Peter Hitchens – a rabidly right-wing version of his brother – reports:
Remember, this is a country that does have elections and those elections don’t always go according to plan, despite ruthless official rigging. I asked those present if they had supported Ahmadinejad in the presidential poll. All hands but one went up. Would they do so again? No hands went up. By the way, the women dominated this conversation.
On the other hand, we have this.
(Hat tip: Headline Junky.)
… or the War on Drugs. Pick one of the two. Sane terror-fighters in Afghanistan just got reprimanded by the UN. And NATO reversed its policy of winking at the sole source of income many Afghans have.
An alternative to a carbon tax:
One idea put forth by a physicist involved in climate-control discussions would involve bombarding the Arctic stratosphere with specially engineered particles to deflect the sun’s rays, thereby lowering temperatures. Alternatively, a fleet of crop-dusting airplanes could deliver the particles by flying continuously around the Arctic Circle. An astronomer suggested placing a huge fleet of mirrors in orbit to divert solar radiation.
Here’s the Wilson Quarterly essay that gives you the full monty – and the risks and drawbacks as well.
Congress could do it. Here’s how.
An awful, exhausted paleo-liberal idea. And Obama signed up for it. Mickey’s right on this one.
This is what he said two years ago to Bill O’Reilly:
"I’m in favor of civil unions. Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman."
When O’Reilly asked what Giuliani’s response would be to gay couples who think denial of marriage rights is state discrimination, Rudy replied: "That’s why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have." That’s exactly the argument that New Hampshire’s legislature and governor have made in passing their civil unions bill. So Rudy supports that, no?
Er:
"Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly. In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it."
That’s from the New York Sun. So he was in favor of ending the discrimination by civil unions before – and he isn’t now. Romney isn’t the only flip-flopper, is he?
My friend Kevin Sessums has been on one for his heart-rending memoir, "Mississippi Sissy." On his blog, he captures the ineffable exhaustion of book tours, and the guilt-inducing selfishness they provoke, and the numbing isolation they conjure. One snippet rings as true as Kevin’s book:
I thought it would be easy doing a round trip in one day because it was Boston. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I am exhausted and frustrated and close to tears. I sold three books tonight at the store. I paid for this trip myself. My Amazon number is for shit. I feel like I’ve sort of reached my limit in sales – I pray I’m wrong about that – and I’m just treading marketing water now. I hate to sound so down but that’s the way I’m feeling. I live a pretty solitary life but this life-on-the-road has taken the loneliness I often feel and encased it with a meta-loneliness that is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with on a night like this.
A reader tries to talk me into one, after this post:
I’m going to put this to you plainly and I hope you listen close (it’s for your own good). America’s romance with cars has nothing to do with commuting to work or one-upping your yuppie neighbor, it has everything to do with the sensation of a perfect drive. Here is a sporting conquest, an affirmation of skill, a moment of oneness and bliss, even a religious experience waiting for anyone with the right car and a driver’s license. I hope you can apply the same sensibility that led you to post the dressage video a few weeks ago to the world of automobiles. It will open your eyes.
I’d recommend taking the keys right out of your boyfriend’s hands, especially if the car is rear wheel drive and light weight, and heading at least two hours north of NYC. Anything north of New Paltz in mountainous terrain is essentially police free, without posted speed limits, and without traffic. Just look for mountain passes, reservoir roads, really anything that refuses to stay straight for more than 200 yards. No need to plan anything else (food, lodgings, amusement), trust me, it will all fall into place.
Well, I watched the video. Maybe you have to be there.
As I expected, the honorable member from National Review did very well. An Oxford reader writes of Jonah’s speech:
Very amusing: a joke every line, house often in stitches. Hammered home the line that to regret America is to regret Britain, and that is a shameful, ludicrous act of self-loathing. Quite stirring. Excellent cracks about the Communist guy (who failed to turn up): "Was Dr. Doom not available? Did you not approach the most penetrating pundits in the Klingon galaxy?" etc. It fell to Matt Frei (of the BBC) to bark "Nein Danke!" at the proposition bench, when one clambered to make a ‘point of information’, to prolonged laughter.
Proposition was, shall we say, sinister – particularly UK Islamic Party guy, who talked darkly about "Corporations and control of money by small, dangerous groups", but stopped short of mentionining the Jews by name. One or two Muslims in the audience applauded them at points, but few else. Oddly they were combined with a Canadian feminist (producing, as the first proposition speaker put it, "the first ever Canadian-Islamist alliance against a Neoconservative-Matt Frei alliance"). Nearly everyone poured out the Noes door (save Matt Frei, interestingly, who nipped out for a loo break through the Ayes).
All in all it was a pretty good Union night, though the Islamists became quickly tedious, depriving it of those moments when the place zips with the tension and excitement of real and dramatised intellectual swordplay.
Now back to revising for finals.
