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"If there were no scarcity, there would be no economics"

Our newly discovered Photoshop toy — the "paint daub" filter — transforms a quartered cauliflower atop the kitchen counter into a vast, glacial landscape with no anthropogenic melting in sight (cf. unretouched photo below).

Dr. Sanity's commentary yesterday on Thomas Sowell's column on why voters don't listen to economists — they want quick fixes and someone to blame, not solutions — afforded a eureka moment [Or was it an instance of crackpot theorization?] regarding the preference of the BMI-challenged among us for magic pills and fad diets over sensible eating habits. Dr. Sowell:

Is there anything complex about the fact that with two countries — India and China — having rapid economic growth, and with combined populations 8 times that of the United States, they are creating an increased demand for the world's oil supply?

The problem is not that supply and demand is such a complex explanation. The problem is that supply and demand is not an emotionally satisfying explanation. For that, you need melodrama, heroes and villains.

It is clear that many people prefer to blame President Bush. Others prefer to blame the oil companies, who have long been the favorite villains of the left.

Cauliflowerets unfiltered. Cutting the head into quarters first makes it easy as pie to remove the stems and leaves to make Silky Cauliflower Soup (recipe below). 

Dr. Sanity takes it from there:

This is what passes for heroism these days: finding new and creative ways to avoid reality; exploiting and empowering the inner 'victim' of people who don't want to deal with the real world by changing their own behavior.

I know all about this because I deal with people like that every day in my profession …  They want a pill to make themselves feel better so they can keep on doing what they have always been doing no matter how destructive or irresponsible or counterproductive it is.

Photoshopped image of steamed, puréed cauliflower in the Cuisinart calls to mind the putti in William-Adolphe Bouguereau's The Birth of Venus.

"They want to hear about how their political heroes will stop the villains from 'gouging' them or 'exploiting' them with high prices," continues Dr. Sowell in Part II of his essay today:

Least of all do voters want to hear about the most fundamental reality of economics — that what everybody wants has always added up to more than there is.

That is called scarcity-- and if there were no scarcity, there would be no economics. What would be the point, if we could all have everything we want, in whatever amount we want?

Ironically — despite artificial scarcities produced by government mandates — overweight Americans would seem to have the opposite problem: too much of everything they want to eat. "Knowing that another meal was just a few hours later is really important," emails our svelte sister Sue, responding to our previous post on "mindful eating":

When I was in college and weighed a hundred boop-boop, I used to eat five full-sized candy bars at a time, as though, after that glutton session, there would be no more cakes and ale.

We are blessed to live in this land of plenty, where our larders remain full, and we can say "yes" whenever we actually feel hungry and not have to hoard and stuff every meal.

The trick, of course, is to recognize when we "actually feel hungry."

A midday Cold Turkey Cookbook plateful of small portions of a variety of good things to eat. Clockwise from left: Silky Cauliflower Soup, Chelsea Baked Beans half sandwich with mayo, half an orange and plain yogurt with a dollop of puréed ready-to-serve prunes.

Silky Cauliflower Soup

Chop cauliflower into quarters, cut out and discard core and leaves, break up into medium-sized florets and rinse in a colander.

Steam florets, together with five chopped roasted garlic cloves, in the top of a double boiler about 20 minutes until tender.

Purée in a food processor and return to pan (bottom of double boiler). Add 1 1/2 cups fat-free chicken broth, a few sprigs of chopped chives and freshly ground pepper to taste and slowly bring to the boil, stirring to blend. Serve hot or cold.

lt's what's for lunch.

"More satisfying than eating an entire cake mindlessly"

The sight of a plateful of petits fours — elaborately decorated, multi-layered, bite-sized French teacakes created for the "let them eat cake" crowd during the reign of Marie Antoinette — corresponds metaphorically in our mind's eye to the classic Cold Turkey Cookbook plateful of small portions of a variety good things to eat (see below). (Divine Delights photo)

"Have you learned to eat consciously? Has it changed your life?" the WSJs Health Journal columnist Melinda Beck asks readers, noting that "mindful eating," which has "roots in Buddhism, is being studied at several academic medical centers and the National Institutes of Health as a way to combat eating disorders":

Many past diet plans have stressed not overeating. What's different about mindful eating is the paradoxical concept that eating just a few mouthfuls, and savoring the experience, can be far more satisfying than eating an entire cake mindlessly.

It sounds so simple, but it takes discipline and practice. It's a far cry from the mindless way many of us eat while walking, working or watching TV, stopping only when the plate is clean or the show is over.

Painterly vision of our supper this evening, a potpourri of sweet and savory morsels to tempt the eye and palate. AND they're good for you. We knocked the photographic image up a notch using Photoshop's "rough pastels" and "paint daubs" filters. Clockwise from lower left: Potato Meltdown, Harvest Meatballs, Corny Cornbread minimuffin, Roasted Beets with dollop of sour cream (grabbed from Googleland and dropped into the image) and Sweet Potato Puree.

