1275 A few tips for travel to Germany

Blonde librarian and her readers have some tips for you if you plan to relocate or travel in Germany.

1274 You used to be a liberal. What happened?

Galley Girl asks, and Bernard Goldberg answers for many of us:

GG: You used to be a liberal. What happened?

"What happened? Liberals happened. I want to make a distinction between your run-of-the-mill liberals and the cultural elite liberals, who really speak for liberalism in America today. Most liberals obviously are decent people. They go to work every day, they care about their families, maybe they give money to charity. Fine. I have no problem whatsoever with anybody in that group. But the people who are speaking for liberals in the world of politics, the chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean; or the cultural liberals, like Michael Moore; the Hollywood elites who confuse intelligence with celebrity—they think because they’re famous, they’re also smart. I listen to them and I say, I don’t want to be part of that group anymore. Even when I agree with them, which is more often than you would think, I no longer want to be seen as being part of that group. It isn’t because of their politics, which I think are misguided; it’s because they come off as snobby and elitest. I think they look down their nose at ordinary Americans."

1273 Kerfuffle: Taranto's Favorite Word

Taranto's reasoning on the Rove kerfuffle (used 3 times in this article alone) is a bit obtuse, I think, because the Bush White House rarely does things the way you would expect, and the Dems get hysterical and unglued about everything these days, especially facts:

"Let's conduct a little thought experiment, shall we? Suppose that people in Washington generally had the sense that Karl Rove was soon to be indicted in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. How would they react?

It seems to us the White House would be working to distance itself from Rove, possibly planning for him to make a quiet exit, much as John Kerry's campaign "disappeared" Joe Wilson last summer when Wilson's credibility fell apart. The Democrats, on the other hand, would act high-minded and talk of "letting the process work," at least as long as Rove remained on the job. An actual indictment, after all, would do maximal political damage to the Bush administration.

Instead, the White House (which knows a lot more about the investigation than any of us) is confidently standing behind Rove, while the Democrats are waging a hysterical attack that would be premature if it were based on anything real. Partisan Democrats don't want to talk about the facts of the case (facts are irrelevant, as a former Enron adviser insists) or about the law. They just want to pound the table and insist that Rove is metaphysically guilty." James Taranto, July 15

One thing that has bothered me all along. Didn't Bob Novak tell the whole world about Valerie Plame? What's his responsibility in blowing her cover? Also, do Democrats assume that anyone who "works at the CIA" is an undercover agent? Don't they have secretaries, gofers and librarians?

Update--so much for secrecy--today's AP report: "Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of an undercover CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story.

The conversation eventually turned to Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.

Rove testified that Novak told him he planned to report in a weekend column that Plame had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Niger, according to the source."

1272 Doesn't look good for this Lutheran

You scored as John Calvin. Much of what is now called Calvinism had more to do with his followers than Calvin himself, and so you may or may not be committed to TULIP, though God's sovereignty is all important. John Calvin 100% Karl Barth 80% Anselm 73% Martin Luther 67% Jonathan Edwards 67% Jürgen Moltmann 60% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Augustine 53% Paul Tillich 33% Charles Finney 20% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

As Karl Barth said when asked to summarize his theology: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

I always have to change the width of these quizes. Do you? Otherwise they post below all my links.

1271 Creationists in the Closet

Although his core beliefs probably don't surface in his job as a school administrator, he whispered to me that he too was a creationist when it came up during our conversation. The evol-bio-fundies would just go bonkers if they knew how many well educated, urban, deep thinkers don't buy into their religion. He's got 30 years in the teachers' retirement system, is part of a main-line denomination, is highly respected in his community and has at least an MS and maybe a PHD (I didn't ask). And like me, he thinks it just doesn't matter on the job except to pass sophomore biology. We confessed to each other that even as young children being taught this in school (and he is a good 15 years younger), we didn't buy it. All we had to do was look around and see the evidence. But even in our childhoods, one wasn't allowed to think outside the evolution box.

Evolutionists are safe from us, however. Creationists can't even agree with each other (as coherent groups) and waste a lot of energy squabbling. I personally believe biology instruction belongs in the church--evolution/creation, sex/abortion, contraception/abstinence, gender and marriage, stem cell research, and end of life issues. We can't entrust these important issues to the education system which seems to have its plate full with reading, writing and arithmetic and bringing poor and disadvantaged children up to the standards all middle-class children are expected to know.

