Luciano Pavarotti , RIP

Luciano Pavarotti is gone.  We are fortunate, that the state of audio recording is such as it is today.

Rebecca Harrison, Scotsman:

ISRAELI leaders decided yesterday against a broad offensive in Gaza to curb cross-border rocket attacks, but did not rule out cutting off Israeli-supplied power, water and fuel to the territory.

Palestinian militants regularly fire rockets into Israel from Gaza. An explosion near a kindergarten in the Israeli town of Sderot this week rekindled calls for reprisals.

I suppose some idiot, say Jimmy Carter, will imply that Israel should sacrifice her school children in the name of peace.

It is not Larrry Craig, says Ann Coulter:

Assuming the worst about Craig, the Senate has not held a vote on outlawing homosexual impulses. It voted on gay marriage. Craig not only opposes gay marriage, he’s in a heterosexual marriage with kids. Talk about walking the walk! Did Craig propose marriage to the undercover cop? If not, I’m not seeing the “hypocrisy.”

It is Mrs. Clinton, say Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:

The winner of the Hypocrite of the Year award goes to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Even though the year is far from over and is likely to have its fair share of hypocrisy, Mrs. Clinton’s comment on the need to compromise to achieve political and social progress has to outclass any other current or future entrant.

The Clinton’s are famous for preaching one thing while practicing another, for example the politics of personal destruction.

Fred Thompson’s campaign introduction video.   I like it, both adult and calm.

RCP says today:

SEATTLE — Former Rep. Jennifer Dunn, a six-term Republican who at times anchored the Washington State Republican Party, died today of a pulmonary embolism at her apartment in Arlington. She was 66.

Dunn represented Washington’s 8th District from 1993 to 2005. In 1998, Dunn ran for Majority Leader, losing out to Texas Rep. Dick Armey, and was an early supporter of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, serving on his exploratory committee.

Dunn becomes the second powerful Washington woman to pass away recently. Last week, former State Democratic Party chairwoman Karen Marchioro lost her long battle with cancer; her memorial service is set for today.

Marchioro, whose career in politics spanned forty years, was a must-have endorsement for any major candidate hoping for a strong showing in Washington State. She was one of four representatives to the Democratic National Committee after serving as chair until her death.

And Joyner is passing along links that report congressman Paul Gilmore of Ohio, has also died at age 68.

Gilmore, in particular was a bit of a surprise.

Joyner, today:

Senator John McCain told off a kid who asked whether he was too old to be president.

An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school students he might be too old to be president and too conservative to be respected. McCain, the Arizona senator whose presidential bid has stumbled through the summer, countered the Concord High School students with humor.

“Thanks for the question, you little jerk,” McCain joked back to one student who asked the 71-year-old about his age. “You’re drafted.”

Actually, while his delivery on these things is always odd — he loves to call people “jerks” when joshing around — it was clearly lighthearted.

And that question aside, what kind of politics are we dealing with when John McCain of all people, is to be considered “too conservative”?  McCain is right; the kid’s a complete jerk.  But I’ll bet that McCain wouldn’t agree with my reasoning.

As Rush Limbaugh points out Mrs. Cliinton’s standard response to any criisis to deny that she knew anything.   For example, Mrs Ciinton did not know that Norman Hsu was a fugitive   Nor did Mrs. Clinton know that Mr. Clinton as dibbling with Monica Lewiinsky.

Yes, Mrs. Clinton’s answer to everything is that she did not know..

Yet Ed Morrissey, Captain’s Quarters, does find something that Mrs. Clinton does profess to know.  Mrs.  Clinton claims to know that “Privatization Never Works.”

If Mrs. Clintoin is right, everyboby has to right sometime,  and privatization does not work, then you will not be reading this artiicle, posted on the formerly government owned Internet.

Yes Mrs. Clinton, privatization does not work and your husband had not been cheating on you for the last twenty years.

?

I see Jonah Goldberg has taken up the chant over “true diversity”.  He’s getting the usual feedback from idiots such as Ezra Klein.

