Moments in Chinatown

Continuing the theme of shallowness.

I was heading out of the house to get some air and some lunch today and passed by two men talking on the sidewalk. Both in their late forties or early fifties, jeans and leather jackets, bearded. As I walk by, the shorter of the two smiles at me brightly and says, "Hi, hi, haven't seen you in a long time!" I check the memory banks and can't place him. "I'm Frank", says he. I give him my name but admit that it's been so long that I don't remember how we met.

"Well, I'm pretty sure," he offers, "that I just walked up to you, cause you're such a handsome man...(I smile and say thanks)...and said to you, 'You have to make love with me before you die.'"

I laugh and pat him on the shoulder and thank him for the compliment and wish him a nice day and say it was nice to see him and off I go. He beams.

Life in Chinatown.

Chinatown?

There is a strong, sturdy, square and solid man in his mid-fifties, smart, smart-mouthed and stealthily sexy, who is passionate and playful. Although he clearly has a powerful attraction to his own male kind, (thank God!), he has never identified himself as gay. He's one of those guys who could honestly wear this t-shirt.



I once asked him why he had lived in such proximity to the big gay neighborhood in town where I live, but had so little sense of affiliation to it. His reply, "It's Chinatown. Just 'cause you're part Chinese doesn't mean that's the place you have to live. It's not a career."

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Shallow

Aside from my Deep Thoughts about sex, or as the polite folks like to say, sexuality, I also, male dog that I be, just like to look.

There is a subset of males that I appreciate: the boyishly handsome cleancut guy with the strong bone structure and the muscular build. B-List actor Jason Beghe is the standard bearer of this group. It also helps that he moves like a nervous athlete and has a voice like rough corduroy. He recently escaped from his long captivity among the Scientologists, which is nice.



Michael C. Hall aka Dexter is a member, too. Here he is looking more hard-edged than his usual clean-shaven, longer-haired self. I like short hair and stubble.

There is a subset of the subset, nice Jewish guys with boyishly handsome faces, strong bone structure and muscular builds. Dan Futterman rules here.

One of the guys in the Gentile part of this subset is Richard Ruccolo. Now in his mid thirties, he is a TV actor with a not so terrific career, I think. He starred in Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Parlor in the 90's. And he co-starred as Dan Bucatinsky's troubled lover in the indy film, All Over the Guy. Now he's on a Lifetime sitcom, Rita Rocks.

The boy has aged very nicely and has been to the gym.
I watch the online episodes of the new show just for the pleasure of watching him. Shallow, no?

(Of course, looking is secondary to participating. And it can also be a part of participating. I mean, gimme a strong, square, sturdy and solid man in his fifties who combines passion and playfulness and I am pretty well perfectly content. But I digress. Which is a pleasant thing, given the world of finance and politics...)

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Right on the money

Shelby Steele on Obama.




For a longer conversation, the first of five Uncommon Knowledge pieces.

Disaster or catastrophe?

One of the people who have helped to make me a conservative is Thomas Sowell, author of the mind-clearing A Conflict of Visions. I came across his Quest for Cosmic Justice in a bookstore years ago and found myself very much taken with his viewpoint. I was astonished when I discovered that this American writer was also black. That was when I discovered black conservatives (Shelby Steele is another), of whom there are as few as there are gay conservatives. (And of course I exclude the late lamented Andrew Sullivan, who was once a gay conservative very important to me and is now a hysterical moralist).

Anyway, Sowell is an economist by training and has a lot to say about the confluence of economics and race. He is a shrewd observer of the human scene; some of his best columns are those called "Random Thoughts" and range from the Yankees to feminism.

Anyhoo, I am cyberwatching him on Peter Robinson's excellent Uncommon Knowledge series. His feeling about voting for McCain rather than Obama, "I prefer disaster to catastrophe." Amen, dude.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Family Values

Barry Hussein O's poor relatives in America, thanks to the British, not the American press. What a surprise.

TigerHawk writes: "This story is eerily reminiscent of the moment back in December 2007 when Obama seemed to brag that his grandmother lived in a "hut" back in Kenya. The press ate it up, but he dropped that talking point after conservative bloggers wondered why he had not helped the poor woman pay for a better house. Call me a bonehead, but we are beginning to see a pattern here. Indeed, I have finally figured out why somebody who has been as successful as Barack Obama believes that the government must help people who cannot or do not help themselves: He simply does not understand that helping the poor, unlucky, or incompetent is first the responsibility of family.

