sisu

In my mind I blog daily

We're pinning our hopes for non-appeasing diplomacy on UN Ambassador John Bolton, the man who sports the mustache that repels bullets.

Imail trails:

We: Hello, beautiful.
She: Hi, Doll. Rehearsal tonight, so just wine. ZZZZZZZ. Did you read the thing in today's WSJ about bloggers who vacation?
We: Yes. It's true . . . I rarely visit blogs who have guest bloggers while they're on vacation. They're lucky if I visit them anyway!
She: You are in the tiny percentile of those who blog daily.
We: Yes. Although I do miss a day from time to time. But in my MIND I blog daily. And when I don't I am wracked with fear and loathing.

Gasp.

She: Remember when we went to Matt's wedding? You suffered severe withdrawal symptoms.
We: Of course.
She: Ah, the sweet torture.
We: It wasn't pretty.
She: Just finished today's Sisu. LOVE the post, and LOVE the comments!
We: Yes. The comments are A-1. I love the reference to "the mighty sisu."
She: Incredible how the Left twists everything back on itself. Blame Bush, and America, first.
We: Projection happens.
She: Can you say, "clueless"? When Israel backed down to the UN, it broke my heart.
We: Many of the sub rosas are Jews, but others are Catholic, atheist and who-knows-what. I'm putting all my eggs in the basket of the man whose mustache repels bullets.
She: LOL. He's a charmer. The John Wayne of the un.
We: Awesome.
She: Lower case was not intentional, but certainly fits.
We: The perfect Freudian slip.

Slipping into something more comfortable, ScrappleFace catches the tenor of the times:

Mr. Bush hailed Iran’s “transparent diplomacy” and said, “I called President Ahmadinejad today to congratulate him, and I told him that if he happens to notice one of them Stealth bombers going over his town at about 600 miles per hour, he can be assured that the pilot has only the best intentions in his heart for world peace.”

Bring on the man with the white mustache.

"They wanted to believe"

"Dr. Seuss’s political cartoons from the early 1940s are just as dead-on target as when he first drew them, and especially pertinent today as the ideological heirs of the good Doctor’s 'Appeasement' characters run amok in the streets of Europe and San Francisco," wrote Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs way back in March of 2004, cited in our own post "Clueless, then and now."

"These days, the term fascism is loosely applied to anything antidemocratic," asserts a Boston Globe editorial this morning, willfuly missing the point of Secretary Rumsfeld's astute camparison -- in a rousing speech at the American Legion convention yesterday -- of international appeasement then and now, even as the Globe's editors lump together Rummy's use of the fascism analogy with that of the Bush=Hitler™ crowd:

The Bush Administration has gone on the offensive this week to shore up collapsing support for its policies in Iraq. The latest effort -- transparent as it is inaccurate -- tries to draw parallels between Iraq and World War II . . . In a long, looping analogy, Rumsfeld described the period before America entered World War II as a time "when those who warned about a coming crisis -- the rise of fascism and Nazism -- were ridiculed and ignored." He said critics of the Iraq war "seem not to have learned history's lessons."

When it comes to missing the lessons of history and indulging in "long, looping" analogies, no one does it better than the Globe:

Meanwhile, in an almost uncanny echo of Rumsfeld's overblown rhetoric, anti-war groups mobilizing for a rally in Washington on Oct. 5 have themselves seized on Nazi analogies [doh] . . . It presents a bill of particulars, from the response to Hurricane Katrina to denying women abortion rights. "People look at all this and think of Hitler, and they are right to do so," the ad concludes. And, like Rumsfeld, the alliance warns that "history is full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to be swallowed up by a horror far beyond what they ever imagined."

You want "uncanny echoes" and "overblown rhetoric"? Look no further than the mainstream media's party line du jour.  We heard very much the same misreading of Secretary Rumsfeld's words from Kitty Pilgrim, subbing for Lou Dobbs on CNN last night. CNN International has the talking points:

President George W. Bush has recast his global war on terror in recent days into a "war against Islamic fascism."

Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.

Bush used the term this month, in talking about the arrests of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in the middle America state of Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.

You don't suppose Tony, Rummy and the President they serve actually believe the "new buzz word" might help focus the citizenry on the no-prisoners intentions of the enemy? You know, those follks who want to kill us and reshape the world in their own totalitarian image the way Hitler did? Naw, it's just about sagging poll numbers:

Stephen J. Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University, suggested White House strategists "probably had a focus group, and they found the word 'fascist.'

"The War is Coming. No Matter How Hard We Try to Evade It" subheads Cox & Forkum's awesome cover illustration for Robert Tracinski's "Five Minutes to Midnight."

While Rome burned. Our friends with their heads in the sand need to listen to Robert Tracinski. From his "Five Minutes to Midnight" in The Intellectual Activist [via Cox & Forkum]:

Observing the events of today -- the hesitation and uncertainty, the stubborn clinging to the fantasy that the enemy can be appeased if we just keep talking and find the right diplomatic solution --I now feel that, for the first time, I really understand the leaders of the 1930s. Their illusion that Hitler could be appeased has always seemed, in historical hindsight, to be such a willful evasion of the facts that I have never grasped how it was possible for those men to deceive themselves. But I can now see how they clung to their evasions because they could not imagine anything worse than a return to the mass slaughter of the First World War. They wanted to believe that something, anything could prevent a return to war. What they refused to imagine is that, in trying to avoid the horrors of the previous war, they were allowing Hitler to unleash the much greater horrors of a new war.

Today's leaders and commentators have less excuse. The "horror" they are afraid of repeating is the insurgency we're fighting in Iraq—a war whose cost in lives, dollars, and resolve is among the smallest America has ever had to pay. And it takes no great feat of imagination to project how much more horrible the coming conflict will be if we wait on events long enough for Iran to arm itself with nuclear technology. Among the horrific consequences is the specter of a new Holocaust, courtesy of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Yes, but how would it play in a focus group?

Pajamas Media links.

"Is it news or is it terrorist theater?"

Is it news or is it terrorist theater? To Goomp's Purrky (left) it's probably terroist theater. To Babe, on top of things (right), no news is good news.

"As each day passes it becomes clear that the responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life," writes Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post:

Is it news or is it terrorist theater?

Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout the world.

At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised the Palestinians. Centanni said, "I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are a very beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world need[s] to know more about" . . .

While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. ['Guess she didn't read our two "live," as it was "reported" on TV, posts on the subject.]

Our own sub rosa leading light, Richard Landes of Boston University, has been on the case forever. He was the first we ever knew of who got the Palestinians' Big Lie by the jugular. Instapundit and Pajamas Media and Michelle Malkin got wind of it of late, thank God. Richard stood before a French court this summer* to tell it like it is. We're going to debrief him shortly at a cookout down Sol's on the North Shore.

This gigantic story of the so-called mainstream media's dropping of the ball re the good guys vs. the bad guys won't go away. It was ever thus, but the stakes are wicked bigger now. We remember as a young art school student in the seventies being "interviewed" by a big-time Boston Globe reporter about the murder of a totally ordinary fellow student. In our view, she was just another pretty face, the most nondescript young woman ever was. In the Globe's overblown story, she was a "student leader." We're pretty sure things haven't changed that much in the world of "journalism." What HAS changed are the stakes.

*Update: Richard in the comments corrects the record re his testifying:  "It hasn't happened yet. First trial is later next month. I'll be blogging extensively on it."

"Too many concerns can often lead to hardness of heart"

When 24/7 cable TV weather hysterics struck, Baby was calm beside Goomp's scratch post yesterday afternoon.

Anyone who's been paying attention knows it's all about reminding people who haven't been paying attention that it's "all Bush's fault."

Goomp's Mr. Perkins -- AKA Purrky -- carries no brief for all-Jon-Benet-all-the-time and its multifarious variants, let alone Bush Lied, People Died.™

We're prone to following Papa Ratzi's admonition [via Miss Kelly] to make room for "prayer and contemplation." Speaking during his Sunday address at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, the pope quoted from the writings of St. Bernard of Chiaravalle, who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries:

"We have to guard ourselves, the saint observed, from the dangers of excessive activity, regardless of the office one holds, because too many concerns can often lead to hardness of heart," the pope said.

"This warning is valid for every type of job, even those concerned with the government of the church."

Baby (left) and Tiny guard themselves from "the dangers of excessive activity" as they go for the jugular of their suppers yesterday evening down Goomp's.

To assure your own avoidance of the dangers of excessive activity, be sure to check out this week's totally awesome 127th Carnival of the Cats at Catymology.

Making friends and influencing people

Gratuitous cute kitty pic of the Babe yesterday applying the think system to the hand that feeds. More cute animal pics at Modulator's 101st Friday Ark.

Crackpot theory update. In our previous post, our conspiratorial mind posited the brutal kidnapping two weeks ago and carefully orchestrated release this morning of Fox News correspondent Steve Centani and his photographer as a master plan designed by Hamas elements of the Palestinian Government to draw attention to their cause:

Is it too much of a crackpot theory to suggest the government was behind the whole thing, using the episode and its joyous denouement as a super-sophisticated, media-magnet photo op calling favorable attention to their cause? As Steve Centanni had reasoned to himself during the terrible days of captivity, "I'm worth more to them alive than dead."

As the photo ops unfold -- raw footage of the released captives hugging their colleagues, formal footage of the captives posing, all smiles, with the Palestinian Prime Minister, a news conference full of praise for the legendary Palestinian hospitality -- we sense the hand of media genius Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, guiding back-channel negotiations to an apparent win-win-win situation:

Win #1. The hostages are free.

