The Bosque Boys

Jean Paul Satre died and appeared before God looking very dazed and confused. God asked him, "Well, what did you expect?" "Nothing."

Rene Descartes walked into a bar and orders a drink. He finishes it and the bartender asks him, "Want another?" "I think not," he replied, and disappeared.

A rabbi, a priest, and a Protestant minister were debating which of their faiths was most effective at making converts. Finally a contest was proposed. They would all go into the woods, and the first one to convert a bear would be the winner. At the agreed upon meeting place the priest and the minister met after their ursine evangelism. "I think I won," said the priest. "I soon came upon a bear, recited the Creed, sprinkled him with water, and now he's a Catholic." "I think I was faster," said the minister. "I also met a bear, asked him if he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and he roared. I took that as a yes." The two of them waited and waited for the rabbi. Finally they saw him drag himself out of the woods, his clothing torn and bloody. "What happened?" the other two cried. "Maybe I should not have tried to begin with circumcision," moaned the rabbi.

One night a lion jumps into a missionary compound. First he ate a Roman Catholic priest. Then he ate a Baptist minister. Finally he ate a Methodist missionary. Then he went back into the jungle and had an ecumenical movement.

As I was pondering my next post on why I could not vote for Obama, I found this at Wizbang that pretty well says what I was going to say.

Barack Obama, though... he really doesn't bring much "change" to the party.
. . .
Well, one of the key figures in getting Rich his pardon was Eric Holder, who was the #2 man in the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno. It was Holder who directed that the normal pardon process (including consulting with -- or, at least, notifying the officials who were directly involved with the case against the pardon-seeker, or that the subject of the pardon make the request themselves, or that the proposed pardon not mess up any current cases) be bypassed and Rich get his pardon.
. . .
Well, Mr. Holder is now one of the troika that is advising Barack Obama on who should be his vice-presidential candidate.
. . .
Several of Obama's top foreign policy advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as National Security Advisor for Jimmy Carter -- where he helped shape the foreign policy that we're still paying the price for, in many ways, today.

etc.

What he said. Obama is the candidate of no real change.

A Disclaimer: I have not, nor in all probability will I, see the new movie Sex and the City. I watched parts of two or three of the TV episodes to see what the fuss was about--and found them tacky and boring. I have some thoughts prompted by Roger Ebert's review.

“Sex and the City” was famous for its frankness, and we expect similar frankness in the movie. We get it, but each “frank” moment comes wrapped in its own package and seems to stand alone from the story. That includes (1) a side shot of a penis, (2) sex in positions other than the missionary, and (3) Samantha’s dog, which is a compulsive masturbator. I would be reminded of the immortal canine punch line (“because he can”), but Samantha’s dog is a female. “She’s been fixed,” says the pet lady, “but she has not lost the urge.”

Samantha can identify with that. The dog gets friendly with every pillow, stuffed animal and ottoman and towel, and here’s the funny thing, it ravishes them male-doggy-style. I went to AskJeeves.com and typed in “How do female dogs masturbate?” and did not get a satisfactory answer, although it would seem to be: “Just like all dogs do, but not how male dogs also do.”

The "girls" in Sex and the City represent one possible destination on the paths open to modern women: hedonistic narcissism. Home and family, the traditional destination of a woman's path, is not where the quartet are. They are obsessed with material objects and sex. And the sex is not remotely related to procreation. Fun only, without commitment to future generations. Sterile fun. The play of a sterile masturbating bitch.

1. Muslims do not recognize the Jews to be God's chosen people.
2. Jews do not recognize Jesus to be the Messiah.
3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope to be the the Head of the Church.
4. Baptists do not recognize one another in Hooters.

Up until now, the Democrats have had all the hot-button, no-brainer, red-meat, purely emotional issues on their side. We have Iraq on our side, but that has always been a tough and incredibly complicated sell that may cut against us more than for us. And, worth noting, our opponents are betting on the latter, convinced of our inability to present a cogent and convincing case in re Iraq.

However, there may be a brand new opening for the GOP. Four-dollar-per-gallon gasoline presents John McCain with an enormous opportunity.

Read Fred Barnes for a good summary of the issues, openings, and challenges.

But, in a nutshell, for the last few decades we have been very indulgent concerning energy policy. Why? Oil has been cheap and plentiful. Which means we could drive SUVs and run our AC on 66-degrees all summer and not think too much about the future. It also meant that we could allow the environmentalists to control our energy policy, making drilling, refining, and politically incorrect alternate fuels more trouble than they were worth.

However, we cannot afford that brand of indulgence any more. The good news for green-necks? SUVs and mindless energy consumption are on the way out. The good news for roughnecks: the good ole USA is probably about to get back into the business of oil production.

Back to the horse-race aspect of this question. The Democrats are completely beholden to the "environmentalists wackos," and a major pivot before the Fall Election is completely impossible. The Republicans, on the other hand, are in perfect position to propose a pragmatic policy of increased exploration, drilling, and refining that will strike so many of those swing voters as a perfectly reasonable response to a vital question.

Barnes notes that McCain has some potential problems in this area, but this perfect storm presents the king of pragmatism with a golden opportunity to go on offense.

In "a gripe about Google," Tocqueville points out that the most-used search engine on the web elected to ignore the significance of June 6th, "one of the most pivotal days in the history of the modern world, the day where thousands of America’s finest young men fought and died on the beaches of Normandy to help push back the forces of fascism and tyranny." Instead, Google reconfigured their logo to celebrate the 509th anniversary of the birth of a noteworthy but fairly obscure (to most of us) seventeenth-century portrait artist of the Spanish court.

