Ruminations on music, culture, America and the world stage
Does she honestly expect the outcome she blathers about to come from this?
http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/2008/03/israel-pledges-it-will-allow.html
And surely Christopher Hill is going to get off his “we’re-more-interested-in-real-signs-of-progress-than-timetables” meme after this.
If he uses the word “unhelpful” in response to it, I think I’ll hurl.
Mrs. BN and I checked out of Bronze level I in fox trot, rhumba, swing and waltz last night at our studio’s medal ball. Nice event, sit-down dinner, a dress-up affair.
It occurs to me that there’s something real non-feminist about dancing. that is to say, all the above dances, and all the others we’ve been working on, hinge on the man being the definite leader, giving his partner strong cues on what’s going to happen next. For instance, lately we’ve been working on the difference in the signal the man gives the woman that they’re going into a promenade in fox trot and the signal for going int o an underarm turn. You (the man) tilt your partner – like tipping a tea kettle to pour tea – to indicate a promenade, and you exert a slight pressure with your fingers on her shoulder blade to indicate an underarm turn.
It’s one of those cultural conventions, like “Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith,” that hasn’t gone away in spite of forty years of Freidan, Greer, Morgan, Steinem and the H-word Creature. When human beings of opposite genders get into pairs for activities laden with centuries of attendant decorum, our expectations kick in. See point four of The Bent Notes Manifesto.
McCain gave a foreign-policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council today that was quite nearly vomit-inducing. Says the US must strive to be a “model citizen to the world community.” Jeez, what the hell does he think we’ve been for the last two hundred and forty years? Went into some crud about how “our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want” and that we need to “respect the collective will of our allies.” Yo, Senator, what about the cases in which our allies are wrong? How different is this from John Kerry’s “global test?”
He also made it clear he still drinks the global-warming Kool-Aid, wants an updated Kyoto-style accord.
It’s so hard to come to any conclusion other than that the last, best hope of mankind is past its zenith and that very dark days are ahead for our country, Western civilization, and indeed our species.
If anything, according to the new Pentagon report, Secretary Powell’s characterization of Saddam’s regime as a “sinister nexus” in the world of terrorism was an understatement:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120631495290958169.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
A sub armed with nukes, among other statements of US resolve, heads into strategically touchy waters:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=48682§ionid=351020205
A slice of red onion and avocado slices on red-leaf lettuce, with orange-sesame dressing.
Rack of lamb with couscous with toasted slivered almonds, dried currants and diced scallions. Roasted asparagus.
Can you dig this? I’ve never cooked lamb before. What I did was infuse some olive oil with crushed rosemary and garlic. Brushed that on, sprinkled on a little salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Slow-roasted for, I don’t know, forty minutes, I guess, and then gave it a couple minutes’ worth of sizzle on the grill. Kept covered until the guests arrived.
Little Green Footballs doesn’t mince words about the Cheney – Abbas meeting:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=29370&only&rss
I’m inclined to agree.
Mark Helprin at Time:
Only thing I think he might have considered more closely is the fact that there is not a living organism in the universe that wants to be U.S. president as badly as the H-word Creature. Her power-lust know no bounds, and I think she’s willing to reduce the FHer party to bloody shreds if that’s what it takes to get the nomination.
Shimon Peres gives Vice President Cheney some ressuring information.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205420753728&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Of course, Netanyahu, in his conversation with the visiting U.S. veep, also once again demonstrates that clarity and resolve are alive and well in the land of David.
Ms. Livni, on the other hand, ain’t on board yet.
The Christian religion has a major challenge: the politically correct, candy-ass tendency within its midst.
http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/01d9afa6-85c1-4cf0-a0d7-982e1b7ee34f
I’ve been thinking about how I would have a discussion about all this with – ummm, let’s just say, any number of people who are in the inner circle of my life. I think I would enter into it with this: ”That Jesus of Nazareth was arrested on a Thursday night while praying in the garden at Gesthemane and spent the next sixteen or so hours undergoing the most horrible torture and humiliation imaginable is an established historical fact. So is the fact that on the following Sunday morning, his tomb was found empty and he was later found to be in the company of several of his disciples and followers. It may take the human race the rest of its existence on this planet to completely get its brain around the significance of that, but one has to start with accepting and engaging it. Anything less is mere fooling around.”
