It's Not Easy (or cheap) Being Green

A simply astounding column by Alex Beam about people who spend millions to remodel their home with a proper ecological pedigree. Read the whole thing.

"I never really calculated the premium for going green, because we didn't think of doing the house any other way," [SF green homeowner Jordan Harris] said. "We probably spent close to a million dollars."

It reminds me very much of Tom Wolfe's classic 1970 piece, Radical Chic.

La Page aux Folles

Today’s Globe Op Ed page is all too typical of this daily embarrassment:

1) Scott Lehigh writing on loud motorcycles (certainly a major crisis!)

2) Nick King (a former Globe Op Ed editor) bemoaning the arrival of Internet access on the isolated Pacific atoll, Palmyra (another global crisis)

3) A column by Holy Cross Catholic studies professor David O'Brien concerning the Democratic state convention in Worcester (at least it is written by an outsider)

4) A remarkably late and shallow column entitled ‘Europe’s Muslim dilemma’ by former Globe editor and now columnist H.D.S. Greenway

Let’s illustrate the poverty of content with some excerpts. First from the professor’s column, which is the best of this poor lot:

Democrats seem entranced by the GOP mantra of limited government, low taxes, strong defense, and family values. That platform is the opposite of what our democracy requires. It is a formula for private wealth and public impoverishment, for growing gaps between rich and poor and an unraveling of the social fabric, and for our ever increasing reliance on military power to keep an angry world at bay.

I hadn’t noticed this trend in the Massachusetts Democratic party. I must have been asleep at the switch.

Then H.D.S. Greenway, certainly one of the Globe’s premiere Op Ed ink-wasters. He summarizes the problems caused by growing muslim populations in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the US, all in a few hundred words while treating the unwashed to his profound understanding the French language. This column is both tardy and shallow:

The French model has always been assimilation, one of the definitions of which is "to cause to resemble." Never mind multiculturalism, let's all be French, is the ideal. While the British stressed their railways, their civil service, their courts with wigged judges in their far-flung empire, France stressed the civilizing aspects of its culture and language. So do come, France says, but you have to become French.

The doctrine of "Laïcité," the 1905 separation of church and state, and the ideals of the French Revolution still dominate the cultural attitude toward immigration, even if they are not always carried out in practice. The Muslim ghettos of the unemployed that surround French cities -- and the fact that there is not one member from a Muslim immigrant background in the National Assembly -- suggests the French ideal has fallen short.

Uuuuhhh, yes. How very perceptive.

The major problem that both Europe and America face, as far as their Muslim populations are concerned, is not to let vigilance against terrorism spill over into undermining civil rights and discriminating against the 99.9 percent of Muslims who just want to get along.

After I separated the manure from that statement, I’d ask the sage “Get along how?”

Another day’s great work from the capacious and open minds of the Globe Editorial board. Makes me proud to be a subscriber.

Anybody have a copy of the Herald?

Steady Jobs, Good Day Care, and Inconvenient Truths

Monday’s Boston Globe carries a front page story about a new German film ‘The Lives of Others’ that is breaking the accepted taboos concerning Stasi. Stasi was the huge secret police of the GDR, the former East Germany. Since the German reunification as an effort to foster German unity, the crimes and vast social corruption of Stasi has been unmentionable in polite German society. The Orwellian Stasi supported over 250,000 employees and informants in a nation of only 16 million. Not content with quiet toleration if not acceptance of their past, groups of former Communists and Stasi officers have formed a political party which is currently holds 9% of the seats in the German Reichstag.

The Globe article by Colin Nickerson is quite informative and very well written. Read the whole thing. Here are a few sample quotes:

A former Stasi Colonel:

“We harmed no one. The GDR was not a criminal state. With good conscience, I can say the Stasi only served the people and obeyed the laws that were the laws of that time…We protected the people from their enemies, at home and abroad, there were perhaps dark sides to the GDR -- perhaps there was some repression -- but there also was a sunny side. Most people felt secure and happy.”

A traumatized former Stasi prisoner:

“Stasi torture was psychological. It was sleep deprivation and disorientation, it was intimidation through insinuation -- the guard who would start screaming and touching his weapon, as if you were just seconds away from a bullet. The interrogator whose hints of `worse to come' were somehow more terrible than an actual fist to the face. It was months of never seeing another human, except for guards and interrogators. It was never hearing your own name, only your cell number. It was being stripped of your humanity, layer by layer.”

A German historian of Stasi:

“Germans in many ways have lost touch with reality when it comes to the East. It is forbidden by law to deny the crimes of the Nazis. But it's almost forbidden by custom since reunification to really discuss the crimes of the regime that turned East Germany into a prison. There is a kind of creeping rehabilitation going on. Germany failed to prosecute communist-era crimes except in a very few instances. This was a criminal system. But now all we're supposed to remember is the factory jobs and good day care.”