1270 Thursday wrap

Last night we rushed home from art classes, changed clothes and went to the opening of the art show at Hoover Auditorium. One of my husband's paintings was sold within the first 30 minutes, which was nice. We often buy a painting there, but this time there were none we particularly cared to purchase.

We decided to skip last night's program Tom Chapin, whom we've seen many times and instead went to see the movie, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants which was really quite charming.

Later at home we were trying to recall the details of the only other movie we've seen here this year. We finally tracked it (in our memories) to Memorial Day week-end, but neither of us could remember what it was. We only remembered the rude talkers behind us. So, fortunately because I keep a diary on the internet, I looked it up. Fever Pitch.

1269 Does blogging hurt or help your political party?

The Daily Kos is the most popular left wing blog out there, creating a family feel among its regular readers (I've looked at it a few times, but don't read it.) Numbers of visits for political blogs slid after the election in 2004, but the Kos followers are on the increase. Left wing blogging is much more popular than left wing talk radio, which can't seem to find its voice.

"Indeed, there is little doubt that the habitués of the Daily Kos, like their hated cousins who read popular conservative blogs such as Power Line and Little Green Footballs, live in very different worlds than their friends and neighbors. Blog readers are typically voracious gatherers of news. They not only simply know who people such as Ann Coulter are, they usually have strong opinions about these minor public figures, too. This is an unusual trait. After all, while Ann Coulter may be a polarizing firebrand beloved by her supporters and loathed by her detractors, when it comes to fame she's hardly Madonna." Dean Barnett on the rise of the left wing blogger

The problem as Barnett sees it is that party bigwigs are kowtowing to The Kos and trying to get on his front page. Even though most Americans still don't know what a blog is and don't read them, Democrats are adopting (according to Barnett) the shrill, hyper-reporting of the key blogs. Dick Durbin looked like a complete idiot with his comments about Gitmo being a Gulag, and the US being as bad as the Nazis, Soviets and PolPot, but the left wing bloggers embraced him. Barnett sees the party's affinity with these left wing screamers and screeders as bad for Democrats.

Well, maybe it is sour grapes. I've never heard of Barnett's blog until his article appeared in Weekly Standard. His site meter isn't public and his comments aren't enabled. Who knows if people who hunch over keyboards several hours a day sending memos to complete strangers will get out and ring door bells or work the phone banks or even run for office. Hugh Hewitt seems to think the blog is the next BIG thing in communication and has written a whole book on its growing influence.

1268 Overheard at the Lake

My husband was out for a bike ride. A mother and her two children went by on their bicycles. He overheard her say to them, "Do you think we need to worry that your Father keeps getting lost?" (This town is about 10 streets wide and 8 Avenues deep.)

1267 Reader of poetry

I've written about Ted Kooser before. Take a look at this. I love it. Reminds me of certain readers of this blog--quirky, checking out the bargains, and then moving on for more free lunch.

1266 Wednesday at the Lake

We were both pretty tired after our art classes at the Rhein Center yesterday--I really struggled to keep Mr. Cloud from morphing into Mr. Chertoff in portrait class. I biked home at 5:30, threw together a fabulous dinner of leftovers (meatballs, potato salad, carrots, strawberries and blueberries with vanilla pudding), took a short nap, and then we headed to Hoover. I often leave at intermission, but Robin and Linda Williams didn't have one, nor would I have left early. They are personable, funny and talented, performing a mix of bluegrass, folk, old country, and their own material. They will be appearing in a movie with Garrison Keillor and their final piece is what they perform in the movie. If you are in the Virginia area, you probably have a good chance of seeing them perform, but they also tour. Don't miss this outstanding example of "American music."

1265 If we lose the war

A number of web sites are circulating the warning by Ret. Major General Vernon Chong titled, "This War is for Real," and I saw it at American Daughter.

Even with a link to his AF bio, there is no positive way to identify anyone on the Internet, however, if you read through it, you'll find little that hasn't been reported elsewhere, like the list of the pre-9/11 attacks, the percentage of the world's population that is Muslim, and the number of Muslim countries that are democracies, or our Transportation Director's refusal to allow profiling even though 100% of current terrorist attacts are committed by a specific age/religion group.

"Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece.

And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power."

So take a look and judge for yourself. We know Spain is a goner, and that France will probably be next, so that part of the Chong letter will probably ring true. What else?

