The hard leftists at MoveOn.org have decided to gin up the usual simplistic petition/protest drive today targeting select Congressmen today and haranguing them to join the "Cut and Run" club. They're promoting their latest asinine gesture by declaring as a "known fact" (see HazZzMat: A Known Fact: ™ How Propaganda Works) that the vast majority of Americans are against the Iraq War, something thoroughly disproved even by normally biased MSM polling data. But then, the truth never deterred the Stalinists at MoveOn.
But the intrepid Citizen Smash posts a novel solution to help subvert today's phony media event. Click the link here to see how you can help. It's fun, it's easy, and above all, it's patriotic, which will surely infuriate MoveOn's Ministers of Propaganda.
Longer term, we wonder why some of the larger organizations on the right don't start mounting a campaign to remove MoveOn's 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. It's surely justified beyond a shadow of a doubt. As hired shills of the Democratic Party and hardened seditionists to boot, they've already violated, countless times, the terms under which they are allowed to operate as a nonprofit. It's high time patriotic Americans took a good look at how American tax loopholes are allowing subversive partisan hacks such as these to flourish with the unwitting support of millions of taxpayers who would be appalled if they knew how this was happening. Removing the extensive, free, taxpayer and foundation support that allows these creeps to thrive will go a long way toward restoring American cultural values at a time when the world is most in need of them.
Meanwhile, help out Citizen Smash and his friends.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
A Mammoth Thanksgiving, Part II: The Kennedy Room
Wonker promised to get back to HazZzmat fans with more on the excellent vacation he and Mrs. Wonker took to the cave country of Kentucky late last month.
As you remember from our last episode, we'd arrived in not-quite-so-scenic Ashland, KY, on the way to the caves and found the town interesting if paradoxical, a washed out relic of rustbelt days, south-of-Ohio style, which nonetheless possessed some of its faded glory still, as personified in a series of magnificently restored Victorian mansions.
Whilst in Ashland's environs, we stayed in a charming if slightly eccentric B&B slightly south of town called the "President's House," so named because its last owner or so has avidly collected original Presidential memorabilia to the extent where each room is named after a President and contains many of these appropriate historical artifacts.
Typical of this area, we'd suspect, proclivities tend to be Democratic, alas, and we stayed in the charming "Kennedy Room" on the main floor. (The "Carter Room" is upstairs.) From signed proclamations to vintage copies of LIFE magazine featuring the ubiquitous Jackie on the cover, the room was a sort of late 1950s-early 1960s time warp, bringing back bittersweet memories of an Ohio childhood and the first shattering experiences of adulthood. Wonker recalls when the good nuns at his Catholic grade school lined up all the kids outside to greet then-candidate Jack Kennedy as his motorcade, headed from Cleveland to Lorain, passed by the school on the main thoroughfare. This was back in the soon-to-be-no-more open top days when candidates motored from event to event seated in the back of open convertibles, which allowed them to rise up and seat themselves on the "boot" to wave to their adoring fans.
And, candidly, Jack was a looker, no doubt. TV never did him justice. At 43 or so, he looked, at a slight distance, as if he were 10 years younger. And to this day, I remain a bit surprised that his ample head of hair, which always appeared brown in color photos, actually radiated a surprising background of red. Kennedy's motorcade slowed, he climbed up, smiled broadly, and waved to the youthful crowd. Girls swooned, even churlish guys were impressed, and we all went back to class feeling pretty good about this guy.
For, as perhaps few remember now, Jack was attempting to surmount the same taboo that defeated Al Smith much earlier in the century--his Catholicism. Then as now, individuals, particularly hardline Protestants, or, worse, the hardcore atheist left, still clung to the Know-Nothing beliefs of the 19th century that regarded, among other things, Catholics as nothing more than mindless papists who were crude to boot, distinctly not representative of America, and thus, entirely unfit to run for President let alone win an election.
Jack Kennedy shattered the myth for once and for all, and it is hard today to convince anyone of the chest-bursting pride that Catholics all over the country felt when he won election. It was as if on that election day, 1960, that we Catholics had finally achieved full citizenship in this country. Blacks are not the only group of citizens who've been discriminated against in this country, although what happened to them is by far the greatest blot on the early history of the US. But Catholics, too, largely derived from Irish and Italian waves of emigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, have long experienced a subtler kind of discrimination that still persists today in pockets of the country, as do persistent pockets of racial discrimination.
The main thing is, though, that Protestant fundamentalists have long since--for the most part--recognized that most Catholics are inherently law abiding and conservatives, save for a few rabid liberation theologians and there followers here and there. And thus, fundamentalists and Catholics have joined in a common cause to restore a moral tone to a relativist universe.
However, Catholics continue to be, quite literally, persecuted for their beliefs, as evidenced by the (thankfully successful) Senate hearings for now Chief Justice Roberts, and the ongoing charade of "fairness" playing out with prospective Justice Alito, whom, we hope, will likewise be elevated to the Nation's highest court. Both judges, of course, being Catholics--Alito being the worst one since he's also Italian like Justice Scalia--have dared to question the central sacrament of the Church of the Left--abortion--which simply confirms today's Know-Nothings in their anti-Catholic righteousness.
But this is the discrimination that's condoned by the press, and so it isn't discrimination at all. The Roman Catholic clergy, currently fatally corrupt in its higher reaches, didn't help any with its silent condoning of pederasty. But even without this, Catholics remain a severely put upon class.
So, as we've mentioned, it was nice to think again on those thrilling days of yesteryear when one of our own actually broke the anti-Catholic barrier to become President. Of course he's been disgraced posthumously, and shown in retrospect to have had the sexual morals of a feral tomcat. But 1960 was a magic moment, and one whose memory still feels right, at least in that respect.
Needless to say, we've been diverted once again in our journey, so why don't we get our Saturn VUE back on the road, onto the Blue Grass Parkway (now being re-named for some politician, alive or posthumous, who, no doubt, stole enough money from the taxpayers to build it and take credit for their work), heading west to Park City, the somewhat shabby entryway to what is billed as the World's Longest Cave.
More anon.
As you remember from our last episode, we'd arrived in not-quite-so-scenic Ashland, KY, on the way to the caves and found the town interesting if paradoxical, a washed out relic of rustbelt days, south-of-Ohio style, which nonetheless possessed some of its faded glory still, as personified in a series of magnificently restored Victorian mansions.
Whilst in Ashland's environs, we stayed in a charming if slightly eccentric B&B slightly south of town called the "President's House," so named because its last owner or so has avidly collected original Presidential memorabilia to the extent where each room is named after a President and contains many of these appropriate historical artifacts.
