(1) Good News in the Daily Grind: Your Coffee May Have Some Health Perks, but Can Brew Trouble in People With Certain Conditions

(2) Prepare to get schooled in my Austrian perspective.

(2a) How Obama got Keynes wrong

(3) Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

(4) "In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing that Chaos and Old Night. (Yes conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy "change is the means of our preservation.") A people's historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better that the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers." - Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

(5) "It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it...forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize..." - Phil 3:8-14

Labels: economics, microsoft, quotes, weekend

"Whoever you are, whatever you're up to, that's what you need- a cup of coffee."

- Gordon Theisen

Related
Slang Terms and Nicknames for Coffee

Labels: quotes

...was a real a-hole!

(1) Everton in talks to sign Donovan on loan

(1a) Howard: Donovan Will Bring Strength

(2) How to Make GeekKids Watch Sports

(3) Impotent futurism: the design of Allende's cyber-utopian boondoggle (first seen on Instapundit)

(4) From the Greek poet Hesiod:

And I wish that I had no part
in the fifth generation
of men, but had died before it came,
Or been born afterward:
For here now is the age or iron. Never by daytime
will there be an end to hard work and pain
nor in the night
to weariness.

(5) Shameful: 83 percent of Americans failed a basic test on knowledge of the American Revolution and the principles that have united all Americans.

Labels: history, quotes, soccer, weekend

(1) More art from Makoto Shinkai and 5 Centimeters Per Second.











(2) Go BLUE! I'm off to see if the New York Football Giants can salvage their season.

(3) A book review quote from Randy Stafford...

"Most American conservatives, especially since Sept. 11th, exhibit signs of brain damage. And John Derbyshire diagnoses the problem: too much happy talk, too much optimism and not enough pessimism. There are limits about what man can do with himself and the natural world. Humans are not blank slates that can be remade to fit whatever utopian scheme can be dreamed up. Conservatives are supposed to know this and see things as they are. Liberals are there to take care of the happy talk and wishful thinking."

Labels: quotes, weekend

"History is the great dust-heap...a pageant and not a philosophy."

- Augustine Birrell

"Day by day, man experiences many greater or lesser hopes, different in kind according to the different periods of his life. Sometimes one of these hopes may appear to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes. Young people can have the hope of a great and fully satisfying love; the hope of a certain position in their profession, or of some success that will prove decisive for the rest of their lives. When these hopes are fulfilled, however, it becomes clear that they were not, in reality, the whole. It becomes evident that man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes clear that only something infinite will suffice for him, something that will always be more than he can ever attain."

- Pope Benedict XVI

"There are moments - indeed days, weeks, or even years on end - in some people's lives where there is a palpable sense that all activity is valueless. Perhaps waking up one hopeful, sunny morning, we feel the innocent child within us reanimate, a feeling only to be shortly dispelled by the masked lie of adulthood staring back at us in the bathroom mirror...In such times, and many others left undescribed, many of us may seek out some form of pageantry to provide distraction, or solace. We might visit the corner cinema, or turn on the moving picture box, or eat a cake, in hopes of finding something that will either tickle us, or, more preferably, and much more rarely, provide some sympathetic resonance with out personal situation, either via particulars, or by general philosophic principle."

- Chris Ware

"It is only by becoming children of God that we can be with our common Father. To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow man as well."

- Pope Benedict XVI

Labels: quotes

I cribbed this from K-LO at NRO. It's a long quote from Fouad Ajami.

"At the core of the Reagan mission was the recovery of the nation's esteem and self-regard. Reagan was an optimist. He was Hollywood glamour to be sure, but he was also Peoria, Ill. His faith in the country was boundless, and when he said it was "morning in America" he meant it; he believed in America's miracle and had seen it in his own life, in his rise from a child of the Depression to the summit of political power.

The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan's view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.

In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path."

Labels: obama, quotes

"Some un-American tea baggers in flyover country are bound to get pretty wee-weed up."
  -Peter Kirsanow

Labels: quotes

(1) Three candidates for the new Limestone Roof quote/phrase:

"...between these two kinds of death we are either drowned or slaughtered."

"Like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets you have no intention of eating."

"A shitload of suffering is what we're really talking about."

(2) ESPN is broadcasting English Premier League matches. The match for Saturday, August 22 is Manchester United versus Wigan Athletic. Manchester was upset last week by Burnley (Manchester United = Yankees, Burnley = Pittsburgh Pirates).

