03.04.10
TCM changes his tune
I’m not the first to point this out, nor is Neo-neocon, but it’s important to point out once again.
02.22.10
Now that TCM’s plan is out there
. . . Pundit and Pundette have coverage of such phenomena in its wake as the CBO’s inability to score it, and the latest display of Robert Gibbs’s sinister deceitfulness.
02.21.10
Alexander Haig, R.I.P.
I suppose it’s obligatory to mention the 1981 “I am in control” episode, but the main point about this towering figure is that he was a warrior of the highest principle, caliber and distinction, on the battlefields of Korea and Vietnam and anyplace else he encountered Freedom-Haters. He loved the United States of America with all his heart. (He hated war, too, but knew you must be ready to prevail when threatened by an enemy.)
02.03.10
An important question that deserves a serious answer
Joel B. Pollack at The American Thinker asks, what is a legitimate Palestinian grievance? (He makes the point in the course of his essay that any serious answer will have to be formulated after dispensing with its use as code for absolutist demands such as the right of return.)
01.19.10
No mention of Islam or jihad
Ralph Peters rips the Pentagon’s report on what happened at Fort Hood big-time.
01.18.10
Congratulations, President Pinera
Chile joins an undercurrent of reversal of South America’s leftward shift.
The US will start participating in a similar trend in the North on Tuesday!
12.12.09
Doesn’t reduce costs, which was the FHers’ reason for doing it, so let’s bag the stinking thing
The HHS report on the latest version of FHer-care says that it’s one expensive proposition indeed. Expanding Medicare will inevitably lead to cuts in services. The long-term-care provision will draw the big-time-sick demographic, leading to soaring premiums. So much for whether it’s “fair” to make cost commensurate with risk. That’s the way it would play out even under socialism.
As the linked post says, somebody’s going to get a memo saying, “We don’t do truth in the People’s Republic of Obamica. Knock it off.”
UPDATE: Both the Mayo Clinic and the AMA give a big thumbs-down to expanding Medicare.
11.09.09
It’s the last thing you want to become a joke, but that’s what national security has become
Now that we know this, I hope some intrepid journalist will hold TCM’s feet to the fire regarding the “jump-to-conclusions” remark.
11.06.09
One thing’s for sure: this aspect had better be looked at with appropriate thoroughness
When I heard about the Fort Hood situation, I thought, “Either a garden-variety postal type, or there’s an Islamic connection.” Well, there’s certainly one of those.
09.16.09
Race
I’ve stayed out of this fray for as long as I could.
Last year, when several observers warned, “You just watch. If TCM gets elected, a climate will ensue in which criticism of him will be branded as racism,” I really thought – hoped? – that that was a tad alarmist. Except for MSM stoking of it (and activist judges trying to breathe life into it so as to increase government power), the whole matter of race was truly a dead horse that couldn’t be flogged any more. If one looked around in his or her daily life, one saw a veritable demographic fruit salad. To interface with society at all was to come in contact with people from all races and ethnicities in all manner of roles, from boss to co-worker to sales person to customer to minister to teacher to – well, president. So I truly thought that anybody who tried such a cheap, childish, vulgar move would be marginalized before his remarks gained any traction.
I underestimated the vulgarity that Freedom-Haters will employ in their quest to destroy America. Now we have the likes of Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, Georgia Jew-hater Jimmy Carter, NYT columnist Maureen Dowd, to name the ones who immediately come to mind, reaching into thin air and fabricating a racial implication to Joe Wilson’s outburst during TCM’s speech.
You had various TV people pointing out the (predominantly white) makeup of the crowd in DC last Saturday. Even Bill O’Reilly asked various guests if they thought there was any significance to that. Knock it off, Bill.
This is embarrassing. Time will be wasted untangling the strands of garbage thought that have tied our societal conversation in an utterly useless knot. Ideas and principles pertaining to the actual subject of the debate – health care and human freedom – will have an even harder time getting an airing.