1264 Or they could start a blog

Some kids are going to essay camps to learn to write. The topics sound just like what I read on teen-age blogs.

1263 The morphing of Mr. Cloud

Anvilcloud has some great photographs on his blog, so I thought I'd just borrow one for portrait class. It was this adorable photo of Mr. Cloud with a chickadee (or something) sitting on his head nibbling on a piece of bread crust. I'm taking a portrait class this week, and I tried several photos--one of me, one of my sister, one of Condi Rice, and the bird on a cloud. Mr. Cloud turned out best, so it got transferred to the gesso'd masonite board. Then yesterday we were to paint in the shadows. Up until that point, it was a fairly recognizable Mr. Cloud. He was taped to a pillar and lots of people stopped by to admire. But, I didn't quite get the hang of putting in shadows around the eyes (this is my first try at portraits), and the longer I looked at the drying paint the more he began to morph into this guy

Yup. Put a bird on his head, and I've painted Michael Chertoff, Head of Homeland Security.

1262 Need proof reader

The blogger.com system is really neat. The new photo uploading works great--much easier than Picasa which I had been using. I've never had a spam problem with comments. Tech help usually responds quickly. I'm going to teach beginning blogging here in a few weeks, and I'll start them with blogger.com (can't beat the price). The spell check is awful, however. It doesn't even recognize the word "blog."

But sometimes you just need a proof reader because no spell check is going to clean up proper names. Today I was checking through articles about over-weight military, and how obesity could be hurting recruiting. Everything seemed to be based on the same AP story, so I was browsing through a search and came across a TRICARE article on fitness and the military. As near as I can tell, Tricare is an insurance program for the military. However, at this site, they've misspelled their own name. Now, if you go there and find it is spelled correctly, I've done my good deed for the day.

1261 Canadian-American Governor goes off the deep end

The Governor of Michigan (born in Canada) was interviewed the other morning on 760 am (Detroit). She was absolutely unglued about an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal by a Michigan State Representative Rich Baxter. I don't know her party affiliation, but I know the definition of treason, and reporting that your state's tax system is unfriendly to business and holding back recovery, isn't treason--it isn't even reason on the Guv's part. She gives women in high places a bad name.

1260 Economists advise against Aid for Africa

Aid doesn't solve corruption, or help trade or even reverse disease outbreaks. African James Shikwati say western industrial nations "have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor." [HT Florida Cracker]

Richard Posner seems to say it's not the African's responsibility to make you feel good and generous . . . "Foreign aid makes people in wealthy countries feel generous, but retards reform in those countries as well as in the donee countries. Obviously from a world welfare as well as African welfare standpoint Europe and the United States should not impose tariffs on agricultural imports in order to protect their rich farmers. Eliminating tariffs would do more for Africa than giving them an extra $25 billion a year to squander. (It would also increase the wealth of the countries that eliminated their tariffs.)

Since there are 650 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, the extra $25 billion will increase per capita annual income (assuming it isn't squirreled away by corrupt elites) by only $40. Not that such an increase is wholly trivial in relative terms: Nigeria, for example, has an annual per capita income of only about $300, and it is not the poorest country in Africa. But it is unlikely that the poorest people in these countries will benefit from the extra money; even if most of it isn't skimmed off by corrupt officials or squandered on dumb projects, it is likely to stave off fundamental political and economic reforms. (The G8 nations at Gleneagles also agreed to forgive some $50 in African debts to them, but that is a one-time event and its annualized value is therefore much less than $25 billion a year.)" Becker-Posner Blog

International Monetary Fund disconnects of the concert: "Two International Monetary Fund researchers have turned intellectual firehoses on crowds at the Live 8 concerts, publishing research concluding that, in most cases, aid does nothing to boost economic growth.

In two research papers the fund's research director, Raghuram Rajan, and research economist Arvin Subramanian say comparisons of growth rates throughout the developing world show no solid evidence that aid flows lift growth."

1259 Let's see the job finished

"Before parting company with CSM Mellinger, we attended a memorial on LSA Anaconda for Specialist Ryan Montgomery from Kentucky. Ryan and his twin brother Bryan had both joined the Kentucky National Guard and were twenty-two years old. They were serving in Iraq when Ryan was killed by a bomb. During the ceremony, soldiers referenced the attacks in London as an important reason to stay here in Iraq, and to see the job finished. I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears when soldiers from Kentucky said they needed to be here to prevent attacks in places such as London, or at the Kentucky Derby, or in Germany." Michael Yon.

