sisu

"Men who will deal likewise with their fellow men"

"St. Francis preaching to the birds" attributed to Giotto (1295-1300. Fresco. St. Francis, Upper Church, Assisi, Italy)

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men," St. Francis of Assisi said of the dark side of human nature. In celebration of today's Feast of St. Francis we offer a replay of our April 22, 2005 post "The cats are invading the Holy See":

"Every time he met a cat, he would talk to it, sometimes for a long time," said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Benedict XVI, reports the Daily Telegraph (special thanks to frequent commenter and catpoet Dr. Hull for the heads up):

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said the Pope's image as a German "panzerkardinal" was unfair. "He is human and he will convince you," he said. "He is both a man of science and of faith. He possesses a great sense of humanity, he loves nature and music."

The same churchman said that Cardinal Ratzinger was a cat lover. "Every time he met a cat, he would talk to it, sometimes for a long time. The cat would follow him. Once about 10 cats followed him into the Vatican, and one of the Swiss Guards intervened, saying 'Look, your eminence, the cats are invading the Holy See.'"

"He loves to debate with you, not only about theology," the bishop [of Munich] said. "He plays Mozart on the piano before he goes to bed at night."

A Google search of "joseph ratzinger loves cats" brings up our blog in the number two spot. That was before we even knew that Pope Benedict XVI is an ailurophile. Google combined two unrelated bits: "Joseph Ratzinger" in the body copy of one of our posts plus "I particularly love the cat blogs," a testimonial in our Kudos list. Is it one of those "miracles and wonders" Peggy Noonan spoke of yesterday?

Loving it, we Googled for more (see surprise results of a search for "joseph ratzinger loves cats" in caption above). From the caretaker of the pope's house in Regensburg, Germany in the NYT:

The house — built in the 1970's style on a quiet street with a walled garden -— has the feel of an oasis. A bronze sculpture of the Virgin Mary gazes over beds of roses and daffodils, while a statue of a cat stands next to a sliding-glass door. The pope, Mr. Hofbauer said, adores cats.

And from The Kansas City Star:

His most heartfelt talks may have been the ones he gave after celebrating Mass. "I went with him once," said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. "Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church.

"It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous.

[His housekeeper] pointed up a staircase to a wall full of painted plates, each depicting a different cat. The brothers collected the plates together, she said.

"When we were on vacation, a cat, a little kitten, would come by, and he'd be giddy, almost giggling with joy," she said. "Cats love him; they always go to him straight away. And he loves them back."

He doesn't have a cat, however. Heindl doesn't think he can have one living in the Vatican.

He loves cats, he plays Mozart on the piano before he goes to bed at night and the dictatorial relativist Left is apoplectic. Hallelujah!

"The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier"

Cast your vote for Google to change their logo for one day in solidarity with the people of Iran yearning to breathe free.

How come Twitter's still getting through while other social networking services have been stifled by Iranian authorities? We'd been meaning to google that but didn't have to. Instead, the answer came to us by way of Iranian twitterer Elzone from Tehran: "Times' Kristof: How Iranian protesters are evading the gov't Twitter shutdown," a classic tale of the American Dream come true. "It is these Chinese supporters of Falun Gong who are the best hope for Iranians trying to reach blocked sites," explains Nicholas Kristof:

The protesters’ arsenal, such as those tweets on Twitter.com, depends on the Internet or other communications channels. So the Iranian government is blocking certain Web sites and evicting foreign reporters or keeping them away from the action.

The push to remove witnesses may be the prelude to a Tehran Tiananmen. Yet a secret Internet lifeline remains, and it’s a tribute to the crazy, globalized world we live in. [Or maybe, Mr. Kristof, it's a tribute to the golden door of opportunity the US opened to freedom-seekers fleeing tryranny. – ed] The lifeline was designed by Chinese computer engineers in America to evade Communist Party censorship of a repressed Chinese spiritual group, the Falun Gong … usage of the consortium’s software has tripled in the last week. It set a record on Wednesday of more than 200 million hits from Iran, representing more than 400,000 people …

Here's how it works:

Mr. Zhou, the son of a Chinese army general, said that he and his colleagues began to develop such software after the 1999 Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong (which the authorities denounce as a cult). One result was a free software called Freegate, small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site.

