What would we do without Florida?

A new innovation in community policing - vigilante bunnies.

Henderson was ‘the first US ambassador to darken his door'

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 306.

In July 1948 Loy Henderson came to take up his last post prior to the Tehran appointment reviewed in Chapter Nine. He had been eased out of the Near Eastern and African Affairs department at State because of his refusal to subordinate US policy in the Middle East to the vocal Zionist lobby. On the way to New Delhi he stopped off in London. During a relaxed dinner with Foreign Secretary Bevin and senior Foreign Office officials, Bevin said of India: ‘There is a country where we must keep together, although you must let us be in the shop window.’ Aware that being seen to collaborate with the former imperial power would be the kiss of death in Indian eyes, Bevin joked that ‘If it is ever convenient for you to have a public row with [Sir Archibald] Archie Nye [Britain’s High Commissioner to India] then I’ll be happy to play that game with you.’ An early sign that Henderson’s new adventure would be difficult came when he called on Krishna Menon, the Indian High Commissioner to the Court of St James’s, who rose from his desk but did not offer to shake hands. He informed Henderson that he was ‘the first US ambassador to darken his door’, a theme he kept repeating, and would revert to when they met again six months later.

Blue Bird by Victoria Kalaichi

Blue Bird by Victoria Kalaichi

Click to enlarge.

Ticket To Paradise by The Cathedrals

Ticket To Paradise by The Cathedrals


Double click to enlarge.

Ticket to Paradise
by Scotter Simmons

I’m so tired of living in a world of my own
Getting kind of homesick to go
Heaven’s just the kind of place I’d like to call Home
It’s the place where I’d be welcome, I know
There are prizes in this world I’d like to attain
Things I’d like to do when I can
But anything that I achieve could not mean the same
As the ticket that I hold in my hand

(Chorus)

I’ve got a ticket to Paradise
I’ve got a feeling I’ll be leaving soon, oh, won’t that be nice
I’ve got my bags all packed and I’m ready to go
Can’t hardly wait to leave this land of sorrow and woe
Everything’s gonna be all right
I’ve got a ticket to Paradise

Folks are trying every way to get in the gate
Looking for an easier way
Some will shop around to find a cheaper rate
Even though the price is already paid
So if you’re wondering why you haven’t bought your way in
Well, it’s because of just one man
He’s been here once and He is coming back again
And He can put a ticket in your hand

Repeat Chorus

Susie-Q

Double click to enlarge.

Suzie Q
by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Oh Susie Q, oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q baby I love you, Susie Q
I like the way you walk
I like the way you talk
I like the way you walk
I like the way you talk
Susie Q

Well, say that you'll be true
Well, say that you'll be true
Well, say that you'll be true and never leave me blue, