Category: Old Dish

Here’s the loony-left version of the Republican kiddies’ book. This one isn’t as clearly aimed at children, but it certainly reads like something some moonbat parent might read to a five-year-old. Sigh. Then again, a reader makes the following decent point:

Is a six-year old socialist somehow inherently more absurd than a six-year old Christian or a six-year old Muslim? We think nothing of ascribing religious beliefs to (or imposing religious beliefs on, if you prefer) our youngest children, or sending them to schools for — again, depending on your perspective — spiritual enlightenment or religious indoctrination. But a six-year old is no more able to make a free choice about his or her religious beliefs than about his or her political beliefs. So why mock someone for sending a child to “Socialist Sunday School” and let them off the hook for sending a child to religious Sunday school? Surely both are simply examples of parents attempting to pass along their own worldview to their children, to fix their beliefs before they are old enough to really think them through. The only real difference as far as I can see (and this is a perception unsupported by any hard numbers) is that kids are far more likely to change their political views as they mature than they are to reject their religious schooling?

My response would be that there’s a difference between teaching children about the meaning of the universe and telling them which contemporary politicans might be lurking under their beds.

GLOOMY ABOUT THE WORLD? This is a piece of sentimental but real uplift. Grace happens.

A reader writes:

“I think there’s an even better Philip Larkin line, although it refers to a specific artist. In “For Sidney Bechet” he writes “On me your voice falls as they say love should/ Like an enormous yes.”
By the way, this poem, which begins “That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes/ Like New Orleans reflected on the water . . .” and which ends “And greeted as the natural noise of good/Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity” has a particular poignancy at this moment.”

Indeed. if you are unfamiliar with Larkin, you are missing, to my mind, the greatest English-speaking poet of the last half-century. Try the Collected Poems. None disappoints. Some never leave your consciousness.

“Aren’t you guys in charge of the “legislative agenda”. And for all the talk of your disdain for ‘flaunting rhetoric’ what have you done? Nothing. When push came to shove you refused to put any of the ‘pork’ to your home district on the table. What is this, ‘Do as I say, not as I do?’. That doesn’t work for parents and it sure as hell won’t work for you.
And even worse was the apparent tongue lashing you gave conservative House members for actually proposing real cuts. The article claims you don’t like GOP House members portraying the GOP as big spenders. Well, it’s the truth isn’t it? Perhaps you need to look in the mirror and take stock of whether or not, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, you can handle the truth. Plus, you’re not a king, so you don’t get to tell the ‘peasants’ when to speak and when to shut up, especially when they are speaking uncomfortable truths.” – anklebitingpundits, formerly “CrushKerry,” speaking the truth to Tom DeLay.

“Poetry is what is lost in translation” – Robert Frost.

“All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the instruments.” – Walt Whitman.

“Forget that the nation and the party would both have been better served by the temperamentally suited and professionally qualified John Roberts’ winning Senate confirmation with 90-plus votes.
The nation would have been better served because such a margin would have represented an un-petty act in a city descended into hateful pettiness.
And the Democrats, because by acknowledging Roberts’ obvious assets — intellectual firepower, genuine respect from, and friendship with, colleagues who are active Democrats, a reputation for open-mindedness and not being a captive of ideology — they could have then believably used the “Roberts standard” to measure President Bush’s future court nominees.” – Mark Shields, taking his own side to task for stupidity and cravenness toward special interest groups. I couldn’t agree more. if John Roberts is not good enough as a Republican nominee to the court, who on earth is? I might add that Hillary Clinton’s no-vote is to my mind a clear reminder not to trust her alleged move to the center. I don’t believe her.

The war within the Catholic church continues. This time, parishioners are standing up for a priest who actually spoke truth to power – and has therefore been smeared and dismissed.

“I have been abandoned at many times in my life. By friends who didn’t want to associate with a “fag.” By family members who couldn’t deal with having a gay relative. By coworkers and associates who wondered every time I had a cold or took a sick day, if I finally had that “gay disease.” Through it all I’ve always had faith in my church and the old saying that everything happens for a reason. I would often lie in my parents’ backyard at night, looking up at the stars knowing there was a higher power and someday the answers would all be revealed to us. But now, the abandonment I feel from my church is almost too much to handle. What do I have left? The stars didn’t look real to me last night. My church has told me the stars are not for me, they are for straight people only.”

The president is now asking Americans to conserve gas? I wonder what’s next. Will he ask his own government to balance its budget? Not so long ago, the vice-president derided conservation as a matter of “personal vanity.” Now it’s a national duty? Once again, you see how incoherent this presidency has become. If a government wants to conserve a particular product, it does not need to make rhetorical pleas for people not to use it. It can adjust its own policies to make us more fuel-efficient and less dependent on foreign oil, especially from the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration has, alas, never made this a priority. I think they’re right to drill in ANWR and encourage new energy development in the U.S. and they’ve been better on fuel standards than their critics will concede. But the obvious complement to this – conservation and sane energy taxes – remains unthinkable to them. Simply put: We need to increase the cost of gas to force the auto industry to move to newer, better fuels and consumers to make wiser choices. A phased in gas tax of a dollar on the gallon is a tax that most sane economists support, helps wean us off foreign oil, helps the environment, and defunds the terror-masters. Bush should have proposed it as an anti-terror message after 9/11. Pathetic pleas now to stop driving on Sundays and the like are no substitute for something that actually might solve the basic problem. Look: I’m a low tax kind of guy. I support Bush’s tax cuts on most areas (I exclude the estate tax, because it rewards inheritance rather than work). But this is an area that, in every substantive regard, is a win-win. Except that politically, it’s lose-lose. The test of leadership is whether a person can persuade people that an unpopular measure is still better for everyone in the long run. Has Bush ever done such a thing? Or even tried to?

The NYT “kinda-corrects” the Geraldo untruth:

The TV Watch column on Sept. 5 discussed broadcast journalists’ undisguised outrage at the failings of Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. It said reporters had helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around, and added, “Fox’s Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety.”
The editors understood the “nudge” comment as the television critic’s figurative reference to Mr. Rivera’s flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.
Numerous readers, however – now including Byron Calame, the newspaper’s public editor, who also scrutinized the tape – read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast.

They’re still implying that a nudge might have occurred off camera; and they do not repudiate their previous refusal to post a correction. But it’s the best we’ll get; and it’s something. I wonder how tortured the correction will be for Krugman.