Losing Our Soul

Sunday’s Boston Globe featured a story in the Globe West section about medical attitudes toward Downs Syndrome. The story features a family from Franklin who has a 7-year-old son with Downs, and the huge evolution of their experience since they refused the advice of their physicians to abort their child who is now an accepted and thriving member of their family. The story centered on a study of how physicians communicate with expectant parents whose unborn child has Downs. The study found [emphasis mine]:

Brian Skotko, a joint-degree student at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Medical School, last year published two research papers that concluded physicians often relay the news in an overwhelmingly negative way, focusing on the limitations and hardships a child with Down syndrome may face…“We have to decide as a society what forms of life are valuable,” Skotko said. “Do we as a society believe people should be able to terminate a pregnancy solely because the child will have Down syndrome, or any other undesired trait? Where do you draw the line?”

Ironically the National Holocaust Museum currently has an exhibit about the Nazi public health programs, including a feature on their murder of the disabled:

The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily "unfit" Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's broader genocidal policies. It is estimated that 275,000 adults and children were murdered because of their disabilities.

The Harvard study indicates that most certainly the prescriptions (and also the attitudes, I believe) of today’s medical community toward the disabled overlap that of the Nazis. One could argue that our era has now far surpassed them, since from a global perspective the most common genetic condition causing an unborn child to be aborted today is that they are female. Yet this state of affairs seems to trouble only ‘the religious right’ in America (I would argue that 30+ years of our abortion debate in America have spawned of the religious right). Those on the political left, with the exception of a few advocates for the disabled, maintain that the right of individual choice overrides all others. Thus the Democratic Party adopts the position of pro-choice extremists by fighting tooth and nail against any legislative restrictions on even late-term abortions. The left, because of its radical skepticism towards our western and Judeo-Christian tradition is unwilling to generalize broadly about what behaviors or attitudes constitute civic virtue.

No group today tilts more uniformly to the left than tenured college faculties. This brings me to a 2^nd piece in the Sunday Globe, which is a review of former Harvard dean Harry Lewis’ new book entitled ‘Excellence without a Soul’:

The Harvard Lewis shows us in ‘Excellence Without a Soul’ is tone-deaf to the American Republic, whose liberties it relies on yet whose virtues it no longer nurtures. It has forsaken such pedagogical heavy lifting for market come-ons and a falsely compensatory moralism about sexism, racism, and ‘jock culture’ – “proxies for misgivings about deeper values.” The college no longer turns freshmen into adults who can recognize and take responsibility for hard moral choices: “The Enlightenment ideal of human liberty and the philosophy embodied in American democracy barely exist in the current Harvard curriculum.”… Harvard's assumption that “students are free agents and should study what they wish” drains its “long-term commitment to the welfare of students and the society they actually serve,” he writes…It would be better to impose serious core curricular requirements on students than to offer “what they myopically claim to want,” Lewis writes, admitting that more teaching takes time from scholarship, but the faculty needs to “develop a shared sense of educational responsibility for its undergraduates.”

The root cause identified by Lewis -- “misgivings about deeper values” -- is the same as the reason for our medicine’s adoption of Nazi-like practices with respect to the unborn disabled. One cannot have the confidence to practice, teach, or demand certain values unless one also has confidence in the absolute worth of some value systems as opposed to others. The religious and ethical skepticism of today’s left completely immobilizes them in this regard. They have drifted from respect for diversity to dogmatic indifferentism. Their opponents and much of the electorate recognize this. The Republican coalition of religionists, traditionalists, and libertarians, though unwieldy contains far more ideological common ground than today’s Democrats can find among themselves. This situation is to our collective misfortune.

'Some' Makes Headlines Once Again in the Globe

That perrennial newsroom celebrity, 'some', a fellow who often seems to make the Globe headlines, scores again in today’s Boston Globe in the front page above-the-fold headline:

Hospital crisis has some doubting O'Malley's leadership

However the headline is ill-suited to the article’s content. Of all the people quoted in the article by reporter Michael Paulson, only one is specifically critical of the Cardinal, and he is (surprise!) quoted first. All others quoted are either generic in their criticism or outright supportive of O’Malley. The lone critic quoted is Richard J. Santagati, president of Merrimack College.

Apparently in Globe newsroom arithmetic ‘some’ = 1 + 1 reporter.

Editors Behaving Badly

Yesterday the Globe published a letter from an infuriated reader complaining of liberal bias and noting that Globe advertisements now featured headlines bashing the Bush administration. The letter was signed by the author, Richard J. Egan. After the signature the Globe added an explanatory note:

The writer is former US ambassador to Ireland.

This is true, but it is only a tiny sliver of the whole truth. Mr. Egan is also:

• A US Marine who served in the Korean war
• A graduate of Northeastern and MIT
• A designer of guidance systems for the Apollo program
• The co-founder of EMC which has grown to be a $10 Billion global company employing 23,000 people, 7,000 of them in Massachusetts, and the #1 company on the Globe’s own Mass High Tech 50 list
• A billionaire who ranks in the Forbes magazine 400 and is accurately described there as “self made”
• Trustee of the Catholic Schools Foundation
• Trustee and major donor to Northeastern University
• Trustee of the Inner City Scholarship Fund

Mr. Egan is also a major donor to Republican candidates for office and, yes, he did formerly serve as Ambassador to Ireland in the current administration.