Jonah, my boy, you have got to start calling these things as they are. I gave up trying to be civil about such things along time ago, having determined that it was not only unnecessary but counterproductive.  The man turned himself into an apologist for the left, and found that ditching his integrity by the side of the road to do it was necessary .  One simply cannot make the arguments he makes, without doing so.

I agree, Jonah, that Klein has been successful at deliberately misreading your article.Then again, he’s had plenty of practice, lately.  I also agree that you got it and correctly when you say :

liberalism’s reigning understanding of “diversity” is that every institution should “look like America” but think exactly alike. Surely even young Ezra has heard this argument before. Clarence Thomas types don’t count as contributors to diversity because they don’t think black. There is a narrow understanding of what constitutes the “black perspective” or the “woman’s point of view.” If you break from it, you are no longer authentic. What was it Naomi Wolfe wrote about Jeane Kirkpatrick? That she writes as if she doesn’t have a uterus? It’s similar to the point we’ve been discussing around here for a while now. Gay people according to Ezra-types have to support a litany of “gay issues” if they are going to be authentically gay. Otherwise they are hypocrites.

,,,,or as I’ve been saying since before Limbaugh took up the chant, the only diversity not respected by the left is diversity of thought. 

But perhaps you’d be interested in knowing, that I have already addressed this issue of true diversity, some time ago.  Back in 2003. June, to be specific. 

In that posting, I was addressing a Supreme Court ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger And , incidentally the Bakke ruling as well. 

There is a major difference between mandating what we’ll call “RACIAL Diversity” and encouraging “TRUE Diversity”. “Racial diversity” simply means we have a lot of different races represented in a given sector of society. “True diversity” means that we have a lot of different styles of thinking, points of view, politics, ideation, etc. regardless of the race of each individual involved.

As such, I submit there is no compelling state or societal interest in mandating Racial Diversity per se’, in a racially neutral society, which we are supposedly striving to be.

You should try that train of thought on him, Jonah. The resulting steam from his ears could possibly be registered as a new power source.  You can save a lot of people money ,that way.

McQ asks the question “How can you actually avoid poverty?”

Well it has nothing to do with government or government programs even if the Democrats are presently engaged in trying to expand a children’s health insurance plan for the poor to include much of the middle class.

Instead, avoiding poverty can be as simple as finding and holding a job and getting and staying married:

One thing we probably won’t hear much of in this regard, however, is what the government can and should be doing to encourage the two most effective antidotes to poverty: work and marriage. Many government programs do little if anything to encourage the poor to get and keep jobs or to encourage fathers to marry and support the mothers of their children. Too often, government programs are actually hostile to these core values of building successful families and communities.

The data here are rather startling. As The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson point out, the typical poor family works only 800 hours per year. Just by expanding the hours worked to the full year of 2,000 hours — that’s one adult working 40 hours a week — Rector and Johnson estimate that three of every four children officially classified as in poverty would be lifted out of that status.

Similarly, based on Census Bureau and other federal data, the scholars at the conservative think tank estimate that if marriage became the norm among poor couples rather than absent fathers, two-thirds of the children in these communities would be lifted out of poverty.

It would seem to me that if those in government or running for office are truly concerned with poverty – real poverty – they’d be advocates for both work and marriage. I mean real advocates, not just give each merely lip service while subsidizing not working and single parenthood.

Just so.

What he is suggesting, has become known in the vernacular as “family values”.  Interestingly enough, it is those which the left has turned their back on in the name of “freedom”.

That rejection is precisely why we have the number of poor that we do.  Of course, the effects are not merely financial, but they are social as well .  In other words all of this is precisely what the social right has been saying for 35 years and longer.  These are all ideas that have been shot down by the left on every single occasion they’ve come up.  The study cited, would seem to suggest that that was buried in those ideas, after all.

I think also that I should be pointing out to you that these are cultural values that are the very reason why America has been a success and has been up until recently.  I say that because of a quote in the story which I will break out here again;

One thing we probably won’t hear much of in this regard, however, is what the government can and should be doing to encourage the two most effective antidotes to poverty: work and marriage. Many government programs do little if anything to encourage the poor to get and keep jobs or to encourage fathers to marry and support the mothers of their children. Too often, government programs are actually hostile to these core values of building successful families and communities.