I do not condemn Obama for deciding not to help his African relatives in the abstract, but he has used these people -- his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, and so forth -- as props in his political narrative. He wants us to measure him in part by his relationship to these Kenyans, but -- and here is the harsh part -- only as that relationship is described by him.

What if his characterization of that relationship is misleading? What if it turns out that while he is delighted to cite these people as evidence of his humble beginnings -- that is what I mean by using them as props -- he is not so delighted to consider them as part of his family? Is that not at least a potentially useful insight into the character of this man about whom we know so little?"

I'm with Melanie

Is America really going to do this?

HT to Dr Sanity.


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Good clean 2nd Amendment fun

HT to that very irascible Canadianess, Kathy Shaidle. Read her and you will see what a moderate I am.


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More redistributive fun

Barry Hussein O wants to "break free" from "the founding fathers' constitutional restraints" and use the courts to do this.

Bill Whittle explains.

The Politics of Imperfection

Even a few of the folks I know who plan to vote for Barry Hussein O are unnerved by the blind religious quality of so many of his fans. From my viewpoint, he is a man of small actual accomplishment and experience (less than Sarah Palin), with troubling character issues, some repulsive associations, and above all, a set of leftist policies and values that I reject.

As I have said, I am unmoved by his speechmaking. Having been a talker for a living most of my life, I am well aware of how to say nothing well. He often does. As I have said before, were he not half-black, he would not be where he is.

I became a conservative several years ago, after a lifetime as a liberal. I looked for some kind of intellectual framework for my (even to me, startling) conversion and found the most helpful and congenial one in the work of American philosopher John Kekes.

I have not read him completely nor would I say that I am anything at all like an expert in his thought. But what I have read over the years, I have mostly liked.

I have especially appreciated his critical reading of the American Marx (my words, not Kekes'), John Rawls, who powerful influence has helped make American liberalism the dangerous animal that it has become.

In a nutshell, Kekes says:

"Moderate skepticism about general theories in politics; pluralism about traditions, values, and conceptions of a good life; traditionalism; and pessimism about human perfectibility and the eradication of evil jointly define the version of conservatism that is the best alternative to its chief contemporary rivals: liberalism and socialism."

This from a very short piece outlining what conservatism is, according to Dr. Kekes, who has written quite a lot about political and moral philosophy. He takes the ineradicable existence of evil very seriously, holds a traditional and non-utopian view of justice, thinks that history is a far better source of wisdom about political arrangements than is rational or religious ideology, and has played out the problems with and the bad outcomes of the egalitarian fantasies that lie at the heart of modern liberalism.


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Fun spreading the wealth around with BHO!

HT to Jon Ray for this post on Doug Ross @ Journal, who got it from commenter Mickey, who found it in The Eagle Tribune, posted by a reader.

Sounds like one of those transmission chains of hadith :)

Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign the read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed--just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

This reminds me of an Affirmative Action cookie sale that conservatives were holding on college campuses, where the price you paid for a cookie was determined by your race and gender. Of course, the HighMinded were horrified.

And I think we should have an Immigration Amnesty program where everyone in favor of amnesty has a Latino family living in their basement. And they don't get to choose which family or how long they stay or what they do while they are there AND they have to pay for their healthcare, etc.

Talk about bringing highminded theories home.

Loathing Islam

I am what is fashionably called an Islamophobe (an Orwellian rhetorical device empty of meaning). I am an enemy of Islam. Why?

Because Islam is an enemy to me.

I have read the Koran (long before 9/11, btw), Arab history, know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni. And I am not blinded by political correctness.

Bruce Bawer reports on the deliberations of the Norwegian Islamic Council ---that there should even exist such a thing is wrong--- on the apparently unresolved question of whether or not homos like me should be executed. All sorts of Norwegian bodies, unions and state organizations, are unprovoked by this.

What happened to hate speech law when you need it? Whatever happened to "Think Globally, Act Locally"?

As I have said, all the wonderful Muslim loving homos will learn too late that when it comes to a choice between offending the sons of the Prophet or offending the queers, it'll be no contest.

