Obama's First Foreign Policy Failure

Lots of folks have noticed the President's decision to stand with OOOgo & Fidel against the Hondurans, who chose in the past few days to send their usurper president packing. Former President Zelaya tried to alter the Honduran constitution to become President For Life. The Honduran constitution can only be altered by people's referendum, but Zelaya ignored that and illegally called for a referendum himself. The Honduran Supreme Court and the people and institutions of Honduras Just Said No to that and invited their dictator-wanna-be to step down.

President Obama's calling it an illegal coup.

It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections.

In the sense that the military removed the president from office, I suppose it is technically a coup, but I don't know about illegal. Zelaya was acting to become president for life. The military acted under orders from the Supreme Court and the Honduran legislature; it removed Zelaya from office, but then ceded power to an interim president of Zelaya's own party, duly appointed by the Honduran Congress after it formally removed Zelaya from office. What can a nation do with a tyrant but overthrow him? --and Honduras appears to have done that constitutionally.

I've never been as ashamed to be American as I have been since January, but let that pass for the present. At first I assumed Obama, stung by criticism of his handling of the Iranian uprising, was ignorantly glomming onto a chance to stand against tyranny elsewhere. Alas, no, he knew what he was doing --his administration has been actively trying to prevent this exact outcome for weeks. I haven't seen anyone focus on this. According to the WSJ:

the Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington's ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president's office, the Honduran parliament and the military. The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. "The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message," said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed.

So US non-meddling in other people's affairs apparently includes working to keep tin-pot Friends of Fidel in power and returning them there if they're tossed out. The kind of thing that really does get us hated in the 2nd world. But I digress.

Isn't this a massive humiliation for the administration and for the US generally? The Great Persuader's administration can't even get Honduras to return our calls?

You Can't Handle The Science

The Obama adminstration separates "Science" from politics. And facts.

Standing By Persia

Curtsy to American Digest for this.

The creators write:

On June 24, Iranian Superstar Andy Madadian went into an LA recording studio with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and American record producers Don Was and John Shanks to record a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran. This version of the old Ben E. King classic is NOT FOR SALE. It was not meant to be on the Billboard charts or even manufactured as a CD. It's intended to be downloaded and shared by the Iranian people to give voice to the sentiment that all people of the world stand together. The handwritten Farsi sign in the video translates to 'We Are One." If you know someone in Iran - or someone who knows someone in Iran - please share this link.

Cap 'N' Trade, The Musical

Laughter Is Patriotic

It's an odd fact of contemporary life that at one and the same time we can observe the most appalling decline of the basic courtesies that make life civilized, yet there is the most bizarre courtesy extended the world's stupidest ideas. A hearty "Amen" to the conclusion of this piece in the American Thinker.

we've all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down.

Here's my resolution for July Fourth: From now on I'm going to call idiocy idiotic. Not nastily, but as clearly as I can. It is high time for normal, intelligent common sense to become acceptable again. I'm happy to have a respectful argument with anyone who disagrees with me. But I'm going to start saying the magic words:

That's really dumb! That's really ignorant! You haven't thought about that much, have you? Have you ever considered another side of that batty idea?

I promise to be nice.

But honest.

Pass the word.

I think it's important to do more than call things batty; I think it's necessary to laugh out loud. I know I've quoted Tony Snow before when he said of Bill Clinton in 1992,

When you laugh at the student government president, you undo him.

That's the tack I tried to take --and tried, unsuccessfully, to get more Catholic reviewers to take-- on, e.g. The Da Vinci Code. Nothing would have undone that book's popularity more than the response of hearty laughter it deserved. But no, we always have to be up in arms and offended. I understand the impulse to defend and correct lest the little people be fooled, but so much of our culture rests on the phenomenon of the emperor's new clothes, we'd often do more for the "little people" by showing them it's all right to laugh at stupid ideas.

We could restore this nation to health if some reporter would just guffaw --as the Chinese students did at Tim Geithner-- in response to the next obvious falsehood issuing from any politician's mouth. The political and academic classes can bear any amount of reasoned argument demolishing their positions and any amount of hatred, which they wear as a badge of honor. But they can't bear not to be taken seriously. Laughter is one of our strongest weapons, would we only employ it. Not Jon Stewart-style sneering, and not the black humor we use as a coping mechanism when things are going poorly. I'm talking about wholesome and hearty ("You're kidding me, right?") laughter right in front of anyone who looks us in the eye and tells us Obama isn't spending us into oblivion. It's the most cleansing thing we could do.

Curtsy: American Digest's Sidelines
Update: Klavan's got the idea!

Design For Living

We caught Design for Living about a month ago or so, but as it's still playing I can put in my two cents's worth.

Unlike Lear (see post below), every actor's performance in this show is well-observed and the text milked for all it's worth. This is because Michael Kahn is directing, and he's a truly marvelous director for actors. Best in the biz as far as I'm concerned.

It's also an example of a show with a witty design concept and fabulous costumes where these elements are at the service of the text and action, not distracting from it --and I say that even though the curtain rise at the top of the third act garnered enthusiastic applause just for the set (never seen that happen before).

Nevertheless, my feeling is this play is just dated. It's about a ménage à trois. In the first act the gal is "with" the one fellow but sleeps with the other. The "wronged" lad stalks off so in the second act she's "with" the second fellow (he proposes, but she refuses to marry --it's against her principles), but sleeps with the other. Then she stalks off, so guess who's going to be together in the third act?

Supposedly Noel Coward was afraid to debut the play in London because of the censors, but it was a hit on Broadway in 1932. I don't know what to make of that --why people weren't offended-- but I am guessing that in 1932 the final act was considered farce. When the gal abandons her two paramours at the end of the second act, the two lead actors have a truly hilarious drunk scene, very well-played (which only made me realize that we don't "do" drunk scenes in the arts anymore, anymore than we do smoking). Total drunkenness is the excuse for the two men "getting together," and in the third act they are so over-the-top stereotypically "gay" (think Jack Lemmon in drag in "Some Like It Hot"), I can imagine the play passed with many people for that reason. Just a romp.

The male lovers high it to New York to collect their third, treating her stalwart and conventional husband both rudely and cruelly as they assert their right to separate him from his bride and live unconventionally. I don't get the sense Coward is on the lovers' side, incidentally --the protagonists assert a kind of Nietzschean superiority to conventional morality: "We're Artists, the rules don't apply to us," but he lets us see how ugly and selfish they are and how utterly they betray the less gifted man whose honest labor has made each of their separate careers possible. They're ugly, frivolous, ungrateful people and we know it in the end.

Is that the price of art? Transgression? The curtain comes down without an answer, but in any event, such behavior can't play as farce anymore; selfish loving --and assertion of the right to it-- is too commonplace. Nothing to criticize in the execution, but I didn't enjoy the play --not even in the grudging way you enjoy a show that's well done even if you know it's seditious (like Dead Poet's Society). My three companions agreed; the other couple ducked out of the show early on grounds of tedium. "Ubermenschen" are just so predictable.

Thomas Mulvihill King, SJ

The founder and long-time president of University Faculty for Life, Fr. Thomas King, passed away last week at the age of 80.
He had degrees in Economics, Physics Education and Sacred Theology, wrote a stack of books (mostly about Teilhard de Chardin --he said Chardin's interest in science and his passion fascinated him) and taught Theology at Georgetown for years, but was probably best known to most students (and Catholics in the city with pleasures to pursue on Sunday) as the celebrant of "last chance Mass," 11:15 pm in Dahlgren chapel.
He was also a minor celebrity in our burg. After a series of odd happenings on the set of The Exorcist, he was called in to bless the crew and set. Every so often there'd be an Exorcist revival and he'd turn up in an interview.
He's an interesting fellow, as this interview with him reveals. He kind of shatters my categories --a Teilhard fan who turns some people off for being too hard-line on moral issues? I liked this:

“Sometimes people asked me why I was going to college,” King recalled. “My answer was ‘momentum.’ I was going so fast through grade school and high school, college was just the next step.”

King said that his decision to go to college in Pittsburgh lacked any free choice.

“Momentum is kind of a non-freedom,” King said. That’s why his decision to join the Jesuits is so important to him.

