From MLB.com:
Old Timers gather at the Cathedral
By Bryan Hoch

08/02/2008 4:32 PM ET

NEW YORK -- As centuries of combined playing experience slung their arms over the padded dugout railing, the rosters emerged one by one onto the storied playing field -- one more afternoon of glory in the sun for those Yankees of days gone by, whose baseball cards were long lost to bicycle spokes and mothers on spring cleaning missions.

Seventy-two former Yankees greats were in attendance on Saturday for the 62nd Old-Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium, marking the final time that the festivities will take place at the current facility before the club moves into the new Yankee Stadium across 161st Street in 2009.

The afternoon opened with gray skies and heavy downpours, but as surprise guest Willie Randolph said, staring into the sky from the first-base dugout, "I'm not going to let this put a damper on my day."

Neither would the weather, as it turned out -- by 1:40 p.m. ET, the skies cleared and the tarp was being pulled off, drawing the living snapshots of decades past down the runway past the Joe DiMaggio sign once more and onto the infield grass.

Their names called by emcees John Sterling and Michael Kay, they charged out of the dugout -- some slower than others -- and doffed their caps, exposing bald spots and more contemporary haircuts that weren't present when those old snapshots for the Topps company were taken.

"Really, the best part is the introductions, beforehand," David Cone said. "The game is the game and whatever happens during the game is kind of fun. It's not taken too seriously and it's kind of a light nature. The introductions before mean a lot, especially to some of the old-time players who didn't get the recognition as we do now with television coverage and the Internet."

Reggie Jackson threw on his old-school stirrups and slapped a hand across Derek Jeter's back, wandering the rows of current Yankees lockers. Down the hall, the slick-fielding Bobby Richardson grabbed up Dr. Bobby Brown and Jerry Coleman, holding a conversation about the good old days and catching up on what has transpired since the last class reunion.

Cone looked around the auxiliary locker room, realizing he was once more in the company of David Wells and Don Larsen, a trio of living perfection. Larsen scoffed at someone who asked if he had any plans on taking the mound once more, saying, "My arm is tofu. You know what that is? It's a soft rice bean cake."

Among the 18 first-time Old-Timers' were seven members of the 1996 World Series club, helping to lend a younger touch to the scene.

"It's exciting, you know?" Rickey Henderson said. "This is my first one and it's something different -- to be able to play with all of your teammates and enjoy a special day. This is the last time I'll ever play in this ballpark and this is one of the oldest ballparks that I'll ever play in, so it's an honor to be invited back."

There was Wells -- as recently as three months ago looking for work in the Major Leagues -- admitting that his career has run its course. As tough as it was to swallow, Wells said he accepted that he now belonged in the cramped auxiliary locker room with the other retired players, where elbow room quickly grew as scarce as available cold cuts on the buffet table.

"You know the day is going to come, but you want them to kick you out," Wells said. "I guess they did."

Yet Wells' control was still there -- at least, sharp enough not to disrupt a conversation between Don Baylor and Dave Winfield during pregame warmups, who chatted amiably while Wells and Al Leiter geared up with soft tosses.

"It's so great to see guys," Jim Abbott said. "You play baseball together and you grow so close. I remember walking in the tunnel as an opposing player for the first time and you see the rich history. To pitch here in front of the fans, you never know what's going to happen. I still love it."

The fans had plenty of time to cheer in a ceremony that lasted more than one hour: Rickey Henderson got a loud ovation, and they stood for Wells. As usual, Paul O'Neill brought the house down with chants, and Randolph proved that you can go home again, twirling by home plate and waving his cap to the upper tier.

Yogi Berra was the final honored guest out of the dugout, leaving all of the assembled Yankees clapping from the baselines. Yogi tucked his thumbs into his belt loops and grinned, as only Yogi can.

"These men still have pride to wear pinstripes in this day and age," O'Neill said. "You can only clap for the fans, because they've been such a huge part of it through the years. There's been so much history here that even when this place closes, I don't know if there will ever be a ballpark that has the memories that this place has right here."

There was a one-inning exhibition, one in which the final score was irrelevant. It was more about the memories and honoring history: when else could you see a double play turned from Bobby Richardson to Randolph to Tino Martinez, or see Al Downing come in to face Darryl Strawberry in relief?

Mike Torrez and Bucky Dent reprised their memorable 1978 meeting at Fenway Park; unlike then, when Dent crushed a three-run homer that would give the Yankees the pennant and become ingrained in everyone's fuzzy memory banks, this at-bat ended in a sharp ground ball deftly handled by shortstop Tony Fernandez.

The Old-Timers' festivities took on a poignant note with the remembrance of Yankees captain Thurman Munson, who died in a plane crash on this date in 1979.

His widow, Diana Munson, was among a group of five Yankees ladies invited to take part in the pregame introductions, joining Arlene Howard, widow of Elston Howard; Helen Hunter, widow of Jim "Catfish" Hunter; Jill Martin, widow of Billy Martin; and Cora Rizzuto, the widow of Phil Rizzuto.

"It's a sad day -- I always get sad every year when I remember the date," said Graig Nettles, a teammate of Munson's that fateful season. "We didn't get through it. I know we had to finish the season, but we had been talking about how we were going to make a comeback like we did in '78. When we lost Thurman, it took it out of us."

Some spoke about the new facility rising across the street, and much the way Berra speaks of the current Yankee Stadium by saying, "I didn't play there," there were mixed feelings. Henderson said he rode a bus to the Bronx on Saturday and leaned over to Martinez, asking if the former first baseman had seen the inside of the $1.3 billion structure.

When Martinez shook his head, Henderson winced, saying, "It won't be the same."

Others, like Darryl Strawberry, were more receptive to change: "I have great memories of this ballpark, but it's time to move on," he said. "They're moving on to a bigger and better place. New York isn't like anywhere else and they deserve it for their fans."

With at least one player from each of the last 16 world championship teams in attendance, the ceremony was large, and deservedly so. It is to be the last of its kind on the patch of land where Larsen was perfect, where Reggie hit his three World Series home runs, where Ron Guidry fanned 18 California Angels and where Wade Boggs rode a NYPD horse on the warning track.

All of those events were acknowledged on Saturday, and in a way, with six dozen former Yankees jogging to the baselines, the Stadium got its own trip down memory lane.

More importantly, the old ballpark got one more day in the sun.

Whitey Need Not Apply
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 08/01/2008 ET

"Will race be an issue in this campaign?"

Hearing the cable talk-show host solemnly pose the question, I could not suppress a belly laugh.

For the anchor was fearful that some white folks might reject Obama because he is African-American -- even as a Rasmussen poll was reporting that Barack is beating McCain among black voters 94 to 1.

What, other than race, explains how Barack rolled up 90-10 margins among black voters while running against Hillary Clinton, wife of the man novelist Toni Morrison dubbed "our first black president"?

Indeed, so one-sided was the primary coverage in favor of Barack as the first African-American with a real chance to be president, even "Saturday Night Live" took to mocking the mainstream media.

