our resolve on this Dominion Day.

Who Owns The Sky?

2009-06-30T20:59:00.002-07:00

In Colorado, "every drop of water that hits the ground belongs to someone."

So says said Kevin Bommer, Colorado Municipal League lobbyist who is critical of new legislation giving homeowners the right to collect the rainwater that falls from their skies. **If** homeowners can prove that setting up a rainbarrel does not infringe on other water users' rights.

Because for years now, the rain falling from the clouds was private property. Does that mean that someone owned the sky over Colorado..?

"People are shocked that some developer or water provider owns the water that falls out of the sky," said Rep. Marsha Looper, a Republican from rural Calhan, southeast of Denver, who sponsored the legislation.

The New York Times carries an arresting article this week, "Its Now Legal To Catch A Raindrop In Colorado", reminding us rain-drenched city-dwellers on Canada's wet coast that it's a big world out there, and that our little corner of it is only a tiny drop in the ocean. The article also signals how laws based on science need constant updating if they are to remain soaked in justice:

A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.

But the deeper questions about rain are what really gnawed at rain harvesters like Todd S. Anderson, a small-scale farmer just east of Durango. Mr. Anderson said catching rain was not just thrifty — he is so water conscious that he has not washed his truck in five years — but also morally correct because it used water that would otherwise be pumped from the ground.
Mr. Anderson, a former national park ranger who worked for years enforcing rules and laws, said:
“I’m conflicted between what’s right and what’s legal. And I hate that.”

When even the crooks live white guilt...

2009-06-26T22:29:00.001-07:00

Nearly three dozen stolen computer monitors that were bound for schools and hospitals in the African country of Cameroon have been returned to a B.C. church group with an apology from the thieves.

The Kelowna church received the 31 monitors as a donation, but they were taken from the back of a pickup truck overnight on June 11.

Earlier this week, all but two of the monitors were returned to driveway where they were stolen, with a hand-printed note attached to one of the boxes.

"Sorry for the trouble, hope you forgive us," the note said. "Hope those kids in Africa enjoy."

The RCMP say they've accepted the apology and have closed their fil

B.C. thieves return Africa-bound computers with note: 'Hope you forgive us' | Macleans.ca - Canada - Features

But of course it's old news that most crooks have pretty much the same morality as everyone else, on one end of things; they're just a little less zealous about certain rivals' private property on the other. Send them to Africa, I say.

If your free-speech t-shirts are starting to wear...

2009-06-25T11:47:00.001-07:00

Time to get involved in voting for your next one: Blazing Cat Fur: Vote for your favourite entries in the "Be Mean to Jennifer Lynch" T-Shirt Slogan Contest

Axes of Evil: Iranian State and American Left/State

2009-06-25T06:22:00.005-07:00

Iranian security forces have left a mosque in downtown Tehran to meet and greet protestors against the recent election in Iran. The security forces greeted people with axes. One can view the result of one such greeting here. Warning: Graphic axe wound.

Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

American leftists seem to prefer hacking at Straw Men.
One can see the mind of such apologists at work at the Huffington Post.

The Republicans are faulting President Obama for not taking a "strong enough stand" in support of the freedom marchers in Iran. Yet if the Republican/Religious Right/Neoconservative agenda had come to full fruition over the last 35 years the Republicans would have plunged America into our own version of the misbegotten theocracy destroying Iran today. I know. As a former Religious Right leader I worked to make America "safe" for "Christian values" and dangerous to everyone else. Thankfully I, and those like me, failed.

Had we succeeded America would be another version of Iran. Instead of people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson having become marginalized they'd be sitting in Washington advising whomever was the next Republican president. Instead of environmental protection and new mileage standards for cars there would be new anti-gay laws on the books.

Rather than interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, i.e. Iran, which would make the Iran people hate us, our president is going to let things go without much comment. Enough of our arrogance and cultural imperialism. But rather than do nothing at all about the nature of the Iranian dictatorship, the weiner dialogue is off.

Update: Now it turns out that Obama's interference in Iranian internal affair has upset the Iranian government:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor toward Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologized.

[....]
"Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about ... I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said....

From: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026735.php#respond

This last bit above is a monologue by a sadist. What does the sadist do when he bet up his partner? He feels bad. So, he then beats up the masochist for making him feel bad. It makes perfect sense if you're insane. Some people are insane, and some insane people are heads of state. It might well be a waste of time to write about this, but then again, it might lead some people to think about the possibility that it's true after all. If that, then coffee.

We're meeting for coffee and chit-chat this evening at VPL. You can come and join us for discussion too. Atrium at 7:00 p.m. outside Blenz.

