Wheat & Weeds

Memorial Day 2012

2012-05-28T08:44:00.003-05:00

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images 2009

We remember.

But I've come to the conclusion remembering isn't enough, and in fact is mere sentimentality unless we take from memory the resolve Lincoln prescribed at Gettysburg:

from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth

First Tomato Update 2012

2012-05-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

I have at least two major projects on my plate, and they are each in different respects weighing upon my spirit, which is why I've spent the last two weekends in the garden straining my bending over, pulling up, digging and hauling mulch muscles and pretending said projects and the people associated with them do not exist.

Dripping sweat for 3-4 hours and concentrating on something else feels good. At least until you come inside, shower, realize all those unused muscles are seizing up on you, and said projects have not worked on themselves.

The good news is all the tomatoes --four kinds!-- and other veggies finally got into the ground last weekend. (May 19: for record-keeping purposes) They could have gone in late April temperature-wise; I just wasn't in the mood. Wasn't in the mood last week either (not myself this Spring: nothing's wrong, just kind of sapped), but I don't want to reach mid-July wracked with regret, and a home-grown tomato might be just what I need, so I sucked it up. Once I got started it felt right.

This weekend I added marigolds to scare off slugs and recruited 75% of my offspring for Operation Jungle Tame to help me reclaim the hydrangea bushes which line the back yard from the morass of weeds and crud I'd allowed to grow up around them. I was afraid they'd (the hydrangeas, not the offspring) all be choked and dead, but they were thriving --just hidden behind very tall grass, incipient trees and honeysuckle tendrils sticking out from the back fence. And 5-6 of this awful invasive weed. I don't know what it is but it's spiky all over like a cactus, except it has spiky leaves, too. It grows about a foot per night, and is the most wretchedly ugly thing I've ever seen. It looks like a plant from outer space. I HATE those things.

The worst is now cleared out and about 1/3 of the back yard has been well-cleaned and mulched. If it doesn't rain on the weekends, we'll probably have recaptured the entirety by next weekend.

It was fun working with the kids. They only whined a little and they're all both big enough and strong enough to actually be useful. Middle Weed mowed the lawn and ran the trimmer. Us goils pulled up the vines and anything that wasn't a hydrangea. Little Weed stuffed the detritus into a lawn bag. Everyone took turns using the big clippers to take down stray trees and those horrible spiky things. The boys spread the weed-n-feed and hauled the mulch. Now that I've taught them what to do and know they can do it, I will of course be turning the job over to them entirely and staying inside to drink margaritas.

Bwahahahahahaha.

Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day

2012-05-25T07:52:00.002-05:00

Today is everyone blog Brett Kimberlin day. Michelle Malkin writes:

the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats.
Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less.
More. Louder. Bolder.
For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.
Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.
The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.
This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.

Read blogger Patterico's firsthand experience with "SWATTING", which as he points out, can get people killed and is a terrific waste of police time and community resources.

He documents the literal daily harassment (including not only SWATing but harrassment lawsuits and posting phony naked pictures supposedly of himself) of him and other bloggers (AaronWorthing, Stacey McCain, Ace of Spades among others) and he names names of at least some of the individuals and entities behind it.

Excellent run-down not only of Kimberlin's antics, but of his Soros-funded front groups.
Good round-up here.

Notre Dame & Other Un-Persons

2012-05-23T14:44:00.000-05:00

Now, finally, can we all agree the media abdication of duty and lapdoggery is undeniable? How is it possible that 43 organizations (including the Obama-awarding U. of Notre Dame, with many more expected to follow) file suit simultaneously in 12 jurisdictions and ABC World News and NBC Nightly News literally (and I mean that literally, Mr. Biden) don't mention it? (CBS gave it a thorough-going 19-seconds.)

Folks is hoppin' mad, but don't they get it? Catholics and their institutions already don't exist. The history books have already been updated, and all the double-plus-ungood people were never there.

The chancellor of the Archdiocese of Washington explains the suit here:

Update: EJ Dionne explains why the press isn't covering the 43 lawsuits. It's because the REAL story is that many bishops AREN'T suing.
Yes, Dear.

