sisu

"I'd like to think a penguin would prefer a handmade sweater"

"BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE: Mormon women in New South Wales are knitting sweaters for fairy penguins," to keep them warm during post-oil-spill clean-ups, twitters G. Vanderleun of American Digest. "I'd like to think a penguin would prefer a handmade sweater," says the Salt Lake City medical secretary who organized women of the Church of Latter Day Saints to help the little fellows out. More on  the "Jumper Project" here. [LDS Church photo]

Thank God we'll be watching THE most compelling TV show ever — "a lot of crazy people" and music to die for — "Boston Legal," while the inedible Leader of the Free World spews forth his "100 Days" taxpayer-funded self-promotional tour at the expense of the so-called mainstream media. The Fox broadcast channel is just saying no, noting that those who are so inclined can catch Prez Obama's PR blitz on Fox News cable this evening. It will be interesting to check out the stats tomorrow morning.

We couldn't help but notice that the NYC flyover that set New Yorkers' teeth on edge was obscenely given a pass by President Obama's fellow travelers in the MSM. Doh. Be still, my foolish heart. Like Big Guy's teleprompter, we are as ever constitutionally unable to listen to his toe-curling "soaring rhetoric" and depend upon those who are paid to do so to let us know, next day, the latest con he is asking us to buy into.

Until tomorrow.

Update: Crapazola. "Boston Legal" ain't on in its usual slot. Sigh. Flipping through the channels to find something watchable. Nothing. Finding Dear Leader on all the networks is SO totalitarianesque. Can't imagine anyone but paid talking heads putting themselves through it.

Update II next day:  Mary Katharine Ham watched so we didn't have to and synopsized with panache. A tasty tidbit, and then head on over and devour the whole thing:

Obama obfuscated for 5 minutes before answering Jake Tapper's question, but eventually and mercifully used just seven words to wrap things up: "I do believe that it is torture." He also asserted that vital information for preventing terror attacks could have been gleaned from hard-boiled mass murderers through other means, the guidebooks for which are hidden in the sugarplum grove at the foot of the gumdrop tree in the Mythical Forest of Prosperity from which Obama's domestic plans come. Convenient!

Jammie Wearing Fool reads the ratings entrails:

Heh: Fox's 'Lie to Me' Wins 8 pm Timeslot While Obama Lied to Everyone Else.

He made his bed, and he lies in it.

Roll over, George Washington, and tell Ben Franklin the news

"One of the most iconic and enduring images in American art,"  Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (detail, above), "will be "out of sight until 2011 as the artwork gets a touchup and an ornate new frame and its gallery undergoes a renovation." (Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Oil on canvas, 149 x 255," Metropolitan Museum of Art)

George Washington @Twitter*:

The best way to preserve the confidence of the people durably is to promote their true interests.

Sissy Willis @ Twitter:

Try telling that to Rahm "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" Emanuel.

 

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, explaining "What I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do."

You remember Emanuel's quotatable quote about fooling all of the people some of the time (see caption, above). As we wrote in our recent appreciation of Roger L. Simon, "Part of my leftism was a sales pitch," re Rahm Emanuel's conscience-free self-revelation:

Translation: Take the money and run when people are preoccupied, and you can get away with spending it in ways they would never agree to were they paying attention.

Roll over, George Washington, and tell Ben Franklin the news.

*Re George Washington @ Twitter: Thanks to Preacher Gilbert, who just started following us on Twitter last night. He's also following foundingfather, a compilation of quotations by "the World's Apostle of Liberty." It looks like we're in good company.

"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!

Peggy Noonan is following us

Terry Teachout and Sissy Willis are now following Peggy Noonan on Twitter and vise versa (see below for more). Our Twitter logo above is detail of "a many-colored cotton Ralph Lauren outsourced to India, air-drying in the shade of the Silver Maple, a bumped-up version of the madras plaids that were all the rage in our salad days."

"Two kinds of people," Twitters A-list critic, biographer and blogger Terry Teachout, who blogs at About Last Night:

I'm the kind who straightens up his hotel room before going out to dinner.

