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In 1995, Saturday Night had this from Mordecai Richler, the late great iconoclast:
"As I remember the terror bombings of Coventry and London's East End, never mind Hitler's 'final solution', I do not feel obliged, as seems modish these days, to apologize for the firebombing of Dresden."
Sparky Lyle brought his left-handed stubbornness out of the Yankee bullpen on October 8, 1977 in game four of the American League Championship Series at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.
The box score is courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.
The history is part of the lore of Billy Martin and the swashbuckling 1977 Yankees, perhaps a true sixties team in the skewed time warp called big league baseball.
Quebec hospital linked to C. difficile deaths cleaner now: officials.
.....The institution east of Montreal now produces a daily report on infection rates, has hired new permanent cleaning staff and juggled its budget to allocate more funds for disinfection procedures,.........
The New York Times recorded the afternoon antics of Joba Chamberlain and the New York Yankees. I spent a splendid afternoon underground with the team via the booming AM signal from Rochester. Cementing a long-neglected basement wall, in front of winter, took all nine innings.
Thoughts of grace, bliss , mortality and stone-mix all agreeably co-habited.
Russell Kirk , great American writer, historian and conservative thinker ended his Conservative Reader anthology by including this pithy comment on modern folly: "The totalists say that the old order is a corpse, and that man and society must be fashioned afresh, in grim fashion, upon a grim plan."
From `Under Ben Bulben'
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
The National Post recounts the popularity of Floridian illogic: The results of prosperity are classified as the basis for prosperity.
"[ Richard] Florida’s work in urban studies, economics, and cultural and technological innovation has captured the attention of millions with his books The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class about the integral role of creativity in the growth of cities.
Mr. Florida has said the multicultural nature and gay-friendly attitude of Toronto has and will continue to attract many of the world’s most creative and innovative thinkers to Ontario’s capital and stimulate economic growth. "
Grand Bruit, my mother's birthplace, remains one of Newfoundland's most beautiful harbours, but now without a school, come September.
In the cool evenings of August, as the visitors get down to their last few hours spent home in Grand Bruit, the passage of many eras will compound again, as it has so many times before.
My mother was an alumnus of that school. My father taught there.
The metropolian world moves on. 'Equalization' is another profanity that will not brave the winterlude in Grand Bruit.
In our cafe society, there are always people who are willing to play social eunuchs to any dictator, to any brute force that offers to accomodate their elitism. Mark Steyn has no trouble understanding that ancient concept and its currency.
W.H. Auden called the 1930's 'a low dishonest decade'. While some may have fallen victim to this malaise, Friedrich Hayek did not. Five years into the war against the Nazis, he published a work of seminal insight and clarity. It bears reading and reflection today.
University of Chicago Press rightly touts one of its prized publications, Hayek, F. A.: The Road to Serfdom:
"An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy."
This is unlinked, other than to my own thoughts.
What keeps our central Western institutions firmly on a course for centralization of services? An intuitive response to the communications revolution that the microprocessor has wrought should lead to institutional satellites. Instead, the present reaction seems just that, reactionary, dedicated to re-paving the less travelled roads leading to the centre.
Metropolitan centricism is now taking on the shape of a social pathogen.
CTV reports:
A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.
"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said
Fearless prediction: With their usual fervor, the Gore disciples will pool their collective grade seven-level scientific knowledge, control that nasty gag reflex over 'math' and condemn this eminent scientist in a manner reminiscent of coven hunters from a few years back.
British Prime Minister Blair is unflinching in this classic showdown with a deliberatively provocative rogue regime in Tehran.
"I really don't know why the Iranian regime does this [show captives on TV]," because it just arouses disgust, he told reporters Friday.
However, when will the ultra-sophisticates in the West rear up to douse British patriotism in a flood of guilt-ridden angst, quivering over possible 'resentment'?
This story has the capacity to bring out all of the usual sanctimonious preachers braying for an entente with the reptilian government in Tehran at the expense of Western honour. British sailors are a dispensable commodity when neurotic pacifists sublimate their own cowardice in a cold slimy stew of cultural self-loathing.
Congratulations to any of the various cognoscenti/slasher film actors who do their part for the 'environment' by fueling up the family jet with ethanol. For a true followup on this form of altruism, a decent seal skin coat is a must. Perhaps the fragmented McCartney's have one to spare.
Charles Krauthammer, writing in National Review Online, has had enough of the shallow punditry that blames America first and always:
"......Iraqis were given their freedom and yet many have chosen civil war. Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments, and tribal antagonisms, who gets the blame for the rivers of blood? You can always count on some to find the blame in America. “We did not give them a republic,” insists Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. “We gave them a civil war.”