Just as on 9/11 the REAL story was the number of Muslims who weren't attacking us.

Dionne rests his case on the word of one bishop, actually: Stephen Blaire of Stockton. He's the guy who says Paul Ryan's budget is a moral failure. I haven't gotten around to fisking him yet but he's way overdue. An interview he gave in the NC Register recently shows beyond doubt he hasn't even read the dang budget. He thinks the Church should not defend itself because it gives the GOP a talking point. And we all know the Church exists for the purpose of denying talking points to the GOP, and political neutrality means never telling politicians they are wrong. Except Paul Ryan, apparently.

Dionne is angry that the Church hasn't been mollified by the "compromise" on the HHS mandate, in which the government allows an accounting trick so Christians can pretend on paper they aren't funding abortifacient drugs and sterilizations. E.J., Baby: THERE IS NO COMPROMISE. The HHS rule was finalized as written on the same day the Administration floated it as some kind of maybe possibility down the road. It was a trick and a lie from the beginning, and only you and Sr. Carol fell for it.

Fauxcohantas & The First Birther President

2012-05-20T21:01:00.002-05:00

"Lizzie Get Your Minority Faculty Position" from The Ryskind Sketchbook

You've heard of "Fauxcohantas," the scandal caused because Harvard Law Prof and Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims Cherokee blood -- falsely, it turns out. Sing along w/ Lizzie to the tune of "I'm An Indian Too" from Annie Get Your Gun. And if you really want to have fun, click over to the Sketchbook and read his lyrics to "Claimin' I'm A Cherokee," sung to the tune of Doin' What Comes Naturally. Here's one verse:

Folks are fair in Harvard Square,

For justice they are yearnin’

They will tenure whites like me

If I say I’m Cher-o-kee (If you say your Cher-o-kee).

To add insult to injury, turns out Ms. Warren also plagiarized some recipes in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook. Clearly no one took the authenticity of the recipes very seriously at the time, since Ms. Warren submitted two crab recipes among several others as generations-old recipes from the Oklahoma Cherokee. Crab is so authentically Oklahoman, as we all know (and Mark Steyn beat me to mocking, but I thought it all by myself)

What's going on at Harvard Law that teachers and students alike must falsely embellish their heritage to feel good enough? As you probably read, it turns out the President used to pass himself of as being born in Kenya back in the day. Which means -- and this is the true importance of the story-- Mr. Obama is our first birther President! He probably wasn't born in Kenya, but he himself if the source of the story that he is.

My big conclusion from this week's news cycle? Harvard Law types are liars.

Same Sex Marriage Fall-out

2012-05-15T07:09:00.000-05:00

MD. Delegate Emmett Burns -- who is also a pastor and testified eloquently before the MD House of Delegates earlier this year in opposition to the redefinition of marriage -- told his Church last weekend he will no longer support President Obama and predicted he would lose the election. Curtsy to Hot Air for the video. Ed Morrissey writes there:

This will be a disaster in places like Maryland. No one expects the congregants of Pastor Burns’ church to run out and vote for Romney, but they’re going to be a lot less enthused about Obama — and a lack of enthusiasm in his base will put an end to hopes of a second term. Maryland is a safe state for Democrats under normal conditions; it last went Republican in 1988, and Obama won it by 25 points in 2008. However, the same reason for that large margin of victory shows the risk for Obama, which is that 30% of the vote in the state comes from the African-American community that Pastor Burns and others serve.

Here's anecdotal support for that. A friend volunteering at Maryland Marriage Alliance headquarters overheard some African American volunteers discussing the president's stand. One woman came in and announced loudly to no one in particular, "Well, President Obama has sold his soul for votes!"

Later I asked this lady if she thought his support of homosexual marriage would sway a lot of people. She said she didn't know what she would do, because she didn't like Romney so she'd probably not vote. Today another lady came in expressing consternation, but said she didn't know what to do because "Romney wants to fire people."

If Republicans had any sense, they'd make like our MD senate candidate Dan Bongino and capitalize on the opportunity to make inroads. People will listen. At least a margin of people will listen. Even alleged noted "racist" Sen. Jesse Helms always managed a certain percentage of the African American vote simply because he never wrote it off and always campaigned in black communities too.