1258 Frances Langford dies at 92

This morning's paper reported the death of Frances Langford on July 11, 2005 in Jensen Beach, FL. She appeared in 30 movies, few of which I've seen, but I remember seeing her in old footage of entertaining the troops during WWII. "I'm in the mood for love" was never sweeter or more poignant.

1257 The cruise on Lake Erie

Last night's cruise was lovely. I think I saw the most fabulous sunset ever. My husband, who frequently paints watercolor skies using pinks and ultamarine blues, put his arm around me and whispered, "If I painted that, no one would believe it." At 10:10 p.m. we could still see its remnants. The route was around Put-in-Bay and we came very close to Perry's Monument.


The water was a bit choppy and watching people balance their food on plates and knees was heart stopping. I met and chatted with Mary, 90 years old, and still playing golf. She reminds me a lot of my dad's friend Ruth, "the energizer bunny." I'd like to say these people have a magic formula for long life and good looks, but I know Mary's mother lived to 102 and her sister to 105. And I believe Ruth's parents lived into their late 90s. You just can't beat choosing the right parents.

As we walked toward the dock at 7 p.m. we reminisced about the summer of 1988, our first year on one of these cruises. The midwest was locked into a horrible heatwave and drought. We had rented a tiny cottage on Walnut that blessedly had ceiling fans (we didn't even have AC in our home in Columbus). Out on Lake Erie the moist, moving air engulfed us, but it felt cooler. The minute we walked down the gangplank onto the dock at 10 p.m., it was like being hit with a 2 x 4. Later that week we walked around and passed a small house for sale. We peeked in the back window. "It has a real kitchen and a basement," I squealed. We moved to the front porch, which was unfinished and unlocked and I pressed my nose against the pane. "Oh, it has a fire place!" That afternoon we contacted a realtor, who wisely showed us 4 dogs before he showed us the one we asked about. Soon we were locked into a 10.5% mortgage, just about the lowest available at that time. Because our home mortgage in 1968 had been for 20 years, we were debt free and could handle it.

We took possession the week-end after Labor Day. It was a life saver for me, being in deep, intractable grief over my children's decisions not to go to college (relax--it's not the end of the world as I believed then). The cottage was like a new baby, one we needed to visit every week-end and work on from morning 'til night. We'd sit under the fading lilac bush and eat breakfast and say, "It doesn't get any better than this." This summer is our 17th, and the cruises are still fun.

CATAWBA WINE

This song of mine
Is a song of the vine,
To be sung by the glowing embers
Of way-side inns
When the rain begins
To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song
Of the Suppernong
From warm Carolinian valleys,
Nor the Isabel,
And the Muscadel,
That bask in our garden alleys.

Richest and best
Is the wine of the West
That grows by the beautiful river
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room
With a benison on the giver.

Very good in its way
Is the Verzenay,
Or the Sillery soft and creamy,
But Catawba wine
Has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

Pure as a spring
Is the wine I sing,
And to praise it one needs but name it,
For Catawba wine
Has need of no sign,
No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

1256 The sad truth about the U.N.

Even the Toledo Blade had a photo of a Muslim woman weeping at the graves. Yesterday's Wall Street had harsh words for those of weep "never again" and then demand immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

"But Mr. Clinton allowed the Balkans to bleed for three years before he "did something." He let the U.N. and Europe take the lead and was frequently heard musing about the ancient roots of the Balkans conflict, which supposedly made it intractable and beyond the reach of the United States to repair. What's remarkable is that, when the U.S. did intervene--for example, with a limited bombing campaign in 1995--it achieved fast and decisive results. Had Mr. Clinton honored his campaign pledges, he could have saved thousands of Bosnian lives and almost certainly averted the massacre at Srebrenica.

If American policy makers want to avoid facing another Srebrenica on their watch, they must never let the U.N. determine the mission. Allowing the Europeans to "take the lead" is also a bad idea. Above all, Srebrenica is what happens when Western policy makers reject taking pre-emptive measures against gathering dangers, so that by the time the dangers are obvious it is too late to do something.

It has become trendy in certain circles to speak of "No More Srebrenicas," as well as "No More Rwandas" and "No More Darfurs." If these people really believe the slogan, then the policy to make it work already has a name. It's called the Bush Doctrine."