Freegate amounts to a dissident’s cyberkit. E-mails sent with it can be encrypted. And after a session is complete, a press of a button eliminates any sign that it was used on that computer …

Responding to the growing use of Freegate in Iran, the consortium introduced a Farsi-language version last July — and usage there skyrocketed.

"Noticed green avatars all around in support of #IranElection? See who started this great idea," twitters Mr Tweet himself, answering another question that's been on our mind, even as we've gone from pink to green (Our own avatar, before and after, above).

"If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an 'Internet freedom initiative' pending in Congress," Kristof gently chides the President who "chose not to choose on Iran":

This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it.

As tayastorm twittered from Tehran this morning, "fight back government's propaganda in twitter! if we lost here we have no other place."

Note: Check out all the latest Iran tweets here. This just in as we write: BBC confirm reformists detained, former Vice-President Abtahi, Mustafa Tajzadeh and Saeed Hajjarian. Our own twitter contributions here.

Update: Luis Gil (elzote), the Iranian who alerted us about the Kristof article, is now following us on Twitter! As Elisson twittered a month back, "How recursive is that?"

"At home chillin' with the wife"

"If you wanna find out about Republicans just like us, you just tune in to MSNBC," quips AlfonZo Rachel (right) in PJTVs blockbuster "Everyday Normal Republicans," now showing at a YouTube near you.

"At home chillin' with the wife! Hope your weekend is goin' good!," twitters AlfonZo Rachel, the chocolate-cookie half (above photo) of PJTVs to-die-for "Everyday Normal Republicans!" the best thing since sliced Oreos (no inside, no outside). We were thrilled to learn that he is "following" us on twitter [Ed note: We are using lower case t for twitter now that it's become the generic "kleenex" of social networking sites].

"I almost forgot. All black Republicans are traitors to their own race," cracks Steven Crowder, who plays the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Robert Culp character to Zo's Bill Cosby in this thoroughly modern iteration of the colorblind Sixties TV comedy hit "I Spy."

Even as the moribund David Letterman brand of politically correct humorless humor exits stage left in a cloud of ignominy, a sweet and savory new brand of wordplayful, colorblind comedy takes center stage. Our friends on the left side of the aisle won't know what hit them.

"It's hard as a progressive actor to get into this conservatively warped character, but I thought that came across as pretty genuine," deadpans Crowder in a masterful coda that impales the heart of the liberal project.

"I have a TERRIBLE crush on Zo," twitters The Anchoress this morning, noting with gusto:

Crowder looks a lot like my son buster!

They ARE a couple of cuties! "Sarah, Mary Katharine and now Carrie," we blogged a month back, delighting in the bevy of fresh distaff faces springing forth from the right side of the aisle:

Talk about beauty in unexpected places, not to mention the cojones* to go where no man has gone before. The ladies are leaving the Democrats' lame "Party of No" in the dust.

Welcome to the theater of operations, gentlemen.

The sounds of silence

I am not there. I do not sleep.

Three things. Three pieces of music that break our heart. Can't listen to 'em without breaking up, so if you need a good cry . . . Used to be two, but thanks to blogpal Stoutcat now three:

1. Mozart's Ave verum corpus Our thoughts: "You don't get to be the same again"

2. Schubert's Ave Maria Our thoughts: "They also wondered greatly at my piety"

3. Do not stand at my grave and weep Our thoughts: "Do not stand at my grave and weep."

There's nobody that could take your place, Baby face.

Sigh.

Update: "I ran across a post by a Catholic blogger which she called, 'The Sounds of Silence,' writes blogger Carolyn of Carolyn's Cotton Corner:

This got me thinking about whether there were some types of music which had an effect on us which was similar in some respects to the effects of purposeful silence.

She relates the concept to mindful eating, the secret recipe of our Cold Turkey Cookbook.

Mary Katharine Ham, the shining fresh face of the anti-statist party

 

Mary Katharine Ham of The Weekly Standard, the fresh new face of the right side of the aisle. The lady's not for conning. Eat your heart out, Rahm Emanuel.