Typical of this area, we'd suspect, proclivities tend to be Democratic, alas, and we stayed in the charming "Kennedy Room" on the main floor. (The "Carter Room" is upstairs.) From signed proclamations to vintage copies of LIFE magazine featuring the ubiquitous Jackie on the cover, the room was a sort of late 1950s-early 1960s time warp, bringing back bittersweet memories of an Ohio childhood and the first shattering experiences of adulthood. Wonker recalls when the good nuns at his Catholic grade school lined up all the kids outside to greet then-candidate Jack Kennedy as his motorcade, headed from Cleveland to Lorain, passed by the school on the main thoroughfare. This was back in the soon-to-be-no-more open top days when candidates motored from event to event seated in the back of open convertibles, which allowed them to rise up and seat themselves on the "boot" to wave to their adoring fans.
And, candidly, Jack was a looker, no doubt. TV never did him justice. At 43 or so, he looked, at a slight distance, as if he were 10 years younger. And to this day, I remain a bit surprised that his ample head of hair, which always appeared brown in color photos, actually radiated a surprising background of red. Kennedy's motorcade slowed, he climbed up, smiled broadly, and waved to the youthful crowd. Girls swooned, even churlish guys were impressed, and we all went back to class feeling pretty good about this guy.
For, as perhaps few remember now, Jack was attempting to surmount the same taboo that defeated Al Smith much earlier in the century--his Catholicism. Then as now, individuals, particularly hardline Protestants, or, worse, the hardcore atheist left, still clung to the Know-Nothing beliefs of the 19th century that regarded, among other things, Catholics as nothing more than mindless papists who were crude to boot, distinctly not representative of America, and thus, entirely unfit to run for President let alone win an election.
Jack Kennedy shattered the myth for once and for all, and it is hard today to convince anyone of the chest-bursting pride that Catholics all over the country felt when he won election. It was as if on that election day, 1960, that we Catholics had finally achieved full citizenship in this country. Blacks are not the only group of citizens who've been discriminated against in this country, although what happened to them is by far the greatest blot on the early history of the US. But Catholics, too, largely derived from Irish and Italian waves of emigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, have long experienced a subtler kind of discrimination that still persists today in pockets of the country, as do persistent pockets of racial discrimination.
The main thing is, though, that Protestant fundamentalists have long since--for the most part--recognized that most Catholics are inherently law abiding and conservatives, save for a few rabid liberation theologians and there followers here and there. And thus, fundamentalists and Catholics have joined in a common cause to restore a moral tone to a relativist universe.
However, Catholics continue to be, quite literally, persecuted for their beliefs, as evidenced by the (thankfully successful) Senate hearings for now Chief Justice Roberts, and the ongoing charade of "fairness" playing out with prospective Justice Alito, whom, we hope, will likewise be elevated to the Nation's highest court. Both judges, of course, being Catholics--Alito being the worst one since he's also Italian like Justice Scalia--have dared to question the central sacrament of the Church of the Left--abortion--which simply confirms today's Know-Nothings in their anti-Catholic righteousness.
But this is the discrimination that's condoned by the press, and so it isn't discrimination at all. The Roman Catholic clergy, currently fatally corrupt in its higher reaches, didn't help any with its silent condoning of pederasty. But even without this, Catholics remain a severely put upon class.
So, as we've mentioned, it was nice to think again on those thrilling days of yesteryear when one of our own actually broke the anti-Catholic barrier to become President. Of course he's been disgraced posthumously, and shown in retrospect to have had the sexual morals of a feral tomcat. But 1960 was a magic moment, and one whose memory still feels right, at least in that respect.
Needless to say, we've been diverted once again in our journey, so why don't we get our Saturn VUE back on the road, onto the Blue Grass Parkway (now being re-named for some politician, alive or posthumous, who, no doubt, stole enough money from the taxpayers to build it and take credit for their work), heading west to Park City, the somewhat shabby entryway to what is billed as the World's Longest Cave.
More anon.
Nastygrams for the Strib
The "Strib"? Well, according to James Lileks, at least, this is the nickname for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, very probably the most radical-left of America's larger newspapers, worse, if you can imagine, than the New York Times. That's probably why Strib editorial writer Jim Boyd copped an award from "Editor and Publisher," proving that the best way to further your career in the MSM is to trash President Bush, conservatives, Republicans, and anyone living in flyover country who happens to disagree with you.
But readers struck back in 3 letters published in E&P, according to Power Line. Here are choice excerpts. First up, one letter writer gets directly to the point:
The reason most Republicans end up in business is because they're rigorously excluded from intellectual lines of work by the always vigilent left who will brook no interference with their hard-won citadels of intolerance in the media and the arts. The more the public is made aware of this, the more likely it will be that these leftist monopolies will be smashed, similar to the way that trade unionists took their unions back from the communists that had subverted them during and after the Second World War. Barring that, it's time to found new clubs and new awards to recognize demonstrable excellence and intellectual courage as opposed to using such vehicles to glorify a slavish conformity to a long-ago discredited and ruinous ideology.
But readers struck back in 3 letters published in E&P, according to Power Line. Here are choice excerpts. First up, one letter writer gets directly to the point:
Boyd's antipathy for all things remotely conservative results in spewing vile stuff, not reasoned argument. His "exhaustive research [and] a willingness to tell truth to power," as the loony tunes award citation claims, is a crock. It fails the giggle test among legions who do not share in Boyd's leftist fantasyland.Another writer describes in loving detail why news and commentary on the Net is fast supplanting the rantings of MSM demagogues like Boyd:
Shame on the American Academy of Diplomacy for getting it so wrong, so ironically wrong, about Boyd, painting him as a mythic heroic figure in journalism, when he is clearly a blight on that trade, a poster boy for partisan flackery. Like Dan Rather, he is a purveyor of falsehoods when it suits his partisan purposes.
The condescending, victimized, nasty tone of Jim Boyd towards the freedom of speech exercised by people who disagree with him is symbolic of the decline of the mainstream media. Americans do not consider the MSM the final word in truth, in fact, it seems each day the lies and partisanship of the supposed truth-tellers are exposed. When you have the next big symposium on why readership is declining, let topic #1 be the treatment of dissent by editorial writers. The Internet is the better mousetrap: it was created out of necessity because the first mousetrap, the MSM, failed miserably.Best of all is the observation by yet another writer who, along with stating his opinion, is terminating his Strib subscription out of disgust with the paper's blatant anti-Americanism. Citing Boyd's customary hate-filled editorial rantings, this EX-reader notes that:
Your acceptance speech for you award was an interesting study in rhetoric. It's a funny thing about the Left. They devise all these awards and give them to each other as a measure of their ideological purity.The always-verbose Wonker is jealous. In this short, pithy sentence, the last letter-writer exposes one of the left-literati's main PR rackets, the founding of bogus awards or the subverting of old ones (like the Pulitzer Prize) to create a recognition machine promoting the careers of all those who slavishly follow the Party Line, even though they're no longer exactly sure what the Party is for the most part. From the Nobel Prize to the Pulitzer, to the more recent "Genius Grants," nearly all these prize machines—at least in the arts and humanities—have been taken over by the Gramscians over the past 5 decades. Once each institutional prize is firmly in control, the Gramscians exploit it to support their powerfully socialist message that literary, artistic, and journalistic excellence are only possible if the writer or artist embrace extremist socialism wholly and uncritically. The Prize Machine smooths the career of leftist comformists and makes impossible in the current environment the serious and deserved recognition of anyone with remotely dissenting views. It is a major scandal, but even conservatives don't pay much attention to its devastating effect on potential new voices in literature, journalism, and the arts.
The reason most Republicans end up in business is because they're rigorously excluded from intellectual lines of work by the always vigilent left who will brook no interference with their hard-won citadels of intolerance in the media and the arts. The more the public is made aware of this, the more likely it will be that these leftist monopolies will be smashed, similar to the way that trade unionists took their unions back from the communists that had subverted them during and after the Second World War. Barring that, it's time to found new clubs and new awards to recognize demonstrable excellence and intellectual courage as opposed to using such vehicles to glorify a slavish conformity to a long-ago discredited and ruinous ideology.
The Popular Kids of the Goose-Stepping Left
Fascinating post this morning on Clive Davis' site on today's "Conventional Wisdom" Hollywood-style:
One of the commentators, posting at Evil Pundit of Doom, makes the following interesting observation:
The result: the oppressed right today is vastly more articulate, disciplined, and reasonable than the left. This is why the left sends goons and thugs to break up every campus public event that dares speak from the right. These Stalinists know they'll get what's left of their heads handed back to them on a platter if conservatives are allowed to hold forth uninterrupted for any length of time. (Observe, too, the verbal diarrhea of leftist pundits on the cable talk shows who eat up all available minutes spewing talking points, depriving their more polite opposition on the right of the opportunity to get in a word edgewise before the commercial break cuts them off.) The left simply no longer possess the intelligence or the cogent arguments to confront the right intellectually. So they try to intimidate or silence all speakers from the right.
This crude tactic, aided and abetted by the MSM, worked brilliantly for a time. But now with cable TV and the Web making short work of these leftist gatekeepers, their days of ruling the roost, or, if you will, of heading up the herd, are now drawing to a close. And they will soon find that they are members of no clique at all, a fate worse for them than death itself.
Mick Hartley listens to Jarhead director, Sam Mendes unburden himself of the usual menu of right-on platitudes. I'm always struck by the uniformity of views among the artists and literati I've interviewed. For almost all of them, the notion that there might just be another point of view simply doesn't exist. It's their religion, really, which is ironic, since they usually make a point of saying how much they distrust religion. Other people's religion, that is.Follow up on this entry, including incisive comments, can be found here.
(My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who'd put a tray of tea in front of her.)
One of the commentators, posting at Evil Pundit of Doom, makes the following interesting observation:
I think we are looking at a hyper-conformist subculture.Well, yes. As Wonker has suggested many times, let's take this one step further. The mental age of most of these leftist intellectuals (a term as oxy-moronic as "Conventional Wisdom" is when referring to Hollywood), is approximately 15. You can only find this kind of goose-stepping conformity and cliquishness in the average suburban high school—or, historically, in Stalin's Kremlin, Hitler's Third Reich, or, more recently, Saddam's Iraqi thug-ocracy. Such figures as these as well as their contemporary imitators, have abandoned intellect altogether in favor of a highly-refined herding instinct that places them at the head of a mindless larger herd that exists for their personal convenience. The irony is that the larger herds, collectively and individually, possesses significantly greater intelligence than the poseurs at the head of the herds. But all are afraid to break ranks in order to confront the uncomfortable world of reality they feel they've finessed by creating a fantasy world of their own.
Within the humanities, any given individuals personal success is wholly dependent on the good opinion of one's professional peers. Its not like in the sciences or business where natural or market forces can prove an iconoclast right. In the humanities, popularity is everything and those that do not conform to current fads face professionally fatal ostracism.
Combine this fear of expulsion with a culture of overweening intellectual and moral arrogance that leads them to believe that no other group has ideas or experiences of any worth whatsoever and you get a subculture of individuals who will not deviate from the herd in the least.
The result: the oppressed right today is vastly more articulate, disciplined, and reasonable than the left. This is why the left sends goons and thugs to break up every campus public event that dares speak from the right. These Stalinists know they'll get what's left of their heads handed back to them on a platter if conservatives are allowed to hold forth uninterrupted for any length of time. (Observe, too, the verbal diarrhea of leftist pundits on the cable talk shows who eat up all available minutes spewing talking points, depriving their more polite opposition on the right of the opportunity to get in a word edgewise before the commercial break cuts them off.) The left simply no longer possess the intelligence or the cogent arguments to confront the right intellectually. So they try to intimidate or silence all speakers from the right.
This crude tactic, aided and abetted by the MSM, worked brilliantly for a time. But now with cable TV and the Web making short work of these leftist gatekeepers, their days of ruling the roost, or, if you will, of heading up the herd, are now drawing to a close. And they will soon find that they are members of no clique at all, a fate worse for them than death itself.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
John Murtha's Solipsistic Logic
Power Line continues its admirable work today exposing the defects in the Democrats' current "cut and run" and "cut and run lite" lines on withdrawal from Iraq, exposing, as usual, the 'Rats' entire lack of seriousness. John Hinderaker, highlighting yesterday's underreported ABC News poll highlighting good news for the Bushies, makes the following observation:
Such thinking, or lack thereof, also reflects the inherent childishness of the left—which is an increasingly uncomfortable place for thinking men and women to reside. There's plenty of room on the right, and plenty of diversity, too, no matter how the MSM tries to convince intellectuals otherwise. Their choice is increasingly clear: permanently give in to the left's neverending demand for mind-control, or join the new free expression clubs that are springing up on the right. The secret password is: integrity.
