Today's naked redneck chick post

Bleeding heart says abortion is okay but eating eggs isn't:

Many people don't consciously realize that chickens do not naturally produce eggs for humans to eat. A hen's egg is intended to be fertilized by a rooster and to grow into a baby chick. This is an egg's sole purpose. An egg is no more intended as food, than is the menstruation of a mammal.

Eggs are laid through what is called a hen's vent. The vent is the cavity chickens use for mating, defecating and laying. Anyone who has collected eggs from a chicken can attest to the fact that, often, the shells will be coated with feces due to this, and the fact that hens will commonly defecate in the boxes they lay in.

Chickens will naturally have two broods of chicks per year. Chickens originally only laid 15 to 35 eggs per year -- again, it would be the hen's hope that all of her eggs would hatch into healthy baby chicks. But when people started keeping chickens as captive animals, they realized that hens could be forced to lay more eggs if they weren't allowed to incubate their prospective babies. If you continue to take a hen's eggs away, her body will not go into its natural brooding period. Instead, she will create more eggs to try and replace those stolen from her, all in an attempt to create chicks.

Over the thousands of years that chickens have been kept by humans, people have selectively bred hens to lay as many eggs as possible. Today, many laying hens breed upwards of 300 eggs per year! There is absolutely nothing natural about this. This is the product of the farmer's desire to create an egg-laying machine from a sentient being. And unfortunately for those beings, the egg industry has almost succeeded in doing just that.
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If they have roosters and all the birds are cage free, that means you are eating fertilized eggs because roosters will mate with as many hens available to them. In other words, that egg is a potential life that would have grown into a baby chick if it hadn't been taken from its mother and she had been allowed to incubate it. Some people may say that hens will simply abandon their eggs even if they are fertilized. This does sometimes happen in younger hens, or in breeds that have been so over bred for egg production, that they barely act like chickens anymore.

If you are vegetarian, eggs are already classified as poultry because they are so similar nutritionally to eating the flesh of the animal. But in the case of fertilized eggs, there is no denying that that is a potential life you are eating.

Kate Gosselin's Hen-Pecked Rooster:

Don't get too excited, Jon Gosselin didn't make an appearance, but there was some hen pecking on this week's back-to-back episodes of Kate Plus 8.

Kate Gosselin added up the cost of buying organic eggs each week, and decided she'd just raise them herself.

"I said that's it, we're getting chickens," she said.

And so they did. The children were thrilled, and it seemed to be a great family bonding experience and lesson in working together. She even planned to use the chickens as a discipline tool, saying that those who misbehave will be made to scoop the poop.

But for all the fun of collecting eggs and taking up water in the nice summer weather, I wonder how thrilled they're going to be to make that trek in the dead of winter. Hmmm?

As they prepared for their all-egg meal (egg salad, deviled eggs and egg custard for dessert), they found the rooster of the bunch bloody and battered. He had literally been hen pecked.

The irony wasn't lost on Kate.

"The poor thing was hen pecked ," she said. "They were just relentlessly picking on him and I just needed to get him out of there so he could have some peace, the poor thing. ... There's possibly some irony. We've got issues with roosters."

Crowing contest at the County Fair:

Diana Roy said her children's roosters crow all day long, often starting at 3:30 a.m.

So it couldn't have been much of a surprise Friday when 12-year-old Christina's rooster, Ryan, crowed 32 times in half an hour, winning the annual rooster crowing contest. Christina used a hen, Sharpay -- as in, Ryan and Sharpay, the brother and sister in "High School Musical" -- to encourage Ryan to make some noise.

Not to be outdone by much, 8-year-old Stephan's rooster, Kentucky Fried Chicken, came in second, with 26 crows.

"They're noisy," Roy said of her kids' roosters. The Hebron children also have dogs, rabbits and turkeys in the fair.

Nine roosters participated in the contest, held in the Rabbit and Poultry Barn, in what has become a tradition for the past 15 years or so. The contest is something fun to do the day after the auction, with no pressure, said poultry superintendent Ryan Mottinger.

While Christina and Stephan had tremendous luck getting their roosters to crow, other participants weren't so lucky.

Erica Wayne, 19, a 10-year 4-H'er from Hebron, and Harrison Gluth, 17, who's from Washington Township and has been in 4-H for nine years, tied for last place with roosters who didn't make a peep.

Enticing them with hens produced no response. At one point, Harrison brought out another rooster -- a bird so aggressive it nipped him -- and even that didn't get his rooster to crow.

Harrison's brother Tyler, 21, who also was in 4-H, tried to help, to no avail. The brothers practiced with the bird, named Richard, the day before the contest and got him to crow 14 times in five minutes.

"All we had to do is cluck at him and he crows," Tyler said, adding they couldn't even get Richard to crow once for the contest.

If you're a rooster, it doesn't matter if you're incredibly old:

You can still make it with all the hens you want. Even if you're shooting blanks. But how is this good for the future of chickenkind?

The simple answer is that it isn't. A group of scientists studied feral chickens and found that age doesn't prevent a rooster from achieving high status - which means he gets first dibs on sex with all the hens. And that puts roosters and hens directly at odds with each other, since the rooster doing the most mating also has (due to age) the lowest probability of fertilizing eggs. Apparently this scenario is at its worst in groups of chickens dominated by hens. The scientists write:

By experimentally manipulating the sex ratio of replicate groups of nine birds, we studied the relationship between male age and male social status under different intensities of intrasexual competition, and we found a signal of senescence in male social status only under intense competition. In groups in which six males competed over access to three females (6:3), socially subordinate males were older than males of higher status . . . However, in the more relaxed competition of female-biased groups (3:6), male social status was independent of male age.

In other words, when many roosters are fighting each other, the younger and more fertile roosters get the most sexual access. Luckily for hens, though, it's typical to mate several times with different roosters - and their sperm competes with each other to get access to the hen's eggs. So even if the old guys get the first shot, their sperm may still get beaten out by a younger bird's genetic material.
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In the chart above: (A) Copulation propensity. (B) Probability of ejaculation. (C) Total number of sperm ejaculated. (D) Sperm swimming velocity (average path velocity, VAP). Solid lines represent predicted values from the model; dashed lines represent confidence intervals.]

According to zoologist Rebecca Dean, a co-author of the study:

In evolution there are many battlegrounds, but nothing is more important than successfully reproducing. So, for hens, being monopolised by an impotent old rooster who will cause them to lay many infertile eggs is a disaster and amounts to a declaration of war. Our study shows that this sort of sexual decline is an engine driving sexual conflict in animals.

Chicken diapers?

Hobbies often hatch small-business ideas; chickens are no exception
Ruth Haldeman began adopting pet chickens in 2002. "I wanted fresh eggs, but I found that chickens are like peanuts, you can't have just one," she says. Before long, Ms. Haldeman had founded ChickenDiapers.com in Hot Springs, Ark.

"Everyone was talking about how there was a need for diapers," she says, given that chickens typically can't be potty trained. "Oh, lord, what a mess they make."

Ms. Haldeman, who is also a full-time chemist, designed a chicken diaper with a replaceable liner. She says it takes her about an hour to stitch one together, and her diapers are available in a variety of colors and patterns, such as rainbow and camouflage. She usually charges between $9 to $14 depending on a bird's size. Buyers hail from cities such as New York and Tacoma, Wash., and as far away as New Zealand.

