Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP; Age 89

Erica Wagner at the London Times notes the passage of one of the great voices of freedom: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

Years of internal exile and suffering never daunted him. The 1962 publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a revelation; until its publication in the Russian literary journal Novy Mir, no Soviet writer had dared tackle the subject of Stalin’s concentration camps. “Solzhenitsyn’s words burn like acid,” said The New York Times when the English translation appeared a year later.

No shock that since Wagner is a literary critic at the London Times, that her obit would take on a literary angle. Perhaps  since that’s how most people know of him and his life, that’s fitting.

No shock, either… (and I’m sorry, but this must be said)… that the Paper of Walter Duranty’s Record, the New York Times, should write a huge article on the subject, one that completely ignored the role they played in supporting the horrors that Solzhenitsyn described, becoming the official apologist for the Soviet monster,  in America.  Arguably, it would have been far more appropiate for the NY Times to issue an apolgy to Solzhenitsyn before his death. But, apparently the lesson remains unlearned, even with so great a teacher.

Sad, really.

Back along about the end of 2006, during a  Christmas break, I wrote an extended piece about Islam and some of the problems in the world with relation to it. I’ll post it here, because I think it’;s ideas are still of import, and particularly because it is important to the extended discussion I’m about to start.

By the time most of you read this, that Bastard of Baghdad will have been executed for his crimes against humanity, and specifically his fellow Iraqis. If I was to take a cue from the mainstream news services, I would be doing wall to wall coverage of this guy’s every breath between now and 10:00 PM eastern, which is when we’re told he’s going to receive his rasins. Or, not.

However; rather than dwell on the point for any length of time, perhaps it is fitting that we pay him all the attention he deserves, a which is to say none all, and rather discuss how to move the region forward.

In my job, I am if nothing thing else, a diagnostician. Rule number one in fixing problems, is diagnosing them correctly in the first place. Without that first at being accomplished you don’t have a hope in hell of solving the problem.

Well, similarly, part of our problem with our analysis of our success or failure in Iraq, and the whole of the middle eastern region, is that we have misidentified some of the problems. Some of these misidentifications have been for reasons that we’ve been force-fed all our lives. the equality of all men, etc.. I will certainly not argue against that wisdom. The problem is, While all men are created equal all cultures, are not. The cultures we’re dealing with over there don’t see it that way. They are driven by something else… a different world view, entirely.
Jason Pappas at Liberty and Culture makes this important point, by way of John Agresto, former president of St. John’s College‘s Santa Fe campus. That point being, that when we make judgments about our success or failure in Iraq, we miss in both directions, because of a complete misunderstanding of the rocky culture and the religion on which so much of it is based:

“We generally have a benign view of religion. We always insist that those who kill infidels or torture in God’s name have somehow ‘hijacked’ their religion. We consistently failed to understand that not all religions have the same view as we do of peace, of brotherhood, or of justice. Islam in general, and parts of Islam in particular, are not post-Enlightenment faiths. But why would they be? We desperately kept looking for the supposed ‘moderates’ among the clergy in Iraq. Moderate as compared to what? Just because we believe that God wants everyone to enjoy equal rights, or that killing Jews or stoning apostates is wrong, doesn’t mean that our beliefs are shared in other faiths.

And therein, lies a point that I made over a year ago now, which was unfortunately lost in the transition to this new web site. I will try to reconstruct it from memory and snippets. It generally made the point, that Islam was still waiting for its Martin Luther. I would suggest to you that Luther, more than anyone else at this time, paved the way toward the age of enlightenment. Prior to Luther’s arrival, there was no such thing as a moderate Catholic. Similarly, then, there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim today.

As I asked Bill at his excellent INDC blog back at the beginning of this year:

Where are the long lines of local Muslims angry at what’s been done to their peaceful religion? There are none, or not enough to make any difference.

The more I investigate this the more I’m convinced that the Pope, of all people, got this one right. Islam, being Islam, simply cannot reform itself. Therefore I submit, that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. More correctly, that there is no such animal as a moderate Muslim.

At least, at the moment. Which, translates into “it may be possible to inject some change down the road.” But, frankly, I consider it an open question, whether or not reform can ever occur.