As for black radio, on "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," "Michael Baisden Show" and "The Steve Harvey Morning Show," which together may reach 20 million folks, there is "little pretense of balance," writes Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times. "More often than not the Obama campaign is discussed as the home team."

Black Entertainment Television plans to carry Barack's speech to the Democratic convention live, but has no plans to carry McCain's. Barack's speech "is an historic occasion," says BET Chairman Debra L. Lee, "so that demands some special treatment from us."

As the mainstream media have moved left and talk radio right, and cable is breaking down along political and ideological lines, there is something else afoot now -- the racial Balkanization of the newsroom.

Consider. On Sunday, 6,800 folks showed in Chicago for the 2008 quadrennial convention of UNITY: Journalists of Color. McCain declined an invitation. Bush had been booed at UNITY 2004, while John Kerry got a standing ovation. Featured speaker: Barack. Major concern of the journalists running the show: that their colleagues would lift the roof off the McCormick Place convention center when Barack arrived.

Said Luis Villareal, a producer of NBC's "Dateline," "I don't think it's such a bad thing if for 15 minutes you take off your reporter hat and respond to (Obama) as a human being at an event where you're surrounded by people of color and you're here for a united cause."

And exactly what "cause" might the 10,000 members of UNITY be united behind? The hiring and advancement of journalists of color in all major news organizations in America.

For, as its emblem depicts, UNITY comprises four alliances: the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association and the National Association of Black Journalists.

"A New Journalism for a Changing World" is UNITY's motto. And the title of its July 22 press release reveals what the "new journalism" is all about. "Aim of New UNITY Initiative Is More Diversity in Top Media Management."

"With more than 50 percent of the population projected to be people of color in less than a generation," says UNITY President Karen Lincoln Michel, "the nation's news organizations continue to generate dismal diversity numbers year after year. ... 'Ten by 2010' is a significant step in the right direction."

What is Ten by 2010?

UNITY is demanding that 10 major U.S. news organizations, by mid-2010, elevate to a senior management position in the newsroom at least one journalist of color and provide "customized training to help prepare them."

The journalist may be Asian, African-American, Native American or Hispanic, which rules out journalists of Irish, English, Polish, Italian, German or Jewish ancestry, since they are white.

Is this what we have come to 50 years after the triumph of the civil rights movement? Flat-out demands, by American journalists, for the hiring and promotion of colleagues based on race and color?

Is there any evidence major news organizations in this country have engaged in systematic discrimination to keep out men or women of color this last half century? The reverse seems true. They have bent over backward to advance minority journalists.

And if journalists have been hired and promoted based on ability and merit, why in the 21st century should these criteria be thrown out as the standards for advancement -- in favor of race and color?

Isn't this what they did in the days of Jim Crow -- hire and promote based on race? What UNITY is calling for is a return to the old rules but with new beneficiaries -- blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans -- and new victims, all of whom will be white.

On Sunday, McCain came out in favor of an Arizona civil rights initiative that would outlaw any state discrimination either for or against folks, based on race, gender or national origin. Barack said he was "disappointed" with McCain and told UNITY he favors affirmative action "when properly structured."

The Arizona referendum banning preferential treatment based on race is also on the ballot in the swing state of Colorado. It won in California in 1996, in Washington in 2000 and in Michigan in the great Democratic sweep of 2006. It has never lost, and may just win McCain Colorado, and with it the nation.

From Breitbart.com:
Another example of the wonders of diversity among non-Christian religions
'Rat people' forced to beg on Pakistan's streets

Aug 1 12:32 PM US/Eastern

Outside a Muslim shrine in this dusty Pakistani city, a "rat woman" with a tiny head sits on a filthy mattress and takes money from worshippers who cling to an ancient fertility rite.

Nadia, 25, is one of hundreds of young microcephalics -- people born with small skulls and protruding noses and ears because of a genetic mutation -- who can be found on the streets of Gujrat, in central Punjab province.

Officials say many of them have been sold off by their families to begging mafias, who exploit a tradition that the "rat children" are sacred offerings to Shah Daula, the shrine's 17th century Sufi saint.

"These are God's children. We are proud to look after her," said Ijaz Hussain, the shrine's government-employed custodian, as Nadia shrieked unintelligibly and put coins in a battered wooden box at her side.

According to local legend, infertile women who pray at Shah Daula's shrine will be granted children, but at a terrible price. The first child will be born microcephalic and must be given to the shrine, or else any further children will have the same deformity.

Hussain said Nadia was just a young child when she was dumped at the shrine 20 years ago in the dead of the night. Her parents were never traced, he says.

"Since that day we have taken care of her, she is like family to us. People come here for prayers and seek fulfilment of their desires but they are respectful towards her," added Hussain, 56.

Pakistan's government says it has tried to crack down on exploitation of the "chuhas" (Urdu for rats) and says it plans to set up a shelter in Gujrat to rehabilitate them.

The shrine stopped officially accepting microcephalics in the 1960s when the government took over the site.

But not only does it still keep Nadia at its gate, the town's beggar masters also keep the superstition alive.

"Get lost! I don't want to talk to you," shouted a bearded beggar master in Gujrat's main bus station, grabbing a microcephalic woman by the hand and leading her through the crowds when asked to comment on his actions.

Bus passengers gave the woman money, as many believe it is bad luck not to.

Another microcephalic man stood with his handler in the wilting afternoon heat, staring into space.

The high incidence of microcephalics in Gujrat, an industrial city of around one million people, has long been a bone of contention.

The popular belief among many Pakistanis -- that cruel beggar gangs clamp the children's heads in infancy -- is strongly denied by government and advocacy groups, who say there is no evidence to support this.

Recent medical studies say the most likely cause is that the normally rare recessive genes behind many microcephaly cases crop up with greater frequency because of the common custom of marrying cousins in Pakistan.

But finding the cause is easier than stamping out the exploitation of "rat children" in the name of religion, says Pir Nasiruddaula, a descendant of the saint who has written several books on the shrine.

"The myth of the chuhas has been exploited by beggar mafias and religious groups," said Nasiruddaula, a former science professor in his 70s.

"They roam the villages and if the real chuha is born they give them some money and they take them," he said.

"But what kind of saint would really curse issueless women with the 'blessing' of deformed children?"

Rakhshan Sohail, of the Punjab provincial government's Child Protection and Welfare Bureau, said his department planned to establish a centre in Gujrat to stamp out exploitation of microcephalics.

"Some of these children, the handicapped ones especially, are accompanied by relatives," he told AFP. "But begging gangs also look for poor parents who will sell them because they are a burden to feed and shelter."

Sohail said his department had busted more than 30 gangs across the province involved in exploiting street children, some of which had broken the limbs of children so that they would earn more as beggars.

But the "rat children" are symptomatic of hardships faced by up to 100,000 street children nationwide -- and an economic crisis caused by spiralling fuel and food prices is hurting his department's efforts, he said.

"It's a critical issue," he said. "When people are living on less than a dollar a day, they are more likely to put their children on the roads and make them beg."