Sophomore year in college, King began to feel the sense that Christ was present in his life. One day, King felt that Jesus invited him to become a priest.

“I said yes, and it seemed so fundamental,” King said, “like it was rising up from my toenails.”

Part of King’s philosophy on life and religion involves freedom. He said he doesn’t believe that people are just part of a complex, moving machine.

“I didn’t have a vocation,” King said about becoming a priest. “I had an invitation. I wanted to come. It was my free choice.”

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.

Unpleasant To Watch Mr. Lear

Stacy Keach is rather wonderful as Lear in the Shakespeare Theatre's re-mounting of a production first done at Chicago's Goodman Theater.

The great danger of Lear for an actor is to overact the part and reduce yourself to just stomping around the stage like a T-Rex all night long. Keach never does that, and excels at finding the humor in Lear --of which there's quite a bit for anyone paying attention to the text. There's much wisdom --or at least wry and apt observance-- in Lear's mad moments (his Fool having died, he becomes his own Fool), and Keach makes the most of them. It's a touching performance and he manages to make you kind of like one of Shakespeare's least sympathetic characters.

Laura Odeh has a really interesting take on Cordelia as well. Cordelia too I usually find hard to like; she may be noble, but there's always the whiff of the self-righteous in her as most actresses play her being horrified at her elder sisters' gross flattery. In this production, the opening scenes take place in the midst of a raucous party, with Lear passing the microphone around to his daughters for their toasts. Odeh plays Cordelia completely straight: enjoying the party, laughing good-naturedly at her sisters' flattery, and delivering her sober answer with innocent confidence that its wisdom and superior depth will be recognized. She is truly astonished by her father's response, and the rest of the actors on the stage indicate through awkward silence that everyone in the room but Lear knows he is abusing Cordelia and making an ass of himself; the scene is keenly observed.

Alas, that is all the good I can report. Director Robert Falls, Lear-like himself, cedes control of the production to the two wicked sisters of set design and "concept" (daughters who might amount to something if a superior authority keeps them in line, but make a mess of things when left to run amok).

The production takes place in the Balkans and the battle scenes are meant to evoke the conflict in Bosnia, complete with an onstage ethnic cleansing and dumping bodies into mass graves. There is much onstage torture in the last act, including an eye-gouging scene so well-played I almost literally vomited (you don't actually see anything). From this I gather we're to conclude War Is Hell and Torture Is Bad, but mostly I found myself thinking that Mr. Falls thinks there's not enough drama in Shakespeare's play, so he took it upon himself to add some. Seemed arrogant to me, not to mention he has noble Kent on the point of committing an unspeakable act until he's restrained by others --totally out of character.

The Balkans concept allows him to place all the scenes of Edgar hiding in the wilderness and Lear's mad dance in the storm at the city dump. Huge bags of trash, bombed out cars and muck strew the landscape. Sigh. The designers are skilled and everything technical is well-observed, but I am just so over city dump scenes in contemporary settings of ancient plays. During the 90s, it seemed like every classical play and opera was staged in black "fascist" costumes. Here in the Aughts, everything's set at the dump. (Gee, Directors, would that be a metaphor, by any chance? You guys take a meeting every decade to decide these things?)

Then the thunder and lightning and later the loud bombings and spluttering helicopters offstage are so loud many lines are lost. The two bad sisters are just awful. Playing up 21st century slutty, they're so busy swaggering about the room they don't seem to understand what their lines actually mean and in some instances actually place the emphasis on the wrong word in the sentence --I'm not talking difference of interpretation, I'm talking not fully understanding the implication of what's being said. It's the kind of mistake directors who care about acting and texts can channel an actor away from --but directors who are only looking at the scenery overlook.

I guess I should warn potential viewers there is nudity, too, although it's nothing prurient and it takes place in the dark and shadowy storm and is totally called for by the script. Edgar runs around nekkid and Lear strips down in imitation. In the very last scene, Lear carries out a naked Cordelia. Her modesty is somewhat preserved by artfully placed cords, but her body bears the marks of an obviously brutal beating and rape. As I say, I think Director Robert Falls let his updating run away with the actual play.