Romney At Liberty

2012-05-14T07:13:00.002-05:00

Mitt Romney gave a commencement address at Liberty University over the weekend. K-Lo liked it, and folks in my email stream did too. She called it an important address about religious liberty.

Meh. In the sense that he gives unashamed public witness of his own faith and defends religious liberty and one man one woman marriage, it's a good thing. But in the sense that it is all only a statement of his own views and gives no marching orders, it's not much. Ok, religious liberty and marriage are important -- and what is he going to do about it and what should we?

What we have this week from the two presumptive party nominees is personal professions of faith backed by nothing. The President says he's "personally" for re-defining marriage. Mitt says he personally isn't.

So?

Standing With Geert Wilders

2012-05-14T06:58:00.003-05:00

Mark Steyn's forward to Geert Wilders' new book is up at The Corner. It makes me ashamed because I confess from press stories I had the idea Wilders was a bit of a right-wing fanatic -- someone one is put in the awkward position of defending against Islamic extremism but with whose ideas one really doesn't wish to associate. (I don't care how crazy you are or how provocative what you say is, Islamic youths don't get to kill you on the streets of a Western democracy.)

As Steyn shows, this opinion is the product of lazy journalism. Discussing a big flap in Oz when an Aussie politician had the gall to want to meet Wilders and size him up in person rather than relying on rumor, he writes:

In that Cory Bernardi flap Down Under, for example, I’m struck by how much of the Aussie coverage relied on the same lazy shorthand about Geert Wilders. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

“Geert Wilders, who holds the balance of power in the Dutch parliament, likened the Koran to Mein Kampf and called the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”
The Australian:

“He provoked outrage among the Netherlands’ Muslim community after branding Islam a violent religion, likening the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Mohammed a pedophile.”
Tony Eastley on ABC Radio:

“Geert Wilders, who controls the balance of power in the Netherlands’ parliament, has outraged Dutch Muslims by comparing the Koran to Hitler’s work Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”
Golly, you’d almost think all these hardworking investigative reporters were just cutting-and-pasting the same lazy précis rather than looking up what the guy actually says. The man who emerges in the following pages is not the grunting thug of media demonology but a well-read, well-traveled, elegant, and perceptive analyst who quotes such “extreme” “fringe” figures as Churchill and Jefferson.

Well, that's what you get for believing anything you read in the papers. Mea maxima culpa.

Steyn opens the forward by saying he considered not writing it because he's had enough of his own struggles with Islamist extremists trying to shut him down, brand him an extremist or threaten him with death and who needs it? But then he felt ashamed of that impulse. He concludes:

I have no desire to end up living like Geert Wilders or Kurt Westergaard, never mind dead as Fortuyn and van Gogh. But I also wish to live in truth, as a free man, and I do not like the shriveled vision of freedom offered by the Dutch Openbaar Ministrie, the British immigration authorities, the Austrian courts, Canada’s “human rights” tribunals, and the other useful idiots of Islamic imperialism. So it is necessary for more of us to do what Ayaan Hirsi Ali recommends: share the risk. So that the next time a novel or a cartoon provokes a fatwa, it will be republished worldwide and send the Islamic enforcers a message: Killing one of us won’t do it. You’d better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad because you’ll have to kill us all.

Quite.

Shall There Ever Be An England?

2012-05-12T09:25:00.003-05:00

They say the Right is fear-mongering and hysterical. I only wish we were making this stuff up. The "Advertising Standards Authority" is going after a blogger for running an ad in defense of marriage. Please click through and see the ad to understand how utterly innocuous it is. It's a bunch of photos of couples on their wedding day together with a statistic (w/ source citation) about how many people favor keeping marriage as it is and a plea to sign a petition.

He's getting threatening letters, requests for documentation and -- especially important-- insistence that he keep this process "confidential," all because some homosexuals complained it was "homophobic."

Rightly he calls BS on that and is shouting it to the world.

Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are?

Read his entire response. It's very satisfying, though we shall see whether he ends up shut down. I don't know what power this ASA has, if any.