Can you imagine any Christian body in the world debating this point without Queer Nation exploding? And other Christian bodies standing up and shouting their disapproval? People who don't think men should be allowed to marry men in California are routinely cast as "hate-filled bigots". But Muslim thugs? You can hear the crickets.

I will cease being an enemy of Islam when Islam ceases wondering whether or not I should be put to death and doesn't even remember asking the question. Till, then....



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Memory and judgment

Twenty five years ago today, over 250 American marines died in a jihadi bombing in Lebanon. The soldiers were there during the Lebanese civil war to help keep peace.

I was living in Canada at the time and one of the folks I knew was a Nigerian priest named Ihanye. He was a loud and self-important lout, frankly, but his African race gave him status among the other folks I knew, who were so taken with the Third World, etc. He was a charismatic Pentecostal type, pretty popular in those days, and a great proponent of "social justice". A bit of a local star.

He saw the news that night about the event in Lebanon and leapt from his chair and applauded.
I left the room.

I used to see him perform at various services, swooning over "the sweet name of Jesus."

A while later, news reported that Nigeria was expeditiously expelling a hundred thousand Ghanans, driving them back over the border. When I asked him about this, his answer was simple, "Ghanans are thieves."

I recall the deaths of my countrymen in 1983, with sadness I can feel in the tightening in my throat.

I am small enough, however, still to retain a measure of contempt for Fr. Ihanye and all the people like him I have since met, those justice and peace loving progressive lovers of Jesus whose own souls are as partisan, blind, grasping and cold as the images of the enemies that they project. I do not wish them well.

Twu

Liberalism is uncomfortable with patriotism*. The liberal's default reaction to expressions of patriotism, even on September 12th 2001, is typically to show anxiety about "jingoism". One of liberalism's seven pillars is transnationalism.

Obama and his little priggish speech about why he stopped wearing his country's flag.
And he wants to be the President of the USA...sorta. More like of "the planet".

This piece explains it nicely. Liberalism, as an ideology (and because it is an ideology
rather than an attitude), is fundamentally mistaken about what human beings are.

Liberalism talks a lot about freedom, but what it really wants is justice, especially "social justice", which means egalitarian outcomes. And justice and freedom are always in tension with each other. "Social justice" is usually the enemy of freedom.

Why? Because even if "all men are created equal", this metaphysical equality does not cash out into practical equality. Many men are better than I am, smarter, more accomplished, more virtuous, more successful, more admirable. And I am better, smarter, more accomplished, virtuous, successful and admirable than many men. If men are left free, thus it has always been and always shall be. It's a kind of, what shall we say..."bio-diversity."

In the drive to make us all practically equal, aka "social justice", the freedom to do better and to be better must be coercively managed by the state and the organs of social control.

Liberalism's purpose is to use state and social force in order to penalize and plunder successful groups (aka Oppressors) for the sake of empowering and enriching unsuccessful groups (aka Victims). Freedom is the last thing it loves.

Within a nation-state like ours --though how long this will last is up for serious doubt-- it is the war of the Have-Nots, real or imaginary, with the Haves. Put this on a global scale and there is no reason why an utterly liberal President like O would not engaged in penalizing and plundering "his own" country for the sake of the Global Victims.

Marxism as a state-enshrined world power may have gone down into dust in the late 20th century, but Marxism lives on, the lastest form of an old old heresy, which Orwell's "Animal Farm" skewered so frighteningly: utopianism.

And utopia, for you etymological types, is created from the Greek word for... "no place."

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*Try an experiment. In a room full of liberals, criticize America or Americans. Parochial, unilingual, uninformed, overweight, superstituously religious, racist, etc. Wait for someone to counter you and stand up for the US. Call me when they do.

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Men and women are not equal

An episode of NCIS last night crystallized something I have been aware of for quite a while. In contemporary media culture, from sitcoms to commercials, it is perfectly ok and even virtuous for men to be scorned and it is perfectly ok for women to be held up both as superior to men and at the same time as perpetual victims who not only can be excused for bad behavior but cheerfully lauded for it.

Long sentence.