Consider the state of Islam vs the state of Christianity, since the Reformation of the latter.
From an objective standpoint Christianity at least has the advantage of viewing government and religion on two separate levels. It was Christ himself who urged us to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s. Islam, meanwhile, has no separated perception in this area. At least part of this is a problem of point of view from the average Muslim; The Islamic world looks forward to the 15th century. So, perhaps viewing it from this angle will help your overall perspective. If you were a citizen of 14th century Spain, let’s say… would you have been able to envision such a separation between Rome and Madrid?

OTOH, and by the same token, the point of view differs from our standpoint…part of our inability to get our mental arms around this whole concept of the limitations of Islam to reform itself is due to the fact that whereas we deal with religion and social values on separate levels, those in the Islamic world do not, as a rule…. and that’s not much different than the point of view of the denizen of fourteenth century Spain, is it?

That’s problem number one, and it’s the easiest to describe in terms of trying to propagate a secular society.

Now, understand please, I still take the question of Islam’s ability to reform within the bounds of the religion framework an open question. Mostly this is due to a lack of understanding of what the religion encompasses at it’s foundations. I don’t pretend to understand Muslim culture. But I can’t help but speculate, here; what if the problems of reforming Islam are due to a lack of understanding of the religion by its adherents, much the same as there was a lack of understanding about the Christian faith amongst most of its adherents in Luther’s time , pre-Guttenburg?

As I have said elsewhere, Luther’s biggest contribution to the Catholic church, and ultimately to the world, was the concept that he opened the Bible and the understanding of it up to the average parishioner. Most of the people of that day who called themselves Christian, really didn’t understand the religion they claimed as their own. That’s because the majority of them couldn’t read, And even if they read English, they couldn’t read Latin, and were therefore utterly dependent on what the priest told them the book said.
So it was, that up until the time that the printing press came along, that intimate understanding, that study, was pretty much limited to the clergy, and even there, to the upper levels thereof. I’m willing to bet that’s the case in Islam… who steadfastly refuses, for example, to provide education for it’s women.

Along comes Luther with his printing press, who teaches them how to read the Bible for themselves, and gain the needed understanding of it… who tells them that a personal relationship with God is necessary, and with that personal understanding comes the reform of tolerance, which over hundreds more years becomes the church we know today.

In light of this, I would suggest to you a trend:

Here in western society, people tend to be better educated than they are in everyday Iraq, or even Egypt and Turkey, for example. This results in vastly different perceptions of everything in the world, including religion. They tend to read more, for one thing, having the ability. While I am sure that the western civilization tends to breed more placid people particularly in regards to spiritual matters, because of cultural influence alone, I would also suggest that the violence we see inherent with Islam is directly connected to the education level and therefore the understanding of that religion by its adherents.

Muslims we see here in the west are at least somewhat more peaceful than what we’ve been seeing in the MiddleEast. Is this a result of their having a better understanding of their religion, I wonder? A good understanding of one’s religion is difficult to obtain at the point of a machete , which is how Islam is so often taught in that region today.
This is one reason I’ve always been somewhat uncomfortable with the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism”; There is still a great deal of argument as to specifically what that phrase means, because the fundamentals of Islam are still in the discussion stage, even among its most adherent followers. For someone to call themselves fundamentalist, assumes that said person has a fundamental understanding of their religion. yet, that still his ill defined at best, because they themselves can’t agree on what it means, on any more than a superficial level. Without that understanding the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism” simply does not apply anymore than “Fundamental Christianity” does to pre-Guttenburg Christians.

Thus the question; If greater understanding of the religion by the very people involved in it is the answer, does this suggest a path for us to take?

If it does, then that path is going to be made somewhat more complex by the fact that there is no real hierarchy within the Muslim religious world as there is in say the various offshoots of Christianity. Even the various Christian sects are not nearly as disparate in their beliefs (and thereby the definition of being within the religion) as Muslims would seem to be. This presents some complications in terms of getting the “true Islam” message out; the various leaders themselves because there is no hierarchy, cannot seem to agree on what Islam IS… the tenants of the religion; Without the strong leadership model, the messages being sent on mixed at best. In a very real sense, there’s nobody to question as regards religious tenants.