Meanwhile on this side of The Big Pond (speaking of hate speech), my illusion that the WaPo editorial board is slightly more sane and capable of rational discussion than The Formerly Grey Lady has been shattered. Look what ad they ran on Wednesday. Even shameless bigots might think twice about offending a big population of potential subscribers one might think. But one would be wrong. Hatred for Christianity and Christians trumps all. Here's the excellent response from the Archdiocesan newspaper.

It is slowly becoming a crime to be openly Christian.

Maurice Sendak

2012-05-11T21:09:00.001-05:00

Avengers in the style of Maurice Sendak, shamelessly pinched from here.

You owe it to yourself to follow the link and see the illustration to scale. It's wonderful! Somehow I think it's a better tribute to Sendak than his Times obit, with this lede:

Maurice, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83.

Is there anything at all the Formerly Gray Lady won't render bathetic? Or into a dig at America?

In book after book, Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children’s literature, in which young heroes and heroines were typically well scrubbed and even better behaved; nothing really bad ever happened for very long; and everything was tied up at the end in a neat, moralistic bow.

Pish-tosh! What American children had read to them until very recently was the Bible, Shakespeare, Grimm's fairy tales, Mother Goose, and uniquely American folk tales such as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, John Henry and Johnny Appleseed. Later we added in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. There's absolutely nothing buttoned-down, trim and neat in any of it. (They must be thinking of McGuffey's primer, which is not literature.) It's only recently we've got it into our fool heads that kids must be insulated from anything "real." I will pay you $5 if any reviewer at the Times has ever read any actual American children's literature.

So anyway...look at the picture. Sendak wasn't dark; he was hilarious. (Has anyone at the Times ever read Where the Wild Things Are to a kid?) Melancholy I'll give them... he was Jewish, for pity's sake, there's a certain amount of "oy" in everything, but that's exactly what makes his illustrations beautiful, sometimes wild, and deeply humorous. Here's a much better obit -- because it's interested in Sendak, not in its own liberal pieties.

from Little Bear Goes to the Moon, Maurice Sendak (see the angst in Little Bear's face?)

Shamelessly pinched from here.

So dark. Shamelessly pinched from here.

Having a wild rumpus and not at all terrified (same link as above.)

For hours and hours of pleasure in my own childhood and again in adulthood as I read to my kids, I thank him.

We've Been Avenged

2012-05-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

Will you lose respect for me if I say I enjoyed The Avengers? I'm not saying it's an important movie or anything other than a piece of comic book fluff, but it's thoroughly fun and not marred by any of the things Hollywood usually sticks into blockbusters merely to cheese me off: America is not the bad guy; industry isn't secretly poisoning anything; we aren't sold out by the CIA; there are no "sly" (but obvious) digs at Republicans. And nothing (at least that I recall) I regret my kids seeing or hearing. In other words, a family movie if the kids are old enough for cartoonish violence and "peril."

There are even two things that make it rather wholesome, but as they're slightly spoiler-ific I'll save them for the end.

Following my own custom, here are the Weedlet reviews as reported to me moments after the credits rolled and out of each others' earshot.

Youngest Weed (8): It was quite good!
Middle Weed (11): Man! I really liked it. The best part was: "Hulk: Smash!" and the way he grinned.
Girl Weed (13): It was pretty good. (She did not seem enthusiastic, I must admit)
Eldest Weed (15): That was fantastic!

Bonus reviews:

The Cartoonist: That....met expectations. (By which was meant he's outgrown his ability to be enthusiastic about this kind of thing, but it was the best thing of its kind.)

Mr. W: The best I can say is that it didn't anger me. (Let the record show that he attended only out of loving indulgence for his childish wife, who now and again gets a kick out of a brainless action flick.)

Now for the semi-spoilers. What I enjoyed was an intelligent script -- not that anything in this tale of loner action heroes conquering their egos to save earth from alien invasion bears much scrutiny, but the action moves along and is punctuated regularly with genuine humor (as opposed to mere snark). It's not all punching and explosions. (Not all.)

There is also a strong theme of defense of liberty not merely in the military sense. The bad guy (faithful to the theme of the Avengers comic books) comes to "liberate" men from freedom, which he says is a pipe dream keeping them from happiness. They should give this pipe dream up and pay their obeisance to him in exchange for his protection and imposition of order and peace.