Three pigs, no poke

2009-06-22T14:16:00.005-07:00

I will return to active blogging soon; in the meantime, a visual metaphor for our times, to be precise, well, you name it:

If anyone knows how to buy one of these recent vintage Honda-cub style bikes in North America, let me know. Here's the original context:

From what I'd previously heard I expected Cambodia to be the "poor cousin" of Thailand, and in many respects that seems to be the case. Even at the border there were throngs of poor-looking Cambodians carting their wares in hand-wagons across to the large market on the Thai side.
[...]
The people in the lush and wet countryside live mostly in stilted wooden houses which line the roadside for miles on end. As far as one goes you hear "hello", mostly from under the houses where people seem to live during the day to escape the heat and the rain. The many small motorcycles are put to the utmost tests, often towing fairly large trailers loaded with goods or people - and even large wooden boats. Pigs are generally transported to market on the back of these motorcycles (on their backs with trotters facing the sky). By the time they're in transit these animals have usually stopped sqealing, but one still had some grunt in him and I thought I heard "Farang" as he passed me. The countryside through which I cycled is quite flat, and any hill seems to have some religious significance (although the stone sculptors are cutting up the hills at quite a rate).

Commercial Drive waking up?

2009-06-20T19:51:00.002-07:00

American Psychopath

2009-06-16T23:32:00.006-07:00

We like to think that all people are pretty much the same, given the right chances to be happy and decent. If someone is down, no real fault of his own, the system being what it is, one tends to make allowances, maybe help out a bit, do some good. Our president is bending over forward to be nice to some of the world's creepiest dictators on our behalf, appeasing people I would prefer to do less pleasant things to, and is generally sucking up for the sake of making things better for all concerned. He's bashing Israel, and he feels sad about the election in Iran where people have been disenfranchised and some murdered by their state. But, hey, can we talk? I think not all people are really as good as one would like to think. Give some people all they want and they still aren't satisfied. Why? Well, I went looking for an answer to the leftard bimbo who referred to me as "heart-dead" and the idiot who wrote that I'm a "Right wing religious bigot." This is the best I can do, and I leave the answer to the question posed in the comment section, if you really want to know. I'll confess I didn't get it on my own. I'd still be a better president than Obama. Only the lady in question below and her type wouldn't be. "Any ten people picked at random from the Cleveland phone book would be better than him." (Or so I recall that quotation.)

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her dream guy so much that she fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister..

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?

One can learn this kind of thinking, and then it becomes easier to deal with. It takes some professional interest. One would think those in charge of our foreign policy would care to know who and what they deal with. They could learn, sort of as a professional duty. So far, no signs of that. If we're forced to learn it ourselves, we'll find Obama to be less than The One.

If this goddess speaks....

2009-06-15T01:09:00.009-07:00

I've often wondered if the lady on the radio on the London tube trains who says: "Mind the gap." is as good-looking as she sounds. I've always wanted to date the Columbia movies lady, too. I don't know if they're the same woman. Now I have some real doubts. I got curious and looked up Columbia Lady. Mind the Gap lady is next, I do think so.

Columbia Pictures: The Torch Lady

Columbia Pictures was founded in 1919 ....

The studio’s logo is Columbia, the female personification of America. It was designed in 1924 and the identity of the “Torch Lady” model was never conclusively determined (though more than a dozen women had claimed to be “it.”)

[....]

The current Torch Lady logo was designed in 1993 by Michael J. Deas, who was commissioned by Sony Pictures Entertainment to return the lady to her “classic” look.

Though people thought that actress Annette Bening was the model, it was actually a Louisiana homemaker and muralist named Jenny Joseph that modeled the Torch Lady for Deas. Rather than use her face, however, Deas drew a composite face made from several computer-generated features.

Link.

Some people think Obama is something good, and I have the hots for the Columbia babe. There's reality and there's Obama. Mind the gap.

Greg Felton, Zionist?

2009-06-14T23:17:00.006-07:00

New Westminster/Burnaby News Leader: Backyard sharing a growing pastime:

“I gave them an area to use but they’ve widened it quite a bit,” she said, laughing at the eager gardeners she hosts. “They even put in raised beds, so they’re improving my garden.”

Laugh? We thought we'd die!

2009-06-14T15:41:00.005-07:00

Yes, folks, those kookie-loonies in government are at it again, entertaining the silly-goosest ideas in our time. How funny! How droll. How clever they are. Obamously Hilaryous.

Martin Fletcher, " Iranian President Ahmadinejad celebrates win with show of brutality." Tehran: Times Online. 15 June 2009

Chanting Allahu akbar” — God is greatest — and “Ahmadi, we love you” the army of hardliners poured into central Tehran in a massive show of strength for President Ahmadinejad.[...]