It turns out that we've been practicing "mindful eating" ourselves since May 30 last year, when — deciding we'd had enough of waddling through life on the wrong side of the BMI divide — "we jumped on the wagon cold turkey … cutting out the booze [except on weekends and special occasions], the second helpings and the midnight snacks." The pounds started melting away — 41 and counting —  as we experimented with recipes for The Cold Turkey Cookbook. By the end of July we "bucked decades of denial, headed out to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought a bathroom scale to replace the one we had thrown down the stairs and kicked out of the house in blind rage many years and several diets ago."

More fun with Photoshop filters, this time showcasing the inside of our refrigerator, where stacks of containers contain a motherlode of leftovers, something we rarely had in the larder during our pre-mindful-eating days of gorging early and often. Good for the pocketbook too.

As the Mother of All Sensible Eating — our elegant, swelegant sis — always says, if you have a lot of different savory and sweet things on the plate in small amounts, it seems like a lot of food but doesn't put on the pounds. And she's got the figure to prove it. More good stuff from that WSJ report:

Chronic dieters in particular have trouble recognizing their internal cues, says Jean Kristeller, a psychologist at Indiana State, who pioneered mindful eating in the 1990s. "Diets set up rules around food and disconnect people even further from their own experiences of hunger and satiety and fullness," she says.

Mindful eaters learn to assess taste satiety. A hunger for something sweet or sour or salty can often be satisfied with a small morsel. In one exercise, Ms. Kristeller has clients mindfully eat a single raisin — noticing their thoughts and emotions, as well as the taste and texture. "It sounds somewhat silly," she explains, "but it can also be very profound.

"We like the idea of fewer calories, but never at the expense of taste, rib-stickiness and mouth feel," we captioned It's Better than Ham and Cheese on English, above on our Cold Turkey Cookbook title page. "Danish ham and Havarti on toasted Corny Cornbread fills the bill with an added plus, allowing the eater to express solidarity with the Danes in the ongoing Cartoon Wars.

"More NIH-funded trials are under way to study whether mindful eating is effective for weight loss, and for helping people who have lost weight keep it off," says the WSJ. As we said in comments, "It's mind over matter, and it worked for me."

Forget about French teacakes. Let them eat sushi! (USA rice Federation photo of Maki Sushi)

Update: Elisson in the comments sings the praises of Japanese cuisine:

Their tiny morsels, packed with flavor,

Are works of art for you to savor.

"The pounds melt off with shocking ease."

"They shall repair the ruined cities and restore what has long lain desolate"

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at Jenna Bush's lakeside wedding at the President's Crawford home Saturday. In January the "longtime spiritual adviser to the president said he had decided to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Kirbyjon introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention and gave the benediction at both of his inaugurations."

"Those who know Bush, even the ones who hate him, will tell you he and his family are genuinely colorblind," writes The Anchoress, contemplating the difference between class and no class:

That is something the Clintons never were. They talked color, used color, played color, and to some extent that is coming back to bite them now, with Obama’s candidacy, as Hillary makes a weird reference to “hard-working white Americans” …

The over-conscious Democrat president promised a cabinet that “looked like America,” but that promise didn’t hold. Contrast that with Bush’s cabinet. There’s talking, and then there’s walking.

We loved the sentiments of Anchoress commenter gcotharn:

Seeing the photo [of the young couple and Rev. Caldwell, above] and reading your post reminds me of a long ago article about the two-man architectural team who designed the houses on Bush’s property. Both architects were gay, both worked and met extensively with Laura and Governor Bush — whom they described as completely gracious and welcoming, as well as completely interested in the most up-to-date methods of making their structures eco-friendly.

As you mentioned: the President’s and Laura’s sense of decorum and grace is quite opposite from the Clintons’.

Class will out. As we wrote re the President's gracious gesture of going out to welcome Pope Benedict XVI on the tarmac when Shepherd I touched down at Andrews Air Force Base a month [!] ago:

That sounds SO George Dubya, something he would have learned at Barbara Bush's knee.

"I was absolutely shocked when [Jenna] called," the affable, easygoing Rev. Caldwell told a local TV reporter. "She said 'I'm getting married, and I'd like you to perform the ceremony.' I said 'Okay. I can do that' … If you did not know that it was a daughter of a President getting married, you would not know that by being there." Watch video here.

"And you have to remember as well, I knew the president when he was governor,"  Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell told a Beliefnet interviewer shortly after GWs 2004 reelection:

Sometimes people ask me, "Has he changed?" Well, we all change. But his core DNA remains rock-steady and virtually the same. He's the same reliable, dependable guy with a great sense of humor, who enjoys life and wants to do the best he can as president of the United States.

In fact, he told me last week he's gonna work until his term is up. He is not going to be a kick-up-your-boots on the desk second-term president. He wants to do what the people have elected him to do.

"Bush admired Caldwell's work in using faith-based programs run out of his church to meet social needs," notes the interviewer:

Over the years, they became friends, even though Caldwell is not a Republican. Why? Both are Texans. Both are Methodists. Both earned MBAs from renowned business schools. And both have a passion for faith-based programs. Beyond that, they both are known as straight-shooting CEO types who don't get tangled up in a lot of introspection.