In his first appearance before the masses he crashes a public event, slaughters 80 people with astonishing weapons and compels everyone to kneel to him. There's a wonderful moment when an old German man refuses to kneel. "Not to the likes of you," he says, implying simultaneously both that he's learned the lesson of World War II and implicitly that there is someone worthy of our kneeling.

Similarly, much later in the film Tony Stark (Iron Man) confronts the villain unarmed to tell him that his plan for domination of earth can't work because even if he commands superior might, earth has no throne he can ascend, no tradition to appeal to. The message is the human being is constitutionally unsuited to bending to a tyrant and people prefer a messy freedom to a neat and orderly bully, even if he gives them everything they want.

The bad guy, by the way, is good guy Thor's half-brother (they're from another planet), and there's a funny but telling moment when Captain America goes chasing after them and is told he'll never get them because "they're practically gods" and he responds, "There's only one God. And he doesn't dress like that."

So...standing up to tyrants even when you have no super-powers and giving God a little shout-out? That's what comic books used to be like.

There's an interesting bit of tension between Captain America (who has awakened in the 21st century after being frozen at the end of World War II) and his 1950's heroic sensibility and Tony Stark's egocentric, snarky and cynical take on everything. They don't like each other. Stark thinks Cap'n is corny and "old-fashioned" Cap'n thinks Stark is surly, self-centered, unpatriotic and incapable of sacrifice. In the end we see that Cap'n's moral sensibility rubs off ever so slightly on Iron Man, which is nice.

Criticisms? I am informed by the Cartoonist that Samuel L. Jackson is too cool to be Nick Fury, who should be a slightly pot-bellied, gruff-voiced, cigar chewer with his dirty shirtsleeves rolled up. I never read enough Avenger comic books to feel that way about it. Scarlett Johanssen's heroine's only super-power appears to be that she is a girl. Whereas the other Avengers survive battle with aliens only because they are demi-gods from another planet, they have been genetically modified for super-strength and agility, they can Hulk out, or they wear sentient Titanium-powered armor, Scarlett Johanssen can take on a sky full of robot invaders walking upright down the middle of the street with two .22 pistols. This is Hollywood's new thing: no matter how petite the girl and how overwhelming or even supernatural the force of the monster, the girl always wins.

Whatevs. I'm not going to quarrel too hard with God and liberty and fun.

If you'd like a review from a critic who actually knows something about cinema, I agree with this one.

Teen Mitt

2012-05-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

The vetting of Mitt Romney has begun. In this installment, we learn that he was a prankster at prep school and some of those pranks were kind of mean, particularly one which targeted an effiminate (later "out") student. Which, as Hot Air comments, is an excellent reason not to elect a teenager President. Notice that the Post story tries to give the impression that teen Romney's bullying episode that the participants all feel bad about in retrospect is somehow responsible for the man's premature death of liver cancer 40 years later.

Meanwhile, The One's thirty years of Hidden Life continue to go utterly unreported.

The EU Titanic Has Hit The Iceberg

2012-05-10T07:22:00.000-05:00

Revolution on the way and National Socialism about to be reborn in Europe?

The African American Vote

2012-05-10T06:44:00.001-05:00

Wouldn't it be fascinating if the first African American president turned out to be the wedge that pried "the black vote" loose from the Democratic party? I'm not suggesting there will be a wholesale exodus anytime soon, but in elections margins count. Bush didn't win the Hispanic vote outright, but he won enough of it to prevent Kerry from winning, eg. Wedge issues cause people to think anew.

Therefore the opening graf of WaPo's Obama Decision on Gay Marriage Divides Local Residents is interesting.

Willie McMillan and Charlie Hudson are buddies, African American men who were thrilled beyond compare when they had the chance to help make Barack Obama the nation’s first black president. They both believe same-sex marriage is an affront against God, a sin that simply cannot be condoned. As of Wednesday evening, McMillan has switched sides and will vote for Mitt Romney for president, whereas Hudson is sticking with Obama.

