…here ya go, via an Insty link to a pretty dang neat set of cuff links. If that ain’t true internet serendipity, I don’t know what would be. Also, it’s UNEXPECTED!

Abe Greenwald unpacks a shibboleth:

In an article at the Daily Beast about the Cordoba House mosque and Islamic community center, Sam Harris wrote, “It goes without saying that tolerance is a value to which we should all be deeply committed.” Does it? Tolerance is not, in fact, a value at all. If Sue tolerates a kindly bore during a brief conversation is she employing the same moral standard as Tom who tolerates a stoppable violent crime in his presence? Moreover, does this standard qualify as one to which we should all be deeply committed?

By the way, Harris goes on to make some insightful points. But first he has his own faiths to defend—liberalism and atheism—and the above comes from early on in the piece, where he strives to distance himself from “those sincerely awaiting the Rapture, opportunistic Republican politicians, and utter lunatics who yearn to see Sarah Palin become the next president of the United States (note that Palin herself probably falls into several of these categories).” Tolerantly put, no?

That Harris is incapable of practicing in one sentence what he preaches in the preceding one should come as no surprise. Tolerance is not a context-free virtue; it is a simpleton’s word, an artificial political term used to indict those we cannot tolerate.

Sounds a lot like “diversity,” as that word is currently heaved around by those who can’t for one moment, umm, tolerate true diversity, and for many of the same reasons.

Via Maetenloch — whose overnight thread is always so good it’s become one of my daily first-reads — a truly fascinating and well-told story:

There are a few streets in Chicago that are affectionately known to the working class locals as “raper’s row.” These are places one goes to get a used car when one is short on cash, credit, and hope. Places like this are the border towns of the capitalist miracle; where the national character shines most intensely, where regulation is lax, and where everyone seems to either be fleeing to or from something.

In my long education as a capitalist, I once did a term on the raper’s row on North Cicero Avenue, just down the street from the legendary Miracle Motors, whose motto, painted on the wall of the brick building next door, was “If it Runs, It’s a Miracle.”

The place I worked at was more modest in its pretentions. We had a deluxe sized house trailer on a triple wide lot. Our motto was “Se Habla Espanol,” although if any Spanish speaker ever worked there, I never met them.

I hired on for what I thought at the time was going to be a bookkeeper job; taking inventories, keeping the ledger, and filling out the mountains of paperwork. The staff was more or less typical for that street: a semi-reformed bar-brawling alcoholic called Fast Eddie, who ran the place; a “deal closer” named George with a whiskey blown James Coburn voice who had once been a very big name in the new-car trade but who had since slid all the way down the mountain to Cicero Avenue on an avalanche of white powder; a washed up ex-professional wrestler who went by the name of “Zeus”; an old debauched jailbird whom we called “Blackie” after he woke up one morning in his apartment following a night of very hard drinking and discovered that the woman he had picked up and brought back, who he could not otherwise remember, had dyed his hair black with something that wouldn’t come off before she left; a 22-year-old semi-literate street person who acted as our “gopher” and who was allowed to live in one of the junked cars in the back lot and was known as “Ratso”; and the staff of our body shop one block over on Belmont–three guys known to all as the Chinese Chung Brothers, even though they weren’t Chinese, weren’t brothers, and weren’t really named Chung.

Fine writing, and a story that grabs early and keeps you hooked. This guy ought to write a novel based on this. It’d make a good screenplay, too, at least for the kind of guy who thoroughly enjoyed Used Cars — which would be me. I liked that one so much I still have it damned near memorized.

David Thompson on the unreasonableness of liberal misconceptions of “reasonable” force:

The problem, of course, is what constitutes reasonable force and who gets to decide. If you’re going to judge how others react in such a situation, and judge what is “reasonable,” you should first indulge in some pretty vivid empathy. Imagine you and your partner wake abruptly in the middle of the night. You hear a stranger moving about in the hallway outside your bedroom. Your newborn child is sleeping quietly, for once, in the room across the hall. There’s now an intruder between you and your child and his motives are unclear but certainly not benign. He’s obviously used force to break into your home at a time when you’re most vulnerable. It’s an act of premeditated violation and he may well use force again. Has he made these efforts in order to steal your property or to do you mortal harm? And, if interrupted, will the former involve the latter? What if your child wakes and starts crying?