Googling around a bit for clues that might shed light on Rev. Caldwell's decision to endorse Barack Obama, we stumbled upon something both the pastor and the presidential wannabe participate in called the Saguaro Seminar, "an ongoing initiative of Professor Robert D. Putnam at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University" that focuses on "the relationship between social capital, diversity and equality, and on religion and public life." Putnam is the political scientist who repressed the unexpectedly politically incorrect results of his own diversity research last year. John Leo at City Journal described Putnam's dilemma:

His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties.

But even as academics like Putnam may "get tangled up in a lot of introspection," the "straight-shooting CEO types" like Rev. Caldwell are rolling up their sleeves. According to Wikipedia:

One of the major themes of Caldwell's preaching has been the need for his congregation to follow Jesus Christ's lead by being actively involved in community service [akin to the Catholic Church's "subsidiarity"?]. Taking the lead, Caldwell has transformed the Windsor Village United Methodist Church into an all-purpose community help center … The mission of the Power Center is to create jobs in the low-income neighborhood and to teach members of the neighborhood how to create wealth. The Center's motto is from Isaiah 61.4: "They shall repair the ruined cities and restore what has long lain desolate."

What a breath of fresh air compared to Barack Obama's lately spurned spiritual mentor, the "audaciously hopeful" Jeremiah Wright, with his "Black Value System" and disavowel of 'middleclassness,' a selfish pursuit of money and status without giving back to the larger black community."  Kirbyjon Caldwell's can-do spirit puts the lie to Rev. Wright's willful misreading of the legendary generosity of middle-class America, black or white.

"Simultaneously petty, and yet, grandiose and presumptuous"

"Double-flowering tulip in our 'parterre' garden lifts its skirts to show a little ankle," we captioned an earlier iteration three years back of the lovely pale pink blossoms now gracing our garden, comparing them to "Laura Bush's naughty-but-nice performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner" a few days earlier.

"The left systematically substitutes compassion for standards, which is not a recipe for excellence, to say the least," writes Gagdad Bob in a sparkling gem of a post about the chip on Michelle Obama's shoulder:

You just have to be so ahistorically narcissistic to share Obama's bleak vision of the United States. Your mind has to essentially circle in a tight spiral around your own myopia and provincialism, so that it is simultaneously petty, and yet, grandiose and presumptuous. Far from having doors closed to her, this is a woman who has probably never been confronted and brought down a peg, one of the sad legacies of white liberal guilt. This is the very reason why left-wing black "thinkers" tend not just to be such cringeworthy mediocrities, but downright embarrassments, such as Cornell West, whereas conservative black thinkers such as Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele are as brilliant as they come.

Sister Sue (center) left 'em rolling in the aisles as Bea -- the role first played by Bea Arthur -- in "Lovers and Other Strangers" at the Amesbury Playhouse last night.

Then there's Michelle's helpmeet, Barack's misreading of what this Shining City Upon a Hill is all about. Professor Bainbridge puts it best:

If humans are by their very nature imperfect and, moreover, imperfectible, it follows necessarily that human institutions are also inherently imperfect and, moreover, imperfectible. Even the United States of America.

The framers of the American Republic were highly conscious of this basic fact. They knew that fallen mankind was capable of great evil and that tyranny therefore was an ever present threat in human society.

Professor B. was writing in the context of B. Obama's utopianist assertion that "I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it’s the only reason I’m standing here today." The fact-challenged fellow might do well to review not only an atlas of these United States but also a history of the Plimouth Plantation's belated discovery of the power of capitalism.

One wonders whether the presidential contender from Chicago's South Side really believes this stuff or rather has such a low opinion of the intelligence and historical sense of his fellow citizens as to believe they will fall for it and vote him into the Oval Office. What with the history-challenged, anti-capitalist curriculum promulgated by his neighbor Bill Ayers, he may be onto something.

All the world's a stage. Let me entertain you. L'chaim!

Thinking about the power behind the throne, whom would you rather have as first lady/rogue, Michelle, Bubba or Cindy?

Update: The Anchoress links in one of her wide-ranging, addictive Q&A posts.

L'État, c'est Mac!

How to add accents (Voilà!) and trademarks (Bush's Fault™) and symbols of love () to the text of your blogposts? Being allergic to reading how-to manuals, we'd always relied on the hunt-and-peck method -- google an instance of the symbol, then cut and paste it into the editing window, or in the case of hearts, screengrab, edit in Photoshop and then upload as a JPEG image. But no more, thanks to Dr. Mercury's Miracle Cure, featured in today's installment of the good doctor's weekly-plus "Computer Corner" at Maggie's Farm:

Bonjour, garçon!  Here ees my résumé!

I mean, if you're going to act cosmopolitan … at least look cosmopolitan! …

Okay, this is slick and easy.

Go to Start Menu, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, "Character Map."