Labels: quotes, soccer, weekend

"At a time when most homes received just three television channels, more than forty million people watched Disney's forecast for the future...It filled our dreams and fueled our expectations."

- Brian Fies, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow

Jeff Pepper from 2719 HYPERION reviews Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow in Ad Astra Per Aspera. Jeff bottles the ephemeral in his closing sentence...

If Disney's original EPCOT film gave you goosebumps, or if you ever emerged excited and energized after riding Spaceship Earth or Horizons at EPCOT Center, you will no doubt be similarly thrilled and motivated by Brian Fies amazing journey across the 20th century.

Labels: books, disney, quotes, weekend

(1) Airport Check-in: The Palm among new JFK eateries

(2) Another quote from How Rome Fell...

"There were no hordes of barbarians hurling themselves time and again against the walls of civilisation."

(3)


(4) A quote from Admiral of the Ocean Sea by Samuel Eliot Morison...

"The northeastern shore of this gulf is noted for the subterranean streams that flow down through the limestone and break out under the sea not far from the shore, welling forth such a volume of sweet water that that swarms of manatee are attracted to quest their thirst, and seamen may fill water casks without the trouble of going ashore."

I'll be quoting from this Pulitzer Prize winning book again in September.

Labels: airports, books, quotes, signage, weekend

Help choose the next quote/phrase for Limestone Roof.

(A) Convenience and frequent repetition do not amount to truth.
(B) The best argument for conservatism, is the real world results of liberalism.
(C) 'More Humble Men.': The Poor and the Rest

Labels: quotes, weekend

"The emperor needed the wealthier classes to help him run the empire. Senators in particular were the class he lived amongst and their attitude towards him tended to dictate how he would be portrayed in later histories."

- How Rome Fell, Adrian Goldsworthy

Related
Amid Criticism, Post Drops "Appalling" Plan to Sell Access (ABC)
Barack Obama Seeks to Turn America into a Third World Country
Again, Why the Diffidence?
National Security & the Cult of Personality
Congress's Travel Tab Swells: Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos (WSJ)

Labels: dodd, history, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

I've just started this meaty book by Adrian Goldsworthy and will eventually post a full book review. For now, I found this quote in the preface rousing:

The Roman Empire did not fall quickly, but as part of a very slow process, and this should warn us against magnifying current events and their likely consequences on the long-term fortune of countries. Britain has been a fairly depressing place in the last decade or so. Ministers caught out in incompetence, corruption or blatant deceitfulness cling on to power like limpets, first denying everything, before finally apologising and expecting this to be enough. Bureaucracy and regulation continue to grow apace, while the basic efficiency of institutions declines, rendering them incapable of even the apparently simple tasks. Yet while the number of civil servants rises, the size of the armed forces shrinks at the very time they are more committed to serious campaigns. It would be easy to draw parallels with the Roman Empire in the fourth century. The self-righteous tone of so much government legislation certainly chimes with late Late Roman imperial decrees, as does the apparent failure of so much of this to achieve its aim. Such comparisons are unlikely to assist our analysis of the Roman Empire, and would be no more than the author indulging himself. Understanding the history must come first.

And as soon as I read the word limpets I thought about this post at Instapundit (and hyenas).
Our elected officials are like a pack of hyenas (Dodd and his sweetheart loan from Countrywide). I can just see Obey and Waters standing over the carcasses of hard-working taxpayers, forcibly extracting money as payoffs to special interest groups and to engorge their own private coffers. These are filthy people.

en·gorge
- verb (used with object), verb (used without object), -gorged, -gorg·ing.
1. to swallow greedily; glut or gorge.

Labels: books, dodd, history, quotes

I should use my quote of the week more judiciously since it's only Monday but Michael Ledeen has offered this early contender and it's quote of the month material:

Which is where the Left has arrived at the end of its long journey from the Revolutionary Parliament in Paris in the 18th century. Its ideology, as Hegel forecast, having been rendered irrelevant by the changes in the real world, they can no longer explain the world, let alone change it effectively. So they are left with an insatiable desire for power. As we once said about a failed Republican president, they are not very good at the "vision thing." They just scramble around trying to grab whatever they can, and from time to time emerge with incoherent babbling about "cowardice on race," claims that tax increases are actually tax cuts, promises about reducing the deficit that they cannot possibly accomplish, and appeasement of our enemies, since somebody else once advocated support for freedom around the world.