Thing That Makes Me Feel Oldest Today

Until recently, ninme had never heard of AC/DC's Back in Black.

I've never listened to an AC/DC "song" all the way through, but even growing up in a rock-free household and attending an evangelical grammar school where warnings against the satanic influence of heavy metal were as prevalent as warnings against impure thoughts in 1950s Catholic schools, it was impossible not to be aware of Back in Black. Everyone still wears the t-shirt.

Not in Seattle, apparently.

Sigh. Gonna go rub oil of wintergreen into my rheumatic limbs now.

Farewell To Farrah

I was not going to touch the celebrity passings this week, except that Peter Schramm found a really lovely appreciation of Farrah Fawcett. Speaking of what "the poster" meant to him as a boy in India and to others behind the Iron Curtain and in other semi-repressive societies he writes:

She had an utterly American sense of openness and fun, with a smile that suggested that life was fundamentally good and full of promise, that anything could happen (and that a few really fun things certainly would). Imagine the impact of her image, and subliminal message, in the towns and cities of sterile societies where the pursuit of happiness was not part of political scripture.

Of her death being overshadowed by the passing of the man the author calls our "most squalid icon":

The contrast between Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson could not be clearer. He was a grotesque, and in every way. He's an American icon in spite of his fondness for small boys, his skin-whitening and his general lunacy. So where does that leave us? Ululating for a Martian, and brushing aside the girl next door.

Or, put another way, celebrating our own decline.

I don't know that Fawcett's life beyond the poster is exactly a "poster" for the girl next door, but I take his point. She was Catholic and as Catholics tend to even after years of rebellion, she came home.

The Emperor Has No Bill

Wouldn't you say it's a gross violation of your oath of office to pass a law for which there is no text? That's what cap'n'trade is. Everyone who voted for that bill --for or against!-- should be impeached. Not a single person has ever read it, because no text existed at the time of the vote.

It was an imaginary bill and the first company fined under its provisions will have ample reason to challenge it in the SCOTUS on grounds of improper and illegal procedure. (Not that it's law anyway --it still has to pass the Senate, which I'm guessing it won't considering how close the vote was in the House).

It's the principle or lack thereof that gets me. The government grabs a huge sector of our economy --with major effects on the entire world-- and we do this lightly, without a clue what we're actually doing.

The Republicans, with equally imaginary leadership, rather than lodging impotent protests, ought to have instructed their members to walk off the floor on the ground that there was no bill to vote on.

We have reached the point where we have no Constitution, people. Everyone on all sides is just making stuff up. We may as well just submit to a mullah and be done with it.

How's That New Partnership With Europe Going?

Ask Der Spiegel. Writing on Angie Merkel's upcoming visit here, they note:

It isn’t even clear that the United States still perceives Germany and Europe as important partners. The emphasis is shifting toward China, and Merkel will find herself having to campaign on behalf of Germany — something which makes it difficult for her to voice criticism of the US.

A clash of cultures is raging between Berlin and the United States on the issue of financial policy. The administration in Washington is combating the financial crisis by taking on more and more new debt…[T]he White House believes its policy of printing money is necessary, not risky.

…Obama’s visits to Dresden and Buchenwald also ruffled some feathers in Germany. The US president’s advance team, which had been sent to help prepare for the trip, made a negative impression on the Germans through their coarse language and overbearing behavior. German officials were shouted at, treated like schoolchildren and told to wait their turns.

“We have never experienced such a hardline approach during any visit,” says an official from Germany’s Foreign Ministry.

The also observe this cultural difference:

The Americans remember the 1929 global economic crisis with horror. For them, there is nothing worse than a shrinking economy, which they see as the epitome of hunger, hardship and ruin. The Germans, on the other hand, think of 1923, when hyperinflation destroyed assets and plunged many into poverty.

An Accidental Soprano

The Anchoress' sharp eye caught this lovely obituary for Betty Allen, part of the initial "class" of great black sopranos, who passed away Monday. I like her description of her initial exposure to Opera during her childhood outside of Youngstown.

“The families on my street were mostly Sicilian and Greek,” Ms. Allen told The Times in 1999. “On Saturday, walking down the street, you could hear the Met broadcasts coming from the windows of everybody’s house. No one told them that opera and the arts were not for them, not for poor people, just for rich snobs.”