That's two things we have in common with the estimable Mr. Teachout — drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and music critic of Commentary — the other being that Teachout and ourselves were the first two, among 194 Twitterers notified this morning that Peggy Noonan "is now following [our] updates on Twitter," to respond by clicking on "follow" at her Twitter site:

We tried explaining to Tuck what it all means but had to admit that we ourselves still don't quite get this Twittering thing. As Karl Rove  — who follows us and 41,197 others on Twitter — was reported to have Twittered when he first signed on last January:

In one Tweet he confesses that he is "no new media ninja" but is being shown the ropes by an assistant, adding: "I like it so far!"

That's about how we feel, minus the assistant. Back to why on earth Peggy Noonan is following us on Twitter, we're probably in her email address book from a brief correspondence we had four years back over our post "Peggy Noonan almost gets it," a critique of her column "The Blogs Must Be Crazy," wherein she proposed that Big Media "get our own bloggers to challenge our work":

Why don't we invite bloggers who already exist into the tent? Why not take the best things said on blogs each day and print them on a Daily Blog page? We'd be enhancing our rep as an honest news organization, and it will further our branding!

As we pointed out in a follow-up post at the time:

… the jury is still out about the integrity of a blogger's being paid by big media to tell it like it is. Probably not possible. Either you is or you isn't my baby.

Checking back with Noonan's Twitter page before going to press, we note that since we started writing late morning, she's up from the initial two —Terry T. & Sissy W. — to 26 followers, and counting. We've got 59 followers after being on Twitter a coupla months. Any takers?

And what rough beast, its hour come 'round at last?

"Tiny woodpile hunt / A baby snake enjaw-ed / Grandma just says no." That's a haiku invoking the red-in-tooth-and-claw drama outside in the yard this evening, where Tiny caught a snakelet and was quickly dispawed of it by ourselves, each of us following our own imperative.

A haiku ["three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables"] on MSM coverage of President Obama's mythic first "100 Days":

Pauline Kael bubblers,
Remote cargo-cult-like, a-
Wait Second Coming.

The rest of us await the Second Coming of the new Boston Tea Party on July 4th, 2009, two if by sea. There's a plan afoot for tea partiers to "set sail" from Portsmouth, NH that morning and meet up, regatta style, at Boston Harbor late afternoon.

Update: One more Haiku for the road:

Thank God it's Friday,
'Cause critters now boarding Steve's
Ark 241.

Two-by-two if by sea?

I am tea party woman, hear me roar!

"Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could," Abigail Adams famously wrote her husband John during the Second Continental Congress in March of 1776. Meanwhile down south, according to the North Carolina History Project, "during the early 1770s, Whiggish men (those who supported the colonies) frequently blamed their spouses, mother, sisters, and daughters for preventing the creation of a distinct American culture. They would rather annul an American boycott, the story goes, than divorce English tea or clothes. The Edenton Tea Party petition proved otherwise, for the Edenton women boycotted English goods and alerted King George III that they had done so." According to a PBS blurb, "This was one of the earliest organized efforts on the part of women to influence public policy. In the 18th century, politics was thought to be an improper sphere for women, but the American Revolution nudged this dictate toward liberalization." [Thanks to Mary Katharine Ham in The Weekly Standard for alerting us to the story of the Edenton women.] Satirical drawing above "depicting the Edenton Tea Party published in a London Newspaper in March 1775. Image courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina."

"I’m part of a movement and didn’t even know it!” writes The Enlightened Redneck, Danny Glover [via Instapundit], energized at the realization that he is not alone:

Thanks to the power of Google news alerts, a press release about a grassroots group called Save the Redneck found its way to my e-mail box.

Like me, the group is irked at elitist actress Janeane Garofalo for her bigoted rant about rednecks at last week’s anti-tax “tea parties.” Save the Redneck wants an apology from her.