"Just walked into my first WH Correspondents dinner, ever, in between Gov. Mark Warner and Ludacris. Weird night in D.C. Ha," twitters the shining fresh face of the anti-statist party, our own smart-as-a-whip and totally adorable Mary Katharine Ham, known on Twitter as mkhammer. She has the looks of a fancy-free school girl, the "relentless, unflagging optimism" of a Jack Kemp and the ability to articulate the notion of a nation of laws, not of men, in debate with the best of what the other side has to offer on the Number One cable show out there, the unwatchable O'Reilly Factor. When she's on, we always have to mute when O'Reilly or her sparring partner of the day bloviates, but she is always a joy. You ask why we twitter? Mkhammer's news reports and insights alone make it worthwhile.

Now this tweet from WaPo A-list beltway gossip columnist Howard Kurtz, who offers "some pics of the big afternoon pre-party on my Facebook page," noting that it's a "Good day to put out bad news as all journos otherwise engaged":

Todd Palin seemed like a very nice gent, for the record. I just wasn't expecting to see him at this shindig  …

Sometime in the last few yrs the WH dinner turned into spring prom week for Beltway nerds. And Hollywood decided it was a stop on the tour …

I'm virtually certain MSNBC has never covered the WH dinner live before. Bush loyalists, take note!

Fun stuff. We're delighted to learn that C-SPAN is covering the event live. Will be looking for Mary Katharine. Can't wait to see her dress, her escort, her sparkling presence amongst the jaded and corrupted powers that be.

Update: "'Nerdprom' prompts Twitter buzz" [#nerdprom is the tag given to the event by twittering dinner attendees]:

CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry said Twitter has become one of the new status symbols, tweeting: "new status symbol at #whca #nerd prom: @howardkurtz reminded me last nite he has over 6k followers. must catch up!"

We've got 115 followers and counting. Where it all may lead, who knows? Annie Gottlieb links to Ad Age's provocative "The Coming End of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Socialism" with her usual wry wit in 140 characters or less:

Twitter cd just disappear? 'Cause no one's making money from all this tweeting. Venture capital supports addiction

Now we hear the folks who brought you Twitter are fixing to release "something new and entirely different" called Squirrel, a "service that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a merchant." The business of America is business. Sounds like a good idea to us.

Update: Talk about fun stuff, Instalanche!

Update II: "We need 100,000 MK Ham's," writes Dorothy Jane in the comments. Or, as the Professor might put it, An ARMY of MK Hams.

Update III: "Thousand thanks for writing such nice things about me. You're too kind, but I'll try my best to be fresh, shining and ALWAYS anti-statist!" twitters the fresh, shining and ALWAYS anti-statist mkhammer.

Update IV: Once more with feeling from the Professor: "The delightfulness of Mary Katharine Ham.

Smiles of an early spring day

Tuck and Mikey in the Driscoll Forest, Deerfield NH yesterday called to mind …

Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir in Yosemite in 1903.

We came bearing hostess gifts for Mikey and Annie …

And delighted in a tour of his shop, her bookshop and both their fully-wired studios.

Everywhere you turned were wondrous one-of-a-kind creations to delight the mind and eye, like the fantasy birdcage, above. Not to mention the ML Driscoll watercolor paintings featured in an exhibition at the Lazy Lion where we were treated to lunch midday.

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life," wrote the inelegantly wordy John Muir. We know what he meant but are much more taken with the concise, terse, pithy and poetical Henry David Thoreau's formulation:

The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

Tornadic and castoridic remnants lent Biblical overtones to our touristic tramp through the lower forty, where Mikey's been turning trees to timber.

A finely stacked woodpile is the mark of an honorable man.

And a place to lay his head …

Back in the little homestead, happy food made us smile.

We are wired to read meaning into everything we encounter. As Annie and we were discussing, it helps to put potential dangers into a box to give us time for the well of experience to tell us whether to beware or be not afraid — fight or flight — of new environmental clues. A wonderful, magical day with old friends ever new.

"And run down the streets all redneckèd"

Erato, Muse of lyric poetry, by British artist Edward John Poynter, watercolor 1870.

We were a-Muse-d to have inspired our favorite lyric poet, Elisson — who knows what women like — to wax poetic in the comments over "I am tea party woman, hear me roar!:

It's no fun when men are henpeckèd
Or when their nice cars all get wreckèd
Let them take off their clothes
Protest liberal woes
And run down the streets all redneckèd.

I am tea party woman, hear me purr!