After her mother died when she was 12, her father fell into drink and she made her own way in the world from that point on. Since she excelled in Latin & German in high school, she went to college intending to become a translator, but got discovered instead. Her repertoire was largely modern (she was a favorite of Bernstein), which is probably the real reason she's not so well known (we can all pretend, but modern composition just isn't as well-liked as Verdi, Puccini and Mozart, Oh my).

If Ms. Allen was not as well known as other singers of her era, like Ms. Price, Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry, it did not seem to bother her in the slightest.

“I’m not a household name,” she told The Times in the 1973 interview. “I don’t stay awake nights plotting and planning. Maybe I don’t have that extra drive and ambition and energy that makes for a blazing career. I need a home, and I need to be looked after. I may look to be a very self-sufficient female. I act very brazen and hard and matter-of-fact and seem as though I could cope with anything. Well, I can’t. I’m as soft as putty underneath.”

Very nice story.

Above The Fray

"Splitting the Difference" from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Negotiating With Iranian Terrorists

In response to my post below about Obama's making the second best choice on Iraq, a friend wrote in saying she sort of agreed but found his tin ear infuriating. She noted with approval someone's comparison of the President's toneless reaction to the martyrdom of Neda, for example, with Michael Dukakis' dispassionate discussion of his wife's hypothetical rape. I agree with that utterly.

Now comes another wrinkle: Obama's been negotiating with Iranian terrorists. Read the story, but as Andrew McCarthy puts it, "prepare to be infuriated."

The Obama administration has not only released Laith Qazali, it has been in negotiations to release his brother, Qais Qazali, as well. The negotiations and release were carried out in flagrant disregard of the longstanding policy against exchanging prisoners for the release of hostages. Undermining that policy endangers all American troops and civilian personnel — as well as the troops and civilian personnel of our allies — by encouraging terrorists to kidnap them to use as bargaining chips.

This is very bad.

Roe v. Wade Versus Obamacare

Here's an interesting wrinkle.

It is, of course, difficult to imagine choices more "central to personal dignity and autonomy" than measures to be taken for the prevention and treatment of disease -- measures that may be essential to preserve or extend life itself. Indeed, when the overwhelming moral issues that surround the abortion question are stripped away, what is left is a medical procedure determined to be "necessary" by an expectant mother and her physician.

If the government cannot proscribe -- or even "unduly burden," to use another of the Supreme Court's analytical frameworks -- access to abortion, how can it proscribe access to other medical procedures, including transplants, corrective or restorative surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, or a myriad of other health services that individuals may need or desire?

Concurring Only In Part

Andrew McCarthy deconstructs Obama on Iran:

Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.

It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama's instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah's "unjust" repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable "assault," though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover. But expect him to remain restrained and to continue grossly understating the Iranian regime's deadly response. That will change only if, unexpectedly, it appears that the freedom-fighters may win, at which point he'll scoot over to the right side of history and take all conceivable credit.

Well, yes, but.... Mr. W & I were talking about this at dinner and agreeing that in the case of Iran any President has three choices.

• Speak strongly and be prepared to take real action
• Speak strongly yet do nothing
• Keep as quiet as you can.
  

Of the three, Obama has chosen the second best course, which is option three. The worst thing he could do is take the UN option --yak a lot and do nothing at all. I'm for standing on the side of freedom and against the mullahs, but that only makes sense if you intend to back your words with action. The worst and most immoral thing the President could do is make pretty speeches about freedom, stir people into a frenzy, and then not back them up (Hungarian uprising, anyone? Iraq, 1993?) So, while I'm not happy, given who's in the Oval Office, I'm grateful the President's not doing much worse and think much Conservative criticism of him is... while not exactly wrong, at least unrealistic.

When Your Next Door Neighbor Is Free Iraq

Interesting interview with Daniel Pipes about Abombnjihad v. Moussavi. I note this:

I am taken aback by the nearly complete absence of Islam in the discussion. One hears about democracy, freedom, and justice, all of which do play a role, but the key issue is the Iranian population’s repudiation of the Islamist ideology that has dominated its lives for the past 30 years. Should the regime in Tehran be shaken by current challenges, this will likely have profound implications for the global career of radical Islam.