Is it “reasonable” to assume that the intruder is merely a thief who doesn’t mind terrorising those whose homes he violates and whose property he steals, but isn’t prepared to do actual violence to his victims, even when cornered? And on what is that assumption based? Given the situation, and the fact your heart is pounding, do you really have the time and means to fathom the intruder’s motives and take them into account before acting – and acting without “excess”? Or do you use whatever force possible to disable the intruder before he can even think about harming you or your child? And what if the intruder is bigger and stronger than you? What if he’s armed with a knife or a gun? Are you going to wait to find out, dutifully bearing in mind the likelihood of subsequent legal disputation?

Wouldn’t it be wise to disable him as quickly as possible, by whatever means, rather than risk being at his mercy, along with the rest of your family?

Ahh, but wisdom is no part of the invariably emotion-based, kneejerk liberal attitude towards…well, anything, really. And risk — extreme risk, of great bodily harm or violent, painful death — damned well ought to be part of any housebreaker’s job description. As Thompson says, “Don’t we want a world in which it’s the bad guys that are scared, and scared for very good reasons?”

Most of us most certainly do. But most of us aren’t liberals, for whom those who make the fraught decision to invade someone else’s home — a crime of violence in and of itself — to steal the property for which they’ve worked and strived are just “victims” themselves. So we all end up in a world very different from the one Thompson describes, wherein predators are immune to proper, immediate sanction by those upon whom they prey, and the attacked wind up in jail for defending themselves, their families, and their property.

Amazon asks it, and Glenn uncharacteristically answers with a resounding “No”: “Do You Need A $400 Ice Cream Machine?” In a truly free country, with a truly free-market economy, the correct questions would be: Do you want one? Can you get one? And is it anyone else’s damned business if you do? The correct answer to that last one would be pretty much self-evident, I think.

On the other hand, it’s been a long, long time since we lived in one of those, so maybe the question and Glenn’s answer are close enough to correct after all.

A truly remarkable man, Hitchens.

The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited. The country has a language of its own—a lingua franca that manages to be both dull and difficult and that contains names like ondansetron, for anti-nausea medication—as well as some unsettling gestures that require a bit of getting used to. For example, an official met for the first time may abruptly sink his fingers into your neck. That’s how I discovered that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, and that one of these deformed beauties—located on my right clavicle, or collarbone—was big enough to be seen and felt. It’s not at all good when your cancer is “palpable” from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in. Many needles were sunk into my clavicle area—“Tissue is the issue” being a hot slogan in the local Tumorville tongue—and I was told the biopsy results might take a week.

Working back from the cancer-ridden squamous cells that these first results disclosed, it took rather longer than that to discover the disagreeable truth. The word “metastasized” was the one in the report that first caught my eye, and ear. The alien had colonized a bit of my lung as well as quite a bit of my lymph node. And its original base of operations was located—had been located for quite some time—in my esophagus. My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

He writes of his current situation like he always has everything else: with wit, aplomb, honesty, and courage. I may not agree with him on every last little thing, but I do admire him greatly just the same. He’s always seemed like he’d be a hell of a fun guy to sit with in some dark pub bending an elbow, and an ear. Nothing but best wishes and crossed fingers for you from here, Chris.

Here’s a little, from Purple Avenger:

Its the story of the 1838-1842 American Exploring Expedition, which set out to chart hundreds of south pacific islands, the Columbia river, San Francisco bay, and search for the rumored existence of land at the bottom of the world.

You probably never heard of the Ex Ex in grade school unless you’re an amateur naval historian or history major – I know I never did, and I went to a supposedly pretty good high school. In fact, American history post Revolution/War of 1812 through pre-Civil War was generally kinda light – i.e. non-existent and probably still is.

Did you know that when we invaded Tarawa during WWII, the only available nautical charts of the area were those produced by the Ex Ex 100 years prior?