It's the global equivalent of country-club politics, now firmly in the hands of the Democrats.

Labels: democrats, quotes

Slow Drip of Financial Ruin by Dennis Byrne

Reason is the facility of the mind used to intelligently form judgments, make decisions and solve problems. Emotions are feelings, desires, fears, hates and passionate drives—all of which are the tools that Obama deployed to sell the stimulus package to a gullible public. Endeavor to go through all 1,100 pages of this stuffed piggy and you'll find little rational connection between the nation's problems and its solutions—other than if we throw enough money out there, some of it will stick to the wall.

Yes, John Edwards, There Are Indeed ‘Two Americas’ by Jennifer Rubin

It is true that the stimulus bill was just passed so we have barely begun to feel its real-world impact. But consumer confidence indicators and the stock market are predictive of future behavior. If investors are fleeing to gold and selling stocks, consumers are not planning any major purchases, and the banks are declaring a lack of confidence in the man charged with the bank bailout, that says something about the Democrats’ handiwork so far.

And it is certainly true that the president’s own gloom and doom rhetoric has not helped matters. It is possible to talk down the market and scare consumers. There is a fine line between lowering expectations and creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Labels: obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

"For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed. A central administration, or a corps of select managers and civil servants, however well intentioned and well trained, cannot confer justice and prosperity and tranquility upon a mass of men and women deprived of their old responsibilities. That experiment has been made before; and it has been disastrous. It is the performance of our duties in community that teaches us prudence and efficiency and charity."

- Rusell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

The Height of Power: As other American fiefdoms fade, Washington looms larger than ever

America reaches a tipping point as Washington becomes its heart and soul

Labels: quotes

"And now, on the train from Paris, where he had stopped off for five weeks, he met some Germans who gave him reassurance. They said there was no longer any confusion or chaos in politics and government, and no longer any fear among the people, because everyone was so happy. This was what George wanted desperately to believe, and he was prepared to be happy, too. For no man ever went to a foreign land under more propitious conditions than those which attended his arrival in Germany early in May, 1936."

"At last he came--and something like a wind across a field of grass was shaken through that crowd, and from afar the tide rolled up with him, and in it was the voice, the hope, the prayer of the land."

- Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Labels: books, quotes

When I was in college some thirty years ago, the railroad station in New Haven was a moderately grand affair. It boasted marble floors, elaborate brass clocks, airy ceilings, and pretentious entrances. It was a foyer for a heady trip to the big city and beyond. When I returned for a twenty-fifth reunion, I discovered that the station had been abandoned. All that remained of that elegant monument to travel was a shed attached to the original building. What struck me in the sleepless hour when I concocted the title for this book was that religion seems to have suffered a similar fate. Where Church and Temple were once grandiose constructions suggesting all sorts of adventurous journeys to the beyond, they seem today reduced to humanity's arrivals and departures.

- George Dennis O'Brien, God and the New Haven Railway and Why Neither One Is Doing Very Well

Labels: books, quotes

"Railroad stations in all their physical immensity and importance had emerged as the cathedrals of the industrial age, monuments to modernity and to the machine that at their best reflected and honored the full panoply of the train station's drama. In what urban crossroads in human history had so many multitudes high and low, so many varied nationalities, converged in such vast numbers for such different purposes? All those often inchoate human emotions tied to departures to far-flung destinations, to new beginnings and romance (had not George Westinghouse famously met his wife on a train?), even to human routine, deserved a suitably noble setting. Every architect who designed terminals coveted this prize."

- Conquering Gotham, Jill Jonnes

Labels: books, quotes, railroads

"An extraordinary example of imagination and daring."

Required Reading
Don't Waste a Crisis?
Beware of the Big-Government Tipping Point

Christmas Postscript
2008 PAC-MAN Arcade machine holiday ornament from Hallmark

Labels: quotes, weekend

Help choose the next quote/phrase for Limestone Roof. I like A and/or B.

(A) Behaving at the peak of genetic madness
(B) The Redmond equivalent of a Detroit Monday car
(C) Malefactors of great wealth
(D) Pseudo concern underwritten by smug knowingness

Labels: quotes

"But you know what? I'm done with it. I'm going back to gentlemen's hosiery. You know where you are with an honest pair of socks."

- Joe Blumfield

Labels: quotes, weekend

This quote from John Hood explains how choice is a bit of a misnomer and coercion is de rigueur when it comes to the redistributionists. Isn't the left all about choice?

