Tonight begins the festival of Shavuos, so no blogging for a couple of days. Have fun!
Revelation!
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 22, 2007
Posted in Faith and Works | 3 Comments »
Fred Thompson, damn it
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 22, 2007
There’s nothing not to like about Fred Thompson, okay?
But I still haven’t seen the steak. Sizzle, yes. Yet he’s perceived as being so unconnected to the miasma of Washington insiderism (as if he never served in the Senate?) that even smart guys like Glenn Reynolds become almost thoughtless boosters. Check this out:
FRED THOMPSON ON CORRUPTION AND THE U.N.: “When Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il have as much say in U.N. matters as the entire populations of Poland and New Zealand, you’re going to have problems.”
I’m sorry. This is not original. It is not insightful. In fact, it’s not even bold: “You’re going to have problems”?
Fred — Glenn? — and, yes, NRO? This pedestrian observation is something any conservative, or indeed intellectually honest regardless of political stripe, observer of international relations and the UN could have made and probably has made, in some form or another, for the last 20 years. Yet for this he gets a syndicated column, which is picked up on NRO; a featured quote on Instapundit; millions of adoring right-wing bloggers?
Come on!
What is your policy prescription, Senator? Do we leave the UN? Defund it? Sue it? Level it? Audit it (again)?
I love Fred’s stage presence. I love his magical powers. He’s friends with a former boss of mine. He seems like a decent conservative.
Far be it from me to ask a question so banal as, “Where’s the beef?” But I’m at the barbecue. I’ve got my plate. The bun is open. I smell something cooking. But my stomach, she is growling. And the sun is arching into the west.
Posted in Blogophilia, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 15 Comments »
Throw the bums out
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 22, 2007
Who isn’t disgusted with the whole load of them? Nothing is needed more than term limits. Mark Tapscott agrees (via the Captain) and thinks that what the Internet has done for media, it can do for politics:
What’s needed is a massive and continuing infusion of new blood — citizen legislators — in Congress. The careerists will never agree to that, of course, so it will have to be imposed from the outside. That’s where the Internet, the wisdom of crowds, term limits and a potential new post-partisan political movement converge.
Of this, I am skeptical. Media are just that: Media, i.e., conduits. Freed of technical and economic
constraints, information and expression can now flow as never before.
Politics, though also a base of power as the established media powers still are, is not a medium at all. It is an accretion of power and institutions. That power is given back to the governed only in the most grudging fashion, and usually while at the same time it usurps more with the other hand.
This is not necessarily so bad. Government should have stability. Change in societal expectations about government is best made gradually, not only because of “social order” but because massive economic and social decisions are made on the basis of reasonable expectations about the regime.
Fine. That’s what a constitution is for. Now let’s fix ours, using its own mechanisms, and nail down term limits for legislatures, once and for all.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »
Religion in the 21st century: Stronger than ever
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 22, 2007
It’s hardly debatable that socialism is a religion, complete with scriptures, patron saints, miracle tales, relics and promises of a Messianic utopia.
We’ve recently established that environmentalism is a religion with its own scriptures, too.
Not surprisingly, it turns out so is vegetarianism — specifically its fundamentalist form, veganism, though less so for its own scripture as for its own Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Reality based community indeed!
Posted in Faith and Works | 2 Comments »
The rosetta stone of liberalism
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 21, 2007
Do intellectuals simply not understand brutes?
Of course we they don’t. Brutes can hardly ever figure out how to get all the way up that ivory tower, what with the curvy staircase and all. (Trigonometry, right?) The only way most intellectuals ever “get it” is when we they go downstairs for a soda pop and get mugged by reality out on terra firma.
The lucky ones live to maybe think a little and write about it, if they have the nerve. Not because they’re afraid of the brutes outside. Now they have to be afraid of the ones back inside the tower, with the pinz nezes.
Posted in Sisyphus | 3 Comments »
Beneath the citiy, two hearts beat
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 21, 2007
Soul engines running through a night so tender…
Oh wait, a minute did I say sould? Heart? No, no — this underground city is for freshly laundered character costumes!
Posted in Americana | Leave a Comment »
Bottom story of the day
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 21, 2007
Yes, it’s derivative; but what better way to describe a non-story? Guess what: Seung-Hui Cho had more bullets.
Does this appear to be a patent attempt merely to squeeze more juice out of last month’s news? It does to me.
Posted in Medialites | Leave a Comment »
Doctors without scruples
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 20, 2007
Duncan Mclean, head of ‘Doctors Without Borders’ in the region, told Israel Radio, “I don’t think embarrassed would be the right word. We are very sad for Bashir who has been working for us for almost six years. But we would like to make it very clear that we make a distinction between his professional work and what he does on his personal time in the sense that all our staff is hired for professional reasons and I don’t think our organization can be held liable for every aspect of their life.”
It sounds like the guy got caught in a brothel, or maybe a bar brawl. Who would know from this clueless quote that the poor young doctor in question is accused of (and has confessed to) using his DWB credentials to facilitate assassination attempts against the Prime Minister and other Israeli officials?
It’s interesting that the DWB (a/k/a “Medicins Sans Frontieres”) spokescreep is “very sad for Bashir.” Not so sad for his intended victims or the victims of others like him. Certainly not embarrassed for his own organization, which helps to perpetuate a culture in which the murder of Israelis is an understandable act of “resistance.”
So, why is it seemingly impossible for the “neutral” to be neutral?
Posted in O Mores!, Orient | 4 Comments »
Out of the shadows
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 20, 2007
Instapundit writes about the immigration debate, quoting Mark Steyn to the effect that immigrant advocates who seek to allow their constituents to exit “the shadows” don’t really want to exit them so much that they have to pay taxes like the rest of us — and that, amazingly (but not), the new immigration proposal offers them just that:
[T]his captures the disconnect between Washington officialdom’s view of citizenship, and the view held by actual citizens, something that I think is at the core of the immigration debate. More than hostility to illegal immigrants, I think a lot of the backlash is driven by the sense that Washington insiders don’t really value what ordinary law-abiding people do by way of living their lives and, you know, abiding by the law.
A nice point. That and rising hostility to just about everything about “Washington insiders.”
Posted in Americana, Lex scripta | Leave a Comment »
Immigration “reform”?
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 17, 2007
Yeah, well, phooey. Check out the truth here:
Posted in Americana, Jocularity | 1 Comment »