That's what has struck me, too. I'm also thinking about the Bush Doctrine a lot these days. How much of what we're seeing in Iran is a direct result of having Free Iraq right next door?

Why Can't I Read Wheat & Weeds?

Update: Please do me a favor? If I'm linked in your sidebar, please update the address to www.wheatandweeds.com. While most browsers redirect traffic from the old .blogspot address, readers using Safari will get just an error message (hence the rumors of my blog-death). And if you are one of my blog-friends who links to me frequently, would you mind letting your readers know about the address change? Thanks!

I think the problem discussed below is solved. Let me know via email if you're still having troubles the next few days.

Several readers have written me to ask if I've quit blogging or died. Neither! Since September when I went back to work I've been blogging less when projects intervene, and that will continue unless I get sacked.

But the problems you've been having getting the site to load are attributable to Haloscan, my comment manager. Another company bought them out and site changes and upgrades can affect blogs like mine that use the blogger platform but have their own domain and design. They're working on it. (Incidentally, I don't know what other browsers are doing, but in Firefox you can always see the top post of the week, even when the rest of the site won't load.)

First, point your browser at the updated address: www.wheatandweeds.com (rather than the old .blogspot address).

Then, for the time being I can only ask your patience --the site works most of the time, so just because you can't read it in the morning doesn't mean you won't be able to read the rest of the day. If worse comes to worst, I can always ditch Haloscan and return to Blogger comments or find another platform altogether, but I resist those solutions for the time being.

Three Great Love Affairs

According to George Will.

• Heloise & Abelard
• Romeo & Juliet
• The American Media & this president
  

Happy Father's Day

Hope it was a good one. Sr. Mary Martha has a nice post on the subject.

Council On Bioethics Abolished

Peter Lawler reports the President has abolished the President's Council on Bioethics. He was informed by insulting letter with only one day's notice.

Prof. K comments:

Who needs a Council on Bioethics when you have--as the President pointed out some months ago--the powerful combination of scientific expertise and public opinion respectful of it?

What's Farsi For ACORN?

"Persian Chapter" from The Ryskind Sketchbook

(It's ميوهء تيرهء درختان‌ بلوط)

Cappin' Trade

IBD editorial on Cap-n-trade based on Heritage Foundation analysis. The bill would also cause an additional 1.1 million job losses each year, raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation, provoke a 74% hike in inflation-adjusted gasoline prices, and add $1,500 to the average family's annual energy bill, says Heritage.

The Congressional Budget Office says the poorest one-fifth of families could see annual energy costs rise $700 — while high-income families could see costs rise $2,200. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein estimates that the average person could pay an extra $1,500 per year for energy. And those are just direct energy costs.

Doesn't take into account how much a sack of flour will cost you when the price of its production trebles.

Also troubling:

Companies are desperate to have a "seat at the negotiating table," and thus happy to pay $400-$850 per hour to help cut deals that benefit them, hobble competitors and enact cap-tax-and-trade rules that will make mortgage derivatives markets look like child's play.

I'm for free trade, but that doesn't mean I'm pro big business --more often than not, just as described here the largest companies collude with government to inhibit competition. Corporations in fact are government entities in the sense that the government, for some public good, agrees to limit your liability so that your personal risk is limited and you can afford to be detached in a sense from what your company is actually doing. Adam Smith was against corporations (except in some limited cases) you know, because they limit liability-- which is a way of discouraging responsibility too.

If it were up to me (and this is why I'll never be president) I'd tax corporations heavily and tax partnerships and S-corporations hardly at all to encourage people to be personally invested in their own businesses and to incentivize personal responsibility and real risk-taking. I know the objection would be that would discourage capital investment; I don't think so. We think that because of the way things have always been done, but capital will follow incentives.

I also wouldn't exempt anyone from paying taxes no matter how poor. The amount charged could be token for the impoverished, but every voting citizen would see in his paycheck how much the government takes and weigh the promises of politicians accordingly.