Money, Money, Money, Money

2012-05-09T21:29:00.000-05:00

Approximately 30 seconds after the President admitted he's for same-sex marriage, he sent me the following fundraising appeal:

Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer:
I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
I hope you'll take a moment to watch the conversation, consider it, and weigh in yourself on behalf of marriage equality:

http://my.barackobama.com/Marriage

I've always believed...
[blah, blah, blah, almost the same language as the interview, except he corrects the military fighting for "me" gaffe]

I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.

If you agree, you can stand up with me here.

Thank you,
Barack

And then the donate button.

Here's what you see at the link:

So, the President's "stand" in support of men marrying men is to gather an impotent, meaningless list of people who agree?

How stupid does the Administration think black voters are? Will they not understand they've been thrown overboard --respecting them is not as important as gay money and heck, where are they gonna go?

How stupid does the Administration think gay voters are? Will they not see that they're being asked to pony up in "gratitude" for the most impotent political gesture possible? To me this would be like a Catholic politician who'd always been cagey about his views on the social issues announcing that he's "personally opposed to abortion" and expecting Foster Friess to donate as a result.

Update: Apparently gay voters are pretty dumb. My Spy in New York calls it "payday on gayday" : $1 million in donations w/n 90 minutes of the announcement. Still think it hurts in the long run. And Sully, whom I accidentally read last night (first time in years) and can't bear to link to, had this tear-jerker post about how this shows Obama's sincerity. Gimme a break. He was for same-sex marriage in 1996 before he ran for President. Then he was against it. Now he's "personally" for it. Black voters not so dumb, though (see the post above.)

Obama Hates Black People

2012-05-09T15:27:00.001-05:00

It is not precisely "news" that the President supports same-sex marriage, although he publicly admitted it for the first time today. I cannot imagine a more politically self-destructive move. My God, man, just yesterday same-sex marriage met its 31st straight ballot box defeat in North Carolina, largely at the hands of black voters. The very next day you take the stage to rebuke them as bigots?

How many Dems running for office in the South and Midwest will now feel they must distance themselves from the Prez? I think he just kissed off re-taking or retaining either house of Congress.

Update: Andrew McCarthy w/ exactly Mr. W's reaction:

It is not the late breaking news that the current occupant of the Oval Office is the most self-adulatory president — perhaps, person — in our history. But, since the whole country was aware that his “evolution” on gay marriage was a con-job, I can’t help but see the bracing part of his statement today as the assertion that the United States armed forces fight not for the United States but for him (Him?)

Racists!

2012-05-08T22:14:00.002-05:00

North Carolina votes to defend marriage. By 61%. Don't these people know the Democratic convention is in Charlotte this year? What are they trying to do, humiliate the President?

31st state to defend marriage.

Hollande Beats Sarkozy

2012-05-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

I don't really know what to think about Sarkozy's loss. The Greeks tossed out their government, too. Mr. W., optimistic today (it's the Sabbath), thinks it's a world-wide tea party tossing the bums out.

That seems to be true for Greece but in the case of France I'm afraid it signals the French insisting in spite of everything on early retirement and government checks. Suicide vote, in other words.

On the bright side, since Mr. Hollande is proud Socialist, at least I can go back to hating the French. Being nice to them always felt unnatural.

Update: Jaffanese American reminds me of Sarkozy's 2007 address to the U.S. Congress. A speech to tear you up.

America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who—with their hands, their intelligence and their heart—built the greatest nation in the world: "Come, and everything will be given to you." She said: "Come, and the only limits to what you'll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent." America embodies this extraordinary ability to grant each and every person a second chance.
Here, both the humblest and most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That's what constitutes the moral value of America. America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it. And she fought for this freedom whenever she felt it to be threatened somewhere in the world. It was by watching America grow that men and women understood that freedom was possible.

What Battleship Hath Wrought

2012-05-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

I believe the world is missing out on the minor genius/ idiot savant that is The Official Cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds. Turns out he has a secret talent.

I take pride in having called forth this skill with a single tweet observing that if "Battleship" -- the world's simplest and most boring game-- could be made into a movie, I looked forward to the forthcoming Rock, Paper, Scissors trilogy.

That led ninme to tweet me this:

Shamelessly pinched from here.