...most Iraqis view the occupation exactly as President Bush and most Americans do: they want our forces to stay until the Iraqis can maintain reasonable security on their own, then leave. The ABC News poll released yesterday found that only 26% of respondents want coalition troops to "leave now." Further, only 10% list the withdrawal of foreign troops within the next year as a "high priority.""Solipsism" is a good way to describe the defective reasoning that is currently spreading like a pandemic throughout the American left. Nearly all observations from this political spectrum are self-referential. They never involve the careful consideration of outside opinion (other than to sneer at it), and are condescending in the extreme to not only the average American but especially to conservatives (who actually do think, unlike perpetual adolescent Howard Dean). Such reasoning, or lack thereof, reflects a party line time-warped in the era when the Stalinist-Gramscian control of ideas and message began to infiltrate the American and European left "intelligentsia" in the 1950s. Then, as now, even the slightest deviation from party-line thinking will result in the irrevocable expulsion from the intellectual and literary life.
Murtha's conviction that American troops are the problem in Iraq, not the solution, and that things woud be better if we would only leave, exemplifies the childish solipsism so often seen on the Left, where American actions are generally seen as the causes of all events—or all bad ones, anyway.
Such thinking, or lack thereof, also reflects the inherent childishness of the left—which is an increasingly uncomfortable place for thinking men and women to reside. There's plenty of room on the right, and plenty of diversity, too, no matter how the MSM tries to convince intellectuals otherwise. Their choice is increasingly clear: permanently give in to the left's neverending demand for mind-control, or join the new free expression clubs that are springing up on the right. The secret password is: integrity.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Riotous Times in the Merry Old Land of Oz
Much has happened during our recent hiatus, including more slaughter by the benevolent Chinese government and now, what is starting to look like an instant replay, Aussie-style, of the recent French rioting by Islamist thugs. Looks like down-under fellow travelers of the French rioters went crazy yesterday, trashing cars and people in the vicinity of a Sydney beach. Well, apparently the Aussie lads didn't appreciate the gesture, and took some direct action themselves today.
All of which provides the ever-vigilent Wretchard of Belmont Club an opportunity to opine, drilling down on the moral equivalency bleatings of the politically correct who probably figure this is all Australia's (or America's) fault:
UPDATE: Apparently, the sequence of events above has been a bit more complicated than described in this post. More recent news sources blame the initial riots on native Aussies reacting to a story or rumor (which we can't yet verify) that Lebanese thugs had attacked some Aussie lifeguards. The overriding tension, in turn, seems to have stemmed from an actual gang rape of Aussie women by Lebanese criminals who chanted racial epithets while committing the crime. (More here.) The upshot, whatever the true sequence of events, is the exposure once again of more unassimilated and impoverished Middle Eastern immigrants in yet another western country.
The West, whether the US, Canada, Australia, or what is fast turning into Eurabia, is going to have to decide, and soon, whether they intend to fully incorporate immigrants from all locales into their own societies or allow them to remain a largely-ignored, dissatisfied, and potentially murderous band of outsiders who will easily become, upon the least provocation, an attacking proletariat with fascist tendencies. It is ironic that we are seeing most of this in countries that pride themselves on their left-liberal endorsement of socialism while at the same time condescending to those who are truly outside. Those on the left actually remain imperialists in their own hearts, in spite of their pious liberal bleatings. They prefer for the disadvantaged to stay disadvantaged, so that they can be "helped" by the left, which will then be rewarded for its giveaways at the ballot box.
But what if these new postcolonial colonials catch on to the game?
All of which provides the ever-vigilent Wretchard of Belmont Club an opportunity to opine, drilling down on the moral equivalency bleatings of the politically correct who probably figure this is all Australia's (or America's) fault:
I get a little emotional sometimes watching these peacenik types defend blatant murderers because by frustrating justice they are building up tectonic pressures that will go snap one day, and it won't be their necks at the end of a rope. What the world needs isn't the fake sympathy of the Euro-human rights crowd but justice. They should remember that in the absence of justice there is only revenge.Wretchard gets the point here--if governments don't start defending their own people against the predations of religious thugs in their midst, the people themselves will do it. Neither Aussie nor American lefties in the intelligentsia have a clue about this. They will.
UPDATE: Apparently, the sequence of events above has been a bit more complicated than described in this post. More recent news sources blame the initial riots on native Aussies reacting to a story or rumor (which we can't yet verify) that Lebanese thugs had attacked some Aussie lifeguards. The overriding tension, in turn, seems to have stemmed from an actual gang rape of Aussie women by Lebanese criminals who chanted racial epithets while committing the crime. (More here.) The upshot, whatever the true sequence of events, is the exposure once again of more unassimilated and impoverished Middle Eastern immigrants in yet another western country.
The West, whether the US, Canada, Australia, or what is fast turning into Eurabia, is going to have to decide, and soon, whether they intend to fully incorporate immigrants from all locales into their own societies or allow them to remain a largely-ignored, dissatisfied, and potentially murderous band of outsiders who will easily become, upon the least provocation, an attacking proletariat with fascist tendencies. It is ironic that we are seeing most of this in countries that pride themselves on their left-liberal endorsement of socialism while at the same time condescending to those who are truly outside. Those on the left actually remain imperialists in their own hearts, in spite of their pious liberal bleatings. They prefer for the disadvantaged to stay disadvantaged, so that they can be "helped" by the left, which will then be rewarded for its giveaways at the ballot box.
But what if these new postcolonial colonials catch on to the game?
Earth to Sulzberger: Pinch Me...
The New York Daily News today dishes on growing criticism of doctrinaire leftist and rich NYTimes helmsman Pinch Sulzberger, citing a Ken Auletta piece in the current New Yorker. The Daily News cites, f'rexample, Pinch's delicious and decorous wit:
More seriously, both the NY (and the LA Times for that matter) are fast becoming outside-the-Beltway, outside of Manhattan jokes. Any wonder why the right-minded portion of the blogosphere is fast becoming the place where you gather the actual news as opposed to the left-wing propaganda mill that the once great NYTimes has become?
Among several examples was an editorial lunch with Secretary of State Condi Rice where Sulzberger kept alluding to the fact that a bomb-sniffing dog had thrown up on the carpet. "Thank you for sharing that," said Rice, as "some of the reporters present cringed."LOL, and a hat tip for this week's funniest response to a straight line to the Secretary of State. Gotta love it.
More seriously, both the NY (and the LA Times for that matter) are fast becoming outside-the-Beltway, outside of Manhattan jokes. Any wonder why the right-minded portion of the blogosphere is fast becoming the place where you gather the actual news as opposed to the left-wing propaganda mill that the once great NYTimes has become?
