What my friends are saying — Part 2
Picking up where I left off:
Anybody who has read this blog for more than a month or two knows that, while I appreciate all of our armed forces, I have a special spot in my heart for the Marines. I therefore really, really liked what One Marine had to say about what it means to be a Marine. My sincere condolences, by the way, for the two Marines his unit recently lost.
I continue to believe that McCain, with all his faults, his still so far superior to Hillbama that it’s truly no contest for conservatives to pick their candidate (and, with the Supreme Court in mind, not to sit out the election). Nevertheless, as I said, McCain definitely has those faults, and Skippy-san zeroed in on a couple of them.
On the conservative side, we long ago expressed the concern that an ill-thought out rush into biofuels would harm the world food supply. Sadly, the Left started getting worried only after that concern became an actual reality. Gerry Charlotte Phelps has a good post about this blindness, one caused not by ignorance but by a willful refusal to abandon what is less an environmental position and more of a political (anti-Capitalist, anti-American one).
This post, about Bill Clinton’s visit to a University with an ROTC shooting range is really funny. Enjoy it.
Michael Phillips finds frustrating that the Japanese, having gone against all the conventional wisdom rained down on us about longevity, nevertheless live really long lives (and create some pretty good architecture while they’re doing so). It’s a shame that they cannot balance the longevity of their elders with an actual birthrate amongst their youngers.
Mike’s America, writing at Flopping Aces, examines why the Obamaniacs are so hopelessly out of touch when they argue that the questions Obama received at the debate — questions about his colleagues and his character — are important, rather than mere distractions.
You all have read me rant repeatedly about the fact that at public school, the kids are given some narrow, out-of-context lesson on some subject, and then forced to create either a picture or a diorama. A visit to the kids’ school for open house revealed that (a) lots of times it’s the parents who do the project and (b) the kids aren’t learning anything, nor are they displaying anything they learned. These are mechanical exercises that reinforce nothing. Over at Mrs. Happy Housewife, however, in the world of home schooling, you see a perfect example of a child who got interested in a subject, researched it and, on her own, found the best way to convey the knowledge she’d achieved. In other words, she learned something. (But no, I won’t home school, because my hyperactive kids and I would hurt each other very, very quickly.)
One of the absolute best blogs out there is My Shrapnel. Gila, its writer, is an American Jewish woman who immigrated to Israel a few years ago, only to find herself in the path of a terrorist bomb. She survived, but learned how to live with shrapnel all over her body. One of her outlets is writing, and she is just a wonderful writer. Her most recent post, about socializing in Israel, and about being at the center of this life, versus being just an observer, is beautiful — and I bet we’ve all felt as Gila does at one time or another. Heck, as a perpetual outsider, that’s why I blog — I’ve found my “inside.”
Marooned in Marin may have moved to move conservative climes, but he still knows liberal stupidity when he sees it. Among his recent excellent posts, I like his snarky take on Obama’s outrage at actually being shown something other than a love-fest at the most recent debate.
Obama’s “bitter” comment has re-sparked the debate about “voting for ones interest.” The Left is certain that all yahoos and yabos must inevitably find their interest in the party that is for a big, big government that promises to envelope one in its loving arms. Any votes to the contrary, rather than being thoughtful takes on American exceptionalism, are manifestly signs of mental derangement and base stupidity. Neptunus Lex has a thoughtful take on precisely what voting for ones interest does mean to the average American (or panicked Dutch gay person) unconstrained by liberal ideology.
Neo gives a trenchant little analysis about Berlusconi’s many virtues, and what it means that the Italians voted for him, while scorning the Commies entirely for the first time evah since WWII. So, let me think about this: Germany = Conservative leadership; Italy = Conservative leadership; France = Conservative leadership. Given that, why is the media so certain that Europe, if it could vote, would choose the far Left, appeasement oriented Obama, or the middle-Left, who knows what her orientation is, Hillary, over the middle-ish of the road McCain, whose politics are consistent with their own leaders of choice?