Mr Ahmadinejad gave a surreal, Orwellian press conference.
He called his victory an “epic achievement” that made Iran’s brand of religious democracy, with its emphasis on ethics, a model for the world.
Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed the protests as unimportant, comparing the rioters to disappointed football supporters after a match. He said there was no evidence that he had stolen the election, and that his margin of victory — 28 per cent — was so great that it was absurd to question his legitimacy. “Don’t worry about it. Freedom prevails absolutely in our country,” he told incredulous foreign journalists.

[....]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6499534.ece

Funnier and funnier:
"Clinton Reverses: Israel on its Own With Iran," from Israel National News, June 14 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

...When asked if her new statement was official U.S. policy, Clinton dodged the question, "I think it is U.S. policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations. I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that, were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation." Stephanopoulos pressed her: "By the United States?" But Clinton declined to commit: "Well, I think there would be retaliation.”

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026574.php

How are we going to stand any more of this wacky humor from our government? My gut aches already, and it's only been six months of this comedy.

Obama's Recipe for America or Palin Americana: To Serve Man.

2009-06-12T09:10:00.004-07:00

I think fairly often about Sarah Palin as president, usually when I read or hear about some latest antic by Obama. I don't catch the Obama word on tv, like some recent piece from David Letterman. That guy has some audience left, and it's strange to me that we can have a country in which he's a success of any sort. He'd only be possible in a nation that elected Obama. Letterman attacked Sarah Palin's 14 year old daughter on his tv show. That sort of thing doesn't surprise me anymore. It comes from a nation I don't recognize, and that nation used to be home. I remember America as hometown Palin. Television is a foreign country. Obamaland is The Twilight Zone. I remember my home. It was a nice place.

J. Robert Smith, "Still Open Season on Sarah Palin," American Thinker. June 12, 2009

[....]

East and left coast elites have a beau ideal, and that's President Barack Obama, the elegant, cosmopolitan, smooth apologist for America's foibles and mortal sins. The Big Spender and soon-to-be Debaser of the Dollar. The Savior of Detroit who's Amtraking automakers. The compassionate fellow who wants to ration healthcare. And the man who claimed he'd deny Miranda rights to terrorists, only to, well...

President Obama cleans up nicely, as they say. He talks the left's talk, and knows what fork to pick up at a five-star restaurant. He's an African-American JFK, which almost makes him the left's ultimate fantasy. The only thing he's not is gay. But even fantasies have limits.

Note that today's liberals -- or progressives, as they prefer -- never rhapsodize about the late Harry Truman, a gruff, unpolished Democratic pol who didn't give a damn about which fork he used at hoity-toity eateries -- if he ever entered any.

Truman regarded Uncle Joe Stalin as a windbag and mass murderer; he considered communism a sham and a great danger. And he initiated the long, hard Cold War that defeated the communists.

That's not what today's liberal admires in a leader: Resolve in defeating the nation's enemies. For liberals, like Pogo, the enemy is us. These descendants of Adlai Stevenson II see life as complicated -- a vast gray zone -- where truth is relative but most everything about America is absolutely wrong.

Palin is too much like Truman for liberal tastes, less the gruffness. She's a Main Streeter who's very comfortable in her skin. She doesn't put on airs, and doesn't aspire to do so. Her husband is a workingman whom she loves and is proud of; not an inconvenient truth, to steal a phrase. Ditto her son, Trig, born with Down Syndrome rather than aborted. Ditto her daughter, Bristol, who gave birth to an out-of-wedlock son.

Bristol has come out for abstinence among young people. Her honesty and courage is met with rolled eyes and sneers from jaded elites, reporters and liberal commentators. And bad jokes by a ratings-loser talk show host.

Surely, Bristol can't really want to help young people avoid her mistake. Her public stand is all about damage control and pre-emption. She's standing up to inoculate her mother from charges that the Palins talk the good talk about family values but walk a very different walk.

Imperfect creatures that we are, we are all bound to stray. Learning from, and making amends, for our mistakes are large parts of redemption. Bristol is admirably seeking redemption. Had she only chosen to condemn Gitmo and stump for same-sex marriage, then she'd have won plaudits from liberals.

Out-of-wedlock births are a Hollywood norm, and win the seal of approval from convention-hating lefties. Yet another reason to ridicule Bristol.

Governor Palin's conservatism is the sort that connects with the natural conservatism of a majority of Americans. Hers comes with no frills, no eloquent turns of phrase, no Shakespearian grandeur.

Hers is a hotdogs and hamburgers and cold beer conservatism. It's upbeat, reality-tested, everyday commonsense. Americans live it every day. They recognize it in Palin, and are attracted to her accordingly. Hence, liberals' fear.