Slaughterhouse Six: The Fantasyland of Kurt Vonnegut
You have to really wonder about the glitterati lately, most recently, the once and future vastly overrated Kurt Vonnegut. Check out Jim Lileks' latest observations on this has-been scribbler:
A senior professor, and noted Vonnegut scholar at the time, came to the sage conclusion that "Slaughterhouse Five" was really the apotheosis of Vonnegut's profound social message, which somehow conflated the revenge firebombing of Dresden by the allies with the evils of Naziism and Communism, a kind of prequel to today's monolithic moral relativism. The professor triumphantly concluded that Vonnegut's conclusion was: "Well, what can you really say about a war?"
Brilliant stuff. Wonker is certain that this brilliant insight alone will place Vonnegut right up there in the firmament with other great chroniclers of humanity like Tolstoy.
Not.
If Vonnegut is what passes for today's literary intelligence in America, it's clearly time that we start all over again with people who can think before they write. Vonnegut is yet another case of a scribbler who's career ended long ago and who is attempting to regain it by sucking up to the zeit geist of the New York Times and the few hundred remaining leaders who take the opinion of other has-beens like Maureen Dowd seriously. The pathetically myopic world of the American and European intellectual today differs little from the cliquish adolescent societies that impose, er, party discipline at particularly snotty high schools in affluent city and suburban neighborhoods. Be there, or be talked about.
But hey, Lileks sums this up a lot better. Catch the rest of his article here.
I never “got into” Vonnegut, or “dug” his work like my “buds,” several of whom pronounced his work as “intense,” so I am not particularly bothered to find he applauds suicide bombers, and thinks they experience “an amazing high.” In the literal sense, perhaps; it’s possible that skull fragments may reach the third floor before they carom off a balcony and patter back to earth.Wonker actually taught Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" back in his liberal university phase, before the professoriat decided that Wonker might be hazardous to the complacency of America's English Departments as they morphed into propaganda mills promoting unintelligible theories and turgid writing. Even at that point, however, one had to wonder at the hollowness of Vonnegut's content-free little books, of which "Five" was merely the most hyped.
I should note that Mr. Vonnegut’s comments, reported in the Australian, were made while touring to promote a collection of anti-Bush essays, and as such all attempts to refute them are intended to suppress his freedom of speech. It goes without saying he will be spending his senior years naked in a cell, fighting rats for a scrap of bread, writing brave quatrains on the wall with a shoelace-tip dipped in rat’s blood, awakened daily at 4 AM with bright lights and the national anthem. Such is life in Chimpsuit McHallihitler’s America...
A senior professor, and noted Vonnegut scholar at the time, came to the sage conclusion that "Slaughterhouse Five" was really the apotheosis of Vonnegut's profound social message, which somehow conflated the revenge firebombing of Dresden by the allies with the evils of Naziism and Communism, a kind of prequel to today's monolithic moral relativism. The professor triumphantly concluded that Vonnegut's conclusion was: "Well, what can you really say about a war?"
Brilliant stuff. Wonker is certain that this brilliant insight alone will place Vonnegut right up there in the firmament with other great chroniclers of humanity like Tolstoy.
Not.
If Vonnegut is what passes for today's literary intelligence in America, it's clearly time that we start all over again with people who can think before they write. Vonnegut is yet another case of a scribbler who's career ended long ago and who is attempting to regain it by sucking up to the zeit geist of the New York Times and the few hundred remaining leaders who take the opinion of other has-beens like Maureen Dowd seriously. The pathetically myopic world of the American and European intellectual today differs little from the cliquish adolescent societies that impose, er, party discipline at particularly snotty high schools in affluent city and suburban neighborhoods. Be there, or be talked about.
But hey, Lileks sums this up a lot better. Catch the rest of his article here.
Light Blogging Excuses
Light blogging for the last few days from the Wonk. Big corporate doings (the accursed "day job") etc. keeping us away from saving the world if not the universe. We'll be back shortly to re-commence this Herculean task. Meanwhile, check out our newest "good guy" link, now posted to the left, Strategy Page, which provides you with more news and less propaganda on the Global War on Terror (WWIII or IV, depending on your definition).
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The High Price of Congress
The manipulation of hysteria by politicians is nowhere more evident than in various tax campaigns, such as that of Fall 2005 regarding a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. While we had a few months of very high prices for gasoline and high heating oil prices linger, it would be useful from time to time to look at actual costs for delivering energy products. Democrats and their friends among Republicans seem to think cheap energy prices are a natural right, regardless of what those cheap prices might cost, and, increasingly, whether or not they are even possible. Denying access to American energy resources, a standard political game by Democrats (and a few Republicans) for decades, is on the contrary a guarantee that prices will go up, whether in the form of prices at the pump, or in vastly increased expenditures to keep a military watch on overseas suppliers. And what exactly do they mean by "excess profits"? Marlo Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has extensive remarks on this at TechCentralStation, heavily documented I might add.
Read the rest of Lewis's article. The expectations that Democrats and other politicians play upon year in and year out call to mind Ortega Y Gassett's warning about a certain kind of "mass intelligence," widespread convictions that resources and systems built with vast expenditures of capital, labor, and resources are somehow "natural," something that we're entitled to simply because we exist. In the real world, when a hurricane knocks out shipping terminals, refineries, offshore rigs, and trucking routes, oil companies had to spend two to three times as much money to deliver each gallon of fuel to the marketplace. Who's supposed to pay for that? Shall we bomb the Saudis if they don't cut the price of oil? The thing is, with markets, if you follow the logic and the documentation, something will come to you: how much things cost and how much you can expect to pay for them if you're willing to buy. Anything else is a socialist fantasy.
Luther
In the second quarter of 2005, U.S. oil companies earned about 7.7 cents for every dollar of sales. That is slightly below the average for all U.S. industries (7.9 cents), and considerably below the earnings rates of several other industries including banks (19.5 cents), pharmaceuticals (18.6 cents), software and services (17 cents), semiconductors (14.6 cents), diversified financials (11.3 cents), and household and personal products (10.9 cents)...Third quarter oil industry profits rose to 8.1 cents per dollar of sales -- still in line with the U.S. industry average...Exxon Mobil's third-quarter financial statement reports that the company's year-to-date tax payments total $72.9 billion. That is almost triple the $25.4 billion the company earned in year-to-date profits.[20] By what reasonable metric can it be argued that ExxonMobil's tax payments are deficient in relation to its profits, or that its profits are excessive in relation to its tax payments?...According to the Tax Foundation, between 1977 and 2004, the 29 largest U.S. energy firms collectively earned $630 billion in net income after adjusting for inflation. During that same period, those companies paid more than three times as much -- over $2.2 trillion -- in royalties, state and federal motor fuel taxes, and corporate income taxes....