"People like to have their chicks inside the house roaming free," says Ms. Haldeman, who declined to share how many diapers she sells a week because she's seeing more competition lately.
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In January, Kevin Tschida bought diapers from Ms. Haldeman for the four chickens he and his wife, Paula, live with in their rented single-floor home in Bakersfield, Calif. "They have made a huge difference," he says. "There is less smell in the house, less bending over."

Mr. Tschida says the birds, plus two ducks who wear diapers he bought from a different vendor, spend most of their time frolicking and sleeping indoors. "It is like the diaper removes them from the farmyard and gives them the status of pets," says Mr. Tschida, who also owns a dog, two cats, two parrots, a rabbit and some fish.

Did I ever tell you about the Pussy Pastie that I invented ten years ago? I didn't even have to make it. I just bought some baby pacifiers and packaged them with instructions for use:

Do you hate to see your cat's wrinkly anus when it lifts it's tail? Just use one of Patrick's Pussy Pasties. Give your cat a Fancy Feast. As soon as it is purring, shove the Pussy Pastie into the offending orifice. The Pussy Pastie comes in all colors and you can even buy pink ribbons to tie on them for special occasions. The trick is to insert it quickly. WARNING: Never try to insert it a second time if you don't hit the bull's eye the first time as it may annoy the cat.

Saturday houses - more beach cottages

Today's naked underage redneck chick post

Chicken producers debate ‘natural’ label:

A disagreement among poultry producers about whether chickens injected with salt, water and other ingredients can be promoted as “natural” has prompted federal officials to consider changing labeling guidelines.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had maintained that if chickens weren’t flavored artificially or preserved with chemicals, they could carry the word “natural” on the package.

But the agency agreed to take another look at its policy after some producers, politicians and health advocates noted that about one-third of chickens sold in the U.S. are injected with additives that could represent up to 15 percent of the meat’s weight, doubling or tripling the sodium content.

The "soldier" behind the Wikileaks

He's a half Brit homo:

Bradley Manning, the prime suspect in the leaking of the Afghan war files, raged against his US Army employers and "society at large" on his Facebook page in the days before he allegedly downloaded thousands of secret memos.

The US Army intelligence analyst, who is half British and went to school in Wales, appeared to sink into depression after a relationship break-up, saying he didn't "have anything left" and was "beyond frustrated".

In an apparent swipe at the army, he also wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," and quoted a joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron.

The Pentagon, which is investigating the source of the leak, is expected to study Mr Manning’s background to ascertain if they missed any warnings when he applied to join the US Army. The postings on his Facebook page are also likely to form part of the inquiry.

Mr Manning, who is openly homosexual, began his gloomy postings on January 12, saying: "Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast."

He was born in Oklahoma but grew up in Britain where had a hard time in school. I've been wondering what his story was. It sounds like he's a real Sad Sack. Of course the fact that he was schooled in England could simply mean that he's a "confused kid" like most modern "adult" British males who've been infantilized by having Big Brother as the daddy who will always be there to change their soiled diapers from cradle to grave. They've never had to face reality.

PS This is a typical case of too much high-fallutin' education and not enough street smarts. That's like planting a fancy exotic flower in styrofoam "peanuts."

Garland of Arabia

The forgotten story of TE Lawrence's brother-in-arms:

He was a mentor to Lawrence of Arabia, a maverick explosives expert who played a pivotal role in the Arab insurgency against the Ottoman Empire.

But the part that Major Herbert Garland, a British scientist turned soldier, played in the First World War has largely been ignored, airbrushed from history in the wake of his more famous brother-in-arms.

Now the Royal Society of Chemistry is to finally commemorate the army officer who wrecked his health leading the Arab rebellion before dying forgotten and almost penniless in Gravesend aged just 38.

Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), said he was a very rare and "courageous soldier" who was admired by TE Lawrence for his daring and cleverness.

“I am pleased that we are remembering him now, even if it is nine decades after his rather lonely death, far from the desert where his reputation should have been made, as it was with Lawrence, who had learned so much from him,” he said.

Major Garland, born in Sheffield, had worked in Cairo as superintendent of a government explosives laboratory.
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At the outbreak of war, he joined the Arab Bureau along with Lawrence, a group of intellectuals and businessmen whose "mission was to collect every possible bit of information about Turkish and German influence in the Middle East and act on it in the field".

Despite once blowing himself up with explosives and suffering severe shock, he joined Lawrence and Arab rebels to attack the Hejaz railway, one of the main supply lines of the Ottoman Empire.

He developed the mines and taught Lawrence and the rebels how to use them in their guerrilla campaign that acted as a great diversion allowing the British to take Damascus and bring down the Ottoman Empire.

His final act in the war was being sent to Medina, the last place to be surrendered by the Turks, in late 1918. He was responsible for the overseeing of the surrender of the key town to the allies.

But while Lawrence of Arabia, who died almost 75 years ago, refers to him briefly in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the full achievements of Garland have not been revealed until now.

Lawrence alludes to Garland in his book about the desert revolt, upon which the multi Oscar-winning film Lawrence of Arabia was based and which made great play of the derailing of Turkish trains.

He writes that Garland “had years of practical knowledge of explosives" and "his own devices for mining trains and felling telegraphs and cutting metals".

He said that "his knowledge of Arabic" enabled him "to teach the art of demolition to unlettered Beduin in a quick and ready way. His pupils admired a man who was never at a loss”.

“Incidentally, he taught me how to be familiar with high explosive," Lawrence adds.

"Sappers handled it like a sacrament, but Garland would shove a handful of detonators into his pocket with a string of primers, fuse, and fusees and jump gaily in his camel for a week’s ride to the Hejaz railway.

In a letter, Lawrence writes at one point that Garland contribution to the campaign was greater than his.

“Garland is much more use than I could be," he tells a diplomat.

"For one thing he is senior to me and he is an expert on explosives and machinery. He digs their trenches, teaches them musketry, machine gun work, signalling, gets on with them exceedingly well and always makes the best of things and they all like him too."

A Major Davenport, who commanded British officers in Arabia, wrote after his death: ” No man worked harder for the success of the operations than Major Garland, and it was only due to dogged pluck that he worked on as long as he did in the Hedjaz.”

What's gone wrong with the modern novel?

Harry Mount and Michael Deacon talk about what's gone wrong with the modern novel?

Harry Mount:

I long to read good modern novels. A novel at its best is the best sort of reading. With the writers I like – Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, Philip Roth, Edith Wharton, Proust – every single paragraph, practically every single sentence, has something to it. Some insight into the human condition, something funny or sad or interesting, a beautiful piece of writing, or tremendously clever use of language.

You can read a lot of novels nowadays that are perfectly good – there's nothing particularly wrong with them. But there's also nothing particularly right with them, either. Their writers think it's enough to take a character from the sitting room to, say, the kitchen, describe their movements, and leave it at that. None of those sad, funny, interesting etc. elements required.

Michael Deacon:

Here's a selection of novels published in the period 1920-29: Ulysses, Decline and Fall, The Great Gatsby, The Castle, The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, A Passage to India, Women in Love, Mrs Dalloway (actually I don't know why I cite that last one – Virginia Woolf makes me howl with boredom).
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The best writing I can think of from the past decade is TV writing.