There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won't even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That's what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn't understand this, or doesn't want voters to understand it.

Dr. Haywood wrote about this coercion in his essay "A Human Action Taxonomy" in When We Are Free.

Related
Why Is Mommy A Democrat?

Labels: quotes

"I don't know how anybody who pretends to know anything about history can be so naive as to suppose that after all these centuries of corrupt and imperfect social systems, there is eventually to evolve something perfect and pure out of them- the good out of the evil, the unchanging and stable and eternal out of the variable and mutable, the just out of the unjust. But perhaps revolution is a contradiction of evolution, and therefore means the replacement of the unjust by the just, of the evil by the good. And yet it is still just as naive to suppose that members of the same species, without having changed anything but their minds, should suddenly turn around and produce a perfect society, when they have never been able, in the past, to produce anything but imperfection and, at best, the barest shadow of justice.

But once it had, once capitalism had been completely overthrown, the semi-state, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, would itself only be a temporary matter. It would be a kind of guardian of the revolution, a tutor of the new classless society, during its minority. But as soon as the citizens of the new, classless world had had all the greed educated out of them by enlightened methods, the last vestiges of the "state" would be wither away, and there would be a new world, a new golden age, in which all property would be held in common, at least all capital goods, all the land, means of production and so on, and nobody would desire to seize them for himself: and so there would be no more poverty, no more wars, no more misery, no more starvation, no more violence. Everybody would be happy. Nobody would be overworked. They would all amicably exchange wives whenever they felt like it, and their offspring would be brought up in big shiny incubators, not by the state, but by that great, beautiful surd, the lovely, delicious unknown quantity of the new "Classless Society."

I don't think that even I was gullible enough to swallow all the business about the ultimate bliss that would follow the withering away of the state...but I simply assumed that things would be worked out by the right men at the right time."

- Thomas Merton, 1948

Labels: quotes

"After several hundred years of this, it had become a large unruly nest of different styles; there was a palm court, Perspex furniture, some Renaissance plasterwork, the latest up-lighters, and a lingering air of the Thirties. It felt like the sort of place to come and wait for an airship." - John Gimlette

At some point I will finish Panther Soup and start quoting someone else. It's beginning to get a little embarrassing.

Labels: quotes

I wanted to listen to the England versus Kazakhstan WC Qualifier on BBC Radio 5 but was thwarted by some tart with a pleasant sounding voice prattling on about 'unauthorized rights'. I will settle for the US versus Cuba WC Qualifier from Washington DC later this evening.

How about a quote?

"For a long time I lay there, thinking about the grass. Right then, there didn't seem anything else to think about - excerpt perhaps the only other commodity the plains had in abundance which, of course, was solitude." - John Gimlette

Limestone Library - Dwell Magazine

The roads—and the routes and the paths, the trails and the rights-of-way—take us away and they bring us home. They make us who we are and they make the places where we live.

Perpetual Motion: Vol. 1
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 2
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 3
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 4

Unrelated
Does the History Channel offer any programming about history and shouldn't programs like Monsterquest and UFO Hunters be on the Sci-Fi channel? I think Shockwave should be on Spike TV.

Labels: quotes, soccer, weekend

The attempt to centralize all power in the one capital city and, indeed, in its administrative quarter, means the assimilation of all possible rival institutions from monasteries to television stations, from harbour authorities to charitable foundations. All these can be eliminated in the name of democracy or efficiency, and the result is the creation of the one government machine into which all problems are fed and from which all wisdom is to emerge. All that is initially lost is the likelihood of the government's having to listen to informed criticism from outside its inner circle of officials. Thereafter the problems centre upon the growing size and complexity of the central administration. As the civil servants multiply there is an ever-increasing distance between the citizen and the nameless people who will ultimately decide upon his application, protest, or appeal.

- C. Northcote Parkinson

The Fourth Estate has already been absorbed (see below).

A Gallup survey says 52 percent of Americans do not trust news media, up from 30 percent in 1972. Are the two tied? Of course, they are. Who’s responsible for that?

Labels: end times, left-wing media, liberals, quotes

"Government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself."

- John Adams

Labels: quotes

Obama I have never seen as anything but a bag of wind, possessed of great political guile, but steeped in the faddy, solipsistic notions of post-1960s college leftism.

- John Derbyshire

Labels: obama, quotes

"I predict that if Democrats do better in coming elections, much of the lefty apocalypticism will diminish..."