From Pajamas Media:
When “acknowledgment” means “perpetuation,”
or Obama, liberals, and the issue of race.
By Roger Kimball

There is probably a lot one could say about the piece The New York Times ran yesterday about Barack Obama’s 12-year tenure teaching law at the University of Chicago. That Obama “never completed a single work of legal scholarship” may seem surprising given that he was teaching at a major research university where, as the Times notes, “most colleagues published by the pound.” Unsurprising is that, even back then, Obama exuded an aura of “self-absorption” and was surrounded by “groupies.” Also unsurprising is that fact that much of his teaching concerned issues of race and that, as the Times puts it, he “was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say.” Just this past Sunday, at a Chicago fundraiser, he lectured his audience about the “sad,” even “tragic” nature of America’s past. “I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged,” he said.

Glenn Reynolds asks two pertinent questions:

(1) Does Barack Obama think that American history is unusually “tragic” as compared to the history of other great nations? And (2), what does it tell us that journalists were cheering him when he said that?

Regarding the first, how does American history stack up against other countries you know about when it comes to sadness and tragedy. Take Germany–no, that’s too easy. Take France and start in the time of Julius Caesar or, if that is too long ago, in the time of the Cathars and move forward noting the sadnesses and tragedy. Remember Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate who over saw the siege of Béziers in 1209? Asked by one of his soldiers how they should distinguish the innocents from the Cathars, Arnaud-Amaury memorably replied, “Tuez-les tous. Dieu reconnaîtra les siens,” “Kill ‘em all. God will know his own.” Or take a look a French life under Louis XIV, or under Robespierre and his fellow virtucrats, or under Napoleon. Ask Alfred Dreyfus about sadness and tragedy. The Dreyfus affair is also convenient for those who thrill, as do many readers of the Times, at the prospect of an orgy of national guilt. And speaking of national guilt, let’s not forget Vichy France: there are lots of opportunities there to indulge in a bit of moral masturbation.

Not that France has a monopoly or even a majority interest in such sadness and tragedy, as a look at the history of the Balkans, or Russia, or India, or China, or Japan, or the entire continent of Africa demonstrates. Indeed, when it comes to the sort of sadness and tragedy that Obama dilated on in Chicago, America has been conspicuously on the mild end of such things. I don’t deny the sordidness of slavery, the horrors of the Civil War, and all the other blemishes one might exhibit to show that America has not been perfect and has suffered its share of historical unpleasantness. But in the scheme of things, does it not seem to be an unusually blessed society, one that has been unusually spared the sorts of sadness and tragedy that form such a grim recitative in many, maybe most other countries?

Obama mentions slavery early and often, but what is more significant: the fact that slavery existed in America in the 18th and half of the 19th centuries (as it did in many other parts of the world) or that Americans took it upon themselves to end it and that today Barack Obama is a millionaire and the presumptive Democratic candidate for President?

And as for “acknowledging” the bad things from the past, what else have we been doing for the last three decades. How much expiation does Barack Obama, or Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson want? Just a few days ago, the U.S. Congress formally “apologized” for slavery: I employ scare quotes, because the apology is as meaningless as it is hypocritical. Really, I suspect, what is wanted is not “acknowledgment” but perpetual obeisance to an ever receding, impossible ideal of political rectitude.

Which brings me back to the Times’s story on Obama’s career at the University of Chicago. In the course of that story, the reporter confronts the reader with “what may be the ultimate test of racial equality–whether Americans will elect a black president.”

I stopped short reading that because I think it gets the issue 100% wrong. The implication is that if Obama is not elected, then Americans fail the test. But that, I submit, is a racist idea. How many liberals do you know who plan to vote for Barack Obama because he is black, that is to say, for a racist reason? Sure, they also like the fact that he plans to institute a European-style confiscatory tax plan. They approve of his socialistic plans to increase the size and intrusiveness of the government. They share his skepticism about our presence in Iraq and contemplate his call for “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military with equanimity, even pleasure. Really, though, all that is icing on the cake. They have closed ranks around Obama on account of the very thing that Obama pretends he wishes to transcend: the color of his skin.

From NationalPost.com:
Saint Batman?
Father Raymond J. de Souza

Thursday, July 31, 2008

SYDNEY, Australia -Heath Ledger is mesmerizing in The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film. Here in his Australian homeland, his posthumous appearance as the Joker has been a major news story for two weeks.

It's an extraordinary film, even if you are, inexplicably, unmoved by the addition of futuristic gadgets to the most reliable blockbuster combination in cinema: explosions, firearms, car chases and more explosions. This Batman comes with the bonus of some of the more combustible questions in philosophy. What is evil? Is there a moral order built into our world, or is to speak of such a moral design delusional?

This Joker does not permit us to dismiss him as delusional; he comes with an argument. This is not the maniacal buffoon of Jack Nicholson's star turn nearly 20 years ago. This Joker is diabolical.

"I choose chaos," the Joker confesses. There is no order built into human nature, no moral law written on the heart. There are rules of common agreement. But they are only manufactured rules, entirely arbitrary, without enduring value. They do not correspond to any truth--and they cannot, for there is no order or design at the heart of reality. There is only chaos, and the Joker embraces it. In an act of perverse integrity, he sets a mountain of cash alight, lest the impurity of his motives be corrupted by some logic or reason.

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical," explains Alfred, played by Michael Caine. "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Classical philosophy defined evil as not being real in itself, but the lack of something real -- just as darkness is not real in itself, but rather the lack of light. If evil is a privation, as this view suggests, then what is real has some order and goodness to it: Light is good, and it is possible to conclude that it is better than darkness.

The conflict in this Batman film surrounds the truth of this idea. The fight between Batman and the Joker is not a fight between good and evil, but about something more fundamental than that: the question of whether good and evil exist at all. Is there order, including moral order, or chaos?

"You thought we could be decent men in an indecent world," summarizes the hero-cum-villain Two-Face. "But you were wrong; the world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance."

Richard Dawkins, call your agent: As a sworn enemy of Godly design, you should be getting royalties on that one. If reality has no order to it, if there is only chaos and chance producing what we experience, then against what criterion of reality will good and evil be measured? Everything retreats into relativism and meaninglessness. Thus, the Joker describes himself as a dog who chases the car without reason or purpose. It would have no idea what to do if it ever caught it. Chasing the car, catching the car, driving the car, blowing the car up--all of it is equally meaningless.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain," the script replays as a sort of refrain. It is a deeply cynical view of human potential, namely that goodness cannot endure. Yet cynicism is the proper response if there is no possibility of choosing the good but only surviving the chaos.

The answer to the lethal relativism of the Joker is the witness of the one who testifies to the reality of the moral order by his own willingness to sacrifice for it. Batman tries to do that, but his witness is incomplete for he himself dwells in the shadows, behind a mask.

"Gotham needs a hero with a face," we are told. Yes, the world needs a witness to the truth, the goodness and the beauty of reality; a witness to the order of creation; a witness to the enduring reason through which all things were made; a witness with a human face.