Mount:

I completely agree about how superior the best telly is to most modern novels.
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Martin Amis got it right at the Hay Festival, when he talked about the fashion for "the unenjoyable novel" that wins prizes because the committee thinks, "Well it's not at all enjoyable, and it isn't funny, therefore it must be very serious."

But there are still things novels can do that even the best film can't do as well; particularly, say, the inner thoughts of characters, or a cynical/funny/sad view of a person or a place or a situation – the sort of thing that Evelyn Waugh did beautifully, in a way that has rarely been captured in his film adaptations. The Brideshead telly adaptation pulled it off, but only because practically the whole book was read out as a voiceover.

Deacon:

Roald Dahl described the typical Booker Prize novel as "beautifully boring".
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If you want to be "taken seriously", you apparently have to be serious, or, more accurately, joyless.
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Having said all this, I'd still probably slog through 500 pages of hype-inflated, prize-laden pretentiousness about a lesbian commune in 1930s Cork than the stuff that really sells today: Brown and Meyer. Have you any idea why they do so well? I'm not against bestsellers by any means: Stephen King can write, or so I thought when I last read him, i.e. at about the age of 15. But, dear Lord, surely even during the wrong-headed fug of adolescence I wouldn't have fallen for The Da Vinci Code or Twilight. Can you explain the success of this guff?

Mount:

Funnily enough, I've just been talking to a highly intelligent hedge-funder who wants to turn his hand to writing popular fiction. He's studied the whole thing in an analytical way, and looked at what all the Dan Browns and John Grishams have to say about the process.

The main thing is, that it is a process. Make sure you have several hundred scenes, each of around four pages, with enough separate plotlines and characters that then interact. One popular fiction writer said that he spent 85 per cent of his year working out his plot, and the other 15 per cent doing the writing.

Any over-introspection is disallowed; good must triumph; there mustn't be too much seamy immorality, otherwise the Midwest won't buy it. Make sure there is some inanimate object – money, a code, an antique, that must be tracked down, and ideally make that object into several different objects. And none of that show don't tell stuff; you must say how the characters feel at all times.

And make it long – around 4-600 pages.

Deacon:

I suppose in the end though it's the height of idleness to complain about the standard of modern novels – after all, if I dislike them so much, there's nothing to stop me writing one of my own. The trouble with doing that, of course, is that I would soon discover that novelists have a far harder job than I've given them credit for in this discussion, and so I'd have to relinquish my sniping prejudices and admit that the current lot - Christ, perhaps even Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer - aren't so bad after all. And there's nothing that horrifies a blogger more than the thought of having to relinquish his sniping prejudices. Hell, they're all we've got.

Oops! I've tried writing fiction. It worked when I was young but, as I got older, it became harder to immerse myself in the fantasy world of fiction. Maybe I'll give it another try now that I'm entering my second childhood.

Some of the most important influences in my life were novels. I learned to look at the world through different eyes. The novels of D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Foster and Aldous Huxley changed the course of my life.

PS I had to stop posting because Andy called Chas and me for dinner. When I told the boys about this post, Chas piped up and said: "Modern novels are about being a victim." Andy added: "That's because all of our college teachers are communists."

We all nodded sagely and went back to eating corn and steak and drinking Gnarly Head old vine zinfandel and talking about underage redneck chicks as usual.

"Maybe there is some correlation between beauty and conservatism"

Mark Judge:

Somebody needs to say it. The Journolist scandal will not be finished until someone says it.

Who let the dogs out?

The website iowntheworld.com is posting pictures of the Men of Journolist, the listserv where “journalists” got together to hammer out talking points to help liberal politicians. The Journolist has been called corrupt. A disgrace. Something that will never be lived down. But it’s also the ugliest group of life forms this side of a National Geographic special. When do these orcs march on Helm’s Deep?

It’s childish to make fun of someone’s looks, I know. So I’ll get to the deeper point. Perusing the Journolist photo spread – while trying to keep my lunch down – I realized that this proves once and for all that Nietzsche was wrong. The philosopher claimed that Christianity was a religion of losers, people full of resentment who wanted to strike out at their betters. Christians wanted to turn the world upside down by elevating the weak, sad, ugly and pathetic. It was the faith of losers.

Scanning the pictures of the Men of Journolist, it becomes apparent that Nietzsche had it exactly backwards. It is secular atheism – the religion of the media – that is the religion of resentment, rage, intolerance, and apparently folks who were at the business end of a fugly stick beat-down. People have made cracks about the whiteness of the list, but the other lack of diversity is the total absence of hotness. There were 400 Journolisters. Walk into a room of 400 people anywhere on this planet, and there will be at least a few, maybe even a quarter (ok half in Sweden) who are attractive. It’s just the way God made the world.

Maybe there is some correlation between beauty and conservatism.

I don't criticize people for the looks that God gave them - you know like the fact that Chelsea Clinton has no chin. But I do criticize them for what they have done to their faces with their ugly thoughts. And to me all Leftists look like pod people from some inhuman insect planet.

Here's iowntheworld.com's photo spread to prove it.

Peggy's new Gipper

Noonan loves Christie:

The problem for the Democrats, however, is not a new Contract With America, or the Tea Party. Their problem is Chris Christie.

National Republicans don’t want to talk about specific cuts in spending for the obvious reason: The Obama administration is killing itself, and when your foe is self-destructing, you must not interrupt. Let the media go forward each day reporting the bad polls. Turn it into “Franco: still dead.” Don’t let the media turn it into a two-part story: “Obama is Struggling and The Republicans Will Cut Your Benefits."

That is classic, smart political thinking, but wrong. The public thinks we’re sinking as a nation. They want to know someone has a plan to help. The most promising leader in that respect is Mr. Christie, the New Jersey governor, who just closed an $11 billion budget gap without raising taxes. He is famously blunt and doesn’t speak in those talking points that make you wonder, “Should I kill myself now with rude stabs to the chest, or should I just jump screaming from the window?”
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But Mr. Christie’s way is also closer than most national Republicans have come—or Democrats will come—to satisfying the public desire that someone step forward, define the problem, apply common sense, devise a way through, do what’s needed.

He’s going to break through in a big way. The answer to our political problems lies in clarity, competence and courage, not a visit to crazy town. And he knows how to put out his hand. “As much as I love teachers.” That’s good.

I love the guy too but Christie has said he's not interested in running in 2012. Should we beg him?

Deep-fried Okra

This has been making the rounds today.

The Arizona immigration law

Obviously we don't want people entering the country illegally for many reasons especially if they are criminals and/or terrorists and it seems (according to the conservative lawyer bloggers) that the judge decided incorrectly today but I'm glad the process has been slowed down a bit.

All Americans (not just Arizonans) need to talk about this more because it affects us all. If we let individual states make laws unilaterally, then not only legal Latin Americans but illegal ones will migrate to other states. Many of the Mexicans who are leaving Arizona now are not going back to Mexico but are moving to other states - like Oregon. It is therefore essential that this problem is sorted out by all the states through the Federal government.

And it's a very difficult problem. Unlike the hordes of illegal Irish and Russian immigrants, most Latin Americans do look different from most Americans because they are neither white nor black. It is essential that only those who are involved in criminal activities be required to prove their legal immigrant status otherwise millions of Latin Americans will have to carry their birth certificates or naturalization papers all the time.

I don't carry my naturalization certificate all the time and would be resentful if I had to. I was born and raised in a police state which required everyone to carry ID at all times and I can tell you it is creepy when the state is that intrusively authoritarian. Millions of legal Latin American citizens would be subjected to something that most of us are not subjected to. Such government intrusion makes people feel like subjects instead of citizens.