Think about this; when it came time in the Christian church for reform, Luther had the advantage of having Pope Leo to proverbially set on fire. A focal point, if you will, to aim at. I daresay that Luther would not been able to be nearly as effective had he needed to fight a decentralized authority.

OTOH in the Islamic world, there is no such person, no such leader, no such group, even, to ask such questions of. Worse, still, the process of asking such questions can often be dangerous, if not fatal. That makes the process of questioning these radicalized versions of Islam all the harder, even assuming one isn’t going to get killed for asking the questions, or raising challenges.

To whom does one go for an authority of view on what, specifically, Islam is? I have asked that question many times in the past and usually get referred to the Koran. That answer of course, is problematic, given the number of different slants on the meaning of the Koran that there are. Certainly there are a number of different slants as well on the Bible. However I would point out that there is still an authority structure in place there, which tends to narrow the Interpretations down by quite a bit.
Without such a structure, all kinds of things pop up… The religion becomes whatever certain protagonists say it is… such as the Wahabi, for example… And there’s nobody of authority within the religion to say ‘no’.

More of a comparison; The Catholic church certainly had its bloody periods. And why did these stop? Someone sitting in authority, was there to challenge, and once that authority saw the reason in the challenge that somebody within the church said “stop”.

Who is of the like in the Islamic world? Nobody that I can see.
Yet.
And that’s a problem. But more;

Islam is still waiting for its Luther.

I figure that was part of the idea, going into Iraq in the first place: Establishing a democracy in such a place, after all, would certainly lend itself to work toward altering, and, need I say it, pacifying, Islamic society, and controlling the more violent and radical elements. My take is that if such a person or group is to rise up against the Wahhabists or Salfi, they will be the product of a freshly reformed, and democratic Iraq. Which would do a fair job of explaining why the Syrias and the Jordans and the Irans are so very concerned, just now.

The very reason that those hardline Islamic states are so concerned about the insertion of democracy into Iraq is because they see ….apparently more clearly than we… that democracy, for all its faults, has one major advantage ; That it by its very nature injects social change, by way of what I will call “Social Darwinism”. Such evolution has no chance whatever under, say, a Saddam… but it DOES stand a chance under a Democracy. Under a democracy, the ideas and ideals of western culture will filter through, as they have every other place where Democracy has been installed. Japan, for example. South Korea. Etc.

This change will undoubtedly allow a more western attitude, and thereby will create the environment in which Islam’s Luther can stand forth. But this isn’t going to be a quick process. It’s going to be along slow and likely (given whom we’re dealing with) very bloody process, because changing hearts and minds is always the longest , slowest, hardest job there is. And, of course, that assumes we actually have the courage to see it through. Given the recent election, I have my doubts.

We have to stick with the plan. The consequences of not doing so are utter failure, for both they, and us. I say again; It’s not going to be quick. We in the west, cannot expect that kind of seed change to occur overnight. What we’re talking about, is dragging Islam and its followers fast forward from the fourteenth century. We cannot do that quickly, or by force and not expect violent reaction. Forced change, is never long lasting , and seldom satisfactory for anybody concerned. What needs to be done therefore, is to create an environment in which an Islamic version of Luther can stand forth, so that the culture can change ITSELF.

And all of this is exactly why I’ve said that a democracy in Iraq is a good place to start; It’s only under such conditions that Islam can it last find its own Martin Luther. But I wonder if the democrats in Congress are up to creating the conditions where all that can happen.
-=–=-<end of post from December 29th, 2006

So now the other day, along comes Fran Porretto, of Eternity Road and an article called After Islam. Fran is apparently not so optimistic as I as regards the possibility of co-existence:

With regard to Islamic penetration of the West and the hazards to life and liberty that have accompanied it, your Curmudgeon isn’t completely alone in proclaiming the inevitability of quarantine or genocide, but he comes pretty damned close. The usual dissenter’s rejoinder is that “we can’t.” Can’t what? Can’t quarantine all Muslims in the existing Islamic states? Can’t kill them all? Can’t kill some and quarantine the rest? Answers are infrequent; the conversation usually trails off at that point.