The Young Hot Guy in the series (as opposed to Old Hot Guy Mark Harmon) is bantering with his Young Competent Woman workmate and we find out that one of his former dates, when she discovered that she was not his only date, --they had no exclusivity arrangment---broke into his apartment and spread dog shit in his clothes closet. He relates this with a weary bemusement; Young Competent Woman laughs and says he got off easy, that she would have shot him.

And we move on to the next scene.

Imagine the scene in reverse...

That's right, you can't.

As they always have, women are allowed to pour drinks on men and slap them and humiliate them and enact all manner of crap --here, literally-- on them and they must be excused? Because they are the Weaker Sex.

But in the PC Wonderland in which we live, they get to retain all the benefits of being the Weaker Sex and we still have to make believe that they are better than their Male Oppressors at everything. The Sci-Fi channel especially creates reams of awful films, really awful films, where an angry but super competent Bitch insults all the men around her and no one complains.

Similar indulgence is offered to POC (people of color) characters on TV, who can complain openly about "your bony white ass" or "white boy" this or that, and we are supposed to say, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

What is astonishing is that I assume that the media are still controlled, as they have been for always, by males, and white males.

Wassup wit dat?

Does this make me a racist?

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Palin by comparison

I like this side of her. And the part after minute 2. :)

McCain

I am not serene about the future of the Republic. But one of the things that has always struck me as fundamentally healthy is the kind of public ribbing and humor that lots of non-governmental events have built into the process. In monarchies, court jesters get to make fun of the king; in our system, the rulers have to make fun of themselves.

Pretty good stuff, in two parts.






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Bezerkely

The moralizing narcissistic exhibitionists of the neighboring People's Republic, Berkeley, have erected a statue to honor their protests.

One irony --though not a surprise to anyone with a sense of the Jungian enantiodromnia-- is that the town which gave birth to the Free Speech movement is now utterly in the grip of PC.

Just on an aesthetic level, it looks like something out of a Clive Barker film.

Three Jews walk into a bar in Stockholm

and two and half of them vote for Obama.

Funny, cause they're supposed to be smart.


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Cultural diversity vs cultural authenticity

Which word makes you wanna barf more,
"diversity" or "authenticity"?

Racist SF Japanese Americans want to oust
SF Chinese Americans from Tea House for
the sake of "cultural authenticity."

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Loud mouthed priest

Most people I know have some kind of beef with the church, generically. As Lennie Bruce knew, however, there is really only one The Church and that is, of course, the Church of Rome.

My beef with the Roman Church is pretty local these days, with the American Church, namely, its overt complicity with the massive illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America. Part of the love affair liberals have with "little brown people".

I'd like to tell Father to shut up. And if he wants a "good and just immigration law", how about inviting the ten million plus illegals to go home? That'd be a start. And if they got here and have a hard time, it's their own damn fault. Anybody with half a brain knows that if you have to sneak into a country, you shouldn't be there in the first place. Even "little brown people" know that.

For the Mexican government's hypocritical attitude toward illegal aliens from Guatemala in Mexico, btw, check here.

HT to my mentor Virgil.
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"She's OJ"

As my shape-shifting pop-culture mentor Virgil, says.
And at least one other amateur cyberpundit.

A list, which could easily be extended.

Funny how all those intelligent and caring people have
morphed their Bush Derangement Sydrome into
Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Funny how criticizing Hillary was sexist,
but unloading a
barrage of filthy language and threats against
the Governor of Alaska is not?

Inside many open-minded and compassionate
liberals lives the shadow of a fascist. The kind
of egalitarian world they dream of can only be
engineered by force.

It is typical of liberals to save a special kind
of contempt for individuals in their Designated
Victim Groups who wander off the reservation.
So Sarah Palin is not "really" a woman, just as
Condoleeza Rice was not "authentically" black.
And conservative homos like me are "self-loathing".

And I repeat, again, no such kind of rage has
been shown in response to the Muslim thugs
of 9.11 and their kin,
who infest Islam's bloody borders and to their
silent or even outspoken supporters in the
West. Nothing.




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Conquering Peoples Day 2008

Columbus Day used to be a celebration of the founding of our* civilization in the Western Hemisphere. Now it's shadowed by the suicidal narrative of pomo liberalism. Things like "Indigenous Peoples' Day", etc. and becomes an occasion for victimist resentment of "500 years of genocide" and what I call "White Lent"....the long cultural season of Caucasians repenting for their success, in this case over the earlier inhabitants of the continents.