Of all the accounts of the current situation, this is by far the most stupid. And the most pernicious....."
The petty symbiosis between timid handwringing and pseudo-intellectual worldliness is evident in Zakaria's regular Newsweek contributions but this time he caught the attention of someone who is simply better armed for the intellectual arena.
Marshberry, the Newfoundland treasure,
Survivor of frost and winter,
Picked in the fall by a veteran hand,
Shipped by request to our southern stand.
Gulf Port au Port weather report. The timeless cycles repeat, impervious to our concern.
Stalwart cat
Family member
Personality both profound and inscrutable
Lovable feline
Truly beloved by all.
From birdcage flight to Toronto
To leisurely domain over house and home
From Pape Avenue to Downsview to Ajax.
Now, rest in peace
Always remembered.
The new media season for pomposity, self-indulgence and self-importance gets an early boost as 'CNN mistakes Obama for Osama'
Dutch Mason: Rest in Peace, Prime Minister of the Blues
"... a group outside Starbucks on Kenmount Road Saturday were more interested in protesting what they say is the company’s refusal to recognize the rights of Ethiopian coffee farmers to the names of their products...."
"...Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran From th' noise of our own drums...."
It took the sea a thousand years,
A thousand years to trace
The granite features of this cliff,
In crag and scarp and base.
It took the sea an hour one night,
An hour of storm to place
The sculpture of these granite seams
Upon a woman's face.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing else remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away...".
#1672 1:56:49.5 STAGG, BARRY TORONTO 1140/1984 105/178 Men 50 - 54
Essential poststructuralist mumbo jumbo: The paths to advancement and enlightenment that humankind has followed serendipitously over the ages are all a manifestation of a giant conspiracy by the 'establishment.'
Peter Marche is a professional fisherman from Felix Cove, Newfoundland. When we talked last Saturday in Port au Port, Peter was bemused at the apparent 'wisdom' of the Fisheries Department as they continue to befuddle fishermen in pursuit of their livelihood.
My thought is that fishermen must be seen as the professional entrepreneurs that they surely are. Just as Alberta farmers must continually assert their status as business people, so must Newfoundland fishermen. Both battle a social and government mindset that wrongly distinguishes between these professionals and others who manufacture and sell fenders and bumpers for the cars we drive.
Peter Marche and his colleagues should be treated by government with the same respect they extend to Magna International, that successful Canadian purveyor of automobile parts.
Another letter writing savant in the Globe and Mail finds inspiration in the proposition that Israel's existence is open to debate. Surely, his intellectual ancestors had similar thoughts about the Sudetenland in 1938.
"What matters are the practical consequences of Israel's actions and their long-term implications for its continued existence and for Middle East peace."
Ailing Castro meets with Venezuela's Chavez:
"Cuba's Communist daily published new photographs of ailing leader Fidel Castro on Monday, showing him in bed on his 80th birthday during a visit with his brother Raul and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."
CBC News
The Globe's letter section has this sterile example of liberal illusion:
"...Canada's strength in the past has been its determination not to become enmeshed in the political objectives of one side or the other. Instead, we have tried to apply a set of international standards and laws in the interests of preventing or, where that has not been possible, at least mitigating and resolving international conflicts...."
History and past performance as a sturdy warrior nation are irrelevant to such foolish notions of neutralist grandeur.
BBC NEWS reports: "President George W Bush has said a plot to bomb US-bound flights from the UK is a "stark reminder" that the US is still at war with Islamic extremists."
There are some who prefer the suffocating intoxication of appeasement instead of the bleak truth that barbaric nihilists continue to proselytize among the ignoramuses and fanatics who wish death upon the entirety of Western civilization.
Jonathan Chait writing online for The New Republic:.
"......But the brutal fact is that civilian deaths are Hezbollah's strongest weapon. As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."
Thus, Hezbollah places its rockets and other potential targets in homes, knowing that Israel cannot hit back without creating collateral damage. This does not relieve Israel of the burden of minimizing civilian casualties as best it can. The point is that if Israel has to operate under a code of ethics that renders civilian deaths unacceptable, then it automatically loses. The ramifications would be dire and ultimately aid the cause of Islamic radicals in such a way as to bring about many more innocent deaths over the long run....."
This is the real world outlook that the priestly globalists at the UN ignore. This morning in the National Post, a professorial defender of Louise Arbour raised the spectre of how Churchill and Truman would be judged differently today and would act accordingly. The implication is revisionist and absurd and in effect asserts that events that saved Western civilization from annihilation are now to be deplored.