The Doc's excellent instructions were meant for Windows, of course, which got our workaround, problem-solving juices flowing. Apple's "Character Palette" is instantly accessible in a drop-down menu from a little flag symbol along the top right of our iMac screen. [The flag has been there all along, but we never thought to check it out before. So much for intellectual curiosity.] Instead of Windows' five steps from Start Menu to "Character Map," it's only two clicks for us from flag symbol to "Character Palette." As we said in the comments at Maggie's, "L'État, c'est Mac!"

Update for non-bloggers, from an imail chat this afternoon:

Goomp: I read "Voilà!" but I am not sophisticated enough to understand it.

We: It's just a technical trick that makes it easy to insert foreign punctuation marks and other symbols into blog posts.

Goomp: I am sure other bloggers will find it helpful. It sounds like a time saver.

We: Plus the fun of acquiring a new skill.

Goomp: After you expained it, I get the idea. I think those who will use it probably understand.

Not to mention the undercurrent of Mac-vs-PC-flame-war innuendo in Dr. Merc's and our own dueling comments at Maggie's.

"I'm told that on the table there were 27 bottles of Scotch, all presents to Johnny"

He loves, and she loves, and they love, so darling . . . forget about the latest generation of clueless twenty-something Americans in thrall to Saint Obama, not to mention the older but foolisher Democrats who want to believe. The rest of us have been there and done that and are getting our kicks from Roberta McCain, John McCain's 96-year-mother "sitting in a homey den as 1950s sit-com music plays in the background" in the Mother of All Mother's Day ads.

"[The ad] opens with the two of them disagreeing over whether he was born on a Friday or a Saturday":

"It was a happy hour, I thought," he says. She says no, it was a Saturday, and at the club her husband frequented, "I'm told that on the table there were 27 bottles of Scotch, all presents to Johnny. Well, you may as well enjoy it." A little more discussion, then a rose and Happy Mother's Day message onscreen, and "I'm John McCain and I approved this message. And my mom does too."

"It speaks to so many different human issues. It really goes beyond political advertising into philosophy," comments Tuck, who agrees with us that this is the best political advert ever. Forget Hillary's transparently phony love of poor white people, not to mention Barack and Michelle's holier-than-thou embrace of the "bitter, gun-and-religion-clinging" fellow citizens they condescend to. Mama McCain is the mother of us all.

Update: Location, location, location. We're #1 in Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities this week, and the hits are rolling in!

A hunting blind of hostas and violets

Setting herself up in a hunting blind of hostas and violets, Tiny draws a bead on a gray squirrel munching on tasty young samaras high above in the Silver Maple, whose romancing late-winter flowers have been fruitful and multiplied.

Offspring of the feral beauty Sweet Pea -- AKA The Squirrel Slayer -- our own Sweet Tiny Pea and her brother Baby "have slain reckless squirrels at the base of this very tree on occasion," we wrote a few years back, "even as they were constrained by their tethers. Knowing this, the squirrels like to play 'chicken', testing their mettle by taunting the Chelsea Grays."

"Established in our minds through telling and re-telling"

Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart) lifted from Ellen's woodland garden late last summer and planted in our own border beneath the high retaining wall early fall makes its home where the heart is in Chelsea-by-the-Sea.

"Often what we call memory consists of images or even embellished accounts that have become established in our minds through telling and re-telling," emails Norm Geras of normblog in response to our own email re his post "Being there and remembering," where he writes:

There's this question whether or not to take photos of an event you're part of and how doing so will affect your memory of it. Tyler Cowen says that if you do take photos you'll remember the event more vividly because you're stopping and noticing things. Andrew Sullivan thinks your experience of the event is more authentic if you're living it in the present and not worrying about storing it for the future.

I don't know about taking photos, something I hardly ever do, but from a comparable activity, namely, taking (or not taking) notes on an event, in order to write about it, I'd say that neither of these generalizations can be sustained. There's no single right way of being 'in the moment' . . . As Tyler points out, your view is bound to be mediated in some way (which is not to say that every view or account is as good as every other).

Babe strikes a thoughtful pose atop the kitchen counter this afternoon, contemplating the big wait between supper and breakfast, knowing that a carefully focused stare or well aimed Mr. Paw can elicit the necessary kitty treats to tide him through.

As one who does know something about taking photos, we agree with Tyler and Norm that "your view is bound to be mediated in some way" and had this to add to Norm's thoughts:

Re your observation that "the record you have made itself becomes your memory of it," couldn't that very thing be said of most -- if not all -- of photojournalists' work [not to mention journalists' work in general],from Michael Yon's pieta-like image of Major Beiger cradling a dying Iraqi girl to the shameless propaganda setups of Pallywood?

Where picture-making is concerned -- whether your images are fashioned of pixels or paints or words or whatever -- the eye of the beholder rules. Were Georgia O'Keefe to paint an image of our Bleeding Heart, it would have been up close and personal.

The American Primitive artist who painted our favorite bird's-eye view of a cat would have honed in on Baby's killer glare for scarifying effect. Because the visual image is seductive, viewers would do well to beware the feelings it evokes and think twice before embracing the artist's/writer's "vision."