Bless Palin's moose-shooting, hockey mom's heart. She wasted no time unloading both barrels at the hoary Letterman for his lurid jabs. The time has come for conservatives to start fighting back. Governor Palin is showing the way.

The saying goes that the best revenge is served cold. In this case, Sarah Palin needs to always bypass the elites and the mainstream media. She needs to take her case directly to hardworking Americans, whether in Auburn, New York, Joplin, Missouri or Macon, Georgia.

And in those towns and cities and suburbs across the nation, she needs to deliver this powerful, game-changing message: Americans don't have to be ashamed of, or apologize for, being Americans. Our traditional values, morals and beliefs are the nation's backbone and have made us great.

We have been a force for great good and freedom in a world often lacking in both. We may stumble and fall at times, but we pick ourselves up and move forward with hope and optimism and an unshakeable belief that, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, our best days are ahead of us.

Take this message to Americans and it won't be cynical comics or cynical elites who have the last laugh.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/still_open_season_on_sarah_pal.html

America will return.

Come on, be creative!

2009-06-11T16:06:00.001-07:00

Obama Today | Following Barack Obama » Blog Archive » Sign Sotomayor’s “cast” - Engaging the World - America.gov

For What it's Worth...

2009-06-10T14:00:00.005-07:00

We elected a Democratic Party president recently in the expectation that he would be a better president than George W. Bush. But, really, that's not why we elected Obama. We elected him because we had a chance to make history and feel really cool about it: electing the first "Black" president. What might we get? A Democrat.

Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

"Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living."

Ben-Peter Terpstra, "Obama-first mayors lead 14 of 15 most dangerous cities," American Thinker. June 10, 2009

When Mayor Giuliani, the feisty Italian-American Republican took charge of New York, he meant business. Crime went down, down, down.

Alas, today's big city mayor is more likely to be a soft-on-crime Democrat.

What do I mean? When Forbes magazine listed the 15 most dangerous cities in America - the political class ignored one embarrassingly obvious fact. Yes: 14 of the 15 mayors leading America's most dangerous cities are Obama-first leaders.

Here's the beef:

No. 15 Philadelphia, Pa. Mayor Michael Anthony "Mike" Nutter (Democrat)

No. 14 Charlotte, N.C. Mayor Patrick "Pat" McCrory (Republican)

No. 13 West Palm Beach, Fla. Mayor Lois J. Lois J. Frankel (Democrat)

No. 12 Baton Rouge, La. Mayor-President Melvin "Kip" Holden (Democrat)

No. 11 New Orleans, La. Mayor Clarence Ray Nagin, Jr. (Democrat)

No. 10 Baltimore, Md. Mayor Sheila Ann Dixon (Democrat)

No. 9 Nashville, Tenn. Mayor Karl Foster Dean (Democrat)

No. 8 Charleston, S.C. Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. (Democrat)

No. 7 Little Rock, Ark. Mayor Mark Stodola (Democrat)

No. 6 Orlando, Fla. Mayor John Hugh "Buddy" Dyer (Democrat)

No. 5 Stockton, Calif. Mayor Ann Johnston (Democrat)

No. 4 Las Vegas, Nev. Mayor Oscar Baylin Goodman (Democrat)

No. 3 Miami, Fla. Mayor Manny Diaz ("Independent,"Obama-first voter and 2008 DNC speaker)

No. 2 Memphis, Tenn. Mayor Willie W. Herenton (Democrat)

No. 1 Detroit, Mich. Mayor David Bing (Democrat)

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/obamafirst_mayors_lead_14_of_1.html

Cities with Democratic Party mayors. Is it good or bad or just the moon in Virgo? Let's take a seat and watch the show.

American Thinker comment, Posted by: Mac Fuller. June 10, 11:37 AM

EVIDENCE:
This information can be found in U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, published in August 2007, and was widely reported upon in August, September, and October 2008 prior to the presidential election.

POVERTY IN MAJOR U.S. CITIES -- TOP 10.

City and State / Percentage of People Below Poverty Level / "Leadership"

1. Detroit , MI 32.5% #1 on poverty rate list. Has not elected a Republican mayor since 1961.

2. Buffalo , NY 29.9% #2 on list, and hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1954.

3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8% #3 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1984.

4. Cleveland , OH 27.0% #4 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1989.

5. Miami , FL 26.9% #5 on the poverty list. Has NEVER had a Republican mayor.

6. St. Louis , MO 26.8% #6 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1949.

7. El Paso , TX 26.4% #7 on the poverty list. Has NEVER had a Republican mayor.

8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2% #8 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1908.

9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1% #9 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1952.

