The Lobbying-Media Complex By Sebastian Jones (via AmCon)

Peggy Noonan, Rich Man, Boor Man

Rich Man, Boor Man

It's funny. In a time of recession, you'd think salespeople would be more aggressive, because so much might hinge on the sale--a commission, a job. In a time of relative wealth, you'd think they might be less aggressive. But the opposite seems true.

Do people working in the service industry tend to be rather rude? It's unclear, though it seems likely that parents are not doing their job in raising their children with good manners, and their employers aren't do that much either (or as Ms. Noonan points out, they encourage that sort of aggressiveness because it leads to sales). Nonetheless, Ms. Noonan needs to recognize that we are in a recession, or very close to it, retail sales are shaky, and those working in the service and retail industries have reason to be concerned about their paychecks.

How easy it is for those who are living off extra wealth (e.g. columnists) to criticize those who are trying to manage.

I do agree with her criticisms about cell phone and BlackBerry use.

Daniel Larison on the 4 concerns about immigration

It Must Be Immigration And Libertarianism Week

Duty: The Sublimest Word

Duty: The Sublimest Word
Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos on May 21, 2007

See also his Two Funerals and a Quagmire

Two posts about real military heroes.

Robert E. Lee once said that duty is “the sublimest word in the English language.” Yes it is, but dodging duty has now become the operative word in the neocon language. They talk about supporting our troops and all that blather, but how many of these bloodthirsty donut eaters have ever answered the call of duty?

2 City Journal writers on the immigration bill

Steven Malanga
Skilled Immigrants at Last?
Flaws and all, the proposed bill could change immigration for the better.
18 May 2007

Heather MacDonald, Don't be Fooled

Taki takes on Giuliani

at Taki's Top Drawer, of course

Paul Gottfried: When Republicans Debate; When Cousins Marry

John Robb: The future looks bleak for Saudi Arabia

He responds to the recent news of SA's actions against AQ

Cowards, Bullies, and Killers

Cowards, Bullies, and Killers
Posted by R. Cort Kirkwood on May 03, 2007

Is radical feminism the only cause at fault? What about the nanny state and the indoctrination that goes in schools? Now, one could say that the radical feminist agenda has taken over the public schools, but might it not be the case that it is in the interest of the powers to be to create a docile, passive people through the social instruments they have at their disposal as well? Isn't this what one would expect a centralized nation-state to do, to maintain control over the populace and to get rid of any threats to the power of the political and economic elites?

Steve Sailer on American Idol

here

Where are the Citizen Generals?

Where are the Citizen Generals?
The Army's Road to Iraq
By Brian M. Downing

The Negative Proof for the Surge

From John Robb:

JOURNAL: The Negative Proof for the Surge

Mr. Robb's book, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, is now available for pre-order.

Steve Sailer's Advice for Single Women

Hilarious.

Advice for single women: Single women should to learn to distinguish between expenditures on looks that help catch a husband and those that merely impress their single women friends. Spending money to snag a good husband can have a huge return on investment, but not all spending on fashion and beauty has equal payoffs.

Women spend a lot of money in attractiveness arms races against other women in areas that men pay little attention to. For example, spending on your nails doesn't have much payoff in attracting a good man. Nails are the kind of thing that other women pay attention to, but most men only subliminally notice.

Similarly, while buying high heels is a good idea because they make women look more curvaceous, buying and lots of lots of shoes is a waste. Men don't really care whether you have the latest fashion in shoes and whether they perfectly match your dress ... well, some men care, but they are generally not the kind of man who will be the father of your children.

You'll notice that most men think that the fact that Imelda Marcos owned 3,000 pairs of shoes condemns her without appeal. Yet, women I've talked to about this find it reasonable once they do the math: two pairs per week for 30 years of public appearances. Seems pretty thrifty to most women! Still, you can see ways to economize.

Of course, once a woman is not single anymore, her husband would prefer she think more about impressing other women than other men ...

There needs to be a male version of "Don't Impress Me Much." But then whoever writes or sings such a song would get it from feminists and those who take themselves to be "girly" or "post-feminist."

(Keeping up with the Jonses is necessarily only if not maintaining appearances would have a deterimental impact on your access to that social circle for the sake of bearing witness to Christ, but even then the bare minimum should be adhered to as much as possible.)

Neat, simple, clean, and modest--a virtuous Christian man would be content with this. Anything beyond would be an unnecessary frill.