Politics aside, one might expect that a responsible newspaper (especially one whose circulation has fallen 8-10% during the last 6 months) would register just the slightest bit of concern if a citizen of Mr. Egan’s stature wrote to express disgust with their product. Instead, like a petulant adolescent, the Globe editors respond with pettiness by delivering a back-handed compliment to a leading citizen of the Commonwealth. Why? Perhaps (just perhaps) it might be because the Globe Editorial Board dislikes intensely Mr. Egan’s politics.

If they can’t behave more grown up than this, then the Globe richly deserves their declining circulation.

Connecting 2 Dots

Amid the understandable brouhaha about the forced resignation of Robert Haddad from Caritas Christi here is a connection that appears in another ‘unrelated’ story in the Boston Globe.

A background paragraph in today’s Boston Globe article on Haddad’s resignation says:

Haddad is the third leader of the hospital system in two years to be replaced. In April, 2004, O'Malley demanded the resignation of the hospital system's chief executive, Dr. Michael F. Collins, for reasons he never disclosed. Collins, who had served 10 years at the helm of Caritas, is now the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

True, indeed, Collins is now the Chancellor of UMass Boston. In fact, a story just yesterday in the Globe concerned the spending of over $500,000 by UMass Boston to celebrate just the inauguration of Mr. Collins as Chancellor (much of the money was donated by private parties).

My wise wife observed last night concerning the Haddad incident that “these things happen when people in high positions assume that they are better than others and therefore are not bound by the same standards as the ‘lower’ people who work for them”. In other words executive hubris stems fundamentally from a lack of respect.

Judging from Mr. Collins’ current extravagance at his new post in UMass, he hasn’t absorbed much from his Caritas dismissal. UMass-Boston? This behavior is worthy of Massport!

Off Topic

Yesterday the NY Times had a strange and largely content-free page 1 story entitled ‘For Clintons, Delicate Dance of Married and Public Lives’. This Times story is a classic example of how today paying attention (even careful attention) to the mainstream media is reminiscent of reading between the lines of Pravda during the Soviet era -- very often they simply do not dare to speak frankly.

This story/non-story is superbly dissected today by Jack Shafer in Slate.

Hat Tip: Lucianne

The End of History Teaching

It’s a late hit, but I can no longer resist Jim Carroll’s Globe Op Ed column on Monday. He noted how Generation Xers seems less perturbed by the Iraq war and less likely to protest than their flower-child parents (and far less likely to protest then their tenured, ivy-covered, and left wing professors). Jim chalks up the difference to growing up during the Cold War, with its MAD defense dogma of mutual destruction.

'Ours [is] the first generation to live with the possibility of worldwide cataclysm,' declared the foundational Port Huron Statement in 1962.

I’m willing to overlook this document's typically myopic 1960s baby-boomer perspective on world history, but Mr. Carroll does not inform his readers that the document he calls ‘foundational’ is the manefesto of the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. Why not, Jim?

Of course another possible explanation for the phenomenon Carroll describes is that perhaps today’s students are simply tired of being relentlessly proselytized by their professors and, like generations before them, find many of them a bit odd.

Professors protesting the appearance of Secretary Rice
yesterday at the Boston College graduation ceremony
(Photo by David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

A Stopped Clock

Christopher Lydon comments on the Boston Globe Op Ed page:

"The Globe editorial page may be the most predictable rectangle in print, and the least remarked. "

Ombudsman Leaves the Globe

Globe Ombudman Richard Chacón announced he is leaving and a Globe blog reported today the reason is to join the gubernatorial campaign of Deval Patrick. That is the Globe’s loss. Richard brought great dedication to what is a nearly impossible job. Compared to that, flaking for Deval Patrick should be easy.

Good luck, Richard. I hope your new job runs until November, but no longer.

One of These Newspapers is Lying

Lying might be too strong a word, but only slightly. Today both the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal carry stories about the resignation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali from the Dutch parliament and her pending departure from the Netherlands. That is where the similarity ends.

The Globe story focuses on Hirsi’s long-standing admission that she lied on her application for asylum in the Netherlands. The headline and lead sentence of the Globe story both connect her resignation to ‘mounting criticisms that she lied on her application for asylum in 1992’. Hirsi has admitted the lie for years, claiming that she was trying to escape from an arranged marriage, and feared that this reason was not sufficient under law for her to remain in the Netherlands. Let me add parenthetically that though Hirsi spoke in Boston only 8 days ago, the Globe did not cover the event, and I believe did not interview her then or even have a reporter there.

On the other hand the Journal story focuses on Hirsi’s court-ordered eviction from her apartment. She settled there and has been heavily guarded since the murderer of Theo van Gogh pinned a written death threat to Hirsi on his victim’s chest (pinned with a dagger – nice touch). Some of Hirsi’s neighbors in the apartment building filed suit against her claiming that Hirsi’s presence created a danger that violated their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. They won in court 3 weeks ago, and Hirsi has to leave her apartment.

I have posted the opening paragraphs of both stories below. They could not be more different, and such profound differences cannot be simply attributed to journalistic discretion. Rather, the appearance of such different stories covering the same events on the same day is a perfect example of journalistic bias. Whose bias? Which paper do you trust more? For me, the Journal wins that vote.

By the way, neither story tells you that you can read Hirsi’s own statement here.

Critic of radical Islam exits an arena

Dutch lawmaker lied in asylum bid

By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | May 17, 2006 [Boston Globe, Page A6]

BERLIN -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch lawmaker and prominent critic of radical Islam, said yesterday she would resign her seat in Parliament and leave the Netherlands amid mounting criticisms she lied on her application for asylum in 1992.

Hirsi Ali, whose views on Islam had made her one of Europe's most controversial political figures and a target for terrorists, is expected to move to the United States.

At a news conference in the Hague, home to the Netherland's Parliament, Hirsi Ali said she feared that the government planned to ''strip me of my Dutch citizenship" and lift her police protection following news reports that she gave false information when she sought refugee status. She said Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk told her Monday that her status was being probed and that the government believed she had improperly won citizenship.

Islamist Threats To Dutch Politician Bring Chill at Home

-----

Ms. Hirsi Ali Quits Parliament, Plans to Resettle in U.S. After Losing Safe House

-----

A Debate Over Extremism

By ANDREW HIGGINS
May 17, 2006; Page A1 [Wall Street Journal]

THE HAGUE -- Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been threatened repeatedly with "execution" by Islamist extremists. She lives in an apartment with bulletproof windows, and is driven to work at the Dutch Parliament by armed guards, who vary the route to outfox would-be hit men.

But an unexpected menace emerged closer to home: her own neighbors. They have fought to evict her, complaining that the presence of a well-known terrorist target in their luxury apartment tower in this Dutch city has upset their family lives and reduced the value of their property.

"Once this lady leaves, the problem is no longer there," says Ger Verhagen, a retired executive who owns a place two floors above the hunted politician. He says he has nothing personal against Ms. Hirsi Ali. But along with other residents, he wants to banish the fears stirred by the proximity of Holland's most acid -- and most frequently threatened -- critic of Islam.

Yesterday, Ms. Hirsi Ali's neighbor got his wish. Three weeks after a Dutch court ordered her out of the building in response to complaints from Mr. Verhagen and other residents, she resigned from Parliament and said she would leave Holland altogether. Her decision follows a cascade of problems: angry neighbors, a government threat to revoke her citizenship and, more generally, growing public disenchantment with her denunciations of both radical Islam and more conventional Muslim doctrines.

The travails of Ms. Hirsi Ali, 36 years old, raise questions about how Europe, seeking calm rather than confrontation, is grappling with the challenges posed by Islamic extremism in its midst. Born in Somalia and raised in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, Ms. Hirsi Ali says the attitude of her neighbors smacks of World War II-style "appeasement." Others say they sympathize with her predicament but fault her for polarizing society with her attacks on Islamic custom as backward and incompatible with Western values.

A Curious Conflation

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick has resigned from the board of Ameriquest Capital Corporation, a company that his Democratic opponent Tom Reilly charged with ‘predatory’ lending. As is often the case in the Globe, the meatiest quotes are found near the end of the story. Here are a couple of paragraphs concerning the question of whether it is appropriate for a ‘progressive’ to serve on a corporate board:

Patrick said he had understood that his joining the ACC Holding board ''would make some people uncomfortable" and that political opponents would use it against him. He also noted that his role at two Fortune 100 firms, Texaco and Coca-Cola, where he served as general counsel, has drawn similar criticism. Patrick has defended Texaco when it faced water pollution allegations and defended Coca-Cola when it came under fire for human rights abuses at a plant in South America.

''Progressives are sometimes uncomfortable in principle with people who work for companies," he said. ''Political rivals try to make it an issue. But I still believe that lasting reform requires the effort of good people both outside and inside. Whether at Texaco, Coca-Cola or Ameriquest, I have never left my conscience at the door."

What is curious here is Patrick’s conflation of ‘progressives’ and ‘good people’. Is that a telling slip of the tongue? It seems so to me, and may explain why Patrick is so highly regarded within the dogmatic cloister of the Globe’s Op Ed department.

When Life Hands You Sweetness, Remain Bitter

James Carroll compares America to the Titanic:

"By sheer dumb luck the USS America navigated the Cold War without hitting one of the nuclear icebergs, but the helmsmen credited their own skill while slaphappy passengers celebrated -- again -- a claim to unsinkability. We had ''won' the Cold War, and now we were the ''indispensable nation.' Not even awareness of the dangers posed by unmoored nuclear weapons -- ''loose nukes' -- made America's geniuses see the hazard as applying to them. That alone is why, against reason and law, Washington can maintain its fleet of nuclear icebergs even now. Tragedy, nuclear or otherwise, is a fate awaiting other peoples, not Americans, who remain the last Enlightenment optimists."

Leave it to James Carroll to describe the outcome of the Cold War as a matter of 'dumb luck'. Our luck would have been far worse had Ronald Reagan heeded his many leftist critics in the 1980s, among whom was James Carroll.

A 'Principled Liberal' Compares Hillary to Hitler (or is it Stalin?)

Normally you would expect the loony right to be calling Hillary Clinton a lot of nasty names, but in Sunday’s Boston Globe leftie Robert Kuttner comes quite unglued over New York’s junior Senator participating in a fundraiser organized by Rupert Murdoch. He writes:

Murdoch runs Fox television, home of Bill O'Reilly and company. No far-right media enterprise has been more relentlessly dishonest in its efforts to destroy American liberalism in general and the Clintons in particular. Fox was prime cheerleader for the bogus Whitewater investigation and the impeachment campaign against Bill Clinton. Fox exists to oppose every liberal principle that Senator Clinton is accused, perhaps falsely, of standing for.

Murdoch also publishes the tawdry, viciously anti-Clinton New York Post and the more sober ideological print organ the Weekly Standard. You can't imagine the opposite kind of deal happening in American politics, because a left-wing Murdoch doesn't exist. That's why the man is so powerful, and such a nemesis to principled liberals.

Politics may make strange bedfellows, but for sheer cynicism and mutual expediency it's hard to beat this alliance. Maybe the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Fine, Robert, but tell me in your ridiculous analogy who does Hillary represent: Hitler or Stalin?

Robert’s screed might get a good grade in Freshman PolySci, but it is an embarrassment on the OpEd page of even a mediocre newspaper. And as for his ridiculous assertion that a ‘left wing Murdoch doesn’t exist’? Ha!

What about George Soros, Peter Lewis, Stephen Bing, or Herb Sandler? It looks to me like their showering of mega-money on the 'principled liberals' in the 2004 Democratic campaigns far exceeded the financial contributions of Murdoch. You may not think they exist, but the Party Dems sure know that their checks won't bounce.

Too bad that Robert is so unbalanced by Hillary's money-grubbing, because it distracts from some good lines later in his column:

What, ultimately, does Hillary Clinton stand for? Increasingly, it looks as if she stands for Hillary Clinton. And where have we heard that story before? It seems to run in the family.

Well put.

What is tragic about the Clintons is to see so much promise yoked to such opportunism. Nobody in American politics can deliver a well-informed speech without notes better than Hillary Clinton, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. Nobody can be more charming in person, with the possible exception of her faithless husband.

That's nobody's business but theirs, Robert.

But these days, everything she does seems calculating, poll-tested, and money-driven. That, too, recalls another Clinton. Do sequels always bomb?

Ouch. By golly, Robert, you sound more and more like Zell Miller!

A Largely Perceptive Analysis

In an article on population in Russia (a country known more for democide than for volutary migration, and whose population lost 20-60 million people during the 20th century from democide, and probably another 20-30 million from war) C.J. Chivers startles readers of the NY Times Week in Review section with this analysis of the current state of Russian demographics:

The problems can be found in the numbers. Russia has roughly 143 million people, and the population drops an average of 700,000 each year, largely because of the wide gap between the number of those born and the number who die. More babies will help.

If he meant to contrast this with immigration or emigration, he could have mentioned either, but he didn't. The editors must have been on vacation for this article.

The Gulag Lives On

There is a stunning report in today's OpinionJournal from 2 women who are refugees from North Korea. This is absolutely a 'must read' story.

With so much of our western media focused on the marginal and the irrelevant, it is easy to forget that the Gulags of this world did not end with glasnost or even with the fall of the Soviet Union. Unlike the Soviet era, though, it is far harder today for totalitarians to supress information -- even though they can still be pretty sure the New York Times will not report on them.

An Irish Version of Joan Vennochi

Ellen Goodman cannot stomach Caitlin Flanagan’s new book, and in her column today ‘Getting over the mommy wars’ she wishes the whole debate would just disappear. Ellen really means, I think, LET US 'PROGRESSIVES' JUST AGREE NOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

Now the current star of mommy-war lit is Caitlin Flanagan, full of retro-hip confusion about being a full-time mom with a full-time nanny. In her book, ''To Hell With All That," she tips her hat to mixed feelings but delivers punch lines directly at the ''enemy" jaw.

She asks herself, for example, what did her boys gain from having her at home? Her answer: ''an immersion in the most powerful force on earth: mother love." Whammo. Don't the kids of working moms get mother love?

What did she learn in her searing experience of breast cancer from the touching description of her husband's care: ''If that's a traditional marriage, I'll take it." Slammo. Don't nontraditional wives get husbands who stick by them?

Caitlin’s answer was published before Ellen’s column in Time magazine:

When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?...Here's why they're after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can't stand, and I'm not cowering in the closet because of it. I'm out, and I'm proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly "traditional" family…

The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the '60s--civil rights, women's liberation, gay inclusion--we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues--paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.

And now here we are, living in a country with a political and economic agenda we deplore, losing election after election and wondering why.

It's the contempt, stupid.