Read the rest of Lewis's article. The expectations that Democrats and other politicians play upon year in and year out call to mind Ortega Y Gassett's warning about a certain kind of "mass intelligence," widespread convictions that resources and systems built with vast expenditures of capital, labor, and resources are somehow "natural," something that we're entitled to simply because we exist. In the real world, when a hurricane knocks out shipping terminals, refineries, offshore rigs, and trucking routes, oil companies had to spend two to three times as much money to deliver each gallon of fuel to the marketplace. Who's supposed to pay for that? Shall we bomb the Saudis if they don't cut the price of oil? The thing is, with markets, if you follow the logic and the documentation, something will come to you: how much things cost and how much you can expect to pay for them if you're willing to buy. Anything else is a socialist fantasy.
Luther
Monday, December 05, 2005
Christmas Wars: Beyond Belief?
Just when you think America's institutional left can't sink any lower, you find this:
What you're reading here is an excerpt from an actual PR release pushing Flemming's radical left agenda which clearly includes ridiculing Christianity in a way that would earn you a swift death in Mecca. The very Jolly Roger flavor of this press release is deeply offensive, but hey, that's okay, we're only dissing Christians who don't deserve any respect anyway, right? In fact, we're probably working against Christmas inadvertently by running even a portion of this vile stuff for our reader's edification and outrage.
What's particularly asinine about this release is Flemming's assertion that the "figure" of Jesus is "mythical." Even respectable left-wing historians acknowledge the historical Jesus as fact. There's no "myth" involved at all. While conceding readily that miracles attributed to Jesus may be for some an article of faith rather than hard science, there are few who dispute his physical existence. Flemming's empty assertion is thus another page out of the Michael Moore playbook.
Meanwhile, we note with satisfaction that Target, which cut the Salvation Army bell ringers out of its corporate equation last year, have chimed in with new ads in major newspapers this year supporting the Army. Guess they listened to what happened last year. We suspect that Flemming won't. He's clearly on an ego-crusade like Mother Sheehan, and neither common sense nor human decency will deter him. But a lack of sales and attention sure will, so do your part.
Los Angeles, December 5, 2005 -- Beyond Belief Media has formally declared war on Christmas, the December 25 holiday in which Christians celebrate the birth of the mythical figure Jesus Christ, the company announced today.Say, is that a threat, dude? PS, we'd like to know who "acclaimed" the DVD. Michael Moore?
“Christian conservatives complain nonstop about the ‘War on Christmas,’ but there really isn’t any such war,” said Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming , a former fundamentalist Christian who is now an atheist activist. “So we have decided to wage one, to demonstrate what it would look like if Jesus’ birthday were truly attacked.”
As its opening salvo, Beyond Belief Media has purchased advertisements this week in the New York Times , USA Today and the New Yorker magazine. The company’s 300-member volunteer “street team” is also descending on Christmas-themed public events with random “guerilla giveaways” of Beyond Belief’s acclaimed DVD THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE .
“No Christmas pageant or Nativity display is safe from our troops,” said Flemming. “Wherever the mythical figure Jesus is celebrated as if he were real, we will be there with an information barrage. We will undercut the idea that there is any point at all to celebrating the ‘birth’ of a character in a fairy tale.”
What you're reading here is an excerpt from an actual PR release pushing Flemming's radical left agenda which clearly includes ridiculing Christianity in a way that would earn you a swift death in Mecca. The very Jolly Roger flavor of this press release is deeply offensive, but hey, that's okay, we're only dissing Christians who don't deserve any respect anyway, right? In fact, we're probably working against Christmas inadvertently by running even a portion of this vile stuff for our reader's edification and outrage.
What's particularly asinine about this release is Flemming's assertion that the "figure" of Jesus is "mythical." Even respectable left-wing historians acknowledge the historical Jesus as fact. There's no "myth" involved at all. While conceding readily that miracles attributed to Jesus may be for some an article of faith rather than hard science, there are few who dispute his physical existence. Flemming's empty assertion is thus another page out of the Michael Moore playbook.
Meanwhile, we note with satisfaction that Target, which cut the Salvation Army bell ringers out of its corporate equation last year, have chimed in with new ads in major newspapers this year supporting the Army. Guess they listened to what happened last year. We suspect that Flemming won't. He's clearly on an ego-crusade like Mother Sheehan, and neither common sense nor human decency will deter him. But a lack of sales and attention sure will, so do your part.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Democracy in Egypt?
Okay, so I swore off blogging for the weekend. But I just discovered this post/photoblog by Omar on the excellent "Iraq the Model" and couldn't resist. Looks like a bunch of Egyptians, the kind the left says are "not ready for democracy," didn't get the message. Here they are, sneaking in the back way, into a polling place they were being kept out of.
Read the rest here.
Ah, but I guess we should cut and run from Iraq, eh Ms. Pelosi? They're obviously not ready either.
Read the rest here.
Ah, but I guess we should cut and run from Iraq, eh Ms. Pelosi? They're obviously not ready either.
Happy Weekend!
Another long workweek for Wonker with resultant light blogging. But be sure to catch Luther's previous post and link—well worth reading and pondering.
I'll be taking a day or two off but will be back blogging, bloviating, and otherwise pontificating on Monday. Meanwhile, get a jump on that CHRISTMAS shopping, eh?
I'll be taking a day or two off but will be back blogging, bloviating, and otherwise pontificating on Monday. Meanwhile, get a jump on that CHRISTMAS shopping, eh?
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Following a Different Shepherd
From the way MSM cover the "news," one could easily get the impression, if one looked only to such dinosaurs for truth and consequences, that a vast, unified front of Democrats is rising, like a tsunami, to wash away the Republicans and the Bush Administration. One suggestion that this might not be so was the 404-3 vote in Congress against setting a "withdrawal" deadline (Ann Coulter would describe it better as a "surrender deadline"). That struck this observer as being akin to hearing a Weather channel reporter go on for twenty minutes about global warming causing another terrible storm-- coming to your city in the next hour!-- then going outside and finding the sun out in a cloudless sky. Over at Dinocrat.com, they have a similar curiosity. Incidentally, the credo of Dinocrat is "Dedicated to DINOs, from one who realized that 33 years as a Democrat was enough."
The "opposite" side of the aisle may have fewer people in it that we thought. Dinocrat is curious about something else too. Not only does MSM seem to be reporting news from another planet, and most certainly from another era (is it always 1974 in MSM?), but the intellectual elite seems to have lost its senses.