Bullshit.

Happy Columbus Day.

It was customary to speak of the Europeans who came here as "settlers". Well, that's true. But it's only partly true. They were also invaders and conquerers, who often behaved just like every other groups of invaders and conquerers on the planet. But now, in these enlightened times, we know that invading and conquering is something that you should be sent to the principal's office for.

Well, if "they" hadn't done their regular human thing of invading and conquering, I would not be here. And since I am happy to be here, I am glad that they invaded and conquered. Willing the end, I must will the means.

But, you may ask, incredulous, surely you don't approve of everything they did?

Wrong question! Pointless moralistic masturbation. When was the last time any of us approved of everything anybody did? More bullshit.

But what about the Native Americans? How do you think they feel today?

Don't know. You'd have to take a survey. It's not my concern.

But I do remember them on Columbus Day. They are a warning to me, and to us. Leaving aside things they could do nothing about --their defenselessness against European microbes, the massive technological superiority of the Europeans and their eventual overwhelming numbers-- they did not, as a group, mount a successful defense of their land. They did not see the danger fast enough, did not change their traditional ways enough and so remained --like many of us now--in denial, divided against each other, stuck in the past and in habit...until it was too late. In the end, they could not have held out, but they might have made a tougher enemy and slowed their destruction. They are what we will become in the face of Jihad and Reconquista unless enough of us wake up.

Despite the massive evidence of our species' history, our liberal schoolmarms now want us to act now as if conquest, submission and genocide are some kind of inexplicable deviation from the orderly course of peaceful civilized life beyond all that nasty tribalism and nationalism...when in fact they are the bread and butter of the human story.

In my occasional forays into the history of the conquest period, I am struck by two things that I am not supposed to notice. Many of the Indian tribes were as ruthless as any other group of humans. Noble savages not. And secondly, their longstanding rivalries and hatreds of one another often seemed more palpable to them than the threat posed by the whites. As with so many groups who are brought down, they were often far more interested in hating their "fellow Indians" --a concept that would have made no sense to them, I suspect-- than in dealing with the destruction at their door. Like so many of us.

I have been talking about the Europeans as "they". Just a habit, I guess, given my current feelings about them. But even if my genetic Irish and Scandinavian ancestors didn't get here til 1848 and after, who I am now, an American, makes the invaders and conquerers and settlers "us", not "they". They are my cultural and spiritual forebears. I am their son now.

A friend just back from a trip to China noticed how the guides softpedaled, ignored or downplayed certain parts of Chinese history in their presentations. She noticed that they seemed uncomfortable claiming parts of their own cultural story and was led to wonder how other groups, like ourselves, do a similar kind of editing. In the PomoPC version of American history, it begins from day one with a call to guilt and shame.

How can people who structure their national or civilizational identity around such a narrative be expected to endure?

As insightful ShrinkWrapped notes, to become infatuated by "idealizing the ideal" is a dead end. We are not angels. We are men. On planet Earth. Ahimsa is only for monks. And deracinated Boomer narcissists.

If I were not to mark Columbus Day with gratitude, I would be saying, in effect, that I regret my own existence. And too too many of my countrymen (and women), infected with the virus of multicultural victimism, feel exactly that way. I don't.

Happy Columbus Day!

*Multiculturalism makes it impossible to speak of "our" civilization. Diversity does not make "us" strong; it erases "us".

(An edit of my 2007 post).

Right on

Bill Whittle makes clear that health care is not a right.
But if it becomes a right, then we become serfs...or worse.

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Britain the UnBalled, continued

Too typical.

Boy, when these folks have a cultural nervous breakdown,
it ain't pretty.

And it gets better.

And America is not immune.

HT to Conservative Grapevine

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America the Beautiful

Given my basic political attitudes, there is no way I could vote for Barry Hussein O. Or any Democrat presidential candidate.

The Democrats are the party of multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, internationalism, pacifism, secularism and environmentalism. Not my peeps.

I would have even preferred Hillary Clinton, which tells you how little I think of BHO. Why? There are several reasons, but this article by Roger Kimball outlines one of them. HT to Right Side of the Rainbow.


Kimball writes:

“Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America.”