I realize that a day is an eternity in the world of politics, but the current unfolding of events, and the most likely scenario it points to, is delicious indeed.
He Who May Not Walk on Water After All has the Freedom Hater nomination sewn up for all intents and purposes. Still, the Rev. Wright dust-up has damaged him to a considerable degree. The H-word Creature and any superdelegates she can amass for her cause are then poised to go into Denver and say, “You have to give it to us. This guy can’t compete against McCain in the fall.”
The internal party chaos that would ensue is sweet enough to contemplate, but it gets downright wacky when you factor this bunch in.
As I say, it’s way to early too see this as cause for cork-popping. No doubt a gazillion unforeseen developments will come onto the horizon between now and this summer, but McCain is well-poised to take a leadership message based on a clearly-defined body of ideas to the American people right now, while the FHers, as Dick Morris puts it, ”eat their own”.
And this time it’s affecting Pyongyang and the society’s priviledged sectors. A coup in the offing?
http://freekorea.us/2008/03/20/the-beginning-of-the-end-food-shortages-reach-pyongyang/
Now He Who May Not Walk On Water After All wants to look into whether there’s too much “concentrated market power” among a few “big oil companies.” He also wants to tax their “windfall profits.” He also wants to get on board with the carbon emissions offset nonsense.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/pl_nm/energy_obama_dc_6
Hugh Hewitt has been doing great work following the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s wrongheaded and potentially disastrous attempt to get the polar bear listed as an endangered species.
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/9f0cc053-5d87-4799-9aaa-083a5e2fdb84
He Who Maybe Doesn’t Walk On Water After All gave his once-and-for-all-head-on-addressing of the Rev. Wright issue in Philadelphia this morning. Some initial thoughts:
- It was, as one would expect, structurally well-crafted. Still, his attempt at tiptoeing along the fencerow – not “disowning” Rev. Wright, but using what he thought was strong language to repudiate “some of” Rev. Wright’s “political views” – falls short of what most Americans know is needed: the calling out of Rev. Wright as a venom-spewing vessel of hate.
- Of course, Obama can’t do that. Those shouting, clapping throngs in the pews at Trinity Church and in other such sanctuaries where “liberation theology” and “social justice” are preached are the most important part of his base.
- The talk-show hosts and political commentators he called out as blurring some supposed line between bogus racism and some kind of real and still-prevalent racism are surely going to be all over him demanding that he give concrete evidence of this supposed real racism they have supposedly blurred.
- It’s not surprising that he wound the whole thing up with a call for Americans to unify to tackle what he says are the pressing issues before us, which would be, of course, such hard-left boilerplate as “climate change’ and “income inequality.”
- It was well-crafted enough that it will probably stem the bit of political hemorraging he experienced this past week.
- That, in turn, is going to make the smoke coming out of the H-Word Creature’s nostrils all the more hot-coal flashing red. Another way of putting that is to say that superdelegates just went up yet another notch in importance. It’s going to be a bloodbath in Denver this summer.
There has been a fresh spate of bad-mouthing of the US mission in Iraq lately in the BN threads. A lot of it sounds like an attempt to keep alive Harry Reid’s failure meme from last year. Maybe this ABC News item will alleviate some of the gloom. After all, the Iraqis themselves ain’t so gloomy.
The irony is that the world’s major-league Freedom-Haters, who make the ones within our midst look like rank amateurs, are postively giddy about the gloom regarding Iraq spewed forth by the likes of the H-Word Creature. ( I link to the Freeper post about it because the expressions of exuberance at the source website are in Arabic.)
Ban Ki-Moon shows he’s perfectly qualified to lead the United Nations:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080313/wl_mideast_afp/oicislamsummitmideast
Any time somebody starts telling Israel to keep its “response proportional,” you know you’re dealing with a representative of the problem, not the solution.
Some rather pungent quotes from the Obamas’ pastor.
Christopher Hitchens’ Washington Post column entitled “Iraq Was Worth the Price.”