10. Newark , NJ 24.2% #10 on the poverty list. No elected Republican since 1907.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/obamafirst_mayors_lead_14_of_1.html
How cool is it that we have as president a Democrat Super-Mayor?

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me
I've got to beware

Chorus:
Think it's time we
STOP! Hey
What's that sound
Everybody look what's going down ...

http://www.lyricsdownload.com/crosby-stills-and-nash-for-what-it-s-worth-lyrics.html

Short-lived Martys and the Eternal Cool People

2009-06-08T11:24:00.007-07:00

If you geezers want to live a long time, the Danes have it figured out: get a young wife. It' Big Science, I tell ya. The Danes spent some good cash finding out that old guys who marry young women live longer than old guys who marry women their own age. And what could be cooler than hanging out at the bocce court with a babe in tow? You could be knocking over your mates like wooden pins at a lawn bowling tournament when you show up with your own Berlusconi babe. What about the old ladies? Give them a fulfilling occupation. Paradise.

If the meaning of your life is to live a long time: marry a younger woman.

Vail Beach said at June 7, 2009 07:12 PM: "My father, who recently passed away, thought my mom could make better-tasting ice water."

Bronco Bomber said at June 6, 2009 03:45 PM: "I made a huge mistake when I married my first wife. Not only is she older, but she is dumber than a mule. I am hoping to find a younger and smarter and better looking woman perhaps half my age next time. Wish me luck."

Men Married To Younger Women Live Longer
Many of my readers are looking for any edge they can find to extend their lives. They are willing to embrace scientific research results that suggest that a dietary practice or lifestyle choice will help them live long enough to still be around when rejuvenation therapies hit the market. I share this desire. With this thought in mind I have a tip for the guys: Danish men who marry women much younger than them live longer.
According to the research, if a man marries a woman 15 and 17 years his junior, his chances of dying early are cut by one fifth. Also, it suggests that men cut the risk of premature death by 11 percent if their wives are seven to nine years younger.

Another aspect highlighted by the study was that men who opted for older wives have an 11 percent higher chance of dying earlier.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006268.html

You can be like contestant number one whose father passed away recently, obviously meaning the father is dead, especially because his wife seemed to be about the father's age; or you can be like contestant number two, a man who still hopes to live a long time if only he can score a hottie. This is important for Danes. There aren't that many of them, and those there are don't seem to like Danes very much, if we can judge by the abortion rates, latest available to me, 2006. If Danes don't live a long time, there won't be any left at this rate:

2006 64984 15053 (15053)

year live births abortions, reported

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-denmark.html

If you're identical to me, then you too will find this part interesting:

Friedrich Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. "Preface to the Fourth Edition." (1891)

[Johann J.] Bachofen finds the proofs of these assertions in innumerable passages of ancient classical literature, which he collected with immense industry. According to him, the development from "hetaerism" to monogamy and from mother-right to father-right is accomplished, particularly among the Greeks, as the consequence of an advance in religious conceptions, introducing into the old hierarchy of the gods, representative of the old outlook, new divinities, representative of the new outlook, who push the former more and more into the background. Thus, according to Bachofen, it is not the development of men’s actual conditions of life, but the religious reflection of these conditions inside their heads, which has brought about the historical changes in the social position of the sexes in relation to each other. In accordance with this view, Bachofen interprets the Oresteia of Aschylus as the dramatic representation of the conflict between declining mother-right and the new father-right that arose and triumphed in the heroic age. For the sake of her paramour, AEgisthus, Clytemnestra slays her husband, Agamemnon, on his return from the Trojan War; but Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and herself, avenges his father’s murder by slaying his mother. For this act he is pursued by the Furies, the demonic guardians of mother-right, according to which matricide is the gravest and most inexpiable crime. But Apollo, who by the voice of his oracle had summoned Orestes to this deed, and Athena, who is called upon to give judgment – the two deities who here represent the new patriarchal order – take Orestes under their protection; Athena hears both sides. The whole matter of the dispute is briefly summed up in the debate which now takes place between Orestes and the Furies. Orestes contends that Clytemnestra has committed a double crime; she has slain her husband and thus she has also slain his father. Why should the Furies pursue him, and not her, seeing that she is by far the more guilty? The answer is striking: "She was not kin by blood to the man she slew."

The murder of a man not related by blood, even if he be the husband of the murderess, is expiable and does not concern the Furies; their office is solely to punish murder between blood relations, and of such murders the most grave and the most inexpiable, according to mother-right, is matricide. Apollo now comes forward in Orestes’ defense; Athena calls upon the Areopagites – the Athenian jurors – to vote; the votes for Orestes’ condemnation and for his acquittal are equal; Athena, as president, gives her vote for Orestes and acquits him. Father-right has triumphed over mother-right, the "gods of young descent," as the Furies themselves call them, have triumphed over the Furies; the latter then finally allow themselves to be persuaded to take up a new office in the service of the new order. [B]achofen believes at least as much as AEschylus did in the Furies, Apollo, and Athena; for, at bottom, he believes that the overthrow of mother-right by father-right was a miracle wrought during the Greek heroic age by these divinities.