We get so much preaching to the converted, even among bloggers, that hearing the shout of a voice presumed lost is thrilling. It suggests that beyond the howling and gnashing of teeth in MSM that more than a few right wing bloggers think that the elites who claim to speak for us have lost their way. Perhaps if MSM would stop behaving like sheep following a mad shepherd, they could, as new DINOcrats, find their way home.
Luther
What is going on? First there was the 1000th death in Iraq, then the 2000th. Now this. What is with all the multiple-of-1000 death stories? Is the connection that the US under the GOP is so cruel and heartless that it kills mercilessly our soldiers and the pitiful on death row? ...We note for the record that 14,121 people were murdered in 2004 in the United States, so the MSM could run a 1000th, 2000th, etc., story more than once a month on murder victims....
The "opposite" side of the aisle may have fewer people in it that we thought. Dinocrat is curious about something else too. Not only does MSM seem to be reporting news from another planet, and most certainly from another era (is it always 1974 in MSM?), but the intellectual elite seems to have lost its senses.
It is interesting, for example, that leftist intellectuals give a pass to, or overtly admire, authentic men of violence like Castro or Arafat or Stalin, but vilify the good guys who are their enemies...Maybe it comes down to power, with the wimpy intellectuals jealous and fearful of powerful and straightforward men. Maybe it has a religious element, with the vanity of the intellectuals a graven image they have made to themselves in a Marxist, materialistic universe. Maybe it is because because they stop too soon in their inquiries — having replaced the ten commandments with ten questions, they fail to engage the serious moral issue of how should one live one’s life....(from The Ruined Dictatorship of the Intellectuals", 11/22/05)
We get so much preaching to the converted, even among bloggers, that hearing the shout of a voice presumed lost is thrilling. It suggests that beyond the howling and gnashing of teeth in MSM that more than a few right wing bloggers think that the elites who claim to speak for us have lost their way. Perhaps if MSM would stop behaving like sheep following a mad shepherd, they could, as new DINOcrats, find their way home.
Luther
Small Victories Against the Left
An interesting short post today from Wretchard at the invaluable Belmont Club.
BTW, according to Michelle Malkin, quoting AP, the Flight 93 Crescent of Embrace memorial is history. The interesting thing about this episode is how illustrates that that leftist meme machine isn't irresistible. It has its limits. Once the inappropriateness of the design had been pointed out, whether the result of an unintentional oversight or not, it ran into opposition. Resistance is not futile.Wretchard has it exactly right, and his comments accurately describe one of the primary things we're trying to do on this website—expose the manipulation of language, religion, culture, and the arts by the hard left in their attempt to eviscerate American society. We intend to take America back. Wretchard points out that we are not alone and that we all can win if we stick to it and stick it to them.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
The CIA's Spooky Leaks
A few weeks back, we opined on the open undermining of the Bush administration undertaken by unnamed operatives and/or officials at the CIA—you know, the ones who show up in the Washington Post every few weeks trashing current CIA Director Porter Goss and his evil staff of Republican minions. Well, John Hinderaker follows up on this with a good bit more detail in the online Weekly Standard:
Wonker would take these conclusions further. With the crucial exception of the military, patriots to the core, the entire Federal bureaucracy, more or less, has been populated by leftist, unionist supporters of the Democratic Party since the time of Roosevelt. At times, the Government has been infiltrated and, in fact, deeply penetrated by agents, operatives, or sympathizers of the former Soviet union and American interests have been actively undermined. Such penetration is not, of course, exclusive to the United States. But it is surprising how effective it becomes when most of an operative's colleagues are, at least philosophically, fellow travelers.
The tendency of the Federal government today is for many Federal employees to actively support and carry out the initiatives of Democratic presidents while undermining, stalling, or otherwise stymieing those of Republicans until Democrats can be returned to office. Republican presidents—not just Bush—are simply not regarded as legitimate. Therefore it is not treasonous to oppose them. Astonishing but true. It's important to remember this as the real CIA scandal begins to unfold. BTW, this scandal will almost certainly be reported only in the blogosphere, as the media, specifically the Washington Post and the New York Times, are deeply involved in conveying the CIA's anti-Bush leakage to the public while covering up the administration's many successes.
THE CIA'S WAR against the Bush administration is one of the great untold storiesof the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency's most successful covertaction of recent times. The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the administration by former Democratic officeholders. The agency allowed an employee, Michael Scheuer, to publish and promote a book containing classified information, as long as, in Scheuer's words, "the book was being used to bash the president." However, the agency's preferred weapon has been the leak. In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CIA officials have sought to undermine America's foreign policy. Usually this is done by leaking reports or memos critical of administration policies or skeptical of their prospects. Through it all, our principal news outlets, which share the agency's agenda and profit from its torrent of leaks, have maintained a discreet silence about what should be a major scandal.Read the rest of it here. Hinderaker's conclusions are chilling and well worth pondering.
Wonker would take these conclusions further. With the crucial exception of the military, patriots to the core, the entire Federal bureaucracy, more or less, has been populated by leftist, unionist supporters of the Democratic Party since the time of Roosevelt. At times, the Government has been infiltrated and, in fact, deeply penetrated by agents, operatives, or sympathizers of the former Soviet union and American interests have been actively undermined. Such penetration is not, of course, exclusive to the United States. But it is surprising how effective it becomes when most of an operative's colleagues are, at least philosophically, fellow travelers.
The tendency of the Federal government today is for many Federal employees to actively support and carry out the initiatives of Democratic presidents while undermining, stalling, or otherwise stymieing those of Republicans until Democrats can be returned to office. Republican presidents—not just Bush—are simply not regarded as legitimate. Therefore it is not treasonous to oppose them. Astonishing but true. It's important to remember this as the real CIA scandal begins to unfold. BTW, this scandal will almost certainly be reported only in the blogosphere, as the media, specifically the Washington Post and the New York Times, are deeply involved in conveying the CIA's anti-Bush leakage to the public while covering up the administration's many successes.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Mother Sheehan's Christmas Gift
Returning to blogging belatedly after our own excellent holiday trip, we've discovered pictures from yet another holiday voyage—Mother Sheehan's vaunted book-signing tent out near the Bush ranch, in yet another hard left-attempt to dog the President. Cindy drew the predictable admiring crowds:
Oops. Guess the 15-minute clock has elapsed, albeit a bit belatedly. But nonetheless a fitting Christmas gift.
Oops. Guess the 15-minute clock has elapsed, albeit a bit belatedly. But nonetheless a fitting Christmas gift.
Merry Christmas, Denny
Looks like the effort to resurrect Christmas is starting to get seriously on track this season:
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has told federal officials that the lighted, decorated tree on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol -- known in recent years as the "Holiday Tree" -- should be renamed the "Capitol Christmas Tree," as it was called until the late 1990s....Yeah, it is. A little common sense from flyover country, which is mostly where you find it these days. More here.