In point of fact, we — the United States of America — jolly well could do any of the three. We’re not incapable; we’re reluctant. But the time is drawing near when we must choose among them. Rest assured: choose we most certainly will, for the alternative is the extinction of the United States in particular and Western civilization in general. Whichever path we select, and by whatever process we select it, it will occasion great moral agony for its executors, for a good nine-tenths of Muslims worldwide are at worst passive enablers for their jihadist brethren.

Ouch.

While I share his outlook on co-existence under the current set of conditions, I wonder just a bit at his insistance that there’s no cure for the situation from within Islam itself.

The various fables told about Saracen Spain, the most frequently raised “example” of peaceful and tolerant Islamic rule, have all been debunked. No comparable arrangement has fared any better.

Well, that’s certainly true enough, but what of changing Islam from within, as I mention in the old article reprinted here? Well, Fran’s dialogue takes a left turn at the end of the piece, which tends to make my point for me:

Islam did not give birth to the savageries practiced by its adherents; rather, it provided them with a pseudo-theological justification for what they were inclined to do anyway. If Islam were washed away completely — if the last known Qur’an were destroyed and all memory of its contents effaced from the world — the savagery it legitimized would still exist. It would remain so until social and economic evolution had raised the afflicted peoples to something approximating the Judeo-Christian ethos — an interval at whose length your Curmudgeon is indisposed to guess.

Correct. Which is exactly why, as I said back in 2006, that the way out of this is inserting a Democracy in thier midst. Such a move would provide the social and economic path forward, the lack of which entraps so many in that 14th century culture.

As for how long…. there are no shortcuts to this process. Changing minds is always the hardest path. It’s also, in the end the most rewarding.

Joyner notes Kevin Drum:

It’s a pretty good bet that any law named after a child is a lousy one.

He’s referencing “Sarah’s Law” here but he’s right: laws passed in the emotional wake of one very specific crime are bound to be problematic. That’s doubly true if it’s done “for the children.”

I tell him:

I wonder, however how many other things that can be applied to. As an example, let’s consider the anti- oil-drilling laws that popped up after a spill in California, to name but one.

At some point, regardless of the original topic, the logic of unintended consequences leads us to the conclusion that governmental response invariably makes our original problem worse.

What I didn’t say there, is that such a conclusion is problematic for people like Drum, who for example and by my reading, figures that all problems can be solved by governmental intervention. Drum’s conclusion here is quite logical, but I will guarantee you he will never take that thought to it’s logical conclusion. Witness; Does he not still shill for Democrats?

Michael D is miffed at Obama for suggesting that the solution for oil supply problems is to find more. Apparently to him, that’s not painful enough for us.

Look, I know that there are people who are suffering because of high gas prices. I’m one of them, although I know that, like many of you, I can probably afford the prices more than a lot of people. My problem with this is that I think democrats should be solidly be on the side of finding alternative energy. Rising gas prices have made a difference. I’ve noticed a lot more people riding MARTA in Atlanta – a LOT more. I’d be willing to bet many of these people were like me, before I made a commitment to figuring out the system and how to make it work. Pain works.

But toward what, I wonder?

Personally, I don’t want to see gas prices come down because we’re drilling and finding more. The United States is finally getting a taste of what it’s been like in Europe and the rest of the world forever. When I first moved to Atlanta from Canada, I remember gas was 89¢ a gallon. There will never be improvements made in mass transit, no one will ever complain that we’re not investing in wind energy, and no one will ever be pushing for plug-in hybrids or electric cars is gas is cheap as dirt.

Do you see what we’re up against, here, people? First of all, Europe and the rest of the world have been dealing with high gas prices forever because they’re taxing the hell out of their people, not because there was a shortage of supply. I fail to see any advantage whatever in causing people pain, causing them to pay higher prices for anything and I also see no benefit whatever in chasing ‘alternative energy’ pipe dreams.   We most certainly can… and must… drill our way out of this nonsense…. always assuming we can get the left from between us and our energy supply… we do have around 200 years worth of known reserves… and we are finding more all the time. Meanwhile, what we  certainly cannot do, is mass-transit, wind farm and solar our way out of our issues.  Oil, and individual transportation works, and this other stuff the left… Cole included… are pushing, are simply isn’t ready for prime time yet… nor will it be for at least ten years.. if it ever well be.