Remember the Vincennes incident in the Gulf, Iranian airliner shot down blah, blah? Did you know there was an earlier Vincennes? It was the flagship of the Ex Ex squadron.

The Ex Ex found Antarctica, charted over 1,000 miles of coastline, the specimens and collecting prompted the creation of what later became the Smithsonian and outclassed anything Cook or any of the other European explorers ever did. Did you know the Smithsonian is named not after an American, rather an Englishman named Smithson who donated about a half million bucks (in mid-1800′s dollars) for its creation.

Its a truly amazing story of madness, cruelty, cannibalism, petty revenge, reckless daring, cowardice, heroism, incredible sacrifice, and spectacular accomplishment in spite of shifting ill political winds in Washington, a cast of officers and scientists who came to hate the expedition leader, and a leader who often treated his officers and seamen like crap.

So what’s not to like? And then there’s this simply spellbinding collection of color photos from 1939-42, via Hinderaker. Don’t dare miss these, although you’ll want to block out a little more time than you’d spend on your usual short blog post to go through ‘em all. Much as I love black and white photography, and I do, for some reason color just seems to bring home the human commonality with our past and our antecedents in a way that black and white doesn’t.

Black and white, for all its stark beauty, seems almost to erect a mental barrier between emotion and intellect, making its human subjects near-alien in their strangeness and distance from observable reality. Color makes these people seem more like…well, us. This is really good stuff here, folks, trust me; if you have any interest in history at all, you’re gonna love it.

I can’t imagine anyone arguing with this:

Her hips are probably the most hypnotic on television, and now Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Harris (nee Holloway), and is reportedly a size 14, has had her body officially endorsed by the British government.

“Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous,” says Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, who held up Hendricks’ outline as an ideal shape for women.

Highlighting the “overexposure” of skinny models and the impact they have on body image among young people, Ms Featherstone went on: “We need more of these role models. There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn’t be so unusual.”

Okay, sure, Featherstone’s conclusion about Hendricks’ curves being “absolutely fabulous” and an “ideal shape” is pretty much inarguable. Ditto her complaint about the lamentable wafer-thin junkie-chic trend, hopefully passing forever into history even as I type this.

But…”Equalities Minister?” How the hell does any country sink so far into the nanny-state morass as to actually have an “Equalities Minister” in the first place? And more importantly, how does such an enervated and dumbed-down society claw its way back up into the light again?

Unlike actresses America Ferrara (who plays Ugly Betty) and Britain’s Kate Winslet, Ms Hendricks has kept her full figure, adds McNamara, who last week reviewed Mad Men Series 4.

That figure is reportedly in possession of dimensions around 36-32-36 – although some reports suggest 38-32-38 – and her breasts variously described as a C or D cup.

Oh, those majestic fun bags are your D-sized orbs all right. Doubles, at least. She probably left the C cups in the dust for good at about seventeen.

That kind of body requires a lot of exercise and healthy eating to maintain, says Deanne Jade, a psychologist at the National Centre for Eating Disorders.

“Usually in the real world, the bigger breast goes along with a bigger tummy, wider waist or protruding abdomen.

“So it’s unusual to have someone with these curves. Therefore to get a figure like that, you would have to work hard or be naturally well-endowed.”

While she agrees with the minister that role models need to be a fuller and more realistic shape, Ms Jade says women with eating disorders will always seek out images of the thinnest women to confirm their own distorted view of how they look.

That’s true, they will — and no amount of government scolding or propping up of other “ideals” is going to matter in the least. It’s an exercise in futility, trying to alter human nature via edict. It fails every time, and it’s going to fail this time, too. Related:

“In the autumn the minister will convene the first of a series of roundtable discussions with members of the fashion industry, including magazine editors, models and advertisers, to discuss how to boost body confidence among the young,” the Sunday Times reported yesterday.

One might think that one of the first steps to boost such confidence might be to abolish school weigh-ins and make puppy fat a normal rite of passage rather than the subject of a health warning via the National Child Measurement Programme. (Can any woman think of anything more likely to have produced a fear of being on the chunky side than turning up to school one morning and being plonked on a set of scales? If that’s not going to make you skip your Dairylea dunker as a lass and develop a lifelong fear of bread, one wonders if a picture of Kate Winslet’s thighs is going to do it.)