Fly Paper

The President swats flies. I know this because WaPo wrote it up for me and showed me the video.

He ties his shoes better than any President has ever tied his shoes before! He swallows a glass of water with such elegance, such élan! You know what he did this morning? Why, he walked into the room and sat down in a chair! Bush could never sit in a chair like that.

And, Mr. W. reminds me, he puts mustard on his hamburger! We are so blessed.

Fools Will Give You Reasons

Fr. Z. picks apart an NCReporter editorial denouncing the year of the priest. It's too foolish to be worth fisking, really, but I will note that the attack is not ultimately on the Pope, the Church, the Eucharist or the priesthood. It's on Reason itself, by way of an attack on language.

You know the argument: words have meaning. If they don't --if each person gets his own definition of the word Catholic, for example-- then Reason is what is overthrown, not the papacy. Under a set of circumstances in which the meaning of nothing is fixed, there can be no truth, because by the time you get from the major premise to the minor premise, the meaning has changed, so bother with all conclusions and logic itself. You're left with literal crazy talk, of no more significance than infant babble.

If we can't agree on the meaning of words --and Catholicism's basic tenets have been set in stone (some of them literally) for 2000 years-- then no communication is possible. And in that case, as the great Tom Lehrer said, the least you can do is shut up.

Carbon Emitters Need Not Apply

Boston art appraiser refuses to take a global warming denier as a client. Nutty as that is, I defend the guy's right to decide who he'll do business with. But I'll just betcha the guy would disapprove of a Christian printer refusing to do wedding invitations for a same-sex match, considering that a human rights violation.

Clearly I Have Awakened In An Alternate Universe

The Russian Prime Minister is warning the American President not to raise taxes on corporations.

The Chinese are warning us against inflation.

And Spock "follows his heart" in Star Trek.

This Revolution Will Not Be Televised, But Twittered

The Anchoress has a terrific round-up on doings in Iran, including Michael Ledeen's analysis of the situation and the players. The election protests --and the role of twitter in them-- are amazing and their disputed election highlights our president's incredible weakness. (Qaddafi has taken note.)

Sarko stands with the protesters. Gateway Pundit has various videos from the streets if you scroll around.

For a view to the contrary (possibly now overtaken by events), George Friedman thinks Abombnjihad actually won fairly. I don't know what that would mean in a Mullah-controlled state --Ledeen's account suggests Moussavi too was going to have an arranged win, and the Mullahs later renegged on their deal with him. I have nothing to say about that, but Friedman's caution that our view of Iran and "what Iranians think" is wildly distorted is well-taken.

Twilight of Romance

Snark goeth before a fall and I'd no sooner boasted to a neighbor that I had dodged the Twilight bullet because my daughter wasn't interested in it (so no preview obligation) than someone made it this month's book club choice.

Mind you I've only read book one of four, but I find myself able to resist its charms.

I am, however, extremely depressed that anyone should consider it a testament to chastity. It is just gross.

Fully half the story is devoted to the two main characters touching, stroking and kissing each other and describing the electrifying effects these strokes and touches have on one another for preternatural reasons (one of them is a vampire). They may not be touching sexual organs, but the touches are certainly and overtly sexual.

It's a bodice-ripper, folks. Its purpose is to get you all het up with desire. To try to justify that with "nothing happens" is just you being coy.

As for the plot: 100-year-old man uses preternatural powers to seduce and manipulate a young girl, placing her and her entire family in mortal peril. Yeah, that's love.

An apt book cover, though. Our children cry for bread and we give them stones.

A little more as I find I'm not finished being ticked off at this ridiculous novel: true love ennobles and frees. This love enfeebles and enslaves. At the opening, our heroine is competent and self-assured (for a teen), moreso than her parents, in fact. As the story progresses she gradually becomes enfeebled to the point where she literally can't stand on her own two feet.

100-yr-old mind-controlling vampire to teen: if I ever lose you, I'll kill myself.
Teenager: I can change! I want to change to be with you.