We don't call those people superheroes. We call them saints.

From The Washington Times:
Obama's worldview
By Tony Blankley

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Secular would-be leaders of men who promise transcendence and transformational change have something in common with the promise and warning of many religions. They claim to want to preserve what is good in their people and change what needs to be changed to make their lives and souls even better. But unlike some religions, secular leaders with transforming visions of their mission often skip over the bits about what must be destroyed in order to bring those better things to man. And that is where religions are often more honest.

For instance, in Hindu, the god Rudra, who is also known as Lord Siva, is the third god in the Hindu trinity. He destroys worlds. Specifically, he destroys the evil passions and animal instincts that usually characterize human consciousness in order to make room for divinity to enter man's world. He is believed by many Hindus to inspire people to perform acts of courage, spiritual wisdom and devotion.

Now, I am, God knows, no expert on comparative religion. But among the more popular human attributes that many religions condemn is the human desire to possess material things (thou shall not covet thy neighbor's oxen or wives, etc.) And most religions remind us that we are all brothers and sisters of one humanity.

But man persists in liking to have things and organizing around groups smaller than humanity. Specifically, modern Western civilization - and the United States in particular - has done rather well organizing into nations and permitting its people to be free to produce and keep most of the fruits of our labor.

Reading Sen. Barack Obama's Berlin speech, I see dangerous suggestions that he doesn't share that happy view of American prosperity. As he said, while he came to Berlin as "a proud citizen of the United States" he also came to Berlin as a "fellow citizen of the world." Putting aside the thought that a rally in Berlin in front of a quarter-million glistening-eyed, bosom-clenching, swooning Germans is an historically awkward spot for a leader to proclaim his worldwide goals for tomorrow, his actual words are disconcerting enough - even if they had been delivered in peaceful Switzerland.

Mr. Obama said that "the walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand … the walls between … natives and immigrants ... cannot stand. These now are the walls that we must tear down."He also said, "We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity." That last sentence would suggest Mr. Obama is not terribly keen about nation states. It suggests that he believes that nation states have outgrown their practical and moral utility. That is why, presumably, he says that we must tear down the walls between the countries "with the most" - that would be the United States - and those with the least. That is why he calls for tearing down walls between "Natives and [illegal?] immigrants." That is why he is for strict reductions in carbon emissions for the United States even if it reduces our prosperity more than it does poorer countries.

That is why he is a sponsor of Senate Bill 2433, the Global Poverty Act, legislation that Mr. Obama's own Web site proudly claims would "cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015." Now that bill would only authorize the end of gross wealth disparities between nations - it doesn't appropriate money for it or order taxes to pay for it. So technically that promise doesn't cost a cent. But if Mr. Obama is sincere about those goals that he proudly champions - and if he has the political power next year to raise taxes and appropriate taxpayer dollars - we could see the beginning of vast transfers of our wealth to his "fellow citizens of the world."

Mr. Obama owes it to the public to let us know how much of our hard-earned money he, in his wisdom, believes we have a moral obligation to give away to poor people around the world - and how much of our money he thinks he has a moral obligation to forcefully extract from our wages through federal taxation. He has a moral obligation to do as the Hindu God Rudra did, and tell his intended subjects what of ours he will destroy to make us better people.

I hope Mr. Obama is just saying stuff that he thinks sounds good to the kids. But if Mr. Obama means what he says, we should brace for the wrath of Rudra.

Tony Blankley is a syndicated columnist.

From The Chicago Tribune:

Hopium helps you forget several unpleasant facts
By John Kass

July 30, 2008

Hi, my name is John. I'm a hopium addict.

It's true. Yes, I'm a journalist. And that led to the harder stuff. Then one day, Barack phoned the Tribune and called me "bro."

Now, I'm addicted to hopium.

So if you're addicted to hopium, or you're worried that your loved ones might fall prey to its power, then please click on this link for the hard left's Moveon.org commercial for Barack Obama

"I never thought it could happen to me," says a shaggy blond-haired surfer dude in the ad, a guy who should have carried a bong.

"I've been living with it for a while now," says a young woman, talking as if she'd contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

That's how they discuss hopium. Like a disease. But they have nothing to be guilty about. It's not some disease that cranky old Republicans can't get because they stopped having sex.

It's hopium.

Once you see it, you won't be the only one addicted to hope. You'll all become addicted—you, your family and friends, even your pets, except for various crustaceans in your aquarium, which are immune. But you and yours are not immune. You'll all become hope-heads, together.

It's America's most powerful drug. Once on hopium, you won't care if Iran has nukes or if taxes are raised during a recession or whether Obama keeps flipping and flopping on everything from foreign wiretaps to withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Who cares? Relax. Hopium is your friend.

Just ask Republicans. They sure could use some, especially now that Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted on corruption charges on Tuesday. But like lemmings, Republicans are stubbornly jumping off his bridge to nowhere.

Like today's liberals, yesterday's conservatives were also hopped up on hopium. This was years ago, when they yearned to believe in "big government conservatism," the Rule of Law Except for Scooter Libby and the Rovianization of federal prosecutors.

Now, John McCain is suffering the aftereffects, because most journalists are hope-heads who portray him as if he's the angry Scottish janitor guy on " The Simpsons." And most journalists—judging by their frenetic denials about liberal media bias—are obviously too far gone in the grip of hopium to remain rational.

"This is your brain," says a woman in the Obama ad holding a hard-boiled egg. She's an actress who once killed sexy vampires on TV.

"This is your brain on hope!" says an angry fellow sitting next to her, another actor, who played some random guy on "Boy Meets World."

He's still angry, holding a newly hatched chicken. It looks like a Peep, only alive and fluffy.

Alive. It's alive. Hope is alive.

"Hope. It could happen to you," says the narrator with a deep voice.

Then the screen is filled with Obama '08 and you realize it's a campaign commercial for Obama and you start to cry, like when you cry at Kodak commercials, or life insurance spots. We Americans are so emotional these days.

Obama hopium was so powerful, that that first rush of it, well, it sent a tingle up my leg. Or down my leg. Then up. So now, when I read newspaper stories about Obama's political history, like a recent gooey, puffy profile in the Washington Post and it didn't mention Obama as a willing member of Chicago's Daley machine, well, I didn't get angry.

Not anymore.

Why? Because I'm a hope-head.

Now, I don't get upset when foreign and national journalists fail to mention Tony Rezko, or the Daley boys, or how the Chicago machine plans to staff the Department of Justice, and the new Department of Homeland Casinos.

Who cares? I'm numb with hopium.

"I mean, this could happen to anybody," says a man in the ad.

"Anybody," says a doctor in scrubs.

"I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry," cries the stoned surfer dude.

For eight years—while the Republicans ran things—they thought hope was gone. Now, they think it's back.

I'm not the only one attending Hope-Heads Anonymous. Millions of us every day—including those 200,000 hope-head Europeans at the Obama rally in Berlin—are caught in its clutches.