Win #2. The Palestinian Government is presented in a most flattering light, with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, a senior political leader of Hamas, taking the high ground.

Win #3. Fox News, fair and balanced, is covering the waterfront.

And not a single word about throwing Israel into the sea.

Update: On the other hand, notes a DEBKAfile analysis [via Michelle Malkin, who has the usual comprehensive roundup], "For Israel, the fate of Gilead Shalit, whom Hamas kidnapped from sovereign Israel in a cross-border assault, is left up in the air."

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint"

"I'm just so happy to be free," says an emotional Steve Centanni, released this morning after two weeks of captivity by "Holy Jihad Brigades" kidnappers.

"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint" Steve Centanni is telling Shepard Smith as news breaks of the Fox News correspondent's and photographer Olaf Wiig's release by kidnappers in Gaza this morning. "This gentle and unassuming man, who has been with [Fox News] from the beginning," Brit Hume is saying, "embodies this idea of being fair and balanced that is Fox's trademark." In his phone interview with Shep, Centanni adds a little boilerplate:

Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam and learned lots of interesting things about it, but [regarding the "conversions"] we were at gunpoint.

They said what they had to say to stay alive. Jerusalem correspondent Amy Kellogg tells Fox & Friends anchors the forced conversions and anti-Western statements the two were forced to make -- Wiig was videotaped calling on leaders of the West to stop "hiding behind the 'I don't negotiate with terrorists' myth" -- should be seen as "a face-saving vehicle for their release."

Centanni's brother calls in, noting that this particular kidnapping had "one of the widest bases of condemnation around the world," including Hamas. Fox News CEO Roger Ailes explains:

The international community is becoming more aware that journalists should never be used as pawns . . . Protecting journalists helps THEM [potential kidnappers] as well as the whole profession. If you harm a journalist, it may be more difficult for them to tell your story.

Wishful thinking on Ailes's part? Were the kidnappers, indeed, persuaded by diplomatic pressure, or did money change hands behind the scenes as was rumored in the Jill Carroll case?

This just in: New video shows beaming Centanni and Wiig and his wife meeting with the Palestinian Prime Minister. So that was it. For international consumption the PM is denouncing the Holy Jihad Brigades, saying that journalists are the guests of the Palestinians and should be treated well. Is it too much of a crackpot theory to suggest the government was behind the whole thing, using the episode and its joyous denouement as a super-sophisticated, media-magnet photo op calling favorable attention to their cause? As Steve Centanni had reasoned to himself during the terrible days of captivity, "I'm worth more to them alive than dead."

Let's face the music and dance

Keeping the homefires burning, Tuck pursues his endless quest to repair and refurbish the clapboards and window sashes and all things both superficial and deep that make up the envelope of our awesome 1842 Greek Revival house, subject of our very first blog post ever way back on December 12, 2003. A Renaissance man, the Tuckster, for our postmodern age.

Taking a pit stop, Tuck attempts to get a few mouthfuls of supper last night before Tiny (left) moves in for the kill.

Update: In the light of day the next morning, we didn't like the tone of the last part of this post at all and have deleted it. Thanks to Goomp and Teresa in the comments for shaking us out of our snarky whine.

"Those who seek temporary safety will never get safety"

"He who hears nothing, knows nothing, and does nothing belongs to the numerous family of the Chinchillas, which has always been good for nothing," wrote Goya. "Those idiots who pride themselves on their nobility, let themselves go to laziness and superstition. They close off their understanding with padlocks while they are grossly fed by ignorance." Plus ça change. (Francisco José de Goya. The Chinchillas. Etching, burnished aquatint, and burin. First edition, 1799. Wesleyan University.)

"Those who seek temporary safety will never get safety," writes Mohammed of Iraq the Model, reveling in the difference between life in a free -- albeit violence-torn at the moment -- society like the new Iraq vs. a fear society like Egypt, where he was attending a seminar for bloggers and civil society activists last week:

It may sound a bit odd but that's really what I felt in Egypt that I don't feel in my war-torn city; for the first time in 3 years I felt the restraints of government . . . I told one of my colleagues I feel safe in Baghdad despite the dangers, I may feel afraid of terrorists or random violence but I never fear the government and that's not only how I feel, Iraqis are not afraid of expressing their differences with the authority because we in Iraq have more or less become part of that authority the day we elected our representatives while terrorists and militias are nothing more than temporary phenomena that unlike constitution and elections have no solid foundations.

"Back in Cairo I was sitting in the hotel's garden reading a book when I was surprised by a man who reminded me of one of Saddam's security guys," continues Mohammed, "interrupting my quiet afternoon reading and telling me without any introductions 'Don't believe them!'":

"Who are they?" I asked. "Those people," he said, pointing at the book in my hand and adding "we have a very good system that is represented by the government and Islam. Maybe we need some minor improvements but those people want to blow up our culture, history and beliefs."