Come to think on it, now, …ten years…. isn’t that the length of time we were told it would take to get ANWR’s oil fields online, and that therefore we shouldn’t even bother trying to develop those energy sources? The fallacy of that kind of non-thought is now seen by the American people and they are reacting accordingly.  Obama sees the numbers of voters, and knows what is what. He has begun to understand that with 75% of the voters wanting domestic drilling to take place, they’re on the wrong side of the biggest issue of this election.  Michael D, I fear, will never understand such things.

Reality rears it’s head: No matter what happens, we’re going to need oil to fuel ourselves for a long while to come. Meanwhile the never changing left wants to see us herded like cattle into buses and non-existent trains, based on the supposed European model.

But wait; does that model really work?   A short time ago, a study was done in Europe, using cell-phones as tracking devices, to see what the travel patterns of Europeans actually are. Turns out, the reason Europe’s mass transit systems work so well is Europeans seldom go beyond 6 miles away from home, even for vacations. Thereby we learn the reason the European transit systems work so well is nobody bloody well USES them.  A real advantage, huh?

The desperation of the left is amazing and terrible to see. THey’re losing their issue, here. Michael D reaction says some of them will never understand why.

(Update/Edit: Bit): Attribution correction… I originally wrote that it was Cole… and it wasn’t… rather being someone at his site… and Cole is none too pleased. He tells Michael D, the author:

No offense, but Obama’s position on this sucks because you don’t have your pipe dream?

I give up.  F— it.  This country deserves McCain.

Well, I dunno about that, but it certainly doesn’t deserve Obama, anyway. Still, credit where it’s due. Cole has correctly identified the complaint for what it is; A pipe dream.  My bad, John. But see the comments.

Bob Herbert, New York Times, attempts to slime John McCain, only to show his true and bigoted colors:

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

Well Herbert is right, half right.   The race card is bieng played but its being played by Barack Obama.

From a recent BO campaign rally in Florida, as attributed by Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

Protester: So my question is: In the face of the numerous attacks that are made against the African community or the black community, by the same US government that you aspire to lead — and we are talking about attacks like the sub prime mortgage that you spoke of — it wasn’t just a general ambiguous kind of phenomena, a phenomena that targeted the African community and Latino community, attacks like the killing of Sean Bell by the New York police department and right here in St. Petersburg by the St. Petersburg police, and Jena 6 and Hurricane Katrina, and the list goes on. In the face of all these attacks that are clearly being made on the African community, why is it that you have not had the ability to not one time speak to the interests and even speak on the behalf of the oppressed and exploited African community or black community in this country?

Obama: Well, I, ah, I guess, I… Hold on a second, everybody. I want everybody to be respectful. That’s why we are having a town hall meeting. That’s democracy at work. And he asked a legitimate question, so I want to give him an answer.:

Ed has the video posted.   The unnamed protester’s question is in no way legitimate.

The sub prime mortgage lending was not an attack on anybody by the federal government.

The killing of Sean Bell was not an attack on a community, it was an attack on an individual.   It was an incident.   An incident which was investigated by New York city and resolved by New York State.   You can debate and question the outcome of the cases   It is not appropriate to call the Bell tragity an attack by the federal government..

The Jena Six incident was an attack by six black teenagers on one white teenager.  Jena Six is more akin to an attack by the black community than an attack on the community.

The problem with the govenment response to Hurricane Katrina is that the local mayor and the state governor were both incompetent, and the former, Ray Nagin, is black.

In his lust for office, Barack Obama accepts false black sterotypes.  Obama may call this judgement and leadership.  I call it racial bigotry.  What say you?

Bit wasn’t the only one wrestling with problems this morning.

Ended up watching Zulu last night.  Good movie.  I’d seen the movie before.  So I wasn’t going to watch the whole movie   Needless to say, I got caught up in the movie and watched the whole thing.   I believe the movie is the best work both Stanley Baker and Richard Burton did.   I am great fan of Burton’s voice, just not his acting.  Bottom line, dead Zulus everywhere.

Got back on the computer after the flick and ran smack into the Sitemeter problems   I think the Bitsblog’s technical staff, to wit Eric, did a outstanding job recovering.  Bottom line, dead blogs everywhere, both last night and into this morning.