It’s time to get the point, Lynne. The Hill ain’t ever going to look like Joanie. Giving the British woman Joanie as a role model is never going to make her feel good…

Rather than replacing the old impossible images with new impossible images (as the creative director of Harper’s Bazaar pointed out, the fashion industry exists to create the fantasy you’ll never live up to) an equalities minister should throw out all notions of obsessing about feminine beauty and concentrate on helping young girls think about the size of their achievements rather than the flatness of their navels, and the scale of their ambitions rather than – in Joanie’s case – the rather spectacular power of their bosoms.

While there’s nothing really wrong with The Hill’s overall point — there’s nothing really wrong with The Hill herself, and her fretting over the remote likelihood of ever sharing a body type with Christina Hendricks is misguided, to judge by the rather fetching picture accompanying the article — who the hell cares what an “Equalities Minister” should or should not do? There ought not be any such thing as an “Equalities Minister” in the first place. Ditto the National Child Measurement Programme. It’s an abomination, an offense against the very idea of a free society. It’s a sad commentary on how far removed our British cousins are from anything resembling the dignity and individual freedom that we here in the States…uhh…uhhhh….ummmm….

Oh hell.

Hey, here’s a revolutionary idea: how about we just own up to a few basic facts at long last? Beauty is what it is — an ideal, something to admire and aspire to – precisely because everybody doesn’t have it. in fact, most of us don’t; if it wasn’t rare, it wouldn’t actually be “beauty” — it would be “ordinary” or “common” or “plain.” I suppose that’s in reality why politically-correct nanny-state ninnies have such a hard time dealing with it: first, their politics-as-religion ideology requires that they cobble together a position paper and a bureaucracy to maintain control over every aspect of life, including ones that are patently outside of mortal jurisdiction — see Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) for further examples; and second, it sort of upends their “all must be equal in a grey drone world” agenda.

Human physical beauty is a peacock-feathered rebuke to the idea that underneath the drab, one-size-fits-all tunic liberalism would force over our heads, we’re ever going to be anything like equal, no matter how hard statists try to reshape reality. Their usual vapid exhortation to “celebrate diversity” would seem to apply only to ideologies, philosophies, and cultures opposed to our own. Because when it comes to real, immutable diversity, Progressivists are left spluttering in the weeds, their impotent outrage capable of finding expression only in whinging tirades and the establishment of “Equalities Ministers” to help dull the pain that heartless reality always inflicts on the spinners of “utopian” dreams.

Update! Via JWF: related? You betcha:

Feminists are calling for an ad featuring topless women clutching glasses of ale to be banned.
The beers match the hair colours of a curvy blonde, redhead and brunette, reports CEN.

Now feminist leaders are demanding that advertising authorities should ban the ads due to sexism.

One unnamed campaigner said: “There is no genuine connection between beer and naked women.”

Like merry hell there ain’t. They’re two great tastes that taste great together. Go to a beer-soaked biker or car-club gathering, then a teetotaling church social, and see how many dames at each function are letting ‘em breathe, with encouragement being bawled out at fearsome decibel levels by drink-sodden gearheads, rakes, and rapscallions. Compare, contrast, then get back to me and tell me there’s no connection.

And for God’s sake, lighten up, Francine. Your obvious bitter envy isn’t making you look any better, you know.

Now if you folks will excuse me, it’s looking like beer:thirty around here. This blogging stuff sure is mighty thirsty work.

And who doesn’t?

NOT TO WORRY, THOUGH

…Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize!

Mark Steyn:

“Just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

“As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology.”

Excellent. The president directed his Nobel Prize-winning Head of Meetings to assemble a meeting to tackle the challenge of mobilizing the assembling of the tackling of the challenge mobilization, at the end of which they directed BP to order up some new tackle and connect it to the thingummy next to the whachamacallit. Thank you, Mr. President. That and $4.95 will get you a venti oleaginato at Starbucks.