"You DID capture the day," our imail correspondent writes of the custom photo album with quilted cover and Letraset quotations we made for her wedding back in the day. "The ladies getting ready. I love that part." Photo by Tuck of Susan Mummy and Sissy getting pretty.

Update: Snapshots from an imail conversation:

She: It's all in the "eye," and most poor fools just take pictures. I retired my camera, along with my iron, decades ago . . . We're using the wedding album that you and Tuck made for Joe and me as a prop in the [Amesbury Playhouse] show. I remember it as such a happy time, and having the photos to prove it is GRAVY!!! I love the idea of a designated photographer as long as he/she is worthy.You wouldn't want me as DP. It cannot be left to an amateur with no eye.

We: Someone who thinks you just "take a picture" and that will catch the spirit of the moment.

She: I hadn't looked at [the album] in years. The years have not been kind to the Polaroid pictures, but, that aside, the day is captured in all its merriment. A glorious moment in time. The Nanas, the parents, the nun who was a cousin or something. Then all the revelers. It doesn't matter, now, that many are forgotten, or even dead, it was a shining moment.

We:  They are timeless characters in an ageless drama.

She: Yes. Nothing changes but the date. If you come to the show, afterwards, I shall trot out the album for you and Tuck to see. You'll love it, and again, that's why I think your latest post was so thought provoking. Memories require two, two, two mints in one.

Say cheese.

Update II: Lots of shots of all things bright and beautiful at Modulator's  Friday Ark #190.

Update III: Teresa links with hearts and flowers.

"And all I ask"

After five months = 20 weeks of effort -- at about 20 hours per week = 400 hours total, Tuck emerged from his basement workshop yesterday with America in hand, planked and rigged and fitted out from stem to stern. Currently at work on formal ship's cradle/display stand.

"I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."

Tiny atop the diningroom table was all eyes this morning.

"And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

"And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,    
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying."

The Old Salt, shorebound at Camelot-by-the-Sea, can still enjoy many a "grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking" at the river's mouth (behind beyond windows in photo).

"I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life.    
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife."

Update: "Zed Monster answers with a Wowza staring at Tiny and those beautiful green eyes," but "It appears Tiny has her eyes only for the critters she is smiling at in hopes of one to drop into her paws," writes Megan Monster at Bad Kitty Cats' Carnival of the Cats Edition 217.

Quotations from John Masefield's "Sea-Fever."

A basket case?

We took advantage of the animals in the countdown to supper this afternoon, taunting them with "Want your . . ." leaving off the keyword "supper" in a shameless attempt to capture the Decisive Moment with our camera, above, a slightly out-of-focus image that perhaps surrealistically expresses the feline state of mind when food is in the offing.                               

Cat, thy name is focus.

Update: "OMIGOD!!! You have outdone yourself!!!" writes our imail correspondent:

The unfocused one looks like, "do you love me?" The focused one looks like, "You don't love me? TAKE A HIKE!"

PLUS, your laundry basket looks worse than mine.

And yet it's not a problem.

Update II: More decisive moments at Modulator's Friday Ark #189.

Update III: All things bright and beautiful -- plus lots of totally awesome pix -- at Momma Grace & Company's Carnival of the Cats #216.

Pope reframes core message of his papacy

"In a stunning move prior to his US visit next week, Pope Benedict XVI has decided to change the words of the Nicene Creed," deadpanned priest blogger Owl of the Remove recently in a ScrappleFace "Is the pope Catholic?" moment. Before and after images above illustrate the pontiff's "clear and constructive reframing of the core message" of his papacy. Thanks to our dear friend and fellow member of the B16 Fan Club, Jill  of The Business of Life, for the heads up.

"That was a very impressive, clear and constructive flipflopping reframing of the core message of his candidacy," writes a starry-eyed Andrew Sullivan [via Brendan Loy and PJM] regarding Barack Obama's politically astute tossing of  his "spiritual mentor" yesterday in response to the tediously all-about-me Reverend Jeremiah Wright's having come right out and called a spade pandering politician a spade pandering politician. It was one thing to rant and rave behind closed church doors about America as Great Satan, but you don't step out into the sunlight and start telling the world that your former acolyte, like the politician he is, will do whatever it takes to win. Our sense is that those like Sullivan, who want to believe, will enjoy a renewal of faith in the object of their worship, while those like Thomas Sowell -- and ourselves -- who've been there and done that will not be amused. "Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it," wrote Sowell the other day, as usual catching the conscience of the would-be kingmakers:

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president -- especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans . . .

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries . . .

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things -- using the mantra of "change" endlessly -- the cold fact is that virtually everything has says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s, and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

On the other hand, "Conservatives ought not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (That's liberals' job!)," writes Brendan Loy of Irish Trojan in Tennessee, arguing for "a big-picture view of this, please?":

Obama is doing the right thing here, and if he's a little late to the party, slap him on the wrist and then defend him against the coming Wright/Sharpton/etc. onslaught. And then beat him in November on security issues or whatever. But he's on the right side of this issue, and if he loses because of it, it will be a shame for everyone -- principled conservatives included.