I have said in this space repeatedly over the years that the primary purpose of any government that wants to last for a naming of time is to reinforce and if possible expansion influence of the culture that gave that life.  These are, after all, cultural values that we are talking about, here.  its tiny consider that there is a reason why those cultural values involved; they work.

The direct impact of those cultural values, and the following of them or the lack of following of them, can clearly be seen, here.  The solution to our current problem should be, as well.  Maybe somebody should tell John Edwards.  You can bet, that unless forced into it, he’s not going to support traditional work ethics and family values.  So much for his claim about wanting to “help the poor”.

Froma Harrop, Real Clear Politics, explains, “Why Liberals Are Turning on Ted Kennedy:”

Once upon a time, Ted Kennedy could count on his daily dose of veneration. The right wing hated the Massachusetts Democrat, but progressives honored him as a defender of old-school liberalism.

In a remarkable turnaround, liberals are now heaping scorn on the 73-year-old senator. Young audiences boo at his name, and the leftish “Daily Show” on Comedy Central makes fun of him.

Hat tip, Betsy Newmark, Betsy’s Page.

?

Hmmm.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras —AP-  Hurricane Felix strengthened into a Category 5 monster storm early Tuesday, forecasters said, just as it prepares to make landfall near the Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians.

Of course this story includes the obligatory global warming tie in:

This is only the fourth Atlantic hurricane season since 1886 with more than one Category 5 hurricane, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Only 31 such storms have been recorded in the Atlantic, including eight in the last five seasons.

Of course, even here, they can’t get it right.  How do we, today, determine the strength of the storm?  We fly through it.  That’s really the only accurate way to do it.  So tell me?  How did they manage to make such determinations in 1886?  As a matter of fact, until at least the nineteen forties how did they manage to do this?  The fact of the matter is is they’ve only had that method available to them for the last 50 years.  On its face, this paragraph is pure unsupportable hype.

watching the rest of this hurricane season developer is going to be interesting; almost as interesting as watching the hype-meisters at work for the remainder of it.

Boom.

NEW YORK —AP- An explosive device detonated outside a studio owned by “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli early Tuesday, damaging a van but causing no serious injuries, police said.

Police said they did not know if the explosion was connected to Imperioli’s Studio Dante.

Several residents in apartments above the studio were evacuated after the device went off about 1 a.m., police said.

The police department’s bomb squad was investigating what kind of explosive was used and why it was detonated in front of the Manhattan building, two blocks south of Madison Square Garden.

Clearly, we’re going to have to remove ourselves from New York. The locals resent our being there.

Good for him, good for the kids.

In 2003 George W. Bush fell off a Segway.  The Daiy Mail (UK) ran the snarky headline:

“You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you Mr President”

On 24 August, Access Hollywood, reported the editor of that snarky line, Piers Morgan, fell off a Segway, and broke his ribs.

More, Noel Sheppad, News Busters.

Video, Rob, Say Anthing.

John, Powerline, calls it poetic justice.

Next time toadies for organized labor like John Edwards beat their chests about affirmative action, show them this excellent commentary in the WSJ by one of James Brandon’s colleagues, a professor of history at Hillsdale College .

This 125th Labor Day, Americans ought to consider one of organized labor’s lesser-known contributions to American politics: affirmative action.

For most of their first century, American unions promoted affirmative action for white workers: Trade unions were job monopolies and most often white job monopolies.  California unions, for example, led the campaign against Chinese immigrant labor, and the “union label” campaign helped to enable consumers to boycott products made by Chinese workers. “The cigars contained herein are made by WHITE MEN,” the original union label read. As for East Coast immigrant labor, the celebrated socialist leader Eugene V. Debs once complained, “The Dago works for small pay and lives far more like a savage or wild beast, than the Chinese.”

Above all, unions made it difficult for blacks to earn a living. The first large union federation, the National Labor Union, set the pattern of exclusion and evasion. Although it was broadly known that national and local unions excluded blacks, either by their constitutions or informal custom, the federation claimed that, since its constitution made no reference to the race issue, it was unnecessary to deal with it.