Better call up Bill Ayers for another nautical metaphor, because auto-presidencies don’t write themselves like autobiographies do:

My colleague Rich Lowry suggested the other day that most people not on the Gulf coast aren’t really that bothered about the spill, and that Obama has allowed himself to be blown off course entirely unnecessarily. There may be some truth to this: For most of America, this is a Potemkin crisis. But what better kind to trip up a Potemkin leader? So the president has now declared war on the great BP spill – Gulf War 3! – and in this epic conflict the Speechgiver-in-Chief will surely be his own unmanned drone:

“I fired off a speech

But the British kept a-spillin’

Twice as many barrels as there was a month ago

I fired off a speech

But the British kept a-spillin’

Up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico…”

Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he’s capable of plugging the leak in his own support. If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?

Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for chicken dinners and county fairs in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe next summer? Need one of those relaunch books to explain why you’re getting back in the game in your country’s hour of need?

“It Takes A Spillage.”

Speaking of, this is also terrifying: the prospect of a giant, un-corkable sea-bed rupture. More at The Oil Drum.

Pray.

Thomas Sowell offers up some graduation-day advice worth heeding:

Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college-commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible — become big-government liberals.

What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want — not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.

It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.

Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing “compassion” for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.

And it’s a resounding testimony to the power of capitalism that it’s managed to so greatly increase the quality of life not just here but worldwide — despite and not because of the stranglehold inflicted on it by those oh-so-noble Big Government liberals. Imagine how much better off we’d be by weakening that choking embrace, instead of extending its iron grip.

“All My Terror Pals (Have Settled In)…”–Country legend Hank Hussein, Jr., from the album “Kenya Kountry Klassics and Kriss Kraft Kommissars”

WND:

The flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of leftist human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups engaged in attempts to break a blockade imposed by Israel on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Ayers, Dohrn and Evans’ Code Pink have led several recent Free Gaza Movement initiatives, including attempted marches into the Gaza Strip. Dorhn was in the Middle East just last month on behalf of the movement.

Ayers and Dohrn were close associates for years with President Obama, while Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

I told you that old sea-dog Billy Ayers could really turn a nautical phrase!

Weekly Standard:

The Turkish nonprofit [IHH] belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir in Arabic). Notably, the Union is chaired by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is known best for his religious ruling that encourages suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

In 2006, both the U.S. government and the United Nations designated the IIRO branch offices in Indonesia and the Philippines for financing al Qaeda. French magistrate Jean-Louis Brougiere also testified that IHH had an “important role” in Ahmed Ressam’s failed “millennium plot” to bomb the Los Angeles airport in late 1999.

The U.S. government, it should be noted, also views the Union of Good as a terrorist organization. … U.S. Treasury announced the umbrella group’s leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), stating that the group was “created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.”

… The Treasury, drawing from declassified documents, stated unequivocally that the Union of Good “compensated Hamas terrorists by providing payments to the families of suicide bombers.

Five boats were boarded peacefully. Only on the sixth boat loaded with terrorists was there violence, as they chanted slogans celebrating the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arabia by Muhammed.

There is no “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. Only a terrorism crisis. Tons of supplies come in all the time. Indeed, the UN treating these people as permanent welfare pets is part of the problem.

Why don’t these “activists” ever yell at Egypt? After all, Egypt has miles of border with Gaza. You see, it’s not about helping Gazans, it’s about attacking Israel.

This is just an attempt to get the naval blockade stopped, so missiles may be transported freely into Hamas-stan and then fired at Israel’s cities…yet another Bill Ayers bombing campaign!

Liberals thought they were being “nice” when they humored Arafat, letting him murder our diplomats with impunity. Instead, they have turned the Palestinian people into the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth.

Europeans and leftists will yammer about “proportionality”, but if Europeans could do proportionality, the Jews would have never been forced to flee Europe. Masquerading as occupiers of the moral high ground, leftist Europeans are merely trying to save their own skins from Iran’s Bomb or their own Islamist Fifth Columns.