What is next? Perhaps posthumous war crimes trials for the victors at the Battle of Hastings?
The ‘guilty’ make common cause with the likes of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad..... ...
Excellent post from Dust My Broom:
"I read in some editorial the other day that the core of the Israel-arab disputes is not Israel’s unwillingness to compromise but their enemies adherence to violence. That thought plays well today as representatives from Hamas and Hizbollah are stating they will never put down their weapons"
This statement of the obvious from Hamas et al is serenely ignored by such as the signatories to an ‘open letter to Stephen Harper’ which the Globe turned into an oped piece in Monday’s paper. The ‘letter’ comes from a group of peace advocates in Montreal who combine their multi-ethnicity with the tiresome conviction that Israel’s creation in 1948 is the ‘root cause’ of this current trouble.
The usual complaint that Israel evicted Arabs is uninformed by the troublesome reality that both sides in the first Arab-Israeli War enforced relocations of the other side’s sympathizers to the other side of the border.
So, it is more liberal guilt from Montreal. The ‘guilty’ make common cause with the likes of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This should give some backbone to those wishing for Israel to be turned 'into a molten hill of sand'.
BBC NEWS: Iran leader's warning to Israel.
"Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Israel that it has "pushed the button of its own destruction" because of its actions in Lebanon."
Christie Blatchford exquisitely defines our Baby Boomer generation, its cosseted self-absorption and her self-critical agonizing over our indulgence and our parents' mortal battles that got us to this sheltered oasis of tranquility and prosperity:
"I am a late baby boomer, and though I always felt somewhat out of step with my fellows, I am undeniably one of them. The only collective challenge we had was to resist the weakness wrought by the indulgence of our grateful parents. It was not much of a one, and I think that in the main we failed..... As is usual for the lucky generation of which I am a part, I had only to look after myself and, after a lifetime of it, I am good at it. I still wonder if I would have had the courage to do the other, any of the other. I remain untested, and in that sense, I think, I did not have a good war"
The National Post helpfully illuminates the murky interior of the Volpe campaign to lead the federal Liberals. The politics of group mobilization, devoid of anything but partisan symbiosis, is the obvious method of organization for a candidate headed to oblivion.
"In a written statement released late Friday, Volpe said Jim Karygiannis, a controversial Toronto MP, "has left the campaign as a result of the position taken by the candidate on the current crisis in the Middle East.''
Volpe has been strongly supportive of Israel's bombardment of Lebanon, arguing that the Jewish state has a right to defend itself against attacks by Hezbollah guerillas based in southern Lebanon."
Victor Davis Hanson speaks the blunt truth about the war against Hezbollah that secular cardinals Louise Arbour and Kofi Annan avoid like the plague:
"For their part, the terrorist killers hope to kidnap, ransom, and send off missiles, and then, when caught and hit, play the usual victim card of racism, colonialism, Zionism, and about every other -ism that they think will win a bailout from some guilt-ridden, terrorist-frightened, Jew-hating, or otherwise oil-hungry Western nation.
The only difference from the usual scripted Middle East war is that this time, privately at least, most of the West, and perhaps some in the Arab world as well, want Israel to wipe out Hezbollah, and perhaps hit Syria or Iran. The terrorists and their sponsors know this, and rage accordingly when their military impotence is revealed to a global audience "
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard and eminent legal scholar. He calls out Louise Arbour on her crypto-aristocratic threats of criminal prosecution against Israeli military leaders.
"Louise Arbour is part of the problem, not part of the solution. She should be replaced as High Commissioner for Human Rights before she does even more harm to the ability of democracies to combat terrorism within the rule of law."
Today's National Post editorial sets the general context for Arbour's priestly warnings:
"This is all part of a larger trend. In recent years, Sudan has waged genocide against black peasants in the province of Darfur, yet has largely escaped sanction because the globetrotting human-rights elite are invariably more concerned with throwing earnest jabs at the world's two pre-eminent punching bags: Israel and the United States."
The Globe's Doug Saunders writes his usual scornful prose, serving as a prime example of classist journalism, so reluctant to accept that the era of vacuous Trudeaupia is over in this country. When will he have his interview with Louise Arbour, this week's candidate for Chief Justice of the Lunar Court of Appeal, as she expands on her threat to prosecute 'war crimes' purportedly committed during the Israeli demolition of the Hezbollah terrorists?
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper surprised his staff and further complicated the Canadian evacuation from Lebanon yesterday with a sudden decision to detour his jet to Cyprus and personally rescue about 100 Canadian evacuees."