Caitlin's straight talk makes her sound like an Irish version of Joan Vennochi. No wonder her Atlantic Monthly columns are so enjoyable.

Startling Headline of the Day

Keane falsely accused, mother says

Ayaan Hirsi Who?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke at several events on the Harvard campus yesterday, but you wouldn’t know about that if you only read the Boston Globe.

The Crimson has a story about Ali's day, but the best account of her appearance covers her talk at the Kennedy School of Government, and that report is by a Newbie Boston Blogger, Miss Kelly.

Is the Boston Globe newsroom oblivious to Ms Ali’s importance? Were they too busy covering something else? Or are they just spread too thin? Who knows? I suspect that each of these contributed to the Globe’s lack of coverage, but Google tells me that there is none:

Your search - Ayaan Hirsi Ali source:Boston_Globe - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

Heck, it took Globe readers 17 days to learn that Hirisi Ali's cinematic partner, Theo van Gogh, had been murdered. My suggestion is leave your keywords alone, but read some good blogs instead, especially Miss Kelly’s.

Teddy Too?

I found it simply astounding that Ted Kennedy would have the degree of oblivion to name one of his pet dogs ‘Splash’. However today in the Boston Globe an even more astounding example of Kennedy oblivion is pointed out by Jeff Jacoby. Speaking on the April 23 ‘Meet the Press’, our senior Senator was asked about potential consequences of the precipitate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq that he advocates. A portion of the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: If we got out and there was a civil war, chaos, and you saw al-Qaida moving in record numbers and Zarqawi exerting great control over the country, would you go back in?

SEN. KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I heard the same kinds of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam War, the great blood bath, we’re going to have over 100,000 people that were going to be murdered and killed at that time. And for those of us that were strongly opposed to the war, heard those same kinds of arguments at the time.

Here Teddy consigns to oblivion the killing fields of Cambodia, the summary executions in Saigon, the re-education camps, and the experiences of millions of 'boat people' who risked prison and death at sea from nature and pirates in order to escape from Vietnam. Can't he quite remember what events caused the influx of Vietnamese immigrants to the US after 1975?

Significant loss of memory is indicated here. Perhaps Ted should follow the sterling example of his nephew [ed.] son, Patrick, and check himself into rehab.

Familiar Ideas Behind 'Russia's Retreat'

Cathy Young's Op Ed column in today's Boston Globe entitled 'Russia's Retreat' says of a new Russian law:

Among other things, the legislation prohibits anonymous donations to independent organizations; at any time, an organization can be required to prove that its fund-raising doesn't come from ''dirty money."

Putin's lawmakers may be getting their ideas from Boston Globe editorials. Advocating for supposed reform of our political activity, this Globe editorial in 2004 quoted the liberal do-gooders at Common Cause who said of McCain-Feingold:

"Its main goal was to keep the most dangerous money away from candidates and parties"

And how to find money for political action that is not dirty or dangerous? The ideologues of the Globe Op Ed page supplied their usual response earlier this year; total government financing:

POLITICAL MONEY is at the heart of the ethical scandals in Washington. Most members of Congress have not been chastened enough by the tawdry performance of their peers to support the one true answer to the problem -- public financing of campaigns -- but many have suggested smaller fixes.

Unlike the Soviets...er, Russians, I hope that Americans may we be spared further such legal 'fixes', large or small.

The Future of Unbelief?

This post ("Allah Takes Over Church")in the Brussels Journal is about Islamic squatters invited into Belgian Catholic churches by the Catholic Bishops. But trace the story to its roots.

More than a year ago Dhimmi Watch posted this story ("Where once stood a shrine to Our Blessed Lady, now stands a mosque") about invited Islamic squatters in the church. Photos were added earlier in 2006 by this site. Here is another recent background story in the Brussels Journal ("Belgian Church Organizes Illegal Immigrants").

It is the pictures that truly give the story its ability to shock. Another fact that continues to shock is that once again instead of being published somewhere in the mainstream media (or even the Catholic media!) the pictures and the story originated in blogs, whose vision is apparently less obscured by fears of offending Islam or the rose-colored glasses of indifferentism.

Finally add the superb irony that these church occupations were initiated by the Catholic bishops of Belgium as their response to a perception of injustice in Belgian immigration law (according to the blogs). Brussels Journal charges:

For Catholic believers the situation is all the more painful as the same Bishops have never bothered to take any action to change, let alone, protest Belgium’s legislation regarding abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and gay adoption. On the contrary, when a Catholic organisation asked for permission to organize a Mass against the impending euthanasia legislation in Brussels Cathedral on 2 March 2002, the use of the Cathedral was prohibited by Cardinal Danneels because it was feared that (Catholic) politicians of the anti-immigration Vlaams Belang party would attend.

Are our American bishops much wiser? I see no evidence. But perhaps our country and our Catholic Church is not yet (Deo Gratias) suffering in what appears to be the terminal stages of apostasy. That is a not a nice word. But what else can you call such a profound confusion between faith and works of charity?