Clicking on over, we found a rousing call to arms:

For too many years now the political powerhouses, city sophisticates and the rich elite have tried to take advantage and make fun of Redneck farmers, ranchers, mechanics, factory workers and hard working folks who helped build this great country. Without Redneck elbow grease this country and economy would come to an abrupt and grinding halt. Thanks to those who make fun of us, it is already on its last legs.

It is time to take a stand. We believe it is our inherent right to commemorate our place in American culture. This website has been created to celebrate everything right with the redneck. Celebrate who you are, and Save the Redneck.

"We’re definitely on the same wavelength," says Danny Glover:

I went one step further several years ago in an essay I titled “Rednecks Rule,” arguing that “redneckedness is a state of mind to be cherished, not a consequence of culture to be ridiculed.”

Anyone can be a redneck if he wants to be. As Callebs says, it’s all about “talking the talk and walking the walk” — whether you have an accent or not.

Count us in. In fact, we've considered ourselves an honorary member of the tribe ever since we were identified five years back — by a member of the loony left calling himself Chun the Unavoidable — as "an instance of … these alleged [working-class] people who support and indeed admire [President Bush] without having an obvious financial interest at stake." It calls to mind David Axelrod & Company's bewildered elitist "Royalist response" to the upstart Tea Party Movement's resistance to burdensome government.

Back to where we started with Enlightened Redneck's “I’m part of a movement and didn’t even know it!” above, as we wrote in Glover's comments this morning:

Same with us Tea Partiers out here.

Google news alerts are helping us find our voice!

With apologies to Helen Reddy — and not a little irony — I am tea party woman, hear me roar!

Update: Laura Lee links.

"Underestimation, mistrust and an attitude of superiority"

 

"I think these issues are simply too important to the future of the nation for us to operate as though those of us who disagree somehow shouldn't speak out and be heard," our Dick Cheney told Sean Hannity the other night. "I thought the Tea Parties were great, " he volunteered. "I think that when you get that kind of grassroots sentiment being expressed — thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people all across the country — that will have an impact on Capitol Hill. It will have an impact, I think, on the political process, and it's basically a healthy development." A refreshing contrast to WH adviser David Axelrod's nasty and unfounded insinuation that our perfectly lawful dissent "can mutate into something that's unhealthy."

"Get your history straight, cut down on the pretentious vocabulary and stop sounding so superior," writes commenter David Lott in a brilliant fisking of that intellectually bankrupt Harvard Crimson Tea Party editorial we flogged blogged here yesterday. For the tribes of history-challenged opinionators who don't seem to have the time or inclination to get their facts straight, Lott's concise history lesson should be a must-read:

The original Boston Tea Party wasn't about taxation without representation. It was about elimination of a tax, the tea duty, that had protected domestic merchants.

The original Tea Party wasn't spontaneous either …

The original tea party had a bit of excess rhetoric too, plus dressing as Indians and destroying British property. And the Royalist reaction of the British was not unlike the Crimson's in its underestimation, mistrust and attitude of superiority.

"The Royalist reaction." That's it! The Rahm-Emanuel-choreographed reaction of White House and media allies to the Tea Party phenomenon — like their earlier Alinskyesque jihad against Rush Limbaugh — is the modern-day equivalent of the reaction of American colonists loyal to Great Britain to the upstart Patriots: "Underestimation, mistrust and [an] attitude of superiority."

The 18th-Century Pats believed, as John Adams wrote, that "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." But in the wake of the 20th-Century Gramscian march through the institutions, promulgated through the insidious propagandizing of future teachers by "critical pedagogy" proselytizers like President Obama's old pal Bill Ayers, all too many children of the 21st-Century — even some of the best and the brightest who sit on the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson — don't seem to understand the fragility of this thing that is their birthright. In Ben Franklin's words, oft quoted here, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

Update: "It’s your must-read article of the day, so what are you waiting for?" blogs fellow Boston Tea Partier Stoutcat of Grand Rants:

Sissy weaves a wonderful web involving Dick Cheney, the recent round of Tea Parties, and the Harvard Crimson’s imitation of Thurston Howell III ["a stereotypical member of the Northeastern White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Yankee elite" in the Sixties sitcom Gilligan's Island] as they reported on the Tea Parties.