That hatred, in more or less muted form, at the center of Obama’s appeal among leftists and Europeans. In their eyes, America is fundamentally an illegitimate enterprise in desperate need of redemption. Obama–the Harvard education, metrosexual, left-wing sophisticate–is just the chap to perform the exorcism. America as it is is deeply flawed; Obama will recast the country according to a vision acceptable to socialists in Europe and America.

The contrast between Obama, on the one side, and McCain and Palin on the other, could hardly be starker. One loves America for what it might be when suitably purged of greed, racism, inequality, sexism, indifference to the environment, etc., etc. The other loves America for what it is: in Abraham Lincoln’s words: the last best hope of mankind.

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The right to be a queen

No, I mean a real queen. Some Labour MP in the UK, a former Catholic priest, is pressing to change the British constitution so that Catholics may reign and women may be in line to reign by birth order, equally with males. He maintains that the current arrangement "clearly violates human rights".

The right to be the King of England?

Bullshit. "Human rights" has come to mean "I can have whatever I want".

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All cultures are beautiful

I am pleased to see that there are some places where the Divine Feminine is honored and God is not seen merely as unitary and male, much less an Old White Male, with a Son and all. Read the whole thing and rejoice at the wonders of this difference from grim Western patriarchy, where women can't even be ordained priests, for God's sake, much less have their own temples.

Of course, you'll have to check some of your narrow American prejudices at the door in order to grok the glory. For example:

Ignore that she is from a caste, in a system where people are locked into a particular social and economic role and status by birth, and with divine mandate and approval. If that reminds you of Jim Crow or apartheid, you obviously are not understanding.

Ignore that she must be physically perfect. If that reminds you of body fascism, again you are imposing your narrow views on another culture.

Ignore that she will be removed from her family and live alone and separate from age 3 until she hits puberty, with occasional jaunts for festivals and the pleasure of people kowtowing in front of her. Ignore that part of her ascent to deity included being left alone in a dark room all night with the severed heads of animals. This is a privilege, not child abuse.

Ignore that once she is pubescent she ceases to be a goddess and is sent back where she came from, a place she has not lived since she was little more than an infant. If this smells of sex negativity or of fear of female sexuality or some notion that menstrual blood can drive away even divinity by its foulness, consult your multicultural guru and get over your rank misinterpretation of this soulful culture and its ancient and colorful woman-affirming ways.
After all, if people worship the Divine Feminine, isn't peace and equity a natural outcome?

Ignore that in this beautiful culture, not cut off from its roots by dead Enlightenment rationalism or phallic nature-raping science, marrying a former goddess is believed to bring on an early death and so she will very likely remain unmarried in a culture where unmarried women are outcasts without identity or value. If you find this saddening on several levels or refer to the ancestral beliefs of a non-white Third World culture as "superstition", you are a Eurocentric racist.

I bet you aren't even going to vote for Barack (He Whose Middle Name Must Not Be Named) Obama.

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An O by any other name

Mr. Biden is upset that The Other Side refers to Barry Hussein O as "Barack Hussein Obama."

Isn't that his friggin' name?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
George W Bush
William Jefferson Clinton
John Fitzgerald Kennedy


Mr. Biden, with his usual masterful grasp of the language,
apparently wishing to complain that the middle name
functioned as some kind of "epithet", said that it was
some kind of "epitaph".

If only.

Next we'll be required to spell The Savior's last name
as O'Bama, lest it be suspected that his father
was a Muslim African.

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Money and psyche

I am no expert on economics. So no opinions from me on what is happening now, or why. But this segment from a piece on the psychological elements in the process struck me funny:

Optimistic bias: People tend to be overconfident about their own abilities and the outcome of their plans. Something like 90% of people think that they are above average drivers less likely to get into an accident than the average joe. This is so pervasive that there is actually a scientific name for the few people who accurately assess their own future, their abilities, and what other people think of them: clinically depressed.

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Res catholica

Although I have not practiced for a long time, Catholicism has had a huge influence on me. I still have opinions, if not standing.

It appears that the special liturgies written for children are on the way out. Good riddance. These were Dick and Jane level versions of the adult books, which were themselves translated by the authors, it seemed, of Catholicism For Dummies.


I used to hate Children's Masses, with balloons and silly songs and worse. The adults would stand around and gape at how cute it all was. Reduced the priest to the role of pre-school teacher, further castrating him. And reducing the oldest continuing ritual in Western culture to the degraded level of Romper Room. Again, good riddance.