One colleague whose blood is clear of hopium watched the Moveon.org ad, and said she wasn't hopeful. Rather, she was disturbed.

"The ad plays on irony, and at the same time, it supports the Obama propaganda about hope," she said. "How is that done? Irony on one hand, while driving the Obama message about hope. It's more than funny."

What is it, then?

"I don't know," she said. "I'm waiting for you to tell me."

I forgot. But then, they don't teach civics in schools anymore, so young people targeted by the Moveon.org ad can't tell me either.

What is this so-called "civics," anyway? Is it a bone near the pelvis? An economy car? Or, is it an Indonesian cat that eats coffee beans from the tree?

Does it matter, really?

Not if you're on hopium.

jskass@tribune.com

From The Washington Post: Great piece from Milbank...
President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour
By Dana Milbank

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.

Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious:

11:00 a.m.: En route TBA.

12:05 p.m.: En route TBA.

1:45 p.m.: En route TBA.

2:55 p.m.: En route TBA.

5:20 p.m.: En route TBA.

The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls -- just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door -- just as they do for the actual president.

Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama's biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.

Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that "the odds of us winning are very good" -- has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House, causing Republicans to howl about premature drape measuring. Obama was even feeling confident enough to give British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend. "If what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything, then you end up being a dilettante," he advised the prime minister, portraying his relative inexperience much as President Bush did in 2000.

On his presidential-style visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem last week, Obama left a written prayer, intercepted by an Israeli newspaper, asking God to "help me guard against pride and despair." He seems to have the despair part under control, but the pride could be a problem.

One source of the confidence is the polling, which shows him with a big lead over McCain. But polls are fickle allies: A USA Today-Gallup poll released Monday found McCain leading Obama by four percentage points among likely voters. Another reason for Obama's confidence -- the press -- is also an unfaithful partner. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported yesterday that Obama dominated the news media's attention for a seventh straight week. But there are signs that the Obama campaign's arrogance has begun to anger reporters.

In the latest issue of the New Republic, Gabriel Sherman found reporters complaining that Obama's campaign was "acting like the Prom Queen" and being more secretive than Bush. The magazine quoted the New York Times' Adam Nagourney's reaction to the Obama campaign's memo attacking one of his stories: "I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others." Then came Obama's overseas trip and the campaign's selection of which news organizations could come aboard. Among those excluded: the New Yorker magazine, which had just published a satirical cover about Obama that offended the campaign.

Even Bush hasn't tried that. But then again, Obama has been outdoing the president in ruffles and flourishes lately. As Bush held quiet signing ceremonies in the White House yesterday morning, Obama was involved in a more visible display of executive authority a block away, when he met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani at the Willard. A full block of F Street was shut down for the prime minister and the would-be president, and some 40 security and motorcade vehicles filled the street.

Later, Obama's aides issued an official-sounding statement, borrowing the language of White House communiques: "I had a productive and wide-ranging discussion. . . . I look forward to working with the democratically elected government of Pakistan."

It had been a long day of acting presidential, but Obama wasn't done. After a few hours huddling with advisers over his vice presidential choice, Obama made his way to the pep rally on the Hill. Moments after he entered the meeting with lawmakers, there was an extended cheer, followed by another, and another.

"I think this can be an incredible election," Obama said later. "I look forward to collaborating with everybody here to win the election."

Win the election? Didn't he do that already?

From The Washington Times: Excellent op-ed piece from Joe Buck and John Paul II.
Jon Voight: My concerns for America
Obama sowing socialist seeds in young people

Monday, July 28, 2008

We, as parents, are well aware of the importance of our teachers who teach and program our children. We also know how important it is for our children to play with good-thinking children growing up.

Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.

The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.

Those same leaders who were in the streets in the '60s are very powerful today in their work to bring down the Iraq war and to attack our president, and they have found their way into our schools. William Ayers is a good example of that.

Thank God, today, we have a strong generation of young soldiers who know exactly who they are and what they must do to protect our freedom and our democracy. And we have the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, who has brought hope and stability to Iraq and prevented the terrorists from establishing a base in that country. Our soldiers are lifting us to an example of patriotism at a time when we've almost forgotten who we are and what is at stake.

If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there's not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb. And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend.

Gen. Wesley Clark, who himself has shame upon him, having been relieved of his command, has done their bidding and become a lying fool in his need to demean a fellow soldier and a true hero.

This is a perilous time, and more than ever, the world needs a united and strong America. If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way.

Jon Voight is an Academy Award-winning actor who is well-known for his humanitarian work.

From Contentions blog at Commentary.com:
Whatever Happened to Liberal Humor?
Jason Maoz

07.24.2008 - 5:11 PM

The brouhaha over last week’s New Yorker cover illustration of the Obamas as the epitome of terrorist chic extended well beyond the abbreviated news cycle to which we’ve become accustomed.

A New York Times article (which fortuitously appeared the day after the offending New Yorker issue hit newsstands) on the inability or unwillingness of television comedy writers to find anything humorous about Barack Obama was followed 24 hours later by a worried Maureen Dowd ruminating on the Times’s op-ed page about the cosmic implications of a potentially thin-skinned President Obama, and by the end of the week the debate over the Meaning of It All was in full throttle.

The reaction of most liberals ranged from the usual indignant screeching about racism and jingoism to the equally familiar condescension toward benighted conservatives: “Sure, we intelligent blue-staters get the intended joke, but what about all the rubes in the heartland — the numbskulls who’ve never even heard of, much less read, the New Yorker?”

As the controversy played itself out, it became increasingly obvious that we were witness to a massive case of collective projection. Because if one thing has been evident about American politics over the past several decades, it’s that the left lost its funny bone somewhere between the Tet Offensive and the Nixon reelection landslide — and hasn’t found it since.

While R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and P.J. O’Rourke and Andrew Ferguson and Rush Limbaugh and a host of others were giving the lie to the caricature of conservatives as uptight Pecksniffs, the counterculture’s Politics of Rage was evolving into a more sedate, more deadly political correctness, effectively killing off liberal humor.

Once upon a happier time, liberals prided themselves on maintaining a certain detached bemusement. Recognizing - and lampooning - the foibles of even one’s own idols and icons was considered a sign of sophistication, bestowing on its practitioners, deservedly or not, an élan of witty bonhomie.

In Revel With a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press), Stephen Kercher paints a portrait of liberal comedians tweaking liberal and conservative politicians with almost equal verve. Liberal audiences lapped it all up (though not all liberal pols were necessarily amused - Mort Sahl’s jokes at the expense of the Kennedys led to his being blackballed, with the owner of a Los Angeles nightclub telling Sahl he’d been warned “the White House would be offended if I hired you and I’d be audited on my income tax” and another club owner stating that his refusal to cut Sahl loose led to an IRS audit and his being put out of business).

The 1960’s in particular were a golden age of liberal humor, but Lenny Bruce was as likely to excoriate liberal hypocrisy as he was to score conventional morality; the writers of the mid-‘60s political satire television program “That Was the Week That Was” hardly spared their fellow liberals from ridicule; and even as politics took on a more apocalyptical tone in the late ‘60s, shows like “Laugh-In” and “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” while decidedly liberal in tone, were equal-opportunity offenders.