We need to tread very carefully here because, as soon as you encroach on another citizen's freedom, you are in danger of curtailing your own. For a police state to function efficiently, a lot of personal freedom and sovereignty must be sacrificed by all and we cease to be citizens and become subjects.

The bottom line is that the borders have to be secured by the Federal government. Then we can talk and see if we can find a humane solution to the problem of those who are already here without the state intruding on or curtailing any American citizen's individual sovereignty just because they look Latin American.

White South Africans eventually had to face up to the fact that they lived on the continent of Africa. They could adapt or leave. Americans have to accept the fact that we live on a continent that includes Latin America and deal with the difficulties that that incurs.

Should we scrap the terms Left and Right?

Gerald Warner says yes - and that we should proudly reclaim the term "reactionary":

In 1789, in the Assembly, the increasingly alarmed partisans of the ancien régime sat on the right-hand side (Côté Droit) of the president, the revolutionaries on his left-hand side (Côté Gauche). This terminology was first made familiar to the English-speaking world by Thomas Carlyle, in Volume I of “The French Revolution”: “Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves; rudiments of Parties. There is a Right Side (Cote Droit), a Left Side (Cote Gauche); sitting on M. le President’s right hand, or on his left: the Cote Droit conservative; the Cote Gauche destructive.”

That recognition of the character of so-called progressive forces as “destructive” was a valuable insight; the reviving of the memory of the Left/Right alignment, however, was less beneficial. Yet this terminology did not gain popular currency until as late as 1897, when the psychologist William James disseminated the phrase “left wing”. By the 1930s it was all-pervasive. Today it has infantilised politics (and the BBC) to the extent that mutinous Russian armoured columns advancing on Moscow to restore Marxism-Leninism were described as “Right-wing”.

We have to get rid of this nonsensical vocabulary. The correct terminology for those who futilely seek to improve the world through some innovatory creed such as socialism is “radical”, “liberal” or, preferably, “progressive”, since that places some onus on them to explain to what destination they imagine they are progressing. In the more extreme cases they may be described as “revolutionary”.

Their opponents should not hesitate to reclaim the currently pejorative term “reactionary”. It describes a coherent process: an examination of a failed innovation leading to a determination to return to the status quo ante; it is what a scientist does in the laboratory when an experiment fails. It is ironic that, since the days of Hume, progressive thinkers have been fixated on the notion of empiricism; this has paralysed the human imagination, leading to the discarding of religion and many metaphysical insights. Yet, if empiricism reigns supreme, what could be more empirical than reaction, contrasted with progressives’ blind advance towards an unknown Utopian goal? There is a supreme contradiction there in radical thought, by no means the only one.

Ultimately, political allegiances are determined by cultural factors, which is why in an advanced society such as America “culture wars” are at the core of political confrontation. That is why the most accurate term for anyone who opposes all the disastrous consequences of the French Revolution is Traditionalist. This has long been recognised in Spain where political thought, in this respect, is more than a century ahead of Britain.

The great Thomist political philosopher Juan Vázquez de Mella y Fanjul, in the late 19th century, stressed the distinction between traditionalists and “conservatives”, the opportunists who, under the prime minister Cánovas del Castillo, engineered the alternation of power between the Liberal and Conservative parties, ruining Spain in the process.
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The first begetters of both Communism and Nazism were the proto-totalitarian Jacobins of the French Revolution. The DNA is so precise a match that, in the course of massacring up to 400,000 Catholic royalists, the majority of them women and children, in the Vendée, the revolutionary government instructed scientists to investigate the possibility of mass extermination by pumping poison gas into mines; a tannery processed human skin; does that not strike certain resonances?

I'm quite happy to be called a reactionary. When the Democrats call Republicans the "party of no" I can only agree. We have to be the party of no. Someone has to try to put the brakes on the progressives' dangerous nonsense.

Tony Hayward is a prat aka "clueless person of arrogant stupidity"

The rise and fall of Tony Hayward:

Over the last 100 days, Hayward has lurched from one mishap to another, lambasted for claiming that the environmental impact would be "very very modest", sailing his yacht round the clear waters of the Isle of Wight and claiming he'd like his "life back" following the fatal accident.

As BP's share price more than halved and the leak continued to flow, the man who pledged to bring transparency to the oil industry declined to answer 65 questions about the cause of the accident at a political hearing – leading to claims of evasiveness and buck-passing.

Three years ago, the 54-year-old had an entirely different image, characterised as the "loyal lieutenant and bag carrier" of his flamboyant predecessor Lord Browne. He was picked for the top job when the company's reputation was at rock bottom following a fatal explosion at a refinery in Texas City and a corroded pipeline spill in Alaska. In contrast, Lord Browne, who had led the company for ten years, had been heavily criticised for neglecting nuts and bolts operations – always gunning for the big deal at the expense of day-to-day concerns.

In tune with the mood, Hayward used his first speech after being named as chief executive in February 2007 to stress that he wanted to "focus like a laser" on the company's accident record, readily admitting past mistakes. This would be the priority "for the next six to nine months", putting a brake on growth and slashing production targets.
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However, as the oil giant revealed a series of unsatisfactory financial results throughout 2007, it became clear that Hayward had begun to set his sights equally on ways to save money. Within months of joining, the new boss claimed to have uncovered layers of "fat" that were making the company too cautious.

"I don't think having all these layers of assurance reduces risk," Mr Hayward told US staff that year. "We can be more efficient, leaner and fitter." He achieved success in slimming the company down, stripping out 7,500 jobs and $4bn in costs last year alone. Around $500m of those cuts would come out of oil well drilling – a 13pc cut to the overall budget.
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Almost immediately after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, BP management realised that it would be vulnerable to questions about whether cost-cutting contributed to safety failures. The company went on the offensive, with Hayward asserting straight away that it was not responsible for the lapses of its contractors – despite the fact that the oil giant had designed the blown-out well, approved the rig and had supervisors on board with the ultimate say on how it was drilled. "This was not our accident. It was not our people, our systems or our processes," Hayward insisted.
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Throughout the disaster, BP has sought to move attention away from decisions it made about the actual drilling of the well and has denied any link between cost-cutting and corner-cutting on safety. "There's nothing I've seen in the evidence so far that suggests that anyone put costs ahead of safety. If there are, then we'll take action," Hayward told US politicians.

But industry experts have expressed surprise about the well's fundamental design. The well – described as a "nightmare" by a BP engineer – had been encountering problems for many months before the accident. Transocean and BP were struggling to control pressure, causing a phenomenon known as lost circulation in March.

Evidence given to US hearings shows that BP decided to choose a cheaper layer of well casing that would save it up to $7m. It also decided not to tie down the top of the well, known as the casing hanger, which would have taken several days. At that point, drilling was several weeks behind schedule and $29m over budget. Time was money for BP, which was paying $1m per day to hire the Deepwater Horizon rig from Transocean.
...
Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, told The Daily Telegraph that the only reason he could think BP would have used a single layer well design – rather than a standard two barriers – was to keep the cost down.

One engineer – a well design expert at another major oil company – singled out the fact that the casing was not secured at the top of the well as a potential factor in the explosion. "A good analogy is that [the well] was like a champagne bottle without the cork being secured by a wire. It was relying on not shaking the bottle. I was surprised. This is not the norm. The blowout preventer is one lesson, but there is much for BP to learn about well design."

He claims he would have shut down the entire well immediately weeks before the accident, based on currently available evidence about warning signs that showed pressure building up before the explosion.
...
A number of other actions have also been criticised – from a failure to run a test on the integrity of the cement, the replacement of heavy fluid to keep down pressure with lighter water and to the decision not to put in extra devices to keep the well straight – known as centralisers – which aid a good cement job. More broadly, BP did not run a risk assessement model known as the safety case, which is compulsory in the North Sea and standard across all Royal Dutch Shell wells.

Dr Nansen Saleri, chief executive of Quantum Reservoirs and one of the world's leading experts on oil well management, believes that the accident was "entirely preventable".

"The whole episode was systemic failure on a grand scale," he says. "The blow-out preventer was only one aspect. They are many other redundant elements in a robust safety management system. The first line of defence is not ever to let that kind of pressure build up. The reason this happened was a series of bad decisions about the well that are human-based and that completely disregarded risks."
...
Despite BP's upbeat assurances about the amount it was spending on upgrading old facilities – $1bn in Texas and $500m in Alaska – both sites continued to cause problems for Hayward.

In September last year, BP had to pay nearly $2m in fines for not operating with the proper equipment at oil fields in Alaska. The next month, it was hit with a record $87m for failing to correct safety hazards at the Texas City plant. Then in March came another warning "that BP often ignored or severely delayed fixing known hazards in its refineries" from US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis

In total, BP has been fined 760 times by the US health and safety authorities, compared with Exxon Mobil's record of just one.

It was not just BP's troubled downstream business coming in for criticism. The company was also held to account in 2008 at another Gulf of Mexico oil rig, Atlantis, a year after Hayward took to the helm. An internal report said "the context of a tight budget" had contributed to a defective pipeline pump that BP had put off repairing, causing a minor spill. It said "leadership did not clearly question" the possibility that time pressure could lead to failures.
...
BP's statistics – unlike those of some other companies – do not include fatality or accident rates at its joint ventures or include incidents like the 2008 helicopter crash that occurred off its North Sea drilling rig in April 2009, killing eight contractors.

BP's empire is indeed so globally sprawling that the accident has left some wondering whether super-majors are the best model in an industry that needs to focus so precisely on safe operations. Like the large global banks, big oil might have just got too big, according to ING analyst Jason Kenney. "There is an argument that BP got too large to know what was going on in every corner," he said, adding that it might be better off as a smaller "super-explorer" that focuses on fewer, top quality assets.

However, there's at least one man who stands by BP's record, even after the Gulf Coast spill. "I am proud of the improvement in safety since BP launched a comprehensive safety overhaul in 2007," Hayward wrote to staff last month. "Our recordable injury frequency has reduced by 29pc."

Hayward is an idiot and a phony or, as Will Heaven writes, "Tony Hayward acted like a prat."

Prat:

English term, primarily used in United Kingdom. The literal meaning is "bottom" or "rump"; aka backside, buttocks, sacrum, tail end. This lends itself to the slang meaning of "ass," or "clueless person of arrogant stupidity." It is not always directly translatable to American slang. For example, if you used the term "prat hat" in the U.K., you would likely be laughed out of town by the locals.

Actually the biggest problem was not Hayward but the "corporate culture" of BP:

BP's empire is indeed so globally sprawling that the accident has left some wondering whether super-majors are the best model in an industry that needs to focus so precisely on safe operations. Like the large global banks, big oil might have just got too big.

Another recession in 2012?

Rogers and Shiller say yes:

Jim Rogers, the market sage, has warned the global economy is just two years away from another recession, but remains ill-prepared to cope with the after-effects.

Mr Rogers, the respected currency trader and hedge fund pioneer, cautioned that when the downturn takes hold "the world is going to be in worse shape because the world has shot all its bullets."

Speaking in an interview with business television channel CNBC, the septuagenarian investor said that "since the beginning of time" there has been a recession every four-to-six years, and that means another one is due around 2012.
...
With reference to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, he said: "Is Mr. Bernanke going to print more money than he already has? No, the world would run out of trees."

Meanwhile, Robert Shiller, co-creator of the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller house price index, warned that the next downturn may come even sooner.

"For me a double-dip is another recession before we've healed from this recession. The probability of that kind of double-dip is more than 50pc. I actually expect it," he said. His prediction came despite the S&P/Case-Shiller index for May showing a 4.6pc year-on-year increase in house prices in 20 major US conurbations.

Maybe I should have posted this as a Daily duh! You can't "stimulate" the economy with fake money or more debt.

Daily duh! Dogs can read our minds

Dogs can perceive what we see and know, allowing them to take advantage of us:

If a dog's eyes appear to be riveted to you and your sandwich the next time you try to enjoy lunch, consider the clever, strategical intent of your rapt viewer. That's because new research has just demonstrated dogs quietly sneak food when we're not looking, waiting for the perfect opportunity to bite, steal and nosh.

Before every dog owner and lover reading this comments, "Duh! I knew that already," the finding is not to be taken lightly. The research, published in the latest issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science, adds to the growing body of evidence that dogs possess theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others.

In other words, dogs can likely perceive what we see and know, allowing them to take advantage of us when opportunity arises.

Quote of the day

From a letter to a lefty blogger (to whom I will not link) who used the phrase "send our sons to war":

Since when do any of us "send our sons" to America's wars? I don't think any parent of a soldier or Marine ever uses the phrase, or even once thinks in the terms of "I sent my son (daughter) to war." (In a way, we all "send" them.) Please stop using this thoughtless phrase today!

My son, by the way, is at an FOB (that's Forward Operating Base for you civvies) in Afghanistan. I did not send him, any more than the other thousands of soldiers and Marines in harm's way had their parents send them. He volunteered just like all the rest, on his own volition. And the honor of that choice is all his - not to be worn on my chest like a medal to be ogled.

50 Things a Man Should Be Able To Do

From Joe Carter at First Things:

Every man does not need to know how to tie a bow tie. Let’s get that clear up front. I don’t know why it is on every “Things a Man Should Know How to Do” list but it’s simply not true. If you have a reason to wear a bow tie (e.g., your going to prom, your name is George Will) then you can ask someone or you can look it up. That’s what Google and preppie college Republican exist.

But there are some things that every man should be able to do.
...
1. Forgive your parents – They did the best they could . . . or they didn’t. Either way, you’re a man now so it’s time to move on.

2. Ask your parents to forgive you—You know what you did. They do too.

3. Change a diaper so that the baby is cleaner and you are no dirtier than when you started.

4. Perform CPR and the Heimlich maneuver.

5. Use a soldering iron to fix a loose connection.

6. Comfort a child—If you want to judge the character of a man, observe how he treats a child. He may not have any himself—he may not even like kids—but if he can provide them comfort when they are scared or hurting then he can’t be all bad.

7. Cook one signature dish.

8. Calculate square footage—Width x length.

9. Innocently flirt with a woman at least twice your age—Without causing offense or being disrespectful, of course.

Read the rest for yourself. They're good.

The good news: Americans are disillusioned with politicians

Don Surber:

From Gallup: “Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.”

I didn't need a poll to tell me that. When I first came to the USA it was obvious to me that Americans were no longer naïve about politicians thanks to Nixon. Then Carter replaced Nixon/Ford and dragged the country into further "malaise." Then along came Reagan and lifted Americans' spirits for a while but it's been downhill since then except for a blip in Bush Jr's first term. And, as Americans became more disillusioned about the Presidents, they became more cynical about government in general and Congress in particular.

This is all good news. The Founders would be proud of us for being so unenthusiastic about politicians and government.

Bed bugs biting all over U.S.

It's a real nightmare:

Calls to exterminators nationwide about bed bugs are up 57 percent nationwide in the last five years, according to a new survey by the National Pest Management Association and the University of Kentucky. More than 95 percent of 519 U.S. exterminators participating in the survey reported finding at least one bed bug infestation in the past year.
...
“Most cities have bed bug problems today,” says Michael F. Potter, University of Kentucky professor of Entymology and one of the co-authors of the study. "Any place you have a lot of people, or a lot of movement of people, you have bed bugs."

The study, the first comprehensive industry report specifically on bed bugs, supports findings cited in Congress’ “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009” that bed bug populations in the U.S. have increased by 500 percent in the past few years.
...
Despite several widely reported closures of retail stores and office buildings in New York City, infestations are still far more common in apartments and condominiums, single-family homes and hotels and motels. Yet they're also turning up in some surprising places, such as public transit, laundromats and movie theaters.

The real culprits behind the bed bug march across the U.S. are the high cost of eradication, along with lack of awareness, according to Richard Cooper, an entymologist who serves on the New York City bed bug Advisory Board and is vice president of Bed Bug Central, a company that provides educational resources to the public.

“There are still an amazing number of people that think bed bugs are some kind of folklore,” he says. “Or, if they do know about them, they think it’s due to poor hygiene, or it’s a problem that only affects the lower classes.”

In fact, prior to 2006, bed bugs were mostly found in upper end hotels in business and leisure travel destinations such as New York, Boston, Orlando and San Francisco, Cooper says.

From there the stealthy bugs took hold and spread. Bed bugs don’t live on people, but they can hitchhike around in suitcases, purses, backpacks and computer bags. Because they hide during the day and feed on you painlessly while you sleep, they are very difficult to detect.

So that explains why I've been getting 30 to 40 hits a day for the past few years on a post that I wrote over two years ago: The other "undocumented immigrants" - bed bugs. I guess I'm one of the go-to guys for bed bugs.

The JournoList

Of the 107 "journalists" I've read and sometimes even quoted these:

Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic

Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect

Ben Smith - POLITICO

Avi Zenilman – POLITICO

Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO

Mike Allen - POLITICO

Jonathan Chait – The New Republic

Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly

Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University

Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

Yes, I know they're well-known Lefties but I was under the impression that some of them were at least halfway sane. Note the four Politico "journalists." I knew something stank at Politico when they started smearing Fred Thompson in the '08 campaign. I'm not surprised to see Nobel Prize winner "economist" Paul Krugman listed. Needless to say I will never quote them again - or even bother to read them. They've cooked their geese.

Kitty Kallen

Tonight we were listening to Kitty Kallen during dinner. For Chas and Andy.

She's 88 and she's still alive:

Kitty Kallen (born May 25, 1922) is an American popular singer who sang with a number of big bands in the 1940s, coming back in the 1950s to score her biggest hit, "Little Things Mean a Lot" in 1954.

Born in Philadelphia to a Jewish family, she won an amateur contest as a child doing imitations of some singers of the day. When she brought her prize (a camera) home, her father refused to believe her and thought she had stolen the camera, so he punished her severely. Later, when neighborhood people came to congratulate her father, he realized that her story was true. Subsequently she sang (while still a child) on The Children's Hour, a radio program sponsored by Horn & Hardart, a firm which had a chain of Automats in New York and Philadelphia. As a pre-teen she had her own program on Philadelphia's WCAU, and soon she sang as a vocalist with the big bands of Jan Savitt in 1936 and Artie Shaw in 1938, and Jack Teagarden in 1940. While with the Savitt band, she briefly was a roommate of Dinah Shore. She married Clint Garvin, who played clarinet in Teagarden's band, and when Teagarden fired Garvin, she left as well. The marriage was annulled.

Kallen later married Bud Granoff, a famous publicist, agent, and television producer. They were married over forty-five years, until Granoff's death. Still only a teenager at that time--after a short stay with Bobby Sherwood--she joined the Jimmy Dorsey band, replacing Helen O'Connell. Eventually, in 1944, she appeared as the vocalist for Dorsey's US number-one hit, "Besame Mucho". Most of her singing assignments were in duets with Bob Eberly, and when Eberly left to go into the service toward the end of 1943, she joined Harry James' band.

Kallen became a popular artist on radio, film, and nightclubs, but lost her voice at the height of her career. She eventually made a comeback, with the 1954 hit "Little Things Mean a Lot" (voted the most popular record) and Kallen was voted most popular female singer in Billboard and Variety polls.

Other popular recordings by Kallen included "Chapel in the Moonlight" and she also recorded a version of "True Love" for Decca. She did not record again until the early 1960s; firstly for Columbia where she had a hit version of "If I Give My Heart to You". In 1963 she had the biggest selling version of "My Coloring Book" which appeared on RCA. Her final album was Quiet Nights, a bossa nova based long player for 20th Century Fox Records. A compilation of her hits on various labels is available on the Sony CD set, The Kitty Kallen Story.

During Kallen's height of popularity, there were three imposters who billed themselves as Kitty Kallen. When one of them (Genevieve Angostinello) died, it was reported that Kallen had died, and that is where the mis-information about Kallen's birth name originated.

Real wealth

From Why Money Makes You Unhappy:

Why doesn’t money make us happy? One intriguing answer comes from a new study by psychologists at the University of Liege, published in Psychological Science. The scientists explore the “experience-stretching hypothesis,” an idea first proposed by Daniel Gilbert. He explains “experience-stretching” with the following anecdote:

I’ve played the guitar for years, and I get very little pleasure from executing an endless repetition of three-chord blues. But when I first learned to play as a teenager, I would sit upstairs in my bedroom happily strumming those three chords until my parents banged on the ceiling…Doesn’t it seem reasonable to invoke the experience-stretching hypothesis and say that an experience that once brought me pleasure no longer does? A man who is given a drink of water after being lost in the Mojave Desert may at that moment rate his happiness as eight. A year later, the same drink might induce him to feel no better than a two.

What does experience-stretching have to do with money and happiness? The Liege psychologists propose that, because money allows us to enjoy the best things in life – we can stay at expensive hotels and eat exquisite sushi and buy the nicest gadgets – we actually decrease our ability to enjoy the mundane joys of everyday life. (Their list of such pleasures includes ”sunny days, cold beers, and chocolate bars”.) And since most of our joys are mundane – we can’t sleep at the Ritz every night – our ability to splurge actually backfires. We try to treat ourselves, but we end up spoiling ourselves.
...
This makes me think of the Amish. From a certain perspective, the Amish live without a lot of the stuff most of us consider essential. They don’t use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quiet permanence to hefty bank accounts. The end result, however, is a happiness boom. When asked to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10, the Amish are as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. There are, of course, many ways to explain the contentment of the Amish. (The community has strong ties, plenty of religious faith and stable families, all of which reliably correlate with high levels of well-being.) But I can’t help wonder if part of their happiness is related to experience-stretching. They don’t fret about getting the latest iPhone, or eating at the posh new restaurant, or buying the au courant handbag. The end result, perhaps, is that the Amish are better able to enjoy what really matters, which is all the stuff money can’t buy.

I've never had any real lust for money. That's not to say that I don't like luxurious hotels, fine wine and fancy food. But I soon figured out that getting the money for luxuries involved a lot of attached strings. If you're not born rich, you have to borrow money to invest whether it's a mortgage for a house or a business loan and debt is not wealth. It sure doesn't give you any sense of security. In fact it does the opposite. To me real wealth is independence. That means having little or no debt; not being beholden to lenders and cutting your suit to fit the cloth. And it's still true that "the best things in life are free" and the freest thing is not even material.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Today's naked underage redneck chick post

From Martin Gurdon's new monthly chicken column:

I've kept hens for 13 years, and they now live with a quartet of bonkers Indian Runner ducks (the ones that look like feathery milk bottles) in our rural Kentish garden.

Svenson, the cockerel, has a love rival. The other protagonist is Bombay, an Indian Runner, whose hormones go ballistic every spring, causing him to fall in love with Bella the chicken.

It all began last summer when Svenson was then still learning the ropes of cockerelhood, and approached his girls with the enthusiasm of a pillaging Viking. Given that some of them were old enough to be his great grandmother, this didn't go down well. We separated him from the pensioner hens, and ran a kind of bird exeat system, releasing him into the garden with selected younger birds. Bombay, along with his official girlfriend, Crispy, was allowed to mix with the remaining chickens. And that was when the trouble started. Last year's vicious winter dampened Svenson's ardour, and he is much improved, although his seduction technique is hardly George Clooney. Not so Bombay, who has been chasing Bella and causing her to seek refuge under garden shrubs. To help take his mind off Bella, we acquired two extra duck girlfriends, Hoisin and Peking. They never laid eggs and initially, Bombay was reluctant to let Hoisin into the pond.

"That's because they're drakes," said our ex-farmer neighbour, and she was right. Now poor old Crispy has three suitors, and risks being drowned if they get overexcited.

Meanwhile, Bella nearly did drown, when she ended up in the pond, pursued by Bombay. So now we're back to avian apartheid, and the lady who sold us Hoisin and Peking arrives tomorrow to take them back. It's chaos, but we're still sad to see them go.

As for the Svenson/Bella/Bombay triangle; we emailed Telegraph vet Pete Wedderburn for advice. Pete, who's owned Indian Runners, said separation was the only option, and added ominously: "We had to lock up the rabbits."

Our first ducks were Indian Runners and I can confirm Gurdon's observation that they are "bonkers." The drake, Daffy, did not rape our hens but he did give his humans nasty "love bites" and probably would have humped us like a horny dog if he'd had four legs.

One night Daffy was murdered by a raccoon so we got a pair of mallards to keep his widow, Dilly, company. One day the mallards flew away and only the drake came back a few days later. We figured that the female had been shot by a duck-hunter.

The male, Sir Francis Drake, became so lonely that he started hanging out with the chickens. Then a few months ago, Bob gave us three Khaki Campbell ducks. One of the new ducks turned out to be a drake but the two drakes are complete gentlemen towards each other and have not yet had one fight. Sir Francis however is not much of a gentleman with the new ladies.

PS Our cocks are not fussy about raping their own grandmothers and do it regularly.

Saturday houses - Presidents' homes

Everybody knows these but some of the pics are nice and big. Click to biggify. I'm sure you can guess which one's my favorite. Yep, Reagan's Rancho del Cielo.

Washington's Mount Vernon:
















John Adams' Peacefield:

















Jefferson's Monticello:

















Madison's Montpelier:













Teddy R's Sagamore Hill:

















FDR's Springwood in Hyde Park:

















FDR's "beach cottage" on Campobello Island, Canada:















Reagan's Rancho del Cielo (Ranch of Heaven):


















The Bush estate, Walker's Point:











The main house at Walker's Point:

Art Robinson is 1 percent ahead of DeFazio

GOP candidate Art Robinson spoke in North Bend last night:

The Cave Junction Republican wants to unseat Rep. Peter DeFazio in this fall's general election and represent the South Coast in Washington, D.C.

Robinson believes the federal government limits competition through regulation and denies Americans freedom through taxes.

"All of us are half-enslaved to our government," he said.

"Productive people in the United States have been squeezed until they cannot produce more than they consume."

Robinson, a chemist at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, never has held political office. DeFazio, a Springfield Democrat, is seeking his 13th term in the House of Representatives.

"We have to get government off our backs, out of our pockets and out of the way," Robinson said.

If elected, Robinson pledges to fill 10 staff positions with experts relevant to the policies he'll vote on.

He explained his position on various energy projects. He said uproar about dealing with waste from nuclear power plants is artificial.

"Nuclear waste is a product of your government," he said.

He believes the federal government should have no say beyond safety issues in the regulation of the energy industry.

"Most of the things government touches, it messes up," he said.
...
Robinson cited a unofficial poll in which he is 1 percent ahead of DeFazio.

For two months, Robinson said he's been pursuing a debate with DeFazio. He said DeFazio does not want to debate him.

Robinson said he'll hold debates with or without DeFazio.

If DeFazio doesn't show, his son will wear a chicken suit and act as a surrogate.

"Cordoba Center"

All the talk about the Mahomedan mosque proposed to be built near Ground Zero got me curious to know why it will be called "Cordoba House."

In the Middle Ages Cordoba was the capital of the Islamic caliphate of El Andalus (now Andalusia) the southernmost region of Spain and the first part of Europe to be conquered by Mahomedans.

Cordoba played a pivotal role in the history of the Jews:

In the tenth century it became the seat of Jewish learning, scholarship and culture, gradually eclipsing the Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbeditha.
...
The Cordoba Jewish community of Hasdai's time, situated near the alcazar, southwest of the city, was wealthy and vibrant. But the situation would soon change. In 1013, the [Mahomedan] Berbers lay siege to Cordoba and the city entered into a process of gradual decline.

'Nuff said!

Debt = the end of the U.S. as a global world power?

Tyler Cowen:

At some sufficiently high debt-GDP ratio, it becomes a foreign policy issue and a big one. Postwar UK had a high debt to GDP ratio, and to this day it is a fine place, but that debt meant the end of England as a world power, for better or worse. The U.S. for instance used financial issues to push England around and they basically had to give up on their overseas commitments. A very high debt ratio here would mean the end of the U.S. as a global world power, again even if GDP does OK. A global power needs the option of spending a lot more, quickly, without asking for anyone's permission. Your mileage on a U.S. retreat from the global policeman role will vary, but it's the elephant in the room which hardly anyone is talking about.

Is it only a matter of time before China starts calling the shots?

"The JournoList has started to leak like an over-ripe diaper"

Jonah Goldberg:

Just in case you’ve been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here’s the story. A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv JournoList for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks, and the world of forthright liberal activism generally. They spoke freely about their political and personal biases, including their hatred of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

That off-the-record intellectual bacchanalia has started to haunt the participants like an inexplicable rash after a wild party during Fleet Week.

Goldberg sure has a way with words.

Obama should go to Hell

Peter Robinson asked Charles Hill, author of Grand Strategies and professor at Yale where he teaches a seminar called “Studies in Grand Strategy,” to recommend a couple of books for President Obama’s summer reading list. Hill replied:

The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides and Virgil’s Aeneid. It seems to me that President Obama is kind of like Aeneas – Aeneas kind of wanders around and things happen to him. He doesn’t make things happen; he pulls away. We saw this in the prisoner swap with Russia. I was watching Rahm Emanuel on television trying to convince the interviewer that the president had nothing to do with the swap – that this was decided by other entities of the government and that the president was simply kept briefed. That's an Aeneid kind of thing. Aeneas never quite knows what his real mission is. He thinks he knows, but he doesn't know. Aeneas has to go to Hell to find out what his mission is. Let's hope President Obama doesn't have to go to Hell before he figures it out.

There's no way that Obama can avoid Hell if he wants to grow up to be a sane adult. Sometimes the only thing that can burn away vanity, sophomoric delusions and ignorance is the fire of Hell.

PS I had to study Virgil's Aeneid in high-school Latin class and I hated it. Actually I hated Aeneas because he was a dithering idiot - until he went to Hell.

Jim Webb (D): "Less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves"

James Webb in WSJ:

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.
...
Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites.
...
Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.

The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."
...
Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white).
...
In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

HT to Roger Clegg who comments:

So two cheers for Senator Webb, reserving the third for when he acknowledges that the time has come to end racial preferences for all groups, rather than for all but one.

Definitely two cheers for Webb. It is refreshing to hear a Democrat talk some sense for a change but Clegg is right: it is time to end not only "affirmative action" for Asians and other non-white groups (most of whom definitely don't need it) but all race-based governmental discrimination. The vast majority of Americans are not color-conscious. It's time for the government to acknowledge that. Unfortunately the Community Organizer in Chief is very color-conscious and is perpetuating unnecessary and obsolete racism just like the other race-pimps such as the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Quote of the day: Immigration Myths

Mark Krikorian makes a well-argued (as usual) case against the "open borders" brigade and concludes:

[W]hat we've been seeing for three decades is the same thing as in every other country during economic modernization — the movement of excess peasantry off the land and into the cities. But because of our lax immigration policies, they've been moving to our cities rather than their own.

Garden gnomes

Useless fact of the day:

German garden gnomes were introduced to England in 1847 by Sir Charles Isham (1819-1903), a vegetarian spiritualist who hoped that his 21 porcelain Gnomen-figuren would attract real gnomes to his garden in Northamptonshire. Only one of Isham’s gnomes, “Lampy”, survives: it is insured for £1 million. “Seeing and hearing gnomes is not mental delusion,” he wrote, “but extension of faculty.”

I can't put garden gnomes in my yard because unfortunately they attract Sasquatches.

The Electric Razor in Elephant and Castle

London's Strata tower:

I am standing on the wind-buffeted tip of the Strata tower, looking out through the blades of what appear to be an enormous propeller, at the London skyline and the green basin beyond. St Paul's cathedral, across the river, seems close enough to touch. It's the kind of view, and the kind of heroically stylised building, you would expect to see in some 1930s sci-fi movie: the perfect place for a hero and a villain to have a rooftop showdown.

At 147 metres, the newly opened Strata is London's tallest residential building. The nine-metre blades I'm standing beneath are housed in one of three wind turbines that crown this new tower soaring above Elephant and Castle, an area of the city not known for flashy penthouses. But Elephant and Castle is undergoing a massive, if slow, transition from a rundown miasma of noisy road intersections, underpasses and vast housing estates into what the Borough of Southwark hopes will be a £1.5bn model of inner-city regeneration.
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The tower has 408 apartments and 1,000 tenants.
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Strata is the first building in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its structure.
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Whether you find this exciting, disturbing or simply over-the-top will be down to personal taste, yet it's no surprise the tower has been dubbed the Electric Razor, not just because of its whirling blades but also because of its black and silver lines that seem to pixellate upwards.
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[A] three-floor pavilion to the side of the tower has been given to council residents leaving the soon-to-be-demolished Aylesbury Estate, a 1960s housing complex.

35 years ago I worked in a pharmacy in Elephant and Castle (named after an ancient local pub) for a couple of years and used to catch the bus past the Aylesbury Estate, those three tower blocks of government housing on the left, on my way home to Streatham every day. They gave me the creeps and always made me think of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Most of the buildings in the foreground did not exists in those days.

A whale of a tale

Whale lands on yacht:

A South African couple was out sailing near the country's infamous Robben Island when a 40-ton whale breached and crash-landed on their yacht.

"We were watching the whale flipping its tail for about half an hour," said Cape Town Sailing Academy Administrator Paloma Werner, who was enjoying a Sunday sail with her boyfriend and sailing instructor, Ralph Mothes.

"It reached about 100 to 200 meters from us, then it disappeared under water and reappeared about 10 to 20 meters from the boat, but we didn't think we were on a collision course," she told msnbc.com.

The young Southern Right Whale was longer than their 10-meter yacht — most likely between 11 and 14 meters — Werner said.

"My boyfriend told me to go to the other side of the boat," she said, explaining that they thought it would dive under their vessel.

"All I heard him say was 'Oh shit,' and I saw the whale come out of the water and crash against the mast of the boat.

"I ducked behind the coach house and my boyfriend ducked behind the steering wheel and we saw the mast crashing toward us and the whale slip back into the water," she said.
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"Only that evening did we really think about it, and when we saw the photo (taken by a tourist in a nearby boat) in yesterday's paper did we realize we were lucky to be alive," Werner said.

"If it would have crashed into the cockpit it would have sunk the boat."

The photo taken by a tourist:

Obama throws nice non-racist bleeding heart under bus for "racism"

Obama really needs to pay more attention but perhaps he can't because he's so stupid that he really does need a teleprompter to tell him what to think and say.

Stephen Spruiell:

The NAACP has posted the full video of the Shirley Sherrod speech. After watching it, it is impossible not to conclude that the Obama administration made the wrong decision in forcing her resignation.

I'd encourage you to watch the video for yourself, but the summary version is as follows: After experiencing some hard-core white racism in the segregated South (her father was murdered by white men who were never convicted), Sherrod made a commitment to help black southerners in bad situations. "When I made that commitment," she said, "I was making that commitment to black people and to black people only. But you know, God will show you things... you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." She then proceeded to tell the story featured in the clip that Breitbart published (he says he received the clip in its edited form). A white farmer came to her for help, and because she perceived him to be like the others, she fobbed him off on a white lawyer — "his own kind." But the lawyer didn't help the farmer, and that is what led Sherrod to revise her previous biases against whites and to resolve to assist all economically distressed farmers, white or black, who came to her for help.

As for the ongoing dispute between the NAACP and the tea party and the various accusations of racism that have been flying of late: Sherrod's speech was about overcoming racist views, including those held by blacks, illustrated by way of her personal story. There would be no need for her to tell that story to that particular audience if she didn't feel that some in the NAACP still harbored prejudiced views of whites; the moral of her story would be obsolete if black racism didn't exist.

I saw the full video today and I also saw a video of the Spooners, the white farmer and his wife, who say that they are grateful to Sherrod and have regarded her as a friend for the past 24 years.

Spruiell adds that Sherrod was not working for the USDA when she helped the Spooners. She was working for a non-profit do-gooder bleeding heart group.

I wonder how Obama will wriggle out of this mess. I guess he'll throw Vilsack under the bus just like Lenin threw the Menshevik bleeding hearts under the bus.