I could feel that these remarks would be followed by an informal interrogation with questions about my colleagues so I quickly ended the conversation and avoided going into details. However this came as a flashback from the dreadful era of dictatorship that I've forgotten over the past three years.

Natan Sharansky would understand. This is George W's true legacy.

Feet of clay

Yesterday morning we looked out the window and saw what we first took to be the morning star or the dog star or some such timeless thing. But then we noticed it was moving towards us, and we started to go ballistic, imagining Armageddon was on our doorstep. It turned out to be a major airline plane flying south to north (above), a rare thing in these parts, with Logan Airport just to the east of us, but Tuck reported he'd seen such things from time to time.

"Sissy, actually, I don't think there are any scientists who support Darwin's theory," emails the normally astute John Hinderaker of PowerLine in an eye-popping response to a note we sent the PL boys yesterday following their plug of Mark Steyn's thumbs-up review of Ann Coulter's new book. Here's what we said:

Re the otherwise awesome Ann Coulter, what do you make of her trashing of Darwin's theory of evolution? In my view, it totally undermines her credibility.

Hindrocket's response left our jaw dragging along the floor. We'll probably never recover (just kidding):

They have moved on to other variants of "evolution," but all are, in my opinion, based on faith, not evidence.

We've blogged about the field work and subsequent theoretical thinking of our hero, Charles Darwin, early and often here, of course. "There is a grandeur in this view of life" is one of our own all-time faves. Just as a cat can look at a king -- or in our version, a king can look at a cat -- anyone who's good at one thing can make pronouncements in a field he knows nothing of. But he does so at his own risk, as his credibility is in the balance. It's profoundly disappointing when a person one admires as we do John Hinderaker dismisses Darwin's ideas without anything more than this:

It is striking how much fraud has been committed in support of the concept of evolution, but the fact is, modern science does not support it. This is a big topic which we can't begin to cover here.

"Just because Osama is paranoid doesn't mean the infidel isn't out to get him," we captioned this Photoshopped image of the tormented one back in April of 2004, when we "donned our tin foil hat and came up with a couple of good ones."

Well, yes, in your "opinion." As Allahpundit at HotAir [via Laura Lee Donoho at The Wide Awake Cafe] said re our fellow bloggers who went hysterical over the aborted coming of the 12th Imam earlier this week:

I’ll still read them, but never again with quite the same credulity. That’s how it works, boys.

Credulity can be a problem at anytime, of course. We ourselves have not been above apocalyptic prognostications, and last time we promulgated one, back in April of '04, it got us kudos from the estimable Thomas Lifton of The American Thinker.

Update: Pajamas Media takes note.

A dream is a nightmare your heart makes?

Disney, like Oprah, bambifies things. If you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend things will work out if we all just try to get along, that should float your boat. If you want to face reality, open your eyes. (Margot Fonteyn above as Cinderella 49 years ago. No wonder we feel wicked old.)

"A dream is a wish your heart makes," goes the Disney tune -- and there are nothing but obscenely bland Disney images of Cinderella out there at the end of a Google search. Two nights in a row our dreams have been haunted by the ghost of some wishes our heart once made. We found ourselves, in our dream state, just saying no: This is only a dream -- an annoying one -- so wake up now, fergossake. We remember trying to will ourselves out of the dream state, banging our fists to try to wake ourselves up, but the dream lingered on:

We're sitting in the chair across from our awesome Brookline shrink of old, a rising star in the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute at the time. That old New Yorker cartoon [either there was such a thing, or there should have been] comes to mind of the therapist snoozing away while the patient on the couch drones on about the minutiae of his angst, but once or twice, we recall, we actually got the old boy to sit up and take notice. If memory serves, we said something to the effect that when we made a major life choice, family members intervened to try to turn us back from the error or our ways. Eventually, things all worked out for better or worse, but that moment sticks in the mind. The shrink was horrified. He also sat up and took notice one time when we playfully threw a tear-soaked ball of kleenex across the room toward him. Poor boy. What does a woman want? indeed.

Fast forward to the last two nights, when our sleeping persona found ourselves once again across the room from Dr. X. Even as the doc seemed impenetrable to whatever it was we were trying to say, his darling young daughter -- conflated in the world of dreams with the daughter of another psychiatrist who was the adored husband of our best friend during Boston Museum of Fine Arts days -- held us close in her arms and told the shrink he didn't know what he was talking about. Throughout the dream, which seemed endless, we were trying to find our way out. 'Don't remember too many details, but one was that we came to the end of a corridor, looked outside and saw a landscape that "proved" this was real life and not a dream. Shortly thereafter, we awoke, to great relief.

A dream is a nightmare your heart makes?

Update: Pajamas Media seems to be amused.