I'm not so keen on Justiice. I'm usually happy to argue in favor of rational law instead. We have to make some choices in this life. We might like the idea of a Just Price, as Aquinas argues in favor of, or a Moral Economy, as E.P. Thompson wants. These would be fine things, I'm sure, just like a matriarchy, and justice by Furies. Believe me, there are innumerable cases I would love to judge with the Furies as my counsel. I'd like to have according to my needs rather than according to my abilities. And toss in a couple of babes for fun. But there is a matter of selection. Do we want geezers with babes, and Wise Latina matriarchs ruling us all fairly by intuition? We could live a long time, and maybe forever, so long as we can dump the old lady into the Supreme Court so she has something to do while we fool around and expand with the universe. I hear from those who know that it's a matter of "quality of life." Let's topple those Greeks and open abortion so the hotties are ready all the time and the old girls are bitchy with a good enough income not to mess up Paradise. What did Aeschylus know? He's a dead White male. Probably couldn't find a young wife.

Fewer and fewer people, getting older all the time, and being all the happier for it. I understand this is a quality I should like. Unfortunately for me, me being a Right Wing religious bigot, I'd settle for the best ice-water a woman can make. In fact, like Marty Pilletti, I think it'd be worth having over the other.

Radio Memories: Listening To D-Day

2009-06-07T20:09:00.003-07:00

Every Sunday we take a small break from current events of the day to listen to echoes of days gone by, hoping to discover something about our own times through the crackling static and fading voices of radio’s earliest days… the days when radio, not television, shaped our understanding of the world, through radio drama, the theater of the mind.

Yesterday of course marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France, and I thought that this would make an ideal subject for this week’s Radio Memories post. The entire broadcast day from that fateful Tuesday in 1944 has survived; it makes for riveting listening today, letting us share the memory of a nation waking to the big news, holding its breath, checking their maps and saying a prayer for the success of the mission pursued by fathers, sons, brothers, family, friends and neighbors on the far-away beaches of Normandy.

Radio offered its listeners an intimacy that production circumstances deny television today. Most radio drama was broadcast live; actors would show up a few hours before air time to rehearse their performances in plays that had been written, often re-written, right up to the day of their broadcast. They could easily incorporate important stories of the day into their work, having characters comment on the news that the listeners themselves were following in-between their choice of radio theater, such as the war’s sudden beginning in the Pacific, the last days of war in Europe… and the beginning of the end: D-Day.

I've selected a trio of highlights to give a sense of how that day played out on radio. As you can imagine, regular programming was put largely on hold that day, as a flood of news bulletins tried to encapsulate history in the making.

We start with the noon broadcast of Kate Smith Speaks, a popular daily 15-minute chat show for women, hosted by the singer famous today for her stirring delivery of the unofficial US National Anthem, God Bless America. She puts her listeners thoughts into words as she offers a moving prayer for the troops overseas, "a prayer for victory".

Then comes a fifteen minute clip of CBS' six o'clock news broadcast, summing up the major news points of the invasion up to that time. (The time slot had yet to assume the daily compass point it was to offer for generations to come, displaced only recently by unsleeping cable networks and global online news resources.)

The final word goes to comedian Bob Hope. His Tuesday night variety show skirted the edges of prime time, broadcast as it was at a 10:00 pm time slot in those wartime days. It would have brought down the curtain on quite an emotional day for his listeners, and undoubtedly even more so for Hope.

Here was a man who devoted his legendary tireless energy towards criss-crossing the continent in order to entertain the troops. From May 1941 onward, he broadcast week after week from an airfield here, a training camp there; as we heard in an earlier Radio Memories post , he had even spent much of his 1943 "summer vacation" in-between radio seasons playing for the military stationed in the warzones of North Africa and Europe. And shortly after this Tuesday June 6th broadcast he was scheduled to begin his 1944 summer tour of the Pacific Theater. Had anyone met more American G.I.s, one-on-one, than Bob Hope? Shaken their hands, looked into their eyes, met their smiles with one of his own? Was there a single air base, naval base, or army camp that he didn't perform in during the war?

The disruptions of a news-heavy day of programming cut his usual Tuesday thirty minute show down to a mere six minutes, yet these six minutes broadcast on the sixth day of the sixth month of 1944 offer much heartening insight to the modern-day listener, plagued as we are with a world seemingly in decay, trying to imagine what it must have been like to experience a day when the world could be felt to be changing for the better.