“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Hat Tip: Malkin

The Globe Ideas Section Could Use More of This

This being Mark Steyn on the Moussaoui trial:

"The thousands who were killed were not targeted as individuals. They died because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to kill Mrs. Smith. Their families have a unique claim to our sympathy and a grief we can never truly share, but they're not plaintiffs and war isn't a suit. It's not about 'closure' for the victims; it's about victory for the nation. Try to imagine the bereaved in the London blitz demanding that the Germans responsible be brought before a British court."

Solomon Does My Job

Solomon at Solomonia does my job of Sunday Globe-watching today. Noting first Jeff Jacoby's gourmet roasting of the 200-proof hypocricy of Massachusetts' senior US Senator. Second, he roasts Joan Vennochi himself, an finally commenting on a Globe story concerning Palestinians suffering from sanctions Solomon notes eloquently:

"Of course it's natural and proper to feel sympathy for the average folks, particularly kids, who may just be victims of their leaders' political fantasies, although I can't help, upon reading these emergency room tales of sadness, to keep from turning my mind's eye to the other visions of hospital horror -- the shattered and punctured bodies that turn up in Israeli hospitals when the people these folks support send their murderers to do their dirty-work...while many of the people now crying for sympathy danced and handed out candy...The biggest welfare nation in the history of the planet is finding out that killing Jews doesn't pay like it used to."

I wouldn't be complacent, Sol. Jew murder usually has paid well for Palestinian leaders, most especially for the late billionaire Arafat.

Bring It On!

Explain this: Reality TV is all the rage. The consummately boring NFL draft received many hours of national TV coverage last weekend on ESPN. American Idol seems to be on the tube nonstop nationwide. You can watch Emeril Lagasse make food on TV any hour of the day. Yet the eye-popping local NFL event below got NO TV coverage and is relegated to the inside pages of a local free newspaper. What gives?

A Spectator Sport Indeed

Yes, recently 200 twenty-something women auditioned in Foxboro for 12 spots on the New England Patriots Cheerleader squad. Judging from the photo, the judges faced a very difficult choice and had only a day to make up their minds.

So why hasn't this audition been made into a reality TV show? Methinks men just might watch it.

Put the audition on TV, make it 1-2 weeks long with sessions every night, and let thousands of dedicated Patriots fans root (and maybe vote!) for their own personal favorites! Why not have nightly televised talent shows for the candidates and each night vote a few sobbing girls off the show until there were only 12 left and these made the roster? It sounds like a sure ratings winner to me. Why hasn’t Hollywood done it yet?

They will, when they read this.

Bitch Slapping A Couple of Cheap 'Hos'

Daniel Duquenala, a Venezuelan letter writer delivers a well-deserved bitch slap to the Globe Op Ed page today for a remarkably illogical editorial supporting Congressman Delahunt’s special delivery of discounted Venezuelan oil last November that came courtesy of Venezuelan dictator Chávez:

What is really going on in Massachusetts, at least from the viewpoint of the average Venezuelan who knows where to pinpoint Boston on a map, is a congressman shamelessly playing politics for his reelection on the backs of Venezuela's poor. The actions of William Delahunt are close to despicable, at least as seen from here. They give liberals a bad name, and it is beyond belief that The Boston Globe supports such actions in its editorial.

I wouldn’t call anything that appears in a Globe editorial is “beyond belief”. My expectations of Boston Globe editorials are always low but seldom met. Here is one especially obtuse passage from the Globe editorial that probably lit Mr. Duquenala’s fuse:

Many Venezuelans are far poorer than the Americans who will benefit from the discounted oil. A case can be made that Chavez should help his own countrymen first. Americans, however, are major consumers of Venezuelan oil. It's appropriate for Chavez to offer discounts as an informal rebate to the customers who are most affected by high prices.

Representative Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, is investigating to determine whether the oil deal is ''part of an unfriendly government's increasingly belligerent and hostile foreign policy." If this is belligerence, let's have more.

There is superb Globe editorial perception! They conveniently look past the fact that the only oil discounts offered by Chávez were targeted precisely to give maximum political mileage to his favorite Washington toady, our own Congressman Delahunt.

A far more accurate editorial assessment of the blovatious Congressman Delahunt came last November 30 on the Wall Street Journal Op Ed page (which, regardless of ideology, is a far superior and more influential Op Ed page than the Globe musters). The Journal Editorial began:

Money can't buy love, unless you're Anna Nicole Smith. But these days a little heating oil can buy friends in Washington, especially when they come as cheap as Democrat William Delahunt. Massachusetts wants bargain oil prices to help it through the winter. Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chávez wants influence in Washington. Leave it to the Congressman from the Commonwealth and a Kennedy to close the deal.

Last week Venezuela announced that its U.S.-based Citgo Petroleum would sell 12 million gallons of home heating oil at a 40% discount to help the poor in Massachusetts. The deal was announced by Mr. Delahunt on the lawn of a beneficiary before Thanksgiving, with Congressman Ed Markey at his side. "This today is about people, it's not about politics," Mr. Delahunt said with a straight face. Massachusetts-based Citizens Energy, run by the Kennedy clan, will be one of the distributors.

"To Citgo, to the people of Venezuela, our debt," the Congressman pledged. Mr. Delahunt should rightly feel a debt to the people of Venezuela, whose per-capita income is perhaps one-tenth that of Massachusetts and whose sole source of hard currency is the oil that their leader is now giving away to the second-richest state in the union. But Mr. Delahunt has no unpaid debt to Mr. Chávez. For some years now the Congressman has been lobbying hard for the Venezuelan despot, whom he paints as a misunderstood humanitarian. How French.

And concluded:

Mr. Delahunt returned to Caracas to dine with Mr. Chávez in August and was asked whether he might be acting in opposition to U.S. policy. "I don't work for Condoleezza Rice. I don't report to the State Department. I report to the people who elected me in the state of Massachusetts. I belong to an independent branch of government."

Which would be more accurate if it were possible for Massachusetts to have a separate foreign policy. Mr. Delahunt's lobbying for the dictator undermines any official U.S. pressure on Mr. Chávez to behave more humanely, which is precisely why Mr. Chávez is returning the favor by plying Mr. Delahunt with cheap oil.

For less pliable Americans, el jefe del Caracas has a different policy. On Monday, a U.S. Congressional delegation led by House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde and ranking Democrat Tom Lantos was barred from entering the country and held aboard their aircraft for two hours. The delegation's itinerary had been known to Venezuelan officials for weeks. For a little more discount oil, perhaps Mr. Delahunt will explain to his colleagues how this was all just one big misunderstanding.

Delahunt serves as a cheap Washington hooker in for Chávez, and the Globe Editorial page serves the same role at home for the Congressman. I say “ick” to both of them.

Fiddling While Gasoline Burns

(Boston Globe Staff Photo / George Rizer)

Tuesday a truck carrying sugar jackknifed on Boston’s Southeast 'Distressway' (I-93) at 10:30 AM. According to the Boston Globe the traffic was mostly blocked in both directions until 3:00 PM (4 ½ hours!) because [emphasis mine]:

"The delay in reopening the three southbound lanes and two northbound lanes was caused by diesel fuel that leaked from the truck and was treated as a hazardous material spill. ''One of the tanks on the cab was split open, and about 40 gallons of fuel ended up on the roadway,' [State Trooper]Paine said.

Cleanup crews spent most of the afternoon vacuuming and absorbing the fuel leak, said Joseph Ferson, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection."

So how stupid is this? Let’s contemplate it for a moment.

The Globe story eloquently details the horrors faced by drivers stuck in traffic jams that extended in both directions on I-93 for a total of 10-15 miles according to the Globe's graphic, and most drivers lost at least an hour of their time. Thus, in order to clean up 40 gallons of diesel fuel and prevent it from draining into Boston harbor, 10-20,000 cars were held up in traffic for more than an hour each, while their engines kept burning gas or diesel! If you do the math you can see that the choice here was to probably burn roughly 20,000 gallons of fuel and waste hundreds of thousands of person-hours so as to keep 40 gallons of diesel out of Boston harbor.

But wait, there’s more! (Mr. Ronco was right)

We didn’t do all that because of just 40 gallons of diesel. No, we did it for far less. Of course you can quickly absorb most of the spilled oil with the right tools and enough absorbent, but getting the last bit – the last 1-2 gallons – is very difficult. So we burned 20,000 gallons of fuel and kept thousands waiting in traffic most likely just to keep 1 or 2 gallons of diesel fuel out of the harbor.

Here is a case of environmental stupidity at its very finest; sparing the conscience of some environmental extremist by dutifully chasing 1-2 gallons of fuel while at the same time wastefully burning thousands of gallons elsewhere, causing far more waste and pollution than was actually prevented.

May Day: Remembering the Gulag's Victims

R.J. Rummel asks this poignant question in the blog Catallarchy:

"...the annual risk of a person under Soviet control being murdered by the regime was 1 out of 222. But, compare – the annual risk of anyone in the world dying from war was 1 out of 5,556, from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day was 1 out of 278, from any cancer was 1 out of 357, or for an American to die in an auto accident was 1 out of 4,167.1

Now, I must ask, with perhaps an unconscious touch of outrage in my voice, why is this death by Marxism, so incredible and significant in its magnitude, unknown or unappreciated compared to the importance given slavery, cancer deaths, auto accident deaths, and so on. Especially, especially I must add again, when unlike cancer, auto accidents, and smoking, those deaths under Marxism in the Soviet Union were intentionally caused? "

This is the question of our era.

Holocaust denial may be reserved for nut-cases, but Gulag denial has been in fashion for decades and remains so today, especially in academia. As the facts continue to trickle out of the Soviet archives, the denial shifts from the Gulag itself to the connection between Marxism and the Soviet state's systematic murder of roughly 60 million souls. The bloody facts of the Gulag are central to our history and the need to address them cannot be ignored. It is a Holocaust whose victims need to be heard, at least in death.

NOTE: I'm a day late with a May Day post due to issues with Blogger. Sorry.