To better appreciate how things have changed, consider the following bit of commentary delivered by the legendary radio humorist Jean Shepherd, a self-described liberal, during the 1960 presidential campaign, and ask yourself who would be a better bet to jest in such terms today, a liberal or a conservative:

If you have any politically minded type friends, you know — the indignant Liberal or the shell-bound Reactionary — they both talk exactly the same, because underneath, underneath that simple, homespun exterior, there’ll always beat the heart of a true Neanderthal. Doesn’t make any difference what direction it takes, you know?…If you ever really were going to chase the money changers out of the temple, daddy, there would be no temple anymore.

From TheAtlantic.com:
The American Heresy By Ross Douthat

24 Jul 2008 04:58 pm

From Jody Bottum's very fine essay on American Protestantism in the latest First Things, a brief analysis of the theology of Katherine Jefferts Schori, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church:

To be saved, we need only to realize that God already loves us, just the way we are, Schori wrote in her 2006 book, A Wing and a Prayer. She’s not exactly wrong about God’s love, but, in Schori’s happy soteriology, such love demands from us no personal ­reformation, no individual guilt, no particular penance, and no precise dogma. All we have to do, to prove the redemption we already have, is support the political causes she approves. The mission of the church is to show forth God’s love by demanding inclusion and social justice. She often points to the United Nations as an example of God’s work in the world, and when she talks about the mission of the Episcopal Church, she typically identifies it with the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals ... Her Yahweh, in other words, is a blend of Norman Vincent Peale and Dag Hammarskjöld.

The Norman Vincent Peale bit, I think, is particularly telling, because it gets at something that I think is often missed about the current religious landscape: Namely, the extent to which Schori's theological premises are shared across the culture-war divide, by Christians who oppose gay marriage and abortion and voted eagerly for George W. Bush as well as by liberal Protestants who consider the contemporary GOP an abomination. Peale's heirs occupy the pulpits of what remains of the Protestant mainline, but they preach from the dais at numerous evangelical megachurches as well. The people who read Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and The Prayer of Jabez may be more politically conservative then the people who read A Wing and a Prayer, and read certain passages of Genesis and Leviticus more literally, but the theology they're imbibing is roughly the same sort of therapeutic mush. Indeed, the big difference between the prosperity gospel that Osteen and his ilk are peddling and Schori's liberal Episcopalianism has less to do with any theological principle and more to do with what aspect of American life they want God to validate. And this difference, I suspect, has a great deal to do with social class. Osteen and Co.'s God wants us to pursue financial fulfillment because they're largely preaching to entrepreneurial, upwardly-mobile members of the middle class, whereas Schori's God wants us to pursue a more personal fulfillment - sexually, emotionally, philanthropically - because she's preaching to a demographic that, financially speaking, has already got it made. (Which, in turn, is why it isn't a surprise that as American evangelicals grow more prosperous, they're starting to discover their God's Dag Hammarskjöld side as well.)

Obviously the world of religious conservatism also includes lots of people who are invested in actual Christian orthodoxy, as opposed to the Osteen-Shori vision of God as a really powerful life coach. But the theological continuum that encompasses both Schori-style liberal Protestants and Oprah-watching, The Secret-reading spiritual seekers - call it moralistic therapeutic deism, call it gnosticism, call it the American heresy - extends way deeper into the "religious right" than a lot of people think.

'Storybook career' leads Goose to Hall
By Tom Singer / MLB.com

"My whole career has been storybook. I've kept running into the right people at the right time. I've often said that I was like a kid on a ride at Disney World, and I didn't get off for 22 years. To my hundreds of teammates through the years ... thanks for sharing the ride with me. It was amazing."
-- Rich "Goose" Gossage

07/27/2008 7:42 PM ET

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Rich "Goose" Gossage, who overcame repeated episodes of youthful doubt to become a ferocious pitcher who planted doubts in the heads of Major League batters for 22 years, accepted the final affirmation of immortal status Sunday afternoon.

With his late parents and benefactors in his heavy heart and former Yankees teammates in his sight at the Clark Sports Center, Gossage took bows as the valedictorian of the Hall of Fame class of 2008.

After being the last of three award winners and six inductees introduced by Hall of Fame Chairman Jane Forbes Clark, Gossage held aloft his freshly minted plaque to elicit another round of "Goooose!" calls from the sun-baked crowd.

"This is truly an out-of-body experience," Gossage said, launching into a 17-minute acceptance speech, during which he often appeared close to breaking. "The most amazing thing, outside of the birth of my three boys, that I've ever been through.

"My whole career has been storybook. I've kept running into the right people at the right time. I've often said that I was like a kid on a ride at Disney World, and I didn't get off for 22 years. To my hundreds of teammates through the years ... thanks for sharing the ride with me. It was amazing."

Some of those teammates were sitting right below, looking up at him on the stage: Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry, Jim Beattie and Roy White. All former Yankees, part of a team contingent that also included general manager Brian Cashman, COO Lonn Trost and vice chairperson Jennifer Steinbrenner.

The entourage reflected Gossage's induction in a Yankees cap, although he had played for eight other teams during his big league career.

"I thank the Yankees contingent that came to share this great moment with me," Gossage said during his speech. "I'm very honored to be wearing a Yankee cap into the Hall of Fame today, and to continue that great tradition."

Fulfilling his promise to be present might have seemed difficult for Cashman, but he said he didn't have a hard time at all breaking away from his team's most important series of the season.

"I'm proud to be here as another great player representing the Yankees joins the greatest ever," said Cashman. "I'll listen to the game [in Boston] tonight in the car on the way home. There's nothing else I can do to help there anyway.

"I'm humbled to be here," Cashman added. "This is hallowed ground."

Gossage thus became the 25th Yankee in the Hall of Fame -- but the first born in Colorado.

"There's something else I can't even put into words," Gossage confided in a brief meeting with the media immediately after the ceremonies. "All I ever wanted to do was put on a big league uniform one time ... and it turned into 22 years."

He never imagined it would come to this, even during a considerably proficient prep athletic career in his native Colorado Springs.

He would respond to predictions of future big league stardom by his father, Jake, who passed away when Gossage was in the 11th grade, with, "Aw, c'mon dad, that's never going to happen."

Sandlot catches would begin with getting goaded by his older brother, "You're throwing like a sissy," and Gossage responding by putting everything, and more, behind the next pitch.

"I'd be all arms and legs flailing, coming right at you," he recalled. "That's where I got that motion."

So unconfident was Gossage that as he neared high school graduation, he applied for a job as a Little League coach. He got the position, and stormed excitedly into his house to share the news with his mom.

Susanne Gossage said, "That's nice, son. Well, this gentleman has a job for you, too."

And Gossage followed her gaze to the man sitting on the couch, Bill Kimble, a scout for the Chicago White Sox, who had just taken him in the ninth round of the 1970 First-Year Player Draft.