Which is funny, but an image is easy. The real challenge lies in coming up with a plot. Between us, ninme & I challenged The Cartoonist to divine the plots of common childhood games. Were you following the three of us on twitter, you would have seen the following. I think you will agree his ability to think like Hollywood is a little frightening.

Rock, Paper Scissors: Rock, Paper, and Scissors overcome differences, unite to save a small town from fracking. Learn about tolerance & ecology.

The Cartoonist then challenged me to pitch him the Lite Brite movie. I thought I was doing well with the idea of a future governed by apes because human IQs have been lowered by mercury poisoning from the ecological bulbs that were supposed to save mankind. Man now fears both light and reason. Can monks who have hoarded incandescent bulbs for centuries bring man back to the light?

But of course that movie would not get made, so I was chided:

Lite Brite: correct answer-Preacher's war on color for making son gay is challenged by punk LiteBrite artist who is dating his daughter.
Tic Tac Toe: Teens discover ancient Chinese puzzle of x's and o's opens gate to other dimension where game is a matter of life and death.
Sudoku? SmallTown editor believes he can save NY paper with logic puzzle but snooty crossword culture resists change. Based on true story.

Then over to me again with his challenge: Indian Burn. I thought it was: A heart-warming after-school special about a kid who uses "Indian giver" as an epithet learning to respect Native Americans. But no:

IndianBurn: Oooo so close-Julia defies mother and all social convention when she breaks into the all male world of competitive Indianburns.

I had to bow to the superior skill of the master.

Then nin got into the action, issuing the ultimate #gametomovie challenge: Red Rover, Marco Polo, Cat's Cradle. Results:

Red Rover: CIA recuits RedRover champ to break dissident out of China. FoxNews mole leaks rescue to embarrass president.
Cat's Cradle: (this was too easy, plus stolen from Cat Stevens, so dq) Son wants to be like his dad. Dad has no time for son. Son grows up like dad. Family Drama. Alternate plot: String executive learns his Co.'s low quality string is leaving children fingerless.Risks reputation to turn States evidence.
Marco Polo: Blind forensic psychologist gets into the head of serial killer provoking him to reveal his location w/ sound.

Do It To Julia

2012-05-03T19:10:00.000-05:00

Or, as the Obama administration styles it, Do It For Julia. Nevermind the flat lies about the Ryan budget. Take a hard look at how the administration envisions the good life for women.

I remember the old days when if you said the Left thought of citizens as mere wards of the state they hotly denied it.

One Exception to Free Speech

2012-05-03T18:14:00.002-05:00

New rule, one I previously sent to my spy in Theology but decided I need more commiserators: authors of lovely novels are not allowed to tell us what they really think.

Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy... wonderful observers of the human person but kind of expletives in real life. Michael O'Brien: beautiful novels, but a man who should not be let near the field of literary criticism, as he has no understanding of the British novel, literary symbolism or close reading of a text. And now Wendell Berry. I knew he was Liberal (I've read his essays), but this is just dumb.

Why is this? My thesis is that being sensitive enough to beauty to depict it on a page makes you too romantic for the hard-nosed work of rational analysis.

My spy suggests another rule: never find out anything personal about an artist whose work you like.

Take That, James Cameron!

2012-05-03T17:50:00.002-05:00

Shamelessly pinched from an artistic director's fb page.

Fferry Interestink

2012-05-02T20:10:00.005-05:00

Same-sex marriage isn't a done deal, even in Britain? From the Daily Mail:

David Cameron is under intense pressure to ditch his gay marriage initiative amid claims that Tory MPs fear they are 'haemorrhaging' votes over the issue.
The Mail on Sunday has been told that Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin has privately assured anxious Tory backbenchers that the Prime Minister's same-sex marriage plan will 'not come to a vote'.

Tra-La, It's May

2012-05-01T19:18:00.001-05:00

Mary and the Saints in an Enclosed Garden

The May Magnificat

May is Mary's month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why: 
    Her feasts follow reason, 
    Dated due to season- 
Candlemas, Lady Day; 
But the Lady Month, May, 
    Why fasten that upon her, 
    With a feasting in her honour?  