"Let me devour your flesh because I know how to use it better than you do"

"In 1981 our last great president, Ronald Reagan, cut tax rates and slowed the growth of government, thereby ushering in 25 of the most prosperous, free and creative years this country has ever known," notes author Andrew Klavan in a totally awesome PJTV presentation that's the best ever explication of what the Tea Party Movement is all about. "Cutting government was so effective that you, not being experts like myself, might have thought that the era of unchecked government was dead. But, it's back. It's the night of the living government."

"I’m just blazing away because I know I’m right, I know I’m good, and when it comes to the love of leftist elites, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn," best-selling "author of many novels picked up by Hollywood" Andrew Klavan told a Bellum interviewer the other day. We discovered Mr. Klavan in a PJTV blockbuster — "best thing PJTV or just about anybody in the media has ever produced" we wrote Roger L. Simon. Then we took the liberty of sending a news tip with link to Matt Drudge. If Matt picks it up, we will know why we were born. A few more tasty tidbits from that Bellum interview and then on to more of "The night of the living government" and some thoughts of our own:

Filmmakers — and particularly studio heads — in the old days had a sense of responsibility toward the rest of us. The current crop are slavish conformists to the left-wing intellectual elite. They are protected from the consequences of their mindless bad boy radicalism by money and by sympathetic media. But the thing is: to my mind, even if you make a great film, if it endangers American troops in the field fighting to defend you, well, congratulations, you won the Oscar, but as a human being, you’re trash …

One of the prime motivators of human action — and one rarely spoken about — is the desire to appear virtuous before those you admire: it soothes the inner sense of shame. Leftist conformity has given American intellectuals and artists cheap virtue-free virtue, really, virtue without deeds or discipline. Vote liberal and you’re a hero no matter what. Do you beat your wife or drive your kids into addiction or drive a car under the influence of cocaine or betray your nation with anti-American propaganda? No worries, dude, you’re a lefPublishtist, you’re good. But point out that welfare destroys neighborhoods or that Islamists are evil — and whoa, you’re out of the club.

Can you say music to our ears? Tribalism and its progenitor,"the importance of being noticed," ur theme of our blog, rear their lovely heads. How sweet it is.

"So they came to me, because I've written the screenplays for horror movies," continues Klavan. "Not being experts yourselves, you may not know this, but in many horror movies there's a scene in which the monster is apparently killed. The music swells, and you think the picture is over. Then suddenly the monster reaches up out of the grave and goes on a rampage. This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in today."

"This is an almost perfect metaphor for your government at work," explains Klavan:

I'm sure many of you remember that film, "Night of the Living Dead." Ordinary people take shelter in a house, barring the doors and boarding the windows against zombies, who reach in through any opening they can find in order to devour the people's flesh and turn the living into zombies like themselves …

Zombies are dead creatures that don't produce anything and must devour the lives of others, even though once everyone becomes a zombie, there'll be nothing left for anyone to eat. Government is exactly the same. It doesn't start businesses, it doesn't create wealth, it doesn't invent anything. It devours all the stuff that you make.

You bar the door against property tax, they come in through a sales tax. You board the windows against income tax, they reach in through an energy tax.

Now, there are some differences between the movie zombies and the government kind. In the movie the zombies didn't try to tell their victims that being devoured was good for them … or, my favorite, let me devour your flesh because I know how to use it better than you do.

Speaking of zombies, it's time for a reprise of this moment of truth from our post-election December 2006 post, "A most eloquent eulogy for the nation's tragic loss":

The year was 1940, two years after the appeasing Chamberlain declared "Peace in our time" as Hitler's forces of darkness were closing in. Bob Hope, who would later become the great white hope of American forces all over the world, delivered the punchline of all punchlines, which resonates big time in this post-election season of our discontent.

Richard Carlson character: A zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.

Bob Hope character: You mean like Democrats?

Thanks for the memories.

This just in from da man himself, Andrew Klavan, to whom we'd written of our devotion:

Thank you, Sissy. That's so nice to hear, really. It balances the hate mail, lol!  Best, AK.

Hate mail? Bring it on! As Klavan himself says, "when it comes to the love of leftist elites, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Update: Now this via email from Andrew Klavan:

You know, I joked with Roger that you must be a lady of wisdom and discernment to say such nice things about me. Now I read your blog and it turns out you actually ARE a lady of wisdom and discernment, making me feel even more flattered and grateful.