My sense is that Google merely reflected a general reluctance yesterday among America's cultural gatekeepers to make too much of this 64th anniversary of the "Longest Day."

Why?

--Sixty-four is a fairly mundane number--nothing sexy or golden about a 64th anniversary.

--Perhaps no one cares anymore about something that happened so long ago. An increasingly small percentage of Americans were alive on that day in June in 1944, even fewer have a contemporaneous recollection of the event, and the surviving participants of Operation Overlord are down to a minuscule remnant. Literally, one might ask, who cares?

--Perhaps many well-meaning persons of cultural authority also worried that a reminder of this event might glorify war, hail American sacrifice, and highlight our positive role in modern geo-political history. Perhaps noting past military victories while American troops are in the field doing battle as we speak might appear too political and/or triumphal. Perhaps trumpeting warriors and a "good war" during a presidential election year in which the outcome of the political contest might turn on the collective assessment of our current war struck some as inappropriate.

Hard to know.

Nevertheless, here is a brief and personal (albeit somewhat indirect) recollection concerning Normandy and the "boys" who showed so brave sixty-four years ago.

For three weeks during the late spring of 1996, I traveled through France and Ireland. Making the trip by myself, I felt free to wander wherever the spirit led me. Consequently, without much conscious forethought, I found myself at the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie in Bayeux on June 8 (the 52nd anniversary of D-Day plus two), where I ran into a contingent of British veterans of the Normandy invasion. Having served in the 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, these troopers (then in their late-sixties and seventies) were excited to find a young man who seemed so interested in their great adventure so long ago. Even better, I was an American who would cordially laugh with them as they good-naturedly scoffed at the idea that Eisenhower (merely a "political general"), Patton ("all talk of blood and guts but no real grit"), or any other U.S. commander could have accomplished much without "Monty" to tell them what to do and lead the way.

Their devotion to "Monty" and his fame reminded me of a Winston Churchill story (as told by the late Sir Robert Rhodes James during one of his visits to Baylor University during the mid-1990s). According to the tale, toward the end of the war Churchill was briefing King George VI during one of their regular meetings, when the King noticed that the Prime Minister was distracted and agitated. Prompted by the King's query, Churchill explained that although the progress of the war was thoroughly agreeable, things on the domestic front were less happy. After ticking off a number of political and economic problems he faced, Churchill sighed with exasperation: "And I think Monty wants my job." To which, the King purportedly rejoined, "that is quite a relief, Winston, all this time I assumed he wanted mine."

God Save the King and God Bless Monty, Winnie, and all the boys of the 21st Army Group.

God Bless Ike and Patton and the all the boys of Pointe du Hoc and all the other places along the beaches of Normandy.

You've probably noticed that Google likes to commemorate certain historical events on its home page by turning the Google logo into an image that represents something relevant that happened on that day. For instance, events like “World Water Day,” MLK’s Birthday, Earth Day, and even the Chinese New Year get recognized every year without fail. And Christmas and Easter are always heavily secularized in their depictions.

On this, the 64th anniversary of one of the most pivotal days in the history of the modern world, the day where thousands of America’s finest young men fought and died on the beaches of Normandy to help push back the forces of fascism and tyranny, how does Google pay tribute to this event?

Naturally, by celebrating the life of Diego Velazquez, a Spanish painter who died in 1660.

Religion does not always move public policy in a conservative direction.

Story here from The Christian Century.

Excerpts:

Little noted in the history behind the California Supreme Court decision that gives the "right to marry" to same-sex couples are the bold steps taken over four decades by onetime Pentecostal minister Troy Perry in trying to establish legal and religious rights for gays and lesbians.

Perry, who founded a church 40 years ago that became an international denomination for Christian homosexuals, filed the initial lawsuit with his spouse and a lesbian couple in February 2004 that led to last month's ruling making California the second state, after Massachusetts, to legalize marriage for same-sex couples.
. . .
A sociologist of religion who has studied the MCC movement credited Perry's leadership for the changes. "He has had the audacity and the tenacity to claim for gay and lesbian people the religious and civil rights that most Americans have the privilege to take for granted," said Steven Warner, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois-Chicago and immediate past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
. . .
By contrast, some mainline leaders who have welcomed homosexual clergy into their ranks praised the California high court.

The United Church of Christ, which joined a brief in the California case, approved overwhelmingly in its 2005 convention a resolution supporting legalization of same-sex marriages. Bill McKinney, president of the UCC-related Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, said the seminary "celebrates this historic decision."

Episcopal priest Susan Russell, the national president of the gay-advocacy group Integrity, indicated that supporters for gay union rites should raise these issues at the 2009 triennial Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim, California. She told Episcopal News Service that it is time for the church to "be as prophetic as the state of California has been."

Here's a bizarre and disturbing story from India revealing the unintended (but entirely forseeable) consequences of affirmative action.

For the full Report, go here. (This year's report has more color and graphics and so loads more slowly than past reports.)

The worst nation offenders (Tier 3) are Algeria, Burma, Cuba, Fiji, Iran, Kuwait, Moldovia, North Korea, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria.

Interesting that 8 countries out of 14 in this tier have Muslim governments. Communist dicatorships account for 2 more. And Burma, with its now infamous military dictatorship.