And for all that, Stephanie Myers talks at us incessantly: she doesn't show, demonstrate, reveal -- she just tells. There is no action (apart from the electrifying stroking and the vampire training himself to resist draining our girl's particularly tasty blood by kissing her neck incessantly instead. Because the best way to resist temptation is to throw yourself into occasions of it whenever possible). The climax of the story is hidden from us because the heroine passes out and we're all told what happened as she lies passive in a hospital bed.

Do you see why I'm depressed that this somehow touches a chord with anyone? I can understand its appeal to moony teenagers. But grown women? Bleech.

Corpus Christi, Transferred

AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

Stirring Up Apathy

Mark Steyn on health care and more, but just the opening graf is trenchant.

Big government depends, in large part, on going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them.

Protesting Phony Iranian Election

They are said to be chanting, "Death to this liar government."

Plus, street photos from Teheran. But...Abombnjihad won by 70%! Instacurtsy

Warner Sallman Redux

While I was away prayin' the editor of Newsweek said this:

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.

And Sunday he added:

He is the great teacher. He is this guy that stands above everybody...he stands above everybody and says, 'Now, listen. You people have to stop blaming each other unreasonably. You have to get along here and I am going to show you the way.

This is the same fellow who said of Bush:

Well, our job is to bash the President, that's what we do.

Old news, but no matter. I'm really only posting this to give a laugh to certain of my readers, who will be particularly horrified by this photoshop. Which was shamelessly pinched from here.

Lord Czaron

Read this most excellent post. Teasers:

One Czar to rule them all, One Czar to find them
One Czar to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of the Washington where the politicians lie

"It began with the forging of the Great Stimulus. Three billion was given to the Insurance wizards, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the auto manufacturers, great builders and craftsmen of Detroit. And nine, nine billion was gifted to the bankers, who above all else desired power. For within these billions was bound the strength and the will to govern each race.

But they were all of them deceived for another bill was made. In the land of D.C. in the heat of the Oval Office, the Dark Lord Czaron forged in secret a master bill to control all others....."

Anything You Behead Can & Will Be Used Against You

We're Miranda-izing detainees in Afghanistan now.

In what language, I wonder? And what sense do Miranda rights make on foreign soil anyway? How do American laws apply in Kabul?

Anyway, more to the point:

"When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,'" says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up."

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. "The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people -- 'Take the option. You want a lawyer.'"

Rogers adds: "The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he's building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer -- you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone." One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks.

I heard Dennis Miller say of this policy, "We're no longer just Osama's weak horse, we're now a Shetland pony."

Created Or Saved

See, a real Messiah can do both.

Be that as it may, in response to the impossible-to-measure metric of "jobs not lost" (but created or saved), Creative Minority Report has begun a list of other items President Obama has created or saved in addition to 150,000 theoretical jobs. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Obama has created or saved 150,000 Biden Jokes.
2. Obama has created or saved 150,000 Government programs

Or:

5. Obama has created or saved 150,000 Gun Owners.
6. Obama has created or saved at least 2 rogue state nuclear programs.
7. Obama has created or saved Seven Million nervous Israelis.

More from the comment box: Has created 150,000 gallons of Kool Aid.

I think anybody can play. Go add your own.

First They Came For The Catholics

You recall the State of Connecticut's effort to ban bishops from having legal authority over their parishes?

That blatant effort to violate free exercise of religion might fairly have been written off as the nutty and over-the-top efforts of two extremist members of the state assembly.

How does one then explain the fact that the State thereafter informed Bridgeport's Bishop Lori that the Church was being investigated on ethics charges because as a lobbying group, its members inappropriately staged a rally in defense of their own rights? That's a blatant effort to violate freedom of speech & assembly.

Appropriately, Bishop Lori is filing a civil rights lawsuit. Sic 'em, Excellency. This isn't about Catholicism, this is about an obscene and outright attack on fundamental rights.

Skin Of Our Teeth

"Gatekeeper," from The Ryskind Sketchbook

Etiquette Covers Everything

Just so you know. Curtsy: American Digest.

Gone Fishin'

Well... actually, I've gone prayin'. I'll remember you in front of the Blessed Sacrament and you say a little prayer when you read this for me to be open to the Holy Spirit.

(All you atheists, agnostics and pagans, send a good vibe out into the collective consciousness.)

Thanks. Back next week.