"It was known as the 'Holiday Tree' for several years and just recently was changed back to the 'Capitol Christmas Tree.' This was a directive from the speaker," said Capitol architect Matthew Evans.
"The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.
European New Right?
Random surfing today, Wonker encountered a most interesting and somewhat peculiar blog discussing what the blogger calls the "European New Right" or ENR. Employing a sort of reverse Gramscianism, the movement is allegedly attempting to resurrect Europe's sclerotic politics and culture.
Rather than embodying anything that Americans would recognize as ideas of the "right," the ENR, as described in this piece, seems, in the end, yet another way of resurrecting Marxism via the manipulation of words—here disguising the nature of the experiment by insisting that it comes from the "right." Additionally, its restatement of dialectical materialism is what is really meant by the term "metapolitics" employed in the quote above.
This kind of socio-political chicanery is a little like putting a circa-1968 hippie into a Brooks Brothers suit—you can change his appearance, but you can't alter his nature no matter how you try to disguise it.
Nonetheless, as an extended exercise in rationalization, the piece is well written and well worth reading, shedding light on the nature of a left that has now grown so pathetic and devoid of new ideas that it tires to recycle old ones under a "conservative" banner. A visual caution: as with many blogs, this one employs thin white text on a black background, which is virtually unreadable on many monitors. To make things easier, highlight the text you're reading, which will turn the immediate background gray and the text black which is easier to deal with.
A large sector in the ENR subscribes to what they call le Gramscisme de Droite. The ENR (like Gramsci) reverses Marx's idea of base and superstructure. It believes that changes in the ideological superstructure among the cultural and elite opinion-forming groups determine social change. Gramsci called on intellectuals to change society in a socialist direction. The ENR adopts this approach to their own programs. This is called metapolitics. The ENR also identifies with the appeal to populism in Gramsci, although it rejects the rest of the Marxist apparatus.Well, we're not so sure. As the author describes it, the so-called ENR seems more like warmed-over Marxism than it does a new kind of conservative philosophy. The ENR, such as it may be, is tinged with paganism, and spiced with anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and (of course) anti-Americanism. The portrait of Noam Chomsky on the blog's index page is sort of a dead giveaway that blogger Mark Wegierski is not exactly in Pat Buchanan's pocket. And he isn't exactly forthcoming in his bio either.
Rather than embodying anything that Americans would recognize as ideas of the "right," the ENR, as described in this piece, seems, in the end, yet another way of resurrecting Marxism via the manipulation of words—here disguising the nature of the experiment by insisting that it comes from the "right." Additionally, its restatement of dialectical materialism is what is really meant by the term "metapolitics" employed in the quote above.
This kind of socio-political chicanery is a little like putting a circa-1968 hippie into a Brooks Brothers suit—you can change his appearance, but you can't alter his nature no matter how you try to disguise it.
Nonetheless, as an extended exercise in rationalization, the piece is well written and well worth reading, shedding light on the nature of a left that has now grown so pathetic and devoid of new ideas that it tires to recycle old ones under a "conservative" banner. A visual caution: as with many blogs, this one employs thin white text on a black background, which is virtually unreadable on many monitors. To make things easier, highlight the text you're reading, which will turn the immediate background gray and the text black which is easier to deal with.
A Mammoth Thanksgiving
Wonker promised you a brief overview (or 3) of his recently concluded Thanksgiving holiday voyage to the cavelands of Western Kentucky. Along with the Mad Redhead, aka, Mrs. Wonker, W (not to be confused with the real W) traversed hill and dale, staying overnight in picturesque Ashland, KY (home of a huge Marathon oil refinery on the banks of the Ohio River). After dining at the badly decaying town's one decent restaurant, we traveled a few blocks to drive around the central park of which featured an impressive nighttime Winter Wonderland of Lights, ranging from Santa and his elves to—quel horreur!—a Nativity Scene also done up in lights.
Ringing the park and its extensive, picturesque displays were what appeared to be as many as two dozen or more immense, magnificent Victorian houses, most in pretty good repair, that were completely at odds with the town's otherwise shabby appearance. According to the restaurant's maitre d', Marathon had moved its corporate headquarters out of Ashland some time ago, leading to a major exodus of jobs to neighboring Ohio which copped the new HQ. That, plus other decaying industries, give poor Ashland a lean and hungry look. But the town is not without its resources. These include the impressive King's Daughters Medical Center and the well regarded Morehead State University. The former, in fact, is at least indirectly responsible for the care and feeding of Ashland's Victorian homes. The big-name doctors attracted to the Medical Center become smitten with the huge houses, it seems, purchase them for a song, and spiff them up to a fare-thee-well, creating one of the best-looking groupings of such houses east of the Mississippi. Things are not always what they seem in America.
More anon. Meanwhile, a hearty hat-tip to Luther who kept HazZzmat buzzing blizzfully whilst Wonker was out consuming mass quantities of cheap Kentucky gasoline (as low as $1.92 per gallon) as he continued on to Mammoth Cave. Guess it helps to have a refinery in your backyard. Maybe Libs should stop sneering at those canny Midwesterners who can fill their Democratic Hummers far more cheaply than the New Yorkers who seem to have greater need of them.
Ringing the park and its extensive, picturesque displays were what appeared to be as many as two dozen or more immense, magnificent Victorian houses, most in pretty good repair, that were completely at odds with the town's otherwise shabby appearance. According to the restaurant's maitre d', Marathon had moved its corporate headquarters out of Ashland some time ago, leading to a major exodus of jobs to neighboring Ohio which copped the new HQ. That, plus other decaying industries, give poor Ashland a lean and hungry look. But the town is not without its resources. These include the impressive King's Daughters Medical Center and the well regarded Morehead State University. The former, in fact, is at least indirectly responsible for the care and feeding of Ashland's Victorian homes. The big-name doctors attracted to the Medical Center become smitten with the huge houses, it seems, purchase them for a song, and spiff them up to a fare-thee-well, creating one of the best-looking groupings of such houses east of the Mississippi. Things are not always what they seem in America.
More anon. Meanwhile, a hearty hat-tip to Luther who kept HazZzmat buzzing blizzfully whilst Wonker was out consuming mass quantities of cheap Kentucky gasoline (as low as $1.92 per gallon) as he continued on to Mammoth Cave. Guess it helps to have a refinery in your backyard. Maybe Libs should stop sneering at those canny Midwesterners who can fill their Democratic Hummers far more cheaply than the New Yorkers who seem to have greater need of them.
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