Labels: quotes

I found this on No Left Turns:

The difference between Republicans and Democrats that our division demonstrates is the degree to which Republicans (and especially, perhaps, conservatives) are inclined to deliberate (and, yes, fight) about our principles. Hillary and Obama spar . . . but about what? Who’s the most authentic candidate for female voters? Who deserves the Hispanic vote? Who can get the biggest payoff for the labor unions or the old folks? There’s never any talk about the purposes and the ends of government. That’s all assumed. The only time you’ll hear the word "should" is when they’re leveling some insult at a Neanderthal Republican who is not yet on board with their program. To be a Democrat today is to acknowledge that you believe in the "End of Political Thought"--or, to be less generous, that you don’t believe in thought at all. The only thought is that given to the means to achieve pre-determined ends. That’s why their politics is almost always more wonkish and less interesting and fascinating only when it is more Machiavellian and internal.

Source

Related
(1) CPAC starts tomorrow.

(2) Some humor from one of the poster(s) at Ace:

"I for one welcome our new McCain/Huckabee overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted blog commenter, I can be helpful in rounding up the others to toil in the weight-loss and border crossing camps."

Labels: democrats, end times, quotes, the good guys

"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."
- David Hume


I'm reading Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War by Richard M. Ketchum. I like these meaty tomes and this book is brilliant. He excels at keeping the prose quick without sacrificing any of the details and descriptions of the events (and personalities) involved in the conflict.

I'm in transit this weekend and should have enough airport time to reflect on what I've read so far and how it complements McCullough's 1776, Berkin's A Brilliant Solution, and Brumwell's Redcoats.

**UPDATE**

I have two quotes from the book to substantiate Hume's quote.

Clark's proposals were ignored by the commissary staff, which quickly spotted the opportunity to make money by supplying wagons to the army. The method was to threaten local farmers with military reprisals if they did not lease or sell their "country wagons" at outrageously low prices. Then, having cheated the farmers, the commissaries proceeded to cheat the government by selling the vehicles to the crown at huge fees and pocketing the profits. Clark figured he could easily have saved the Treasury £100,000 a year by converting English carts but discovered sadly that "private emolument has been more attended to than publick good."

Modern Day Example

SEN. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

Source

This is one of my favorite quotes from the book.

What was behind this, of course, was the intense jealousy each man felt because of the other- Gates because of Arnold's courage and exploits in battle, which were the talk of the camp; Arnold because the credit, glory, and prestige he so desperately wanted were being denied him. In many respects the dispute revealed Gates at his worst, taking advantage of what he knew to be Arnold's most sensitive trigger points, deviling the man until he could take it no longer and giving the screw an extra twist for good measure. Gates was being more than petty: his behavior could only be described as vindictive and nasty, for as he well knew, he had the command and the therefore the last word.

I worked with someone like Gates.

Notes: The picture is General John "Gentlemen Johnny" Burgoyne. Thanks Ms. S.

Labels: quotes, weekend

Baby Boomers sometimes remind me of that tiresome woman at a cocktail party who keeps talking about herself and then finally comes up for air and says, "But enough about me. What about you? What do you think about me?"

- Dean Barnett

Labels: clintons, generational conflict, quotes

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

- Abraham Lincoln

Labels: quotes

"The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen."

Andrew Klavan

Labels: quotes

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
- H. L. Mencken

Poor Al, having been rebuffed from the White House under such extraordinary odds (how do you botch wha cycle Clinton enjoyed), has set his sights on being the titular head of some Captain Planet-esque GLOBAL tax organization. He is fawned over by the editors of Rolling Stone, CNN and a cadre of vacuous musicians and entertainers.

Here is another intelligent oped on the pop culture of global warming. Did you know that about termites?

In order to focus on you and what you are doing to increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, which, as everyone knows will destroy the globe, we do not discuss the activities of termites. Fifteen years ago it was estimated that the digestive tracts of termites produce about 50 billion tons of CO2 and methane annually. That was more than the world's production from burning fossil fuel.

Labels: quotes

"For some, these dreams of a non-friction life with unlimited abundance are transferred onto an inanimate object called the government, which becomes the great existential teat for all of us. It will heal us when we are sick, rescue us from hurricanes, take care of us when we’re old, educate us, and generally shield us from the vicissitudes of fate."

- Gagdad Bob

Labels: quotes

"The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism."

- Tobias Jones

Labels: quotes

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
-Mark Twain

Labels: quotes