At the Gates of Hell

- Satan. what is your wish list for the Supremes?
- Well...

I wish that unborn babies be denied protection from the Constitution and The People denied the right to protect them;

I wish that child-rapists be given protection by the Constitution and The People denied the right to execute them;

I wish that non-uniformed enemy combatants commanded by mass murderers be treated as US citizens in US courts;

I wish that the next President nominates judges who see my emanations and appreciate that evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person, ie child-rapists.

Vote Obama, vote for the right to life

...of child-rapists. The right to life of children in the womb - not so much. It doesn't matter whether Obama carefully demurs from the Supreme Court's perversion of the Constitution in the child-rape case. It matters which judges he'd nominate and which judges he has voted against.

Things I didn't know

General William Odom was military aide to Zbigniew Brzezenski, President Carter's National Security Adviser. He recently died and his obituary is pretty interesting, but this stands out:

Odom rang Brzezinski at 3am one morning to inform him that 2,200 Soviet missiles had been launched at the United States. Just before Brzezinski was about to call the President to order the launch of American missiles, Odom called back to say that it had been a false alarm – someone had mistakenly placed military exercise tapes into the computer system. Brzezinski did not wake his wife, reckoning that everyone would be dead in half an hour anyway.

Reckless politicking

'Reckless wagering' wrecks your pension, reckons McCain. I guess that's not true if your pension is long Exxon or a commodity index fund, but insofar as American policies cause higher energy prices, then the guilty ones are :

1. No new nuclear power stations.
2. No drilling offshore, Tx and La excepted.
3. No development of shale oil deposits.
4. No drilling in ANWR.
5. No new refineries.
6. Liberals' private jets from Gore to Google.
7. Liberal flatulence from Gore to Moore. Farting from either end>co2>Global Warming apparently>aircon.
8. Political pressure to grant mortgages to unqualified applicants.

1-7 are obvious, but why mortgages? Well, thanks to the housing bust, Fed interest rates are 2% below inflation, rather more were inflation truly measured. That depreciates the dollar and inflates the dollar price of assets seen as an inflation hedge - that means the price of commodities, especially the dollar price. Theory and actual inspection show that speculation tends to dampen volatility and indeed price by giving a market depth and bridging the supply and demand incentives of today's high price into the future.

To re-cap: Liberal/RINO policies are to blame for America's energy predicament and let speculation thrive!

The inversion of economic reality into economic demagoguery implying further economic masochism deserves a name. Let's call it McCainsianism.

McCain's New Deal

McCain is a moron:

Item: Don't drill in ANWR - it's like the Grand Canyon.
Item: Offering 13m+ illegals a route citizenship to will help solve illegal immigration.
And now:

"Investigation is underway to root out this kind of reckless wagering [in commodities], unrelated to any kind of productive commerce, because it can distort the market, drive prices beyond rational limits, and put the investments and pensions of millions of Americans at risk," [McCain] will say in the speech, according to excerpts the campaign provided yesterday.
I don't think he's senile, just a stupid populist. I don't know if Romney could do well on his ticket unless McCain cedes the economy.

The God of Days

Bah! Humbug! Another Day, another dollar..what is it this time? Fathers' Day? Flag Day? Piffle! These Days are ersatz. So is Presidents' Day, MLK Day, Washington's Birthday, Armed Forces Day and most of the rest. The secular Days that resonate are, in order of importance, April Fools' Day (wit and invention), Guy Fawkes' Night (bonfires and explosions), Halloween (mischief and scariness) and Valentine's Day (let osculation thrive). Remembrance Day (poppies and an empty tomb) stands alone. I don't think Memorial Day bears the same weight. Thanksgiving pings in my head, but not yet my heart.

Cards, poems and presents are good, providing they're homemade and the exception not the rule. Oh for the courage to apply that to Christmas!

But the rightful God of secular Days is Loki.

First they came...

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

I have seen Martin Niemoller's poem in 2 contexts today:

1. It is cited by Stephen Bainbridge in defence of the Supreme Court's conferral of habeas corpus on enemy combatants who are not US citizens. A commenter writes:

Considering how much opposition has arisen to even the denial of habeas relief to enemy combatants—which denial is amply supported by legal precedent—I believe the odds that the next step would have been infringement of the habeas rights of American citizens are at exactly zero.
In present-day Germany, the Nazi Party is prohibited. By your logic, Germany is again on an inevitable course back to dictatorship and genocide. “First they came for the Nazis, then they came for the Christian Democrats, then they came for the Social Democrats....”

2. It is cited against the UK government's legislation to extend the suspension of habeas corpus under The Prevention Of Terrorism Act from 20 days to 42 days. Actually I am more sympathetic to this citation. The legislation is presumed to target Islamic terrorists, who are probably UK citizens, and I, like most, hate their guts just for their ideology (Islamist guts, that is - the UK government has none to hate) even if they are law-abiding, so I'm happy if they suffer. Western Islamists simply game the freedoms of their host to hollow it out, so why should the freedoms apply to them? Good question, but that issue should be dealt with by a discriminatory immigration policy and the ditching of multi-culturalism, not by drastic empowerment of the Executive over citizens. In this case the poem applies:

They came for Moslems and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Moslem.

Footnote: Re-reading this I see that I'm slippery in eliding the terms 'Islamic', 'Islamist' and 'Moslem', so let me be clear: an Islamist is a Moslem who wants rule me or kill me. In fact almost all my interactions with Moslems are delightful, the Egyptian I played football with last night in New Jersey, the Moroccan store owner in London, the ship's crew in Djibouti, the Kuwaitis I bought oil from...and on and on...but maybe not the sinister-looking disaffected Moslem youth in The Hague who headbutted me when I interfered with a group of them who were stealing a hat from a frightened Dutchman in a cinema queue of passive onlookers in broad daylight. It's a fond memory as my head has been hardened by decades of full contact soccer like a conker pre-soaked in vinegar. Ah, memories.

Leadership in a democracy

David Davis is the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. He wil resign his seat in the House of Commons to fight a by-election on the single issue of the government's proposed legislation to increase to 42 days the limit of detention of terrorism suspects without charge. While there can be other views on the specifics, his general points are spot on. Davis is a bigger man than David Cameron who won the leadership election, heavily plugged by the BBC as a 'compasionate conservative' - ie socially liberal. This deed will brand Davis as a leader and may draw a historic line in the sand against state control of justice.

Davis has led a real life in the Army and in business. His type restores one's faith in mainstream politics.

Duckblogging

A Muscovy Duck showed up on our lawn. When I asked if he'd vote for Obama, he just looked at me.

Dogblogging

Trixie in the bath.

True myths of New York

A couple of days ago a Frenchman scaled the New York Times building with a banner reading “Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week”. The climb was technically trivial and the banner was appropriately lame for the venue.

Contrast the tale of Philippe Petit who walked and danced across the high wire which he'd rigged between the Twin Towers in 1974. His motive was as light as Mallory's 'because it's there' about Everest - 'When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.' The image of the young man in the sky is a charm against the image of 9/11.

Another sky-dancer is Pale Male, the Red Tailed Hawk which nests at 927 Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park and has fathered 26 offspring by 4 mates despite attempted eviction.

I commend the lovely books on these 2 heroes, both of whom still thrive:The Man Who Walked Between the Towers and Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City.