Q: What Smells So Fishy?
A: The New Euro-Vichy.

Which is just like the old Vichy in its pro-Nazi nastiness. And is not improved by the presence of the same old tired commies, too.

Okay, this is all well and good and all, and my hat’s off to these guys for their dedication and effort. But really, there’s no way in hell I could ever see anybody other than Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal. I just can’t get my head around it. And honestly, I don’t really want to.

(Via Insty)

BUT NOT OVER

Jules Crittenden:

From beyond the grave, Ted Kennedy keeps spending your money.

The Herald:

With $38.3 million in federal earmarks already secured for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, Sen. John F. Kerry and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden) have in recent days tapped the government for $30 million more in the next budget. …

“If the Kennedy family wants to honor the family they should find a way to fund it themselves,” said David E. Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington nonprofit group.

“They should be looking for private funding,” he said. “They’re using federal taxpayers as the funder of first resort. We need to be the funder of last resort.”

Williams and other critics called it “ridiculous” and an “egregious waste” that supporters want to siphon $28.9 million of the funding from the Defense Department budget alone. Nearly $19 million of that is already signed into law.

“It’s hard to fathom the defense-related portion of this project,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group.

He said “fathom”. heh heh.

It’s not hard to understand at all; a school that teaches liberals how to pick their neighbors’ pockets, bleeding the taxpayers dry to finance the vanity of the wealthy while siphoning money from our national defense.

If that isn’t the perfect monument to Ted Kennedy, I’ll eat my love letter to the KGB.

As Crittenden says,

Allow me to suggest a tasteful architectural water feature, with a bridge.

The reflecting pool is free.

The life jackets and the Sympathy Neck Brace(tm) will run you $60 million, though. For starters.

And I yam most definitely with Stossel:

We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they’re for limited government, but they’re pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support “nation-building.”

And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government — they say — to make life kinder for people.

By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone — in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don’t hurt anybody else.

Ironically, that used to be called “liberal,” which has the same root as “liberty.” Several hundred years ago, liberalism was a reaction against the stifling rules imposed by aristocracy and established religion.

I wish I could call myself “liberal” now. But the word has been turned on its head. It now means health police, high taxes, speech codes and so forth.

So I can’t call myself a “liberal.” I’m stuck with “libertarian.” If you have a better word, please let me know.

Oh, I dunno, John; except for the flaky, unworkable isolationism found in some of the more rigid precincts of libertarianism, I’m perfectly fine with the word, myself.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

“I asked my daughter, Amy, what was the great problem we face today and she told me nuclear proliferation.”–Jimmy Carter

If Jimmy Carter can put Amy in charge of nuclear missiles, why can’t this guy bring his kids to work? They’re just little kids, so I’m sure they were searched thoroughly at the airport.

Lighten up, people.

A very humane, very touching and warm and, well, sweet (and decidedly non-political) piece from Doc Zero. No excerpt, just read it.

How is it that liberals are always the ones screaming about the horrors of “right-wing,” “Christianist,” “Teabagger” violence…and also the ones perpetrating all the actual violence, going all the way back to Ayers and Dorn? Granted, her repeated murderous outbursts weren’t politically motivated. But can anyone possibly doubt that, if she had ever once voted or offered the slightest, most anecdotal verbal support for a Republican, the words “right-wing extremist” would have found their way into the liberal-media headlines about her?

Update! Donald points out something else the liberal media ain’t exactly all over here: this Lefty killer was apparently a RACIST, too.

Betcha Obama’s Purpleshirts are waterboarding him right now. Given the man-caused disaster he inflicted on King Crapweasel’s election-fraud organization, there’s no telling what kind of terrorism he’s been up to. It’s a lead pipe cinch that he’ll be treated more harshly for his crime against the State than any jihadist ever will be by our ruling junta.

Totten interviews Hitchens. Boy, would I have loved to sit in on that one.

Hitchens: Do know anyone in Iraqi Kurdistan who actually prays five times a day?

MJT: No.

Hitchens: And you’re not going to, either. They have just as much a claim to being Muslims, Sunni Muslims, as anybody else, yet no jihadist from Birmingham went to help the Kurds when they were being genocided — or Anfalled — by Saddam’s atheist state.