What is the best thing to do? Ignore any charges of racism or bigotry that might be leveled against you and continue to defend freedom and common sense and point out folly, deceit and freedom-hatred wherever you see it. Keep garbage out of your polemical approach. Determine to be a grown-up. It’s way too late in the day to let the race-baiters sidetrack us into juvenile pissing contests.
08.23.09
Who dares say a word?
Barry Rubin at Pajamas Media on Europe’s mainstreaming of anti-Semitism.
07.09.09
The destruction of America (and Americans beginning to get it) – this hour’s update
Bike paths! Websites! Cronyism! Bad poll numbers! Sister Toldjah has a good roundup of what’s going on with the FHer regime.
06.04.09
The Cairo speech – first thoughts
Overall, a statesmanlike gesture of goodwill to a large swath of humankind.
I’m a little skittish about this business of “fresh beginnings,” and legacy of “colonialism” and Cold War treatment of Muslim nations as proxies, though. Has a bit of that odor of apology which has befouled most remarks TCM has made overseas so far in his rule.
We must include in the context in which we’re going to examine this speech the interview he gave the BBC the day before in which he said that the West had “imposed its values” on the Muslim world in the past. Oh, really? Is feeding Somalis, providing security to Bosnians, and rescuing the people of Kuwait and Iraq from the Baathist Sadaam regime an “imposition”?
There’s also his recent insistence that Israel dismantle even natural-growth settlements in Samaria and Judea, and also his giving Iran to the end of the year to show what it hasn’t shown in thirty years of terrorism, West-hatred, internal repression and work on a nuclear arsenal, after which time he will be cool with its “peaceful” uranium enrichment.
California Yankee at Red State has a favorable first impression, but reserves the right to criticize various aspects upon further scrutiny and reflection. That’s basically the BN position, too.
Context is everything in this case, though.
05.20.09
Testing one two three
We’ve been having WordPress difficulty here at BN. Hopefully this test post will verify that we are back on board.
05.11.09
Ultimately, “boss” and “customer” are interchangeable terms
This post is a riff off a New York Times article about women bullyng other women in the workplace. (HT: Bookworm Room) It’s a thought-provoking piece, full of factual tidbits, and, the venue being the NYT, some lefty postmodern goop.
What it got me to thinking about on a personal level, though, is why I’ve orchestrated my worklife in such a way that I’m almost completely a freelancer. (Times being what they are, I have gone back to bartending at an upscale restaurant one night a week, and even that has sparked yet another round of insights and reflections on the whole subject of workplace interaction, about which I’ll hae more to say in a few paragraphs.)
Simply put, I’m just not fit for what most people consider a “job.” I can’t – won’t – subject myself to the obligation of being at a certain place at a certain even most days of the week, submit myself to quarterly performance reviews in which I duly nod my head as some person I report to tells me of my “areas that need improvement” and go over a stinking “action plan” for said improvement with same. I won’t consult a procedural handbook to find out what to do in a given situation. Just won’t.
I have wondered if this qualifies me for immaturity. After all, millions and millions of people have taken marital vows, had some breathless nights in the marital bed, found themselves with a gaggle of young ones and said, “Hell, I have to feed these whippersnappers! Certain aspects of this gig I just took I find to be highly stressful and maybe even somewhat dehumanizing, but trade-offs must be made here.”
I don’t have kids of my own, so the what-ifs could extend endlessly. I do think that I would have found, like lots of people with career chops akin to my own who did have kids and succeeded on their own terms, some way to make it without havng a boss.
In a way, I think the argument can be made that the freelance life is the ultimate paring-down of what doing a good job is all about. In a very real sense, one’s tail end is on the line even more than in an organizational setting. You produce, or you dont get the check. No one has your back. It’s led me to formulate a guideline for myself that I dispense as advice whenever asked: If someone is in a position to cut you a check, be part of their solution, not their problem. Deliver top-notch work on time with a smile on your face. You’ll keep yourself in groceries.
