Negative Railroad |
The Tea Party Feeling
One of the Chicago Boyz, with a nom de blog of Lexington Green, figured out what Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally was all about:
Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.
Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that.
Happy Capital Day!
Via Division of Labor:
Labor without capital looks like Haiti or North Korea: plenty of people working but doing it with sticks instead of bulldozers, or starting a small enterprise with pocket change instead of a bank loan.
There may be no place in the world where there’s a shortage of labor but every inch of the planet is short of capital. There is no worker who couldn’t become more productive and better himself and society in the process if he had a more powerful labor-saving machine or a little more venture capital behind him. Capital can refer to either the tools of production or the funds that finance them. It ought to be abundantly clear that the vast improvement in standards of living over the past century is not explained by physical labor (we actually do less of that), but rather to the application of capital.
No tool chest is complete without a Notch Remover and a Kink Wrench
Over at Sippican Cottage, they know about labor. The kind that makes your body sore. The kind of labor that the workers we’ve forgotten used to do. Due to that work experience, Sipp knows about tools, too. And he can spot it when someone knows little about either one:
Popular Mechanics doesn't disappoint with their: Tools Everyone Should Own. It's a terrific, haphazard mess of twenty arbitrary thingamabobs, written in the breathless prose usually reserved for paperbacks with pictures of Fabio on their cover and the tears of countless overweight data entry clerks dappling the pages.
…
Fantasy Values
The harsh reality is that a few years on the pole with a coke habit would still leave the average woman with a better long term prospect of happiness than the popular combination of student loans and a soft liberal arts degree from a reputable private university.
Quoted from: Vox Day
Rover’s Dream Denied
Another instance of the failed promise of a post-racial America under President Barry “The Mutt” Obama:
After an emotional meeting Thursday night where neighbors split along racial lines over whether an off-leash dog site should be built at Martin Luther King Memorial Park in south Minneapolis, the Park Board president said other options should be sought.
…much of the debate centered on whether the dog park would dishonor King, the slain civil rights leader.
It’s just an amenity in a City park, not a political statement. And dogs set the standard for judging each other not by the color of their fur, but by the content of their…um, “character”.
Local Bike Nut Meets the Real World
The administrator of the premier bicycling bulletin board in Minneapolis is calling it quits:
Visionary from Wasilla
Candidates endorsed by Sarah Palin have won two-thirds of the time. A little more than half of those winners were non-establishment or Tea Party candidates.
Somewhere in disussions about the power of Sarahcuda, I caught this comment, worthy of a Snark Award:
I can see November from my house!
It is important to keep in mind that almost all the elections where Palin’s horse won were primaries. The dynamic is different when it is a Democrat against a Republican. People still tend to vote for the team instead of the candidate.
But I can’t help but grin when I think of all the leftoids who tried to dismiss Palin as a rube who’s 15 minutes expired two years ago.
Anything But Victory
Last night the current President took credit for executing a plan devised under the previous President to transfer control of Iraq to Iraqis. He did not mention that the 50,000 troops still in country have the same weapons and take the same risks as the day before, that “the end of combat operations” is an adjustment of administrative label instead of a marked shift in situation.
Barry also did not utter the word “win”. He did manage to say “victory” once, in a non-specific sense:
In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.
Think Outside the Ballot Box
Remember, the problem isn't the Democrats, and the solution isn't the Republicans.
Quoted from: Borepatch
Oral Surgeons
Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than two hundred years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650—very promising and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you?
Quoted from: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
Who Hates the Lebanese?
Something else you’re not being reminded in arguments about the Hamasque (and in the broader non-dialog concerning the people of Antijudea):
According to the Arab American Institute, the breakdown of religious affiliation among Arab Americans is as follows:
63% Christian
It’s Frightfully Realistic
Thanks to the latest technological advance, you can enjoy the interactive satisfaction found at community meetings and legislative sessions right from your keyboard.
Try it!
The People of Antijudea
George Will makes two vital points in one paragraph. The first I consider lost amid the chatter of popular rhetoric:
The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived.
The Palestinian identity is a recent invention. Yes, there has been that patch of earth sometimes called Palestine (when it wasn’t called Judea or Israel). But the people who lived there were simply arabs, or Egyptians and Jordanians if they needed a political label.
Are You Talkin’ to Me?
There’s post at Chicago Boyz highlighting the contradictions between leftoid rhetoric and the details of leftoid policy. They say they want to tax the rich and protect the middle class, but can’t define who is in which group. Is a small business owner who shows $200K of revenue rich or middle class?
What really caught my eye were a couple of campaign-worthy slogans for Tea Partiers:
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Shouldn’t “tax cuts” be distributed to those who pay taxes?
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Let the tax rates go back to the Clinton administration rates but let’s also go back to the number of government employees of the Clinton period.
Another 600 Feet
I’ve seen several posts about all the other things within 600 feet of the WTC site. Strip bars, fast food joints, and pretty much eveything a big city offers. The point of the posts, I think, is to counter the notion that the proposed Hamasque site is sacred ground. If there are so many vices so close, how sacred can that spot be?
The counter-counter fielded by the Hamasque opponents is that the building in question was struck by a piece of one the planes. That damage somehow anointed the structure with socio-cultural holiness.
I see merit in both points. But I am not persuaded. On one hand, we’ve got the beginnings of a “George Washington slept here” farce. And we open ourselves to phony relics from “the one True jetliner”. Yet, the surrounding vices only increase the importance of holding some places sacred. If we promised to Never Forget, we do have to be on guard against the encroachment of the mundane.
Sorry, Gramps, We Owe You Nothing
It seems fair to say that there is a commonly-held belief that the U.S. Government has an obligation to make Social Security payment to those who paid into the program for decades. The benefits are part of contract between workers and the Feds that help ensure nobody has to retire to live on dog food.
Further, there’s a commonly-held idea that there is a Trust Fund, where all those worker payments are being held so there will be money to pay retirees. The promise of a trust fund is probably less trusted by the public, but they still think that they’re owed something from whatever Congress hasn’t already lifted from the trust fund cookie jar.
Well, there is a trust fund, but the cookie jar is full of empty promises instead of genuine savings:
Above the People
Commenter “The Den Mother” at Neo-neocon pens my next T-shirt idea:
When you lie to Congress, it’s perjury.
When Congress lies to you, it’s campaigning.
Har!
Christ the Warrior
Given this line of the Gospel, I wonder if the common conception of Jesus Christ is wrong:
Do you think that I came to bring peace on earth? Not at all, I tell you, but rather division!
That’s J.C. speaking, in Luke 12:51.
Why are so many Christians, pseudo-Christians, and political Christians so focused on achieving Peace on Earth?
Fujichrome? F*ck that sh!t. Tri-X 400!
Dennis Hopper was a photographer:
James Dean first introduced Hopper to the Los Angeles art world after the two met on the set of Rebel Without a Cause. He went on to produce a wide body of visual art while working as an actor and director on classic movies like Easy Rider. As an artist, Hopper’s talent was most obvious in his photography, which documented his creatively charged milieu and reflected his uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time.
He was good:
