Saturday, October 27, 2007

Currently listening to..


Heavenly.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Have the libertarians gone loon?

The swerve to Ron Paul, who attracts genuine, principled followers, also rests on the likes of extremists who call into question events surronding 9/11. It also calls into question some oddball attractions. Barry Manilow is a Ron Paul man -- contibuting a small but tidy sum that's largely based on the Texas Congressman's opposition to the Iraq War. I wonder what the sonorous liberal thinks of Paul's strict constitutionalism. The eminent blogger, Steve Green will have none of this anymore. He's now a former card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party (I know Paul who ran in 1988 as a LPer is now a Republican candidate for President. But what's the difference. There's now talk about Paul running as the LP candidate next year.
In 2000, I changed my party registration back to Republican for one reason, and one good Libertarian reason only: To vote against John McCain (and his statist threats of campaign finance reform) in the primary. I fully intended to switch back before the next general election.

Then we all woke up one morning to learn that airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and into the wooded hills of Pennsylvania. “Well, here’s a war even a good Libertarian like me can support.” We’d been attacked, directly, and we knew who the culprits were and where their protectors and sponsors were. We would go after them with such righteous fury that no one would dare strike New York City ever again.

Boy, was I wrong.

The angry folks at Liberty were mad at most everybody but Islamic terrorists. One even went so far as to denounce the Afghan War as “racist.” It was all imperialism this, and blowback that, and without a care in the world for protecting American lives, commerce, or, well, liberty. Then Postrel turned over Reason to Nick Gillespie, who seemed more interested in presenting libertarianism as something hip, arch, fun — and ultimately unserious. Such should have been no surprise, coming from the former editor of a magazine called Suck.

I felt abandoned, betrayed, by my comrades. By my former comrades.

If Libertarians couldn’t agree about the clear-cut case for war in Afghanistan, you can imagine how Iraq must have divided us. I had to stop reading Liberty months before my subscription finally, mercifully, ran out. Blogger friends of mine stopped emailing me. Ron Paul, whose name once graced the back of my first car, started sounding to me, less like a principled defender of American liberty, and more like a suited-up reject from the Summer of Love.

I stopped voting Libertarian for local candidates, leaving lots of blanks on my ballot. Next year, I’m not sure which party I’ll support for President, much less which candidate. From here, it looks as if the Republicans have become wrong and corrupt, the Democrats are stupid and corrupt, and the Libertarians have gone plain crazy.

It was easy tearing up my LP membership card. It’s quite a bit harder to find something to replace it. But I know this much: There’s no going back. Maybe there’s just too little room for principle in such a violent world.

Then again, maybe leaving the Libertarians is like leaving the mob. Somewhere in the back of my mind there are echoes of Al Pacino. “Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in!”

If Massachusetts were a publicly traded company, would you buy, sell or hold?

The results as of last night at 7:30.
Unscientific as it may be, this Boston Business Journal online poll doesn't express much faith in Deval Inc. and the legislature. Only 11 percent would buy enthusiastically. Do they see something the majority doesn't?

Monday, October 22, 2007

She certainly speaks her mind

Doris Lessing, unleashed. Would you have her any other way?

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

I'm in heaven, heaven

Yes I am a garlic snapper and proud too. In my mind garlic has always been the key ingredient in the > as I knew it. However it's omitted in most overviews of it.
Garlic has long been touted as a health booster, but it’s never been clear why the herb might be good for you. Now new research is beginning to unlock the secrets of the odoriferous bulb.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of an organic substance called hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.
Hat tip to Instapundit.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I'm not a lefty


It's obvious that the dancer is spinning clockwise. That makes me a right brain person. And I thought I was rather reality-based!

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Justice Thomas has reason to be angry

Can't wait to read Clarence Thomas's new book. Meanwhile I have Ruben Navarrette to offer me some insight.
To recap, here are the rules of grievance as dictated by white liberals: If you're an African-American and your politics lean to the left, you can be righteously angry over slavery, segregation and discrimination and preserve that anger for more than 200 years. But, if you're an African-American and your politics lean to the right – and you're wronged in any way – then you have no right to be angry. And if you do succumb to anger, you must get over it in, oh, say, 16 years.

Personally, I'm glad Clarence Thomas is angry. He should be angry. And the rest of us should be ashamed.