That Thurston Howell III reference is inspired!

Harvard Crimson misses Tea Party scoop

"Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off," former journalist and newly minted Pentagon adviser Rosa Brooks (above, sweetly spinning Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright last year) wrote in her final LA Times column last week. Frightening to think that a mind so out of touch with the imperatives of human nature will now be advising our top military planners.

"By engaging in such puerile antics, the tea partiers only perpetuate the perception of their intellectual bankruptcy," write the Harvard Crimson editors in a fact-challenged regurgitation of mainstream media talking points about last Wednesday's Tax Day Tea Parties:

Tea-party enthusiasts claim that the tea parties were supposedly a spontaneous, nonpartisan, grassroots movement [which they are] fashioned after the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773 … The only problem is that the tea parties of Tax Day 2009 were neither spontaneous nor, in fact, very much related to the original tea party.

… However, the greater existential question for these spontaneous tea parties than the legitimacy of their spontaneity is the legitimacy of their claim to the title “tea party,” for it is not entirely clear what the protesters were protesting.

As we snorted in high dudgeon in the comments:

Perhaps had you been on the scene and talked to some of us "hysterics" in person last Wednesday — rather than rely on biased media screeds -- you might have gotten a clue.

For many of us tea partiers it wasn't about taxes per se. Instead, it's the Rahm Emanuel thing about "taking advantage of a serious crisis" by ramming through big-government initiatives that citizens would never approve were they not distracted.

Sticking to the party line, the Crimsoneers echo Senior White House adviser David Axelrod's shock, shock at the ingratitude of us unwashed:

"The thing that bewilders me is that this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people," Axelrod argued. "I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face."

He said the TEA Party events, which were organized by the conservative group FreedomWorks, comes from a dissatisfaction with the economy that "can mutate into something that's unhealthy."

A classic case of misdirection, as Fred Barnes recently characterized Obama's signature tactic, "pretending to head one way while going another." We little people are supposed to be satisfied with government handouts and not bother our pretty little heads about the power grab that's going on behind the curtain. It may not be "entirely clear" to the Crimson editorial board "what the protesters were protesting," but the self-organizing "smart crowds" of tea partiers ourselves — soldiers of Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids — know exactly what's got our dander up. Mark Steyn explains:

That’s why these are Tea Parties — because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining “your interests” and then announcing that he’s giving you a “tax credit” as your pocket money.

As we wrote a couple of years back in another context, "It's naive to believe [citizens] should be content to have physical comforts handed to them on a welfare platter. No man — no creature worth its salt — can bear the shame. Come to think of it, that's exactly what's wrong with the liberal project." Talk about intellectual bankruptcy.

Update: Maggie's links.

Animal, vegetable

'Wonder whether our feline companions (Tiny above in her cups) and catnip (Nepeta cataria) evolved together through the eons of Darwinian natural selection? What does the cat or the weed have to gain from their association? Is it just one of those things, a happy accident along the road of the relentless drive to continue the bloodline? More thoughts at our May 2005 post "Substance abuse, then and now."

Just one of those those crazy flings …

A trip to the moon on gossamer wings Just one of those things.

Update: "Scientific American ran a brief article in 2007 on the pharmacokinetics of catnip in cats, writes Confederate Yankee in the comments. From the article:

When cats smell catnip they exhibit several behaviors common to queens in season (females in heat): They may rub their heads and body on the herb or jump, roll around, vocalize and salivate. This response lasts for about 10 minutes, after which the cat becomes temporarily immune to catnip's effects for roughly 30 minutes.

Same behavior observed in the Chelsea Grays in response to Tuck's cat whispering. Tuck Willis knows what cats like.

Update: More of those crazy flings at Modulator's Friday Ark #240, now boarding.

"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 leftist, 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 for 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.