Justin Raimondo on Rudy Giuliani

at Taki's Top Drawer

California’s Coup D’Etat

California’s Coup D’Etat

Posted by Paul Weyrich on March 22, 2007

The move to February 5 would not be so pernicious if California alone were doing so. But most of the large States are accelerating their primaries as well. So we will have a super-duper primary and, bang, the nominee will have been chosen right then and there. Whom does super-duper primary help? In the case of the GOP it helps Rudolph W. (Rudy) Giuliani, assuming he can keep the poll numbers he now has. Rudy is the big-money candidate. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), Senator Charles T. (Chuck) Hagel (R-NE), Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK), Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX) and Thomas G. (Tom )Tancredo (R-CO) will have absolutely no chance under this system. On the Democratic side, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM), Senators Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) and Joseph P. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) and former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) also will be relegated to has-beens under this new system because Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has the money.

In fact, it is doubtful that Governor Ronald W. Reagan (R-CA) could have come back from his earlier defeats, as he did in 1976 in North Carolina. He would require a huge sum of money to win on this super-duper primary system. And since Reagan was defeated in New Hampshire by incumbent President Gerald R. Ford (R-MI), he would not have been able to raise in a few days the huge amount of money required of a defeated candidate.

I always have favored a series of regional primaries spread over six months. Each region of the country would hold a primary on a different day, a month apart from another region. That would give candidates from all over the nation an opportunity to be nominated.

But this system says that our Presidential candidates must be rich and must have money to burn all during the year before that February doomsday. It is a distortion of our political system.

Sigh. What can be done.

F. J. Sarto, Don't Look Left

Via the Western Confucian

Don't Look Left by F. J. Sarto

The author reminds us of the outrages being committed in the Western world by governments that do not acknowledge God or His law:

In Quebec, a proposed government policy would forbid private Christian schools from teaching Biblical sexual ethics.

A law with similar intent is pending in Brazil, which according to Zenit News “seeks to criminalize anything considered a condemnation of homosexuality, including priests who speak against the practice in homilies. Priests could face two to five years imprisonment for preaching against homosexuality. And a rector of a seminary who refuses admission to a homosexual student could face three to five years.”

In Britain, the “anti-discrimination” regulation which will prevent Catholic and other serious Christian adoption agencies from placing children only with married, heterosexual couples will also restrict the teaching of Christian sexual ethics in schools, according to the non-partisan, secular news site MarriageDebate.com.

In Germany, where home-schooling was outlawed by Hitler and the law left on the books, the parents of 15-year-old Melissa Busekros lost custody of the girl for teaching her at home. She is now being held at a psychiatric institution—diagnosed with “school-phobia” at an undisclosed location, with no access to her parents. In the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, laws restricting religious garb—which were aimed at the Moslems that country unaccountably allowed to settle there—are now being used to strip teaching nuns of their habits.

In Poland and Ireland, the democratically-passed laws restricting abortion on demand may well be stricken from the books by the diktat of unelected judicial bureaucrats of the European Court of Human Rights—who by the way, ruled against the parents of the abducted German teenager.

Meanwhile, in France, children are still forbidden to wear visible crucifixes or yarmulkes, since this is the only way that anti-clerical country can justify to itself stripping Islamic girls of the Hijab they are religiously moved to wear.

Across the Rhine in Deutschland, a judge recently ruled in favor of an abusive Islamic husband who beat his wife—basing his decision on the Koran.

Looking at the disasters that are Europe and Canada, can one not appreciate the fact that the right to bear arms is still protected at least in the United States?

The only hope of resisting the partisans of secular intolerance is to clean up the Christian Right (Catholic and Protestant), to purge it of jingoism, anti-intellectualism, and end-of-the world nihilism, then to break up its shotgun wedding to the hacks who run the conservative movement. The Christian Right must become less “Right” and much more Christian, reassert its intellectual and moral independence of partisan politics, and insist on applying its principles consistently. Pastors must stop endorsing torture, public Catholics must choose their pope above their president, and all of us must remember that the real war is not between the Democratic and Republican parties, but between the Church and the World. And the battlefield lies within our hearts

The Brogue Wears Off: Why The Catholic Church Is Addicted To Immigration

The Brogue Wears Off: Why The Catholic Church Is Addicted To Immigration
By J.P. Zmirak

The Green Imposter

When Al Gore was Veep
The Green Imposter
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Yes. The Prince of Wales. Now there's a real environmentalist.

Israel's Last Chance

Israel's Last Chance
by Gabriel Kolko

Arm the Unborn

Arm the Unborn

Posted by John Zmirak on March 07, 2007

A reminder why Catholics shouldn't vote for Giuliani.