1. Alex Rodriquez is a greater player than I had realized.
2. Keep this cat away from me!
3. This is the first negative piece on Vin Scully I have read. He began calling games for the Dodgers in 1950 -- 1950! -- 57 years ago. He is 80 now. He's still great and he is still treasured by everyone in Southern California. When I moved here in 1966 he was the voice of baseball and he is still that voice. The guy who wrote that piece is wrong, Scully never misses something important because he is too busy reminiscing like an old man. He is sharp and smooth and his baseball judgment is excellent. And when he does tell stories, they're always interesting. Not many people can start a story with "I remember Jackie Robinson telling me..."
Best of all, he has never once used the phrase "going yard" to describe a home run. Almost everything in American culture is worse now than it was 40 years ago -- everything except Vin Scully. I hope he keeps working until he is 110 years old.
4. Double Plus Undead discusses a silly piece by a leftist who thinks Bush will cancel the '08 election and become a dictator. The leftist asks,
Who really believes this crew will walk quietly away from power? They have the motivation, the money and the method for doing away with the electoral process altogether. So why wouldn’t they?
Well, think about it. Bush got slapped around by his base for merely nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Then he lost on the immigration bill because his base would not cooperate. With such cantankerous Americans around, do you really think he would risk a dictatorial coup? Any President who tried it would be mercilessly mocked and resisted by the entire populace across the political spectrum. Such a President would become the greatest American loser of all time. Why risk such humiliation when Bush can step down and enjoy the esteem that comes to former presidents?
People call leftists who discuss such bizarre ideas "moonbats" because they seem to be out of touch with reality. Actually, they're just stupid. And they're stupid because modern philosophy has taught them that ideas have nothing to do with real life and that people are determined by their glands, their potty training, whatever. Just as the Dark Ages, as Peikoff said, were dark on principle, so today's leftists are stupid on principle.
5. If the Kossacks want Democrats to be proud liberals, they're not having much success. Politicians still run from the L-word. Hillary Clinton prefers progressive. If you want the truth, both conservatives and socialists are reactionaries to capitalism. Neither likes capitalism because it is individualist and based on the morality of selfishness.
I like to call today's liberals conservatives of the welfare state.
6. Russia is increasingly belligerent.
Having just staked a claim to the North Pole, Russia is now eyeing the Mediterranean.
And just weeks after Norway scrambled its jets because Russian bombers got too close, Georgia says Russia fired a missile into its territory.
3 comments:
"If you want the truth, both conservatives and socialists are reactionaries to capitalism. Neither likes capitalism because it is individualist and based on the morality of selfishness."
I love this formulation. I've basically known this for a while but I never thought of it in this way before. Thanks.
John Kim
You're welcome, John. It's always good to remember that the first critics of capitalism were conservatives such as Robert Southey. Marx secularized their arguments. The religious-medievalist strain of conservatism is quite antagonistic to capitalism. Hilaire Belloc even blames socialism on the division of labor. If we had only stayed with guilds and feudalism, we wouldn't have that damned socialism!
2. Don't tell me you wouldn't want to know. ;)
4. I'm not sure whether that's funny or scary. Maybe both.
6. Too many people worry too much about China, when Russia is the true loose cannon on the other side of the world.
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