Bent Notes

At least 78 dead so far.  Several hostages.

It was indeed well-coordinated.  Looks like they were targeting Westerners.

Iran has enough fuel for one nuke.

It’s early afternoon.  There’s still this resolve to see things optimistically on the part of my people, both personal friends with whom I’m in touch as well as the boggers I’m reading and the talk-radio hosts I’m listening to.

The situation in Philadelphia - Black Panthers blocking a polling place - is getting a lot of attention right now.

Part of me is emotionally exhausted and part of me is on fire.  It’s weird to be host creature to both states simultaneously.

I only knew one person in the line at my polling place, an artist buddy of mine whom I know to be a consistent FHer voter.  It was so weird to make small talk with him about what’s going on around town musically, and then watch him get behind the machine, knowing full well what he was doing, what buttons he was pushing.

At the risk of sounding like some therapist’s patient, I am wondering what I do with this thought I harbor whenever I come in contact with someone who I know full well voted the FHer ticket.  There’s a lot of someones in that category - social friends, professional associates, relatives.  The inescapable fact is that there is some level on which they are the enemy.  These are people who have taken a concrete action which jeopardizes my freedom and my future.  So, as I say, wht do I do?  I can’t jettison the lot of them and re-people my life. Plus, most of them are nice, even wonderful, if horrifyingly misguided, folks.

I know one thing.  Whether Mr. Reasonable Gentleman can squeak through, or whether the Chicago Marxist emerges victorious, there must be a from-the-ground-up reassessment of how to get conservatism to flourish again.

The first principle by which we must be guided is zero tolerance for anything less than total clarity. No McCain-esque distractions and vacuous platitudes about “fighting the status quo in Washington” or “fighting for what’s right for America” or “putting country first.”  Such crap means nothing.  An FHer could utter the same phrases.  Indeed, the Chicago Marxist does employ very similar rhetoric.  No, what we talk about are the specific principles for which we’re willing to fight to the death: the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, free-market economics, American exceptionalism, an America that does not hesitate to respond fiercely and ruthlessly to its enemies’ provocations, and America that demonstrates unwavering loyalty to nations that share these principles, the primacy of family as the basic unit of human organization, and a culture characterized by dignity, depth, decency and real inspiration.

We must expect loud arguments amongst ourselves, finger-pointing and bitterness.  Obviously, the wheels came off our movement and we must find out why.  This is why we’d all be well-advised to enter into this foundational examination with as much prayerfulness and mindfulness of our common aims as possible.  Eventually, the the useless sand of confusion will get sifted out and the nuggets of what we were seeking will be all that remains on the fine-mesh screen.

I look back at this year - my personal successes, some episodes of illness in our household and family, memorable times with friends, the spring’s tornadoes and floods, the spike in gas prices, the financial meltdown, the embrace by a frighteningly large segment of the population of socialism - and ask myself what it all has taught me.  I’d say that the biggest lesson at this point is that, in human life, the visceral and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined.  In fact, I’m sort of considering the possibility that the more one progresses on the spiritual journey, the more reality’s upside-the-head aspect becomes impossible to avoid.

 . . . for strongly condemning what’s been going on in Toledo, which is a foretaste of the Stasi-like means of dealing with those who dare to exercise their constitutional freedoms that we can expect once the FHers institute one-party rule.

Remember, during the Chicago Annenberg Challenge days, Obama shoveled all kinds of grant money into Bill Ayers’s programs.

This is the educational model they were putting forth.

Barack Obama, Stalinist thug.  Today, the state of Missouri, tomorrow the entire nation.

Russia and Venezuela are going to conduct a joint naval exercise.

Russia threatens Poland with nuclear attack.

What I want to know is, is this stuff some kind of big surprise to our intellegence, security and diplomacy functions?

Russia and Georgia have gone to war over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

I actually spent a week in this area some years back, in Sochi, A Russian Black Sea resort a few miles from the Georgian border.  Tea plantations on the terraced Caucasus hillsides.  Little stands on the beaches that sell fresh-picked cherries, of all  things.  Nice people, as I recall.  I don’t know enough about the ethnic balance ins South Ossetia to draw a conclusion as to whether it is more of a Georgian or Russian place, but it appears that Russia rolled its tanks and sent its fighter jets into an internal Georgian matter.  Since that’s the case, the UN Security Council will surely have to weigh in on the matter.

Then things get tricky. The EU and the civilized world generally is trying to display a unified front in the push to get new sanctions in place against Iran, and fast, and Russia has already trotted out the old “Why don’t we give them some more time” routine.

This whole area is also, let us not forget, where a whole lot of the world’s oil originates and makes its way into shipping lanes and ports.

I’ll bet there are some very interesting behind-the-scenes conversations going on among the visiting dignitaries in Beijing along about now.

Take a look at who was seated in the room with Ahmadineljad when he stated - can we call this their formal response to the EU deadline? - that Iran would continue uranium enrichment at ever-greater levels.  Would this be the same Bashar Assad of Syria who has supposedly been indicating he wants “peace’ with Israel? 

And meanwhile, Javier Solana and his band of EU clowns is still saying, “Well, we’re not married to an exact fourteen-day deadline, you understand.  We can give them a couple more days if needed on this highly sensitive matter.”

What I want to know is how this news item stacks up sequentially with the recent noises one hears about Ehud Olmert wanting to conclude such a “peace” deal with Syria - which, yes, involves giving up the Golan Heights - before he resigns, but more importantly, this rather noteworthy development.  Who offed Assad’s top advisor, and did Assad know about it before going to Tehran for the weekend?

Alaska Sen Ted Stevens has been indicted for financial footsie with an oil company. 

My next Republic column is on the role of substance and character in the maintaining of a healthy, robust society in which freedom, fairness, security, comfort and convenience  - the stuff we take for granted - thrive.  It requires the cultivation of an intricate body of virtues in each of us.  Granted, there is no guarantee that a scumbag like Stevens won’t rise to a fairly high position of influence, but the thing for leaders of the party to which belongs to do is show him the door, pronto.  That is, if they’re in it for the assurance of such a society.  Now’s the time to say so, if that’s the case.

And the oil company did the principle of a properly functioning free market no favors, either.

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

Murtha returns from an Iraq trip and says it looks to him like the surge is working.  Yo, congressman, have a briefing session for Mama Pinkster Cindy.