But of course.

Update II: More music to our ears from one we admire: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor.

"We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government"

"To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak," Miklós Perényi and András Schiff play Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, D. 821. How sweet it is.

We can't stand being lied to, and that's what the current Leader of the Free World has been doing to us from at least December of 2006, when his "soaring rhetoric" started to fool some of the people all of the time and let him get away with calling us a racist. Thomas Sowell pegged him early on as a fraud who "knows what con men have long known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to continue to believe what they want to believe," and our toes have been in permanent curl position ever since. President Obama's shock, shock at bonuses having been awarded executives who led bailout queen AIG down the beaten path during the last period of time are but the latest example of the big lie that is his modus operandi.

More music to soothe the savage breast from Nora the Piano Cat, brought to our attention by our nostalgic lifetime buddy NH illustrator extraordinaire M.L. Driscoll.

When it comes to soothing the savage breast, there's no one like Sarah Palin, who just said no to "stimulus" cash dangled before the state she leads:

The Alaska governor says she’s only going to take up to 69 percent of the $930 million her state could receive … Rather than focus on education, for which she could get $170 million, or other government operations, the governor’s looking at shovel-ready construction projects. "We are not requesting funds intended to just grow government," Palin said, adding that Alaskans shouldn’t want the feds to "engineer" their future for them. "To me it’s a bribe. It’s here, take these dollars. But you’ve got to grow your government."

On cue "Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse said Palin's decision 'appears to be nothing more than political posturing.'" But of course. Democrats can't conceive of someone's acting upon principle. For them, political posturing is all.

The Iowahawk has landed

 

"Not on my back ledge," we titled a blogpost four years back about a New York Times do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do story of how the other half lives that made our blood boil. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times photo).

It's National Iowahawk Day! In shock and awe, we herewith republish the following historical document from the sisu archives:

"It should be required reading for all students planning a 'career' in journalism"  January 19, 2008

"Forget about Instapundit visitors. Have you read Mark Steyn's latest?" we emailed Iowahawk, who e'd back "Wow, didn't know that. Thanks kindly for the alert! A Fan, Dave." Who knew?

"It should be required reading for all students planning a 'career' in journalism," writes our imail correspondent re Iowahawk's totally -- TOTALLY -- awesome "Bylines of Brutality," picked up not only by the usual suspects, from the professor on down, but by Mark Steyn himself, who notes re the NYTs "new story" in the wake of declining deaths in the war zones: "Americans are being cut down by violent irrational soldiers we can never hope to understand." Iowahawk turns the NYTs politically correct lie on its head, as Mark Steyn explains:

Better yet, the blogger Iowahawk meticulously drew his own "patchwork picture" of another "quiet phenomenon": the Denver newspaper columnist arrested for stalking, the Cincinnati TV reporter facing child-molestation charges, the Philadelphia anchorwoman who went on a violent drunken rampage. As Iowahawk's one-man investigative unit wondered: "Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters?"

"It's probably too late, though," imails our correspondent:

They wouldn't get it. Humorlessness sets in early among that crowd. I love this one [Iowahawk], and Scrappleface, who are able to say what I am thinking.

The thing we hate most is the idea that women per se would glom onto Hillary because "the boys" are piling on, as National Review's Myrna Blyth reports:

So how the media treats a female candidate becomes a factor not only in shaping women’s opinions about the candidate, but also by determining how supportive of that candidate women will be when they arrive at the ballot box. The media may have helped Hillary when they were being positive about the inevitability of her campaign. But they may have helped her even more, at least with women voters, when they turned negative about her chances. A woman’s vulnerabilities, real or pretended, and how the media focuses on them, can become more important than her policies, especially at a time when media coverage has turned this election into a year-long 24/7 reality show. And the twists and turns of the soap opera narrative of Hillary -- she’s up, she’s down, she rises once again are a lot more compelling to the media -- and, let’s admit it, to female voters -- than Hillary’s own chilly, wonky personality.

They should have never given women the vote.

Update: Forgot to mention the guy who started all this National Iowahawk Day madness, Dan Collins of protein wisdom. Check out the latest at Facebook.