Some might consider it as form of company punishement, but I like to do trail maintence.   This morning’s mission was “alien invasive species removal”, in the form of  Bush Honeysuckle.   With Honeysuckle you have to get the base of the problem.  Cut the bush off close to the ground.  So there I was crawling around on the ground trying locate the stem.   I look around and found that some form of ground bees were using the bush as their home.   I only got stung once but beat a haaty retreat.  For what worth, that particular bush did not get eradicated.  The next two bushs I went after also seemed have ground bees.   So I beat a another retreat and decided is was a good time to take a break.   So I did.   So after the crew put in a good morning’s work, there were dead Honeysuckles everywhere.  

Then wrestling with ground bees was probably easier then wrestling with computer code.

Little Green Footballs is on the ball, here, having noticed about half of blogdom is missing… if, that is you’re using IE7… saying about 7pm EDT:

I’ve confirmed that there’s some kind of problem on the Internet, that only seems to affect users of the Internet Explorer 7 web browser. Attempting to browse to many sites results in an ‘Operation Aborted’ error. No information about the problem elsewhere yet … stay tuned.

UPDATE at 8/1/08 7:20:27 pm:

It appears to be related to Sitemeter.com — browsing to their web site with Internet Explorer 7 produces the error too.

I have to tell you, I’m  A little annoyed to say the least. It looks like what has happened, is that Sitemeter has decided to go chaging it’s code, saying just day before yesterday on it’s blog:

For those of you who currently use the SiteMeter Icon that displays the total visitors to your site we wanted to let you know about some forthcoming changes to this feature.

Following the migration of all our SiteMeter customers to the new platform the counter display image will no longer be part of the tracking code. It will instead be available through a separate piece of code which you paste on your site just like you do with our statistics tracking code.

We’ve done this for a few reasons –

1 – It offers a slight improvement to performance and page load times.
2 – It gives you the option of having it displayed on as few or as many pages as you want.
3 – It allows you to place the code on any page you want, visible to site visitors or on a page only accessible by you the site owner.
4 – It allows you to now have the option of displaying either Total Visits OR Total PageViews.

Our plan is that all SiteMeter customers currently using the icon with the counter display image will be have their icons changed to the static default SiteMeter icon following the migration to the new platform. After the migration you can then log into the new system, grab the new counter code at your leisure, select whether you want Visits or PageViews displayed and paste it on only the pages you desire.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but we hope the new features and benefits will be appreciated.

Do you really think this was enough notice, guys?

It gets better… turns out a lot of their servers are offline today, too, and they report this in a different post:

OK, I’ve got it lots closer than it was.

The links are working better, though there’s some inconstancy in the way it handles some of the rollovers in some of the sidebar links; I’m looking into that.  The rollovers on the top menu use a nice little shaded GIF for a background. I’ve re-written the thing so all rollovers use the same graphic.  You’ll see what I mean. A little constancy.  The rest of the stuff is pretty minor.

Because the ads I run in the sidebars are somewhat wider than the width this theme originally provided me, I had to play with them a bit… the right sidebar is a little wider than the left one.. about 20 pix or so. That allows for better picture handling inline. I’ve also modified the blockquotes a bit.

Here’s a block quote.

Here’s a nested blockquote.

Here’s a double-nested blockquote

I’ve widened the field of the body by quite a bit, to allow for the larger text. The theme is now optimal for a 1024*768 screen size. Others resolutions will work, but may exhibit some weird behavior. 800*600 is an operational minimum, but you lose the right sidebar, that way. No big deal, since the vast majority… about 97%, of our visitors are at 1024 or higher anyway.

The work will continue to progress, but I’ve been at it since early this morning, so I’ll take a break for a while.

Who said making a theme change was simply a matter of tossing a new theme directory in?
Put them on the rack.
Or better yet, have them struggle through this process themselves. I suggest that would be more painful by far.

Update to the Update:

I’ve added a little functionality to the archive section.

First, note the calander. You can pand pack and forth, month by month with it. Roll over a date where there are actually posts, and the titles of those posts become visible in those browsers that can do that kind of thing…(IE, and Focpro)  If you want to leap to a month and year, you can do that more quickly with the pulldown directly under the calander.   And if you want to do a string search, you can do that in the line under that.  Works really slick.