Unfortunately, as Sowell wrote recently-- blogged here -- "The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different." Is the junior Senator from Illinois prepared to forsake the mother's milk of grievance? Sowell again:

Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife's statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.

Then there's that unfinished business about Bill Ayers, Obama's Hyde Park neighbor and supporter who -- in Sol Stern's words -- "through his indoctrination of future K-12 teachers has been able to influence what happens in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classrooms," where -- in our words -- "zombies teachers inculcated with the Marxist talking points of influential anti-capitalist propagandists like [Ayers] are, as Sol Stern wrote, assiduously working below the radar to 'turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.'" Where, exactly, does Obama stand on "critical theory"? We're with Becky C of Just a Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever on this one:

Dr. Ayers and his fellow latte sipping Marxists browbeat young teaching students until they accept the thoroughly discredited economic and social theories of dialectic materialism, much as the  victims of Mao's Cultural Revolution did.

Bill Ayers is just a nerdy misguided college freshman who never grew up and cannot stop playing revolution.

Unfortunately, there are way too many people, including perhaps Barack Obama, who take him seriously.

Hey, Hillary & Company, what say you take this one for an outing?

Update: "This is getting no traction, writes Tom Maguire of Just One Minute:

As to where this story is headed -- who knows? I don't think Hillary's staffers are regular readers here, but they may have picked it up from Global Labor, Larry Johnson or Jeralyn Merritt, and they sure could use this now. McCain's people and the RNC ought to like this story since McCain is comfortable bashing Ayers, but September or October may be fine for them.

The MSM has done nothing here, unsurprisingly. As to Rush, Hannity, and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- other than Hot Air, American Thinker, and Wizbang this is getting no traction. Michael Barone wrote about how the Ayers story had broken through to the MSM, but they have a long way to go. And we call ourselves a Noise Machine!

Now that the Professor has linked Maguire, we may be looking at some legs.

Update II: Noise Machine on high volume at Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

The unfathomable walls of an unseen prison

Thinking about a centerpiece for our Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club Ladies' Luncheon this afternoon, we gathered branches of early-blooming shrubs from the western forty, Common Floweringquince and Forsythia, above.

Checking our inventory for the perfect vase, we considered a tall, square pink one. It had been stored in the basement, and there was a noticeably cobwebby feeling about it. Peering inside, we discovered the earthly remains of a cluster of tiny flies who had met their maker when their struggles to fulfill their destiny had been thwarted by the unfathomable walls of an unseen prison.

Calling to mind the final agonies of citizens of ancient Pompei or Herculaneum frozen in time by the ash of Vesuvius or their own prehistoric insect relatives caught in amber, their plight invites contemplation.

Update: "Sisu brings the Unfathomable Walls of an Unseen Prison,"  says DeepSeaNews.

"And they resolve things on their own"

Taunting Tiny with a shaking Swiffer Duster as photographer's birdie in one hand and aiming for the "Decisive Moment" with our camera in the other, we missed Tiny's ears, above, but caught that look of cats concentrating on the jugular of potential prey.

"Animals that escape from the wild to take advantage of the relative ease and safety of living with humans may not be able to do math, but their ability to survive in the wild when necessary shows they still possess talents lost to the human animal," wrote Goomp in the comments to our previous post, giving us an opening quotation to revisit yesterday's post about that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video with some final thoughts.

The video -- one of several touted by MoveOn as "downright addictive to watch and rate" -- presented two competing teams of children, the reds and the blues [get it?], playing the classic schoolyard game "Red Rover," where the teams line up, facing each other and holding hands with their teammates. By turns, each team taunts the other to send one of their players over to try to break the line, and "whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round." In the MoveOn version, "a thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears" uses Obama Magicthink to psychologically disarm the opposing red team, who then -- zombie like -- join the blues en masse, "form a circle and begin a new kind of game."

Another object irresistible to cats, packaging -- in this case the box our Pope Benedict XVI Teddy Bear mugs came in -- just barely big enough for a sweet tiny girl to fit into, but the place of choice atop the dining room table this afternoon.

Which brings us back to Goomp's comment about survival skills "lost to the human animal" in this high-tech, multi-culti, politically-correct day and age of ours. Let's look at the schoolyard "out there" first and then return to the irony of MoveOn's use of it as a metaphor for "Obama in 30 Seconds."

You may remember the story of school administrators' banning the game of tag during recess at a Massachusetts school a couple of years back. "Now 'tag' is being deemed too dangerous [as it may] cause injury or the dreaded liability that the school will meet in a lawsuit," wrote Scared Monkey in a typically commonsensical blogospheric reaction at the time, quoting the mother of one of the children affected by the ban:

“I think it’s a little bit silly," she said, adding that she was not aware the rule was in place. “The kids love to play pick-up football games that they organize themselves. It’s great for their social skills, and they resolve things on their own. It’s good for them."