In his three-minute introduction, Bob Hope reminds listeners of his day, and those finding his broadcast in our own time, what it was like to experience radio's coverage of the D-Day invasion:

Folks, this is Bob Hope speaking from a P-38 airfield out here near Van Nuys California. We looked forward to being with these men and doing our regular show here, but of course nobody feels like getting up and being funny on a night like this.
But we did want to go through with our plans and visit these fellas because these are the same kind of boys that are flying those 11,000 planes in our big effort.
What’s happened in these last few hours not one of us will ever forget. How could you forget. You sat up all night by the radio, and heard the bulletins and the flashes, the voices coming across from England, the commentators, the pilots returning from their greatest of all missions, newsboys yelling in the street… it seemed that one world was ending and a new world beginning. That history was closing one book and opening a new one.
And somehow we knew it had to be a better one. You sat there and dawn began to sneak in and you thought of the hundreds of thousands of kids you’d seen in camps the past two or three years; the kids who’d scream and whistle when they’d hear a gag in a song.
And now you could see them all again on 4,000 ships on the English Channel, tumbling out of thousands of planes over Normandy, and the occupied coast. In countless landing barges crashing the nazi gate and going out to do the job that’s the job of all of us.
The sun came up and you sat there looking at that huge black headline, that one great black word with the exclamation point: “Invasion”. The one word that the whole world has waited for.
That all of us had worked for.
We knew we’d wake up one morning and have to meet it face to face, the word in which America has invested everything these thirty long months, the efforts of millions of Americans building the planes and weapons, the men in the shipyards and the men who took the stuff across. Little kids buying war stamps and housewives straining bacon grease. Farmers working around the clock. Millions of young men sweating it out in camps and fighting the battles that paved the way for that headline this morning.
Now the investment is paid, for this generation and all generations to come.
And folks what a wonderful thing it is that no matter the price, the reward will be greater than the sacrifice. We hope that thought can go along with a prayer tonight, the prayer of a whole nation: God Bless those kids across the English Channel.

Previous Radio Memories posts:

Red Skelton: Vacations
Frontier Gentleman: Gambling Lady
Information Please: Guests Walter Duranty and John Gunther
The Aldrich Family: Cleaning The Furnace
Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates VE Day broadcasts from May 8 1945
You Are There: The Capture Of John Wilkes Booth
Fort Laramie: War Correspondent
CBS Radio Workshop: Son Of Man
Great Gildersleeve: Easter Rabbits
Dimension X: Time And Time Again
An American In England: Women Of Britain
Cavalcade Of America: Bob Hope Reports
The March Of Time: Feb 10 1938 broadcast
Hear It Now: Coming Home From The Korean War
Escape: Vanishing Lady
Rogers Of The Gazette: Rewinding The Town Clock

Thought leader finds God for children.

2009-06-06T12:16:00.002-07:00

Put away the gas oven, bury the chain saw in the yard, dump out the coffee pot of Drano: no more suicidal thoughts from you, it's all OK now. Life is finally worth living.

By Kyle Drennen, "Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: Obama Is ‘Sort of God’." Newsbusters.org. 5 June 2009

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC:
"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."
[....]
"He's going to bring all different sides together...Obama is trying to sort of tamper everything down. He doesn't even use the word terror. He uses extremism. He's all about let us reason together...He's the teacher. He is going to say, ‘now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he – he can – he can do that." In response, Matthews wondered: "If there's a world election between him and Osama Bin Laden, he's running a good campaign." Thomas agreed: "Yes, he is."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/06/05/newsweek-s-evan-thomas-obama-sort-god

Dear reader, you might think that's the gushing nonsense of a fool, but let me hasten to explain that the speaker above is Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. Now you understand. And in case you don't, here's a bit more to clarify it all, this in case you are not one of Modernity's elite, not a thought leader.

Newsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence'....
Recently, the magazine's owner The Washington Post Company has stated the publication has been losing profit. The company overhauled the magazine in May, 2009, refocusing its content and using higher-quality paper, to target a smaller and more "elite audience" and to identify itself as a "thought leader". To sustain its level of journalism with a reduced guaranteed circulation, Newsweek plans to eventually increase prices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek

You slap my forehead, dear reader, and say, "But Dag, who is Evan Thomas?" Well, are you ever in luck. Evan Thomas (1951- ), Newsweek editor, is:

"[T]he grandson of the late Norman Thomas, a six-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Thomas

So now you know. And I know. And we know. Grandpa's ghost finally made it into the White House, and he's a sort of God.