Attributed to Mrs. Pelosi by Jimmie, Sundries Shack:

“The House is in adjournment. The lights are off, the mikes are off…They can talk all they want. We’re just doing what we normally do.”

Even BO is calling the price of gasoline an “economic emergency.”   Mrs. Pelosi:  Normal isn’t nearly good enough.

Aside to BO:  Evidently you have never heard of China.

Hat tip:  Michelle

As you see, we have a new theme going.

This is the one I’ve been doing some work on. We were forced to put it up tonight to provide a fast recovery from a failure over at SiteMeter. Putting this theme up was the fastest way I could think of to get things working again quickly.

THe site was partially down at 11pm, when I found out about it.  I put the new theme up (Sans the call to Sitemeter) and since then, I’ve spent perhaps an hour and a half touching up the CSS and making it a bit more readable. There’s still a few issues I have to touch up… particularly the way the CSS handles links… and I’m not fully happy with the block quotes, either, but this will get us by for the night.

Let us know what you think of the new look.

The hero of the day is Deby, Apples of Gold:

Blogger Problem PLEASE read

If you have sitemeter and us Internet Explorer, they are not working together and will not allow
you to get into your blog. What it also means that I cannot read any blogs with sitemeters on them.
THIS is a HUGE problem in blogspot land right now.
What you do is:
go to blogspot.com
log in
get to your dashboard
then layouts
remove sitemeter….

THAT is the only reason my blog is working tonight….
hope this helps some of you

A short while ago, my cell phone’s alert went off.  It was DavdL, whose mailnote to me had been forwarded by my mail server to the phone, as I programmed it to do some months ago. figuring if a site emergency came up, I’d know.

Tonight was such a night.

Sitemeter, apparently, has made some kind of unannounced change in their scripting.  The site was resolving on Foxpro, but not on any version of IE that I have working here.  Or perhaps IE pushed a security update? Nah… Not on a Friday.  To get the site working, I had to switch to the theme I’ve been working on. It was the fastest way I could think of to take Sitemeter down. The theme isn’t  done yet, but it’ll get us by.

Come to think of it, May as well make this a positive thing, get some good out of their screwup…I’d like you to comment, readers, and let me know what you think of this theme. It’s going to take some polishing up, but see if you like the basic layout, and leave me some comments on it? Thumbs up? thumbs down?

Does anybody, aside from the media, listen to Barack Obama? Evidently not. The price of gasoline is over four dollars a gallon. So BO declares an economic emergency , and in response Mrs. Pelosi, and her entire caucus, go on vacation, John Bresnahan, Politico

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House, turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m., and they are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess

Call your representative and tell him to get back to Washington and get to doing the peoples’ work.  This is no time for a vacation.   Or is it?

• It’s August, already? Where the hell did July go?   2/3rds of the summer is gone and I’m just getting started on the stuff I wanted to do this year.
• Honorable Mention at OTB’s caption Contest. I gotta admit, that one was easy.
• I’m sure a man of his stature will not notice this, but I offer a BBCT and a hearty “Well done” to Rush Limbaugh for his 20 years on the air. Michelle notes this one too.
• Still no news on the cause of death for Frederick W. Hutchins, the aid to Democrat Jim Webb. I should think it would take less time than this if the case was a clear cut suicide.  I remain skeptical.
• Speaking of suicide, we now see Bruce Ivins took the shortcut out of the playing field last night. He’s the one the FBI figured out was behind all the Anthrax stuff post-9/11, after they stopped chasing Steven Hatfill.
• I guess when it comes to diet, there’s two sides to every story. Ya gotta wonder what motivates some folks, though.
• So, there’s a lotta folks a little annoyed, out in Hollywood, about McCain’s “Celebrity” ad of last night. Can someone please explain to me, in terms of Joe Lunchpail votes, how that works out to be a bad thing for McCain?
• When even Hardball notices Obama’s numbers are dropping… Hey, I know… let’s have Obama play the race card… that’ll help, right? Oops… too late. Thing is, Obama shouldn’t be playing that card too much either… the voters he thinks are a lock, aren’t too happy.
• That bit with John Edwards continues apace. Seems the child he supposedly had with what’s her name, has a birth certificate that doesn’t list anyone as being the father.
• Yes, Krugman.. no doubt the planet can be saved… but it’s predicated on your getting off it, first.  The only hoax bigger than global warming “Climate change” (Insert latest Al Gore Rant here), sir, is you being taken seriously by anyone at all. Want a solution to ‘global warming”?  I’ve got one, and it doesn’t involve congressional roadblocks to drilling our own oil, either. Ready? Just shut UP.  Close your MOUTH. That single action will do more to reduce the earth’s temperature, than anything Al Gore has ever come up with. And, Paul? I’m being very kind to you, here. You can’t BEGIN to understand the contempt you’re held in here, anymore than you understand half the subjects you witlessly prattle on about.
• They’ve found Water on Mars..  No evidence of life, yet, though.  Nor can they explain the global warming there. Must be those damned SUV’s we put there, to test for water, if you listen to Krugman.
• Nancy Pelosi continues to be part of our energy problem. Does she honestly think the Democrats aren’t going to pay for this in November? There’s a lot of Democrats that are worried about exactly that.  I see her book isn’t doing so well, either. That doesn’t stop her and the Democrats from going home. Meanwhile, Michelle says the Republicans are calling on the Presdient to push a Special session on energy, to try and forse the issue. Sadly, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
• But John Hawkins notes another wrinkle in Nancy’s pantsuit, that may force their hand:
  