She was not aware the rule was in place. We wonder how many busy parents caught up in the controlled frenzy of their many-faceted lives are unaware of not only what goes on outside at recess but, perhaps even more importantly, inside the classroom, where zombies teachers inculcated with the Marxist talking points of influential anti-capitalist propagandists like Obama neighbor Bill Ayers are, as Sol Stern wrote, assiduously working below the radar to "turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists." And critical-pedagogy types like Ayers acolytes aren't the only ones trying to turn the nation's younger generation into pod people. The self-esteemsters who ban the award of valedictorian to the highest-ranking senior because it might hurt someone's feelings come to mind, not to mention the textbook publishers with their eye on the bottom line. All are complicit, for different reasons, in the politicization and dumbing down of the nation's curricula. As we wrote in our post "Stealth education" four years back:

It isn't just infidel-hating Wahhabists who are trying to brainwash our children, of course, but interest groups of every stripe.  We've blogged about these issues before, here and here and here, noting that textbook companies and educators take the path of least resistance, responding to the squeakiest wheels.

Isn't that what identity politics is all about, ceding center stage to the squeakiest wheels? Appeasement is always a mistake. The more you give in, the more they demand. Now back to the unwitting message of that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video we were talking about at the top of this post. Beyond the unself-aware irony of setting their essence-of-Obama statement in an elementary-school playground, the MoveOn folks embrace the utopianist "why can't we all be friends" agenda of those who would deny the competitive dynamic -- the tragic view -- of human nature. Two competing answers to our google search for "Red Rover" perfectly illustrate the difference between those who get it and those who don't. Gameskidsplay.net doesn't get it:

Note that since all the players are on the winning team at the end, there really are no losers in this game.

FamilyFun.com gets it:

Players can devise sneaky running strategies and use psychological tactics to spice up the game. Whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round.

Sneaky running strategies and the use psychological tactics -- doing whatever it takes to win [just ask Bubba] -- are what politics is all about. That Obamaniacs long to "form a circle and begin a new kind of game" betrays a profound cluelessness of pathological proportions.

Update: No one knows better than our feline companions that the more you give in, the more they demand. But in their case, we wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of sneaky running strategies and psychological tactics in play at House Panthers' Carnival of the Cats #215.

"They don't bark so you have to be alert to get their signals"

Since having her teeth cleaned by the vet a few days ago, Tiny has had to endure a daily regime of Clamavox applied by eyedropper. Once she gets wind of our intentions, she's outta here. Above, near the top of the back stairs this morning, staring back down with suspicion and disdain.

"The animals -- especially Tiny, who has not a sixth but a seventh or eighth sense about these things -- always try to escape our clutches once they catch on that it's time to go for a ride in the car. More than once Tiny's made eye contact with sudden realization and hightailed it for the most inaccessible place she can find," we wrote awhile back. The same applies when she gets the faintest whiff of suspicion we are about to give her some medicine.

We've tried to develop a business-as-usual air about our movements and tone of voice when we're about to play Nurse Jane or do something else they don't like, but cats are ever watchful, supremely tuned in to the slightest changes in their environment. Just this moment we happened to glance outside the window to the side yard to see Tiny and Baby -- restrained by their tethers -- frozen in alarm, their eyes fixed upon some point beyond the 12-foot-high retaining wall behind the house. Looking up, we saw what had given them pause, a team of roofers working atop the neighbors' house. "Just like watchdogs," observed Goomp in response to our imail description:

We: Yes. You can tell from their expressions and body language that something is not as it should be.

Goomp: They don't bark so you have to be alert to get their signals.

As Mummy always said, "Look to the animals."

Update:  From the horse's mouth (our sis), the provenance of Mummy's adage:

She said it to me, when I was flummoxed . . . wasn't sure whether to comfort infant Matthew every time he cried. Mummy was saying, implicitly, that mother animals ALWAYS tend their infants when they are disturbed.

Animals that make it through the great winnowing process of evolution know everything they need to know. As for our own species, we sometimes wonder.

"A thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears contemplates the situation and wonders why there is so much animosity and anger"

"They chant, 'Red Rover, Red Rover, let Barack come over.' A thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears contemplates the situation and wonders why there is so much animosity and anger," goes the caption of Diane Paragas's "Playground Politics," a contender in MoveOn's "Obama in 30 Seconds" competition. "The red team leader's face softens as he takes Barack's hand. Inspired by the audacity bravery of the two boys, the red and the blue teams form a circle and begin a new kind of game." Kumbaya, anyone?

"All week, we've heard that it's downright addictive to watch and rate these Obama ads made by MoveOn members around the nation," emails a breathless Adam Green. Herr Hitler's film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" flashed before us as we contemplated the sheer robotic mindlessness and horror of Green's unquestioning acceptance of the flickering screen images of wishful thinking as the equivalent of political debate. Forget about what Obama might really be up to. Instead, go for projections of your own fantasies onto the blank screen that called us a racist back in Decmber of 2006.

Oh, and if anything disagreeable shows up on the screen, just switch channels.

"A deep threat to all that is human"

Babe makes a strong case for the utility of long catnaps as a survival skill on the studio couch this afternoon.