The reason I’m disinclined to flagellate myself with the immaturity cat-o-nine-tails is apparent in the drama and power plays so amply cited in the NYT article. All that “I’ve-got-this-over-you” hoo-ha is a load I can do without.
That said, my having observed and acknowledged it has been a major factor in my move toward the Christian noton that we are all fallen beings. IN any setting in which human beings have organized themselves for some common purpose, you get this stuff.
Now, about that return to libation-dispensing: Interestingly, in our last paycheck envelopes, we got this questionnaire that the restaurant’s owner came up with. It’s actually pretty interesting. Questions like, “What makes you exceptional at your job?” and “If you could have another position with this restaurant, what would it be?” and “What would make your supervisor a better boss.” I had no idea the boss-lady even thought about such things. I may have some fun with this.
04.21.09
This stuff is all very nice, but it’s not the proper function of government
. . . or at least it wasn’t back when this country was known as the United States of America.
Alas, in the People’s Republic of Obamica, where the size of the Ameircorps program gets tripled with the stroke of a pen, activities like weatherizing homes and mentoring children are the purview of the state. Private organizations? How quaint.
Excuse, me, but I thought we were in a really bad recession. How can we afford this?
Sorry. A little lapse in my proletarian correct understanding. Forgive me for daring to question Dear Leader TCM’s infinite wisdom.
04.04.09
Why self-stewardship matters
Last evening I got together for beers with a friend who is of that delightful type who relishes freewheeling exchanges generously seasoned with differing viewpoints and previously unconsidered perspectives. She’s an investment counselor by trade (not mine, for reasons having to do with our being good friends), a civic-minded sort who supports the arts in our community, reads and travels widely and takes her spiritual journey seriously. She says she’s always voted for Republican presidential candidates until the most recent election, in which she pressed the button for TCM. We’ve had a few get-togethers in which my perplexity at this behavior was our launching point.
It turns out she’s of that breed that I truly can’t get my brain around: the moderate, the citizen who says, “This side has some good ideas on these issues, and the other side has some good ideas on these issues.” I listen intently as she explains how this came to be for her, but I still don’t understand it.
At one juncture, she brought up a point which has surfaced in similar conversations with others. It came up in the context of health care. She said, “There are just some people who aren’t competent enough to provide their own health care.” I gave that a little thought and said, “Well, okay, true enough, but we can extend that and say there are some people who aren’t competent enough to keep themselves in groceries.” She conceded the truth of that.
What I then formulated and put forth was something I’ve been thinking about again since I got up today.
There’s a real sense in which each of us owes it to society to be cultivate as much excellence within ourselves as we can. It’s not just a matter of diong it for our own sake. As our Lord assured us, the poor will always be with us. That said, we can keep their numbers to a minimum by being as sharp as we can. The fewer the number of folks on board who truly need help, the less likely it is that society will look to the state for the solutions to caring for them.
My square old dad was big on trying to exhort me to cultivate excellence – making me join the Boy Scouts, browbeating me about my grades and such – and my response was along the lines of “Yeah, yeah, whatever; can I get back to my rock records now?”
It’s truly only in the last few years, since I’ve been well into middle age, that I’ve seen why this undertaking is of paramount importance. It has everything to do with keeping my freedom. No human profile is more ripe for the picking by socialists and totalitarian zealots than mediocre slobs. It’s not about enabling mom to brag about your achievements at bridge club. It’s about staying out of the re-education camp.
03.23.09
Sunday supper
Chicken thighs with braised fennel, scallions and kalamata olives, with a side of rice pilaf.
03.15.09
I wish I’d seen this interview
Sounds like history will reveal, shall we say, areas of differing perspectives between him and his former boss.
I love the glorious, thunderous truth unabashedly proclaimed.