Well, she can laugh at herself

A Palin drome.

And the remark she makes about Barry Hussein O not seeing America "as we do" earned her the charge of "racism" I blogged on yesterday. But she's absolutely right. BHO's removal of his American flag pin...imagine a friggin candidate for the Presidency...that says volumes.

When Obama Mama Michelle, educated at Ivy League schools, told us that in her recent mid-forties she was proud of her country for the first time in her life (because her half-black
husband is running for the highest office), she was telling the truth.
To these people, "America" is just an unrealized canvas for their liberal dreams. The real place, the actual land and people of the last 300 years, that's all a tragic mistake.

Past twilight

Roman Catholic religious orders of women have hemorrhaged members for several decades since the mid-sixties and new recruits are rarer and rarer. These orders are dying. I know a Sister who, at 51, is the fourth youngest woman in her order. While some new and very traditional orders are doing well, the mainstream ones, like the mainstream Protestant churches, are dying.

I have only looked at a few of the websites of the orders of Sisters. A good example is this one, for the federation of the Sisters of St Joseph. How to put it? These hardly seem like Catholic nuns. Rather, they are liberal feminists.

They are run by "presidents" and "leadership teams" and take "corporate stances". They have banded together in "exciting new" mergers, which indicates their declining numbers and aging membership. Their spirituality is shaped by eco-feminism and the leftwing narrative; all the prayers on their sites were nondenominational and neither Christ nor the Trinity were present in them. And their work is determined by the "justice and peace" and "social justice" agendas of the left. The Catholic clergy and orders are pretty well all married to this socialist and pacifist (and usually highly anti-American) Sixties program. I saw long lists of "systemic evils", war, climate change, immigration, the typical concerns of the secular left. I did not see any concern about abortion, for example.

They strike me as groups of do-gooder elderly lefty spinsters; that is what they look like.


Are they Catholic anymore, in any meaningful sense? What these sites suggest is a mass migration out of anything like Catholicism into a feminist religious liberalism. My guess is that most of them would be far more comfortable with their local Unitarians than with their local Bishop.

A Catholic order that is no longer Catholic is a dead end.
They will die out; another casualty of the Boomers.

Race in the race

"Racism", one of the least useful words in English.
Less useful than "sin" or "self-esteem."

One of the very tedious aspects of an Obama
presidency would be the accusations of racism
that would go with any kind of criticism of The
Messiah.

Especially when Caucasoids use it on one another
to prove their virtue. Pathetic. And the Bookworm
does her usual fine job of analysis.

HT to Michelle Malkin.

PS Update on Monday morning: the heads-up-their-butts
Berkeley treesitters were racists! (Well, they are white, so....).
Welcome to Orwellville.

And more, HT to American Thinker.

Biden my time, cont.

Ace reporter Michael Totten (HT to Real Clear Politics), on Mr Foreign Policy Elder Statesman and the Middle East, namely, Hezbollah. Gaffe-a-day. If Gov. Newcomer Palin did this, it would be all over page one, as was her Katy Couric plotz. Gosh, when I listen to this guy, even I don't like Old White Men.

Crossing 8th Avenue and 21st St yesterday aft and accosted by some idiotchild grinning Obama stumper, it dawned on me that Barack Obama might be president of the republic. I think the blood drained out of my head for a minute. Surreal. Jimmy Carter with teeth and a messiah complex.

I will vote for McCain-Palin, but without enthusiasm. Yet the alternative...I may pay a lot more attention to cuisine and sex and way less to politics.

My brother, a great Europhile, (voting for the above blood-drainer) has apparently been listening to my rants (preceded by a warning, contained to no more than 60 seconds, without any personal attacks and requiring no response pro or con) about the problems of Europe, especially its suicidal demographic and gutless response to the situation that its greedy and arrogantly self-destructive immigration policies have caused.

He was talking to a European colleague he greatly respects and asked him about it. The guy said I was dead on, that Europe was on the way out. And later, during dinner, bro opined that feminism was part of the problem's origin. To my amazement, my sis in law (a smart liberated and wonderful woman) agreed.

I just continued to eat my mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic and greens. Yummmmm.