"[Theodore] Dalrymple makes a strong case for the utility of morality as a survival skill," wrote Wretchard of Belmont Club three years back [via Amba, who had linked Wretchard's essay as apposite to her own cogitations on the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI at the time]. His words sound timely echoes in the current debate over what we should make of Barack Obama's ongoing association with former Weather Underground domestic terrorist and current "radical educator with influence," Bill Ayers. More about that in a moment, but first, a few excerpts from Wretchard's "Nightfall":

[Morality] is a craft, which like hunting and gathering, was once passed on to keep people from perishing in the wilderness. Now it is disparaged; the modern welfare state has no need of it . . .

[A]s Dalrymple argues in the City Journal, the human recognition of evil normally allows us to resist so it never has us wholly in its grasp. Looking back on 14 years of service in hospitals and prisons, Dalrymple realized he was witnessing the inexorable incapacitation of human discernment; the deadening of the ability to distinguish between good and evil which is so essential to survival . . .

In nearly every case the one thing the perpetrators and victims of evil were never allowed to do was to judge their own acts. That was absolutely forbidden. The universal course of treatment prescribed by all the organs of the welfare state was to find ways to make them 'feel better about it'.

Dr. Sanity approached the topic from a slightly different angle a year ago in "The dictatorship of the do-gooders and soul murder," a rousing discourse on the "pervasive intellectual trend in the West to continually bash capitalism, private property, business and free trade while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of all of them":

Betsy Newmark links to an article that demonstrates clearly how socialism's "social justice" advocates have taken over our K-12 education system and are determinedly undermining capitalism . . . Make no mistake about it, what those teachers are doing is indoctinating their students' minds into an unquestioning obedience to the collective . . .

Capitalism's incredible production of wealth is the economic side-effect that occurs when political freedom is present. It has been argued, and I agree, that both economic and political freedom are absolute prerequisites for moral behavior.

Children propagandized by dogmatic tyrants like the ones above have had not only their capacity to think for themselves abrogated; they have had their capacity to make moral choices taken from them.

As we sat here blogging this evening, along came a spider (x 16) -- seemingly out of nowhere -- and sat down beside her, paused and then spun away on silken threads. Indoor spiders, house centipedes and tiny moths are stirring. We spotted the first cabbage moth of spring wafting through the garden yesterday and the first bumble bee this morning.

Enter stage left the above-mentioned Bill Ayers, former Weather Underground terrorist and current "Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago." Sol Stern blew the professor's cover in a must-read City Journal article just under two years ago, linked today by The Barrister of Maggie's Farm, who headlines with "A cruel (Gramscian) hoax,":

This Ed School stuff is straight from Gramsci's handbook, and it represents a conspiracy to keep the "masses" poor and stupid -- and angry, hopeless and helpless. In other words, ripe for "rescue" by The State.

"Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984 [where] he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the 'critical pedagogy' movement," wrote Stern:

As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling -- critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools . . .

The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K-12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order . . . In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.

"[Bill Ayers] has much more influence than he did in the sixties. He's a rock star in the educational establishment," Sol Stern is telling Sean Hannity, adding that "the entire Democratic establishment years ago decided to legitimize him," making Obama's association with the radical leftist perfectly logical within the local political context. Missing the point as ever, Hannity's brain-dead liberal sidekick Alan Colmes asks his guest whether there's any evidence that students are being brainwashed by anti-American educationists promulgating critical pedagogy. "I don't know what it has to do with Barack Obama anyway," he adds. No, you wouldn't.

But until Ayers' association with Oprah's man -- Barack Obama -- came to light, few outside of academia and the Chicago Democratic machine were paying much attention to this particular Gramscian fellow traveler. Bill O'Reilly on Fox asserted earlier this evening that the professor's only significance to the American political debate is his association with Obama, but like Colmes, he misses the point, as Stern wrote yesterday in "Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem":

The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today . . .

Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

The insidious Gramscian infiltration of our culture marches on:

Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the workers' class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.

Is it too late to save our soul?  A former liberal mugged by reality may be the one to lead us out of the desert. As E.J. Dionne wrote upon Cardinal Ratzinger's election to the papacy on April 19, 2005:

Ratzinger is a brilliant, tough-minded intellectual who started out as moderately liberal and -- like so many American neoconservatives -- developed a mistrust of the left because of the student revolt of the 1960s. He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human."

"Relativism means this: Power trumps," wrote Michael Novak in his must-read-and-reread "Culture in Crisis" [again via Amba] just after Ratzinger became Benedict XVI:

In his most formative years, Ratzinger heard Nazi propaganda shouting that there is no truth, no justice, there is only the will of the people (enunciated by its leader). As its necessary precondition, Nazism depended on the debunking of objective truth and objective morality. Truth had to be derided as irrelevant, and naked will had to be exalted . . .

Ratzinger experienced another set of loud shouters in the 1968 student revolution at Tubingen University, this time in the name of Marxist rather than Nazi will. Marxism as much as Nazism (though in a different way) depended on the relativization of