Later that year in Appleton of the Midwest League, "All my worst fears were realized," Gossage said. "I couldn't get anybody out. After that season, I later found out, the Appleton manager had decided to release me but was talked out of it. I'm glad he was."

So were the nine teams for which Gossage posted 124 wins and 310 saves and the two (1978, 1980-81 Yankees and 1984 Padres) he pitched into the postseason.

The nine included the Pittsburgh Pirates, in 1977, much too briefly to soothe Andrew Dreyfuss, the great-grandson of charter Pirates owner, Barney, one of three inductees Sunday through the Hall's Veteran Committee on pioneers and executives.

"I just wish you were in Pittsburgh for more than one year," Dreyfuss said during his own acceptance speech on his great-grandfather's behalf. "You turned out to be pretty good, and we could have used you."

Pretty good, indeed.

The Goose bent, but never broke. His chin quivered a few times, and he had to focus on his notes through moist eyes now and then. But he needn't have worried about challenging 2001 inductee Bill Mazeroski's brevity record of 2:15.

He got to the end, and probably just in time.

"I want to thank the Hall of Fame staff for making me feel so special. And I want to thank the fans here and watching on TV ... you are the reason baseball is as great as it is today," Gossage said, then turned from the lip of the stage toward the 56 other Hall of Famers waiting to throw their arms around him in an eternal embrace.

From VDare.com:
Buchanan On World War II,
The National Question And
Hitler's Posthumous Revenge
By Marcus Epstein

Pat Buchanan’s last six books—The Great Betrayal, A Republic Not an Empire, Death of the West, Where the Right Went Wrong, State of Emergency, and Day of Reckoning—all dealt with policy and politics from a Big Picture perspective. Death of the West and State of Emergency looked specifically at the National Question. But even Buchanan’s books on trade and foreign policy went after many of the enemies of the nation, like universalism and economism.

Pat’s latest book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War is quite different. It is a historical study of various events and decisions by Britain and Germany that led up to World War I and World War II. Pat argues that had Britain acted differently, above all in giving a guarantee to Poland in March of 1939, World War II could have been avoided.

The subtitle of the book, "How Britain Lost an Empire and the West Lost the World", suggests that Pat thinks that the outcome of World War II had a great deal to do with the National Question. In fact, the opening paragraphs of the book begin with the recitation of some gloomy facts about birthrates, immigration, and loss of national self confidence to demonstrate that the West is passing away.

Naturally, most of the attention given to this book—both positive and negative—has focused on Pat’s claim that World War II was unnecessary. But in this piece, I’d like to look at if and why it really caused "The West to Lose the World".

From the lead-up to World War I to the immediate aftermath of World War II, a great deal happened to the popular perception of what the role of the nation should be in world politics, and how much race and ethnicity should be factored into the nation. Most of this is accepted by most historians and is not challenged by Pat in this book.

World War I was sparked in large part by clashing nationalisms in Europe, particularly within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Following World War, I the principle of "self-determination" for ethnic groups became a shibboleth, resulting in the redrawing of many of the borders of Europe and the Middle East.

At the same time, the first international institutions, such as the League of Nations, began.

During the interwar period Japan, Italy, and Germany experienced a form of hyper-nationalism—with the latter’s especially being intertwined with ideas of racial superiority.

After World War II, in response to the perceived failures of the League of Nations, much more powerful international institutions—most notably, the United Nations—were created. They have continued to gain more power ever since.

All these factors have led to a greater sense of international comity. But it does not seem as if "Open Borders" should be the inevitable result. What has been the most damaging reaction after World War II is the extreme reaction against nationalism and anything perceived as "racism", which is assumed—if left unchecked—to result in the next Hitler. This is why Peter Brimelow opened up Alien Nation by calling the mass immigration unleashed by the 1965 Immigration Act "Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America".

Is this reaction at all based on reality?

Most of Hitler’s expansion up until Munich was in some sense done under the guise of Grossdeutschland or "Greater Germany"—meaning that all ethnic Germans should be under the same state. Hitler’s expansion into the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and Danzig could all fit under this category. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that "National Socialists must go further" and promoted the idea of lebensraum or "living space"—meaning that the German nation and people must expand:

"The right to possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life".

But while these plans were outlined in Mein Kampf, Pat argues that these were really not part of Hitler’s immediate war ambitions. He thinks that Hitler wanted a Grossdeutschland, and then protectorate states. Although when Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, was initiated, Hitler cited lebensraum as a justification, Pat suggests that Hitler’s true motivation was in response to British intervention. He quotes Hitler:

"Britain is sustained in the struggle by hopes placed in the U.S.A. and Russia…Britain’s aim for some time to come will be to set Russia’s strength in motion against us. If the U.S.A. and Russia should enter the war against Germany the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very outset." [p. 365]

Regardless of what Hitler’s ambitions were, vanishingly few of today’s American nationalists—even the most "extreme"—have called for a white takeover the Third World. They just want the Third World out of the West. If anything, it is the Mexican elite, with its flagrant commitment to the "Mexodus", dumping its poor on its northern neighbor’s welfare system, which is using America as its lebensraum. In this sense, the U.S. has indeed become what Eugene McCarthy called "A Colony Of The World".

While Pat does not try to rehabilitate Hitler, he does scrutinize the character of Winston Churchill in some detail. He shows that, if opposition to egalitarianism and mass immigration makes one a Nazi, then Hitler’s greatest opponent would be a prime candidate for the SS.

As Pat notes, "Churchill was no egalitarian humanist". He was an avid supporter of eugenics, who warned that Britain’s population of 120,000 feeble minded "should, if possible, be segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations".[Page 401]

Churchill had no problem with the idea of some races expanding their living space: "I do not admit…that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia...by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race…has come and taken their place." [p. 403]

And Pat notes that this attitude certainly affected Churchill’s views on non-white immigration to Britain. In 1955, Churchill told an interviewer that "[non-white immigration] is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice." [p. 404]

Churchill had even suggested "Keep England White" for a slogan for immigration policy.

"The multiracial, multicultural nation of today" , Pat writes, is "no longer Churchill’s nation". [p. 405]

One can agree or disagree with Pat on whether World War II was necessary. But after reading Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, it is hard to say it was "good". The fifty million dead and the empowerment of Stalin was certainly a high price to pay for the defeat of Hitler.

And what is unquestionably unnecessary is the continued self-flagellation of the West for fear of creating another Hitler.

In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Pat has, albeit implicitly, provided further proof that America’s post-1965 immigration disaster is nothing less than "Hitler’s posthumous revenge."

Marcus Epstein [send him mail] is the founder of the Robert A Taft Club and the executive director of the The American Cause and Team America PAC. A selection of his articles can be seen here. The views he expresses are his own.

From Seraphim Secret (via Dirty Harry's Place):
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner's Wonderful Time

Ava Gardner, publicity photo for The Killers

The love affair between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra—and I'm using that term loosely—was a legendary tsunami of high drama. Both stars were emotionally immature with little impulse control. Both stars were alcoholics. And both had a history of affairs with equally unstable partners.