Muslims driven to violence by -- whatever-- need protection from Americans

2009-06-04T15:04:00.003-07:00

Robert Spencer, "Jihad Returns to America," FrontPageMagazine.com. June 04, 2009

Jihad came once again to American soil on Monday, when an American convert to Islam, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, began shooting at soldiers who were standing outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Muhammad murdered Pvt. William Long, 23, and gravely wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18.

Muhammad was charged with capital murder and – in a departure from authorities’ practically reflexive dismissal of terrorism as a factor in virtually any act of violence by a Muslim -- sixteen counts of committing a terrorist act. Rather curiously, Muhammad has entered a not guilty plea, despite a prosecutor’s report that he had admitted shooting Private Long, and explained that he had done so “because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.” Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said of Muhammad’s act: “We believe that it’s associated with his disagreement over the military operations.”

Apparently “they” were the United States, and Muhammad considered this random shooting of two innocent young men to be an act of defensive jihad against a force he believed to be making war against the global Islamic community. Muhammad seems to have driven up to the Army-Navy Career Center intending to kill as many American military personnel as he could. Deputy Prosecutor Scott Duncan said that Muhammad openly admitted that he “would have killed more soldiers had they been in the parking lot.”

More: http://frontpagemagazine.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35094

At least our government is taking steps to protect us.

Statement of Attorney General Eric Holder on Department of Justice’s Outreach and Enforcement Efforts to Protect American Muslims

Thursday, June 4, 2009

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement relating to President Obama’s historic speech today in Cairo, Egypt:

"The President's pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

"There are those who will continue to want to divide by fear - to pit our national security against our civil liberties - but that is a false choice. We have a solemn responsibility to protect our people while we also protect our principles."

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090604.html

From: http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090604.html

By "us" we assume we all know that means not "them" who are us.

Collin Binkley, "Wrong place, wrong time for OSU stabbing victim," The Lantern. June 4, 2009.

A female Ohio State student was trying to catch a bus to class Tuesday afternoon when she became the victim of a random stabbing... by 34-year-old Wael W. Kalash. Witnesses said Kalash had been walking up and down the street exhibiting "bizarre" behavior before the stabbing occurred.

"There's no connection between the victim and him other than she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, it was a completely random act," said Det. Jay Fulton of the Columbus Division of Police homicide unit.

Witnesses said that Kalash... walked up to the student and stabbed her once in the abdomen...
.
[....]

Neighbors of Kalash said he has a history of "strange behavior," and Fulton said he may be mentally ill.

"He didn't make a lot of sense when we tried to talk to him," Fulton said. "He exhibited a lot of signs of some mental instability or some mental issues."

http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2009/06/04/Campus/Wrong.Place.Wrong.Time.For.Osu.Stabbing.Victim-3746031.shtml

There are Muslims who are us, and they have to be protected, because otherwise they have to kill us for being upset, which is a bad thing to do to peace loving people. We have to protect Muslims from hostility by ... I don't know, maybe killing ourselves so they don't have to do it themselves.

Can anyone here read body language?

2009-06-03T23:11:00.008-07:00

Obama bows down to King of Saudi Arabia

Then he sits and has a nice chat.

Obama has a nice time with king Abudulla of Jordan.

Obama shakes hands with ole homeboy, Chavez.

Here's the Israeli prime minister

Photo chosen by US Embassy, Belgium.

Righteous Victims Accord to Perpetrators

2009-06-03T12:55:00.004-07:00

When I was a young guy I had a Catholic priest chasing after me for a while. I don't get it, but then, I miss a lot of things others take for normal. I told this fellow once, in a moment of frustration: "You should be ashamed of yourself." He got this hurt look in his eyes and told me he couldn't help it, and that he didn't think he'd go to Hell for his behavior. I told him he sure would: "How can you ever find forgiveness for this disgraceful lusting? Have you no shame? I'm a Protestant!"

He did leave me with a lasting impression, though, that I find interesting. He told me that religious people don't feel good about what they do; they feel good about what they don't do. "We would never do that!"

Francis Bok's autobiography Escape from Slavery: It's not about the victims, but the oppressor ... they only care if they can loathe the perpetrator.

Comment by Moh Foe: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026399.php#respond

Link to book blurb: http://iabolish.org/slavery_today/slave_experience/escape_from_slavery.html

The context, of course, is the Leftist/West's abandonment of victims who don't fit the template of the righteous as defined by and according to the Left Westerner. Murdered by jihadis? That's OK. Murdered by Communists? That's even good. But water-boarded by Republicans? Hell and Damnation.

It's a moralism gone to Hell long before the religious fanatic himself ever dies. Are Leftists evil? Only if you look at their behavior.