  Yesterday, the fine folks over at Americans for Prosperity alerted me to the fact that the election issue of all election issues has been dumped into the GOP’s lap.

  You see, on October 1st, 2008, “the existing bans on Outer Continental Shelf drilling and oil shale leasing expire — unless Congress specifically votes to extend the bans.”

  What will likely happen, according to AFP is that “Congressional leaders will likely try to sneak an extension into supposedly ‘must-pass’ last-minute spending legislation.”

  In short,, dear reader, the Democrats are not only going to have to continue this stonewall act in the face of 75% of loters,  they’re going to try to take positive action to make sure we can’t get to our own oil. Personally, I will enjoy seeing them trying to justify this one. Can you imagine this kinda thing in an election year? Can YOU say “eEpublicans take over Congress again?”  John Says:

  So, take a look at what I have written and take a look at the letter the AFP has been sending around to Congress that follows and call your senators and congressmen, call your favorite talk radio host and get them talking about this, write your favorite bloggers, and email your friends. If the Republican pols on the Hill see that this is taking off, they will get on board, too, and it can change the face of the political landscape in 2008.

  I concur. Write. Fax. Scream. Holler. Raise hell. This is an issue of national security and should be treated as such. As such our country’s future depends on drilling. Now. Do it NOW.  The letter he mentionsis at the link.

• And hey, Matt… a shout outto you. Does this mean you and Klien are going to stop shilling for Democrats, the party that brought you all the mess you describe?

One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result. This article by Joel Kotkin presents the data showing the urban cores going more and more for the democrats since 1960. He points out the corresponding demographic trends that underly that move. Namely the increased poverty and racial segregation of urban communities.

The fact that the urban centers are a done deal for the democrats is not news. But the article did make me start wondering about the vote plantations the democrats run in the urban centers. One view of the world is to look at the urban centers, see the poverty and segregation and wonder what new government program can be done to change that. The fact that those government programs have tended to lock the urban centers in generational poverty has never persuaded the central government planning types from believing in the next government program.

Another view of the world is to wonder why people would purposely choose to surrender their voice in the political arena and then wonder why the more they vote democratic, the worse things become. Imagine the political consequences if urban voters suddenly started telling pollsters that they were supporting McCain. Imagine the political consequences if the democratic party woke up the morning after the second Tuesday in November and saw polling precincts that went for McCain. Why you could almost imagine the democratic party starting to take the urban centers seriously and not just the ‘new solid south’ vote raising plantations that they currently are for the democratic party. You could almost imagine both parties competing for the votes and thus offering effective policies to do something about the problems that face the urban centers, not just policies that help the Daly school of politicians like Obama.

Addendum: (Bit): The signs are that Obama cannot count on the black vote. He got himself heckled by black voters, today. I will be touching on this in tonight’s Ramble.