The answer to your question is self-hatred, this belief that only true Muslims would want to fight against us…

It has to be, always, the most embittered, the most fanatical, the most absolutist, and the most totalitarian. This is a real poisonous phenomenon, and we refuse to give it its real name because of a combination of ignorance and what I would call multicultural masochism.

If Major Hasan were in the Turkish army, he would not have been offered a promotion after he lectured his fellow medical officers about how “we love death more than they love life.” I don’t think in Turkey he would have made it.

MJT: Nope. In Turkey he would not have made it.

Hitchens: But he made it in Texas. And nobody wanted to report him because it could have gotten them a black mark on their own dossier for possibly being an intolerant person. This is madness.

The Christian churches have been terrible about this, as have many liberal Jews, by saying we must extend a hand. No, we must not. We must withdraw the hand.

…Underneath this indulgence, Michael, this lenience we inflict on ourselves and others, is a vague feeling among millions in the West that Islam is somehow the religion of millions of the oppressed third world, of the brown-skinned, and of the black-skinned in Somalia and Nigeria. What I call the cultural cringe is involved. It’s subliminal, but it’s played on by terms like Islamophobia coined by the propaganda of the other side. It’s designed to make you feel bad even if you don’t like it. It’s thought crime. The attempt is to make Islamophobia something you’ll be as reluctant to be accused of as being a racist.

Actually, from some people I don’t even care if I’m being called a racist. Their standards have become so low that it doesn’t hurt like it should.

Two very smart guys who have been there and done that having a conversation on the issues of the day over cocktails. Yeah, I’d love to have been there. Ah well; reading about it is a pleasure, too. Lots of good stuff here; another fine, worthwhile effort from Mike. Good job, buddy.

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning two things here yet: first, Scott Brown’s campaign in Massachusetts, which represents the last desperate hope, slim reed though it is, of stopping socialized medicine in America — temporarily, of course, because the Democrat Socialists will never, ever stop trying for it. Probably the best place to check for info and links is Sissy’s; she’s been all over this one from the git-go.

And second, the esteemed Stacy McCain’s new digs. Whilst checking out his new joint yestiddy, I realized that he’s not on the blogroll here, which egregious and inexcusable oversight has been corrected. Sorry about that, Stace.

My boss sends this, uhh, touching story along:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl’s dress taken from under a neighbor’s Christmas tree.

The child’s mother, 21-year-old April Wright, told WTVC-TV that the boy “wants to go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.”

Wright said she and the boy’s father are going though a divorce.

Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Janice Atkinson said the incident is being investigated but the department declined to release the report.

The boy’s mother said she met with child protective services and was told she will get to keep custody of her son.

I don’t often find myself speechless, but…I’m speechless.

An all-too-brief appreciation of her over at JWF. Halle Berry? Don’t make me laugh, fool.

Update! Michelle Pfeiffer rocked the ol’ Catsuit pretty damned hard herself, I feel compelled to add.

Well, for me, anyway:

‘Sons of Anarchy’ finale hits ratings high, scores Season 3 renewal
More than 4.3 million viewers tuned in to Tuesday’s season finale of FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” making it the most-watched episode in the series’ history.

And by God, I was one of ‘em.

The 10 p.m. event also topped rankings among men 18 to 49 and men 18 to 34. On Wednesday afternoon the network announced it had ordered a third season.

“The success of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ is very gratifying, and the show has become a bona-fide hit,” said FX President-General Manager John Landgraf said.

Love that damned show. It ain’t perfect, of course, but it’s about as real a slice of biker life as you’re ever likely to get on TV. Good writing, good acting, lots of action, lots of cussin’, some nudity now and then, bikes — what the hell’s not to like? And any show that features Peg Bundy as an iron-hard, tattooed, tough-as-nails biker wench has my vote from the git-go.

For anyone who might be interested, the show was the subject of my regular column in the mag I work for a while back, which is available for perusal here (link might not be entirely work-safe, just so’s ya know).