Is it only its being brighter 
Than the most are must delight her? 
    Is it opportunest 
    And flowers finds soonest?  

Ask of her, the mighty mother: 
Her reply puts this other 
    Question: What is Spring?- 
    Growth in every thing- 

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, 
Grass and greenworld all together; 
    Star-eyed strawberry-breasted 
    Throstle above her nested  

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin 
Forms and warms the life within; 
    And bird and blossom swell 
    In sod or sheath or shell.  

All things rising, all things sizing 
Mary sees, sympathising 
    With that world of good, 
    Nature's motherhood.  

Their magnifying of each its kind 
With delight calls to mind 
    How she did in her stored 
    Magnify the Lord.  

Well but there was more than this: 
Spring's universal bliss 
    Much, had much to say 
    To offering Mary May.  

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple 
Bloom lights the orchard-apple 
    And thicket and thorp are merry 
    With silver-surfegraved cherry  

And azuring-over greybell makes 
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes 
    And magic cuckoocall 
    Caps, clears, and clinches all- 

This ecstasy all through mothering earth 
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth 
    To remember and exultation 
    In God who was her salvation.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bully For You

2012-04-28T07:45:00.000-05:00

As we gradually destroy our civilizing institutions, people are gradually reverting to barbarism and therefore not necessarily learning at home how a civilized person behaves. I acknowledge that schools may need to address certain basics such as, "Dogs establish Alpha order and intimidate everyone else into submission; people don't do that." Nevertheless, while I'm sure they are well-intentioned, I mistrust anti-bullying campaigns for three reasons.

1) I don't think the advice to never fight for any reason is sound. Always walk away from confrontation? That's right if we're talking about having your fancy shoes taken from you at gun-point. Don't die for shoes. When some loudmouth is picking on the class weakling, though, the right thing is to tell him to knock it off. Avoiding confrontation yields the schoolyard to the bully. Remember how horrified we were by the failure of Penn State asst. coach Mike McQueary to intervene in an abuse situation he walked in on? I think we're training our young people to do just that: never think about direct intervention, always wait and call for the teacher. Trained helplessness is good for the bullies long-run.

2) Based on news stories about "bullying" incidents, I think they fail to properly discriminate between bullying behavior and mere insults. If I'm a 13-year-old girl and my BFF from twenty minutes ago switches allegiances to another girl on the playground and I call her a b**** on Facebook, that's uncharitable and immature speech, but it's not bullying. Every expression of anger is not bullying. Bullying is aggressive use of superior force to badger, intimidate or coerce another person. It's a power game. Single instances of lashing out don't qualify, and teaching kids --especially males-- to always suppress anger is a great way to make an adult who is cynical and bullying.

3) The anti-bullying movement is gradually becoming identified solely with eradicating "homophobia." No one wants a kid persecuted for his sexual orientation, but belief that same-sex attraction is an unfortunate cross to bear and not a gift to be celebrated is not commensurate with bullying. That won't wash. Political correctness is itself a form of bullying and there is no bully like the homosexual lobby. As witness this lovely outburst from Dan Savage of the It Gets Better project.

“I thought this would be about anti-bullying,” Tuttle told Fox news. “It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”
Tuttle said a number of his students were offended by Savage’s remarks – and some decided to leave the auditorium.
“It became hostile,” he said. “It felt hostile as we were sitting in the audience – especially towards Christians who espouse beliefs that he was literally taking on.”
Tuttle said the speech was laced with vulgarities and “sexual innuendo not appropriate for this age group.” At one point, he said Savage told the teenagers about how good his partner looked in a speedo.
The conservative website Citizenlink was the first to report about the controversy. They interviewed a 17-year-old girl who was one of students who walked out of the auditorium.
“The first thing he told the audience was, ‘I hope you’re all using birth control,’” she told CitizenLink. “he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the (expletive deleted) in the Bible.”
As the teenagers were walking out, Tuttle said that Savage heckled them and called them “pansy asses.”

Dan Savage is not a man who is against bullying; he is a bully himself. Unfortunately for Christian teenagers there will be no celebrity assurances that public attacks on them will get better. On the contrary, they are liable to get worse.