And so it should have been no surprise that The Voice and The Shape would meet and fall into a mad, torrid relationship punctuated by unbridled passion and equal doses of violence.

In Autumn of 1949 Gardner and Sinatra, not yet lovers, were both at the Palm Beach home of producer Darryl F. Zanuck. The liquor flowed, and the two stars locked in on each other like lethal missiles.

Ava said, “You're still married.”

Frank responded, “No, doll, it's all over. It is done.”

For hours they drank and flirted. Ava's career was going through the roof. Her smoldering role as the femme fatale in The Killers—one of the best noir movies ever—catapulted her into the Hollywood stratosphere.

For a shoeless farm girl from North Carolina with no father and little education, Hollywood stardom was a dangerous perfume. In a few short years Ava went from being a sensitive, prim and proper virgin to a notoriously loose, hard-drinking, hard-hearted woman.

Sinatra's career was in trouble. His records were not selling as they used to and MGM was anxious to let him go as his box office appeal faltered. Sinatra did not help himself by being obnoxious and hostile to the media.

Sinatra and Gardner exited Zanuck's party with a bottle of booze in hand. They clambered into Sinatra's Cadillac and putting pedal to metal, Sinatra roared into the night.

Driving along they passed the bottle back and forth.

Like two crazy kids, they were going nowhere fast.

Soon, they ended up in the small town of Indio. Sinatra pulled into the main street and parked. There he and Ava kissed and groped under the stars.

Taking a break from their make-out session, Ava tipped back her head for another long gulp of hooch. Sinatra leaned forward, opened the glove compartment and pulled out two .38 Smith & Wesson pistols.

Sinatra took aim at a street light and fired. Glass exploded. He aimed at another street light and hit it on the first shot.

Ava, a country girl who grew up around hunters, cried: “Let me shoot something.”

Sinatra grinned and handed her the second pistol. Whooping like a Confederate soldier Ava Gardner aimed at the twinkling stars and blasted away.

Frank stared at Ava, mesmerized, and knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he had finally found his soul mate. Here was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, shooting up the inexplicable universe.

Ava downed more liquor, sighted down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and fired into the window of a hardware store.

Ava shot the chambers empty and continued to shriek the rebel yell.

Sinatra put the huge Caddy into gear and headed back to Palm Springs. They didn't get very far before they heard a police siren.

Two small town cops approached with guns leveled.

Sinatra said to Ava: “Christ, what do these clowns want now?”

A few hours later, as Ava lay unconscious on a wood bench in the police station, a publicist from Los Angeles arrived by chartered plane with a big black bag that he handed over to the cops.

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were released. There was no paper trail and no publicity.

The two small town cops enjoyed a prosperous retirement.

In the morning, back in Palm Springs, Ava Gardner's sister, Bappie, was up having breakfast when Ava returned all rumpled and haggard and smelling like a speakeasy.

Bappie wanted to know where Ava was all night.

Ava replied: “I went out with Frank Sinatra. We had a wonderful time.”

Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra party hard

My main source for this anecdote is Lee Server's excellent biography Ava Gardner, Love is Nothing.

Legal Disclaimer: Seraphic Secret does not condone or recommend this style of dating. We strongly support coffee and conversation in the lobby of your local mega hotel, respect for private property, and oh yeah, firearm safety.

HAVING A BLAST: Derek Jeter and Xavier Nady
celebrate the Yankees' 10-3 win over the Red Sox yesterday.

From The New York Post:
OFF THE BREAK, STEPPING ON GAS
By MIKE VACCARO

July 27, 2008 --

BOSTON - The thing is, not so long ago the Yankees had all but stopped worrying about the Red Sox. The Sox were the Sox, and they were the defending champs, and they got off to that flying start and they were all but unbeatable at home, and they were on cruise control, and they were all but considered a bye into the American League playoffs.

"We can't worry about them," Joe Girardi said only 25 days ago, on the eve of the last time the Yankees played the Sox, in Yankee Stadium. "We have to worry about ourselves."

Funny thing about baseball, though. One night you go to sleep and it seems like you're a week and a half behind the other guy. And a few mornings later, you wake up and you almost feel like you need to shake the newspaper, trying to fix the typo.

Tied in the loss column? Really? Already?

Really. Already. The Yankees and the Red Sox will gather at Fenway Park tonight and when they do both of them will have 45 losses, the Sox keeping a percentage-points lead over the Yankees thanks to two extra games and two extra wins, but really, at this point, the mathematics don't mean near as much as the machinery.

"We're in a good stretch right now," Derek Jeter said. "We're playing well and everyone is making a contribution, and that's the kind of thing that that good teams always do."

For the first time all year, the Yankees don't need to minimize who they are or what they look like. For the first time, right now, they don't simply look like a good team, they look like a championship-caliber team. They've now won four straight off the Red Sox, the latest a 10-3 thrashing yesterday in which the Yankees made an early 2-0 deficit disappear quicker under an offensive assault that looked as unstoppable as it's looked in a good, long while.

"When you hit like that, and you pitch the way Andy [Pettitte] pitched today, good things are going to happen to you," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "I liked our approach today, on both sides. I like the way we're approaching this stretch of the season. I think it bodes very well for this team, I really do."

The Yankees limped into the All-Star Game, they dropped two out of three in Toronto and were fortunate they weren't swept. But the ham-and-egg team that went into the break has emerged as a fortified juggernaut. Exiting the break, the Yankees were fourth in the wild-card standings, with three series upcoming against the teams that lay ahead of them in those listings.

And they have yet to lose to any of them. Three to the Athletics. Three to the Twins (who were barely competitive). And now two to the Red Sox, in two completely different fashions, a 1-0 nail-biter on Friday backed up with yesterday's mashing.

Pettitte wasn't outstanding yesterday. But he was good enough. He is veteran enough to know how to minimize damage, as he did in the first inning, when a 2-0 Sox lead could easily have been 5-0 with someone else throwing. He is accomplished enough that once the Yankees got him the lead, he would sooner have thrown the Sox his wallet than anything they could hit.

And that is what's most encouraging about this Yankees stretch. Every day, there is something different, something new, to like a lot. Every day there is a new candidate to carry the Yankees through another nine-inning test, to carry them one step closer to a playoff safe place that seemed so unattainable even a month ago.

If it isn't Pettitte throwing the gem it's his generational wing man, Mike Mussina, or Joba Chamberlain, or Sindey Ponson, the ultimate reclamation project. If Robinson Cano - who might soon be the most improbably .300 hitter in years - isn't getting the key hits, and bunches of them, then it's Jeter, or it's Alex Rodriguez, or it's Melky Cabrera, who yesterday manufactured the go-ahead run with a bunt and a steal before being driven in by Johnny Damon.

Yankees fans had waited all season for this version of the Yankees to show up. The rest of the AL had feared the day it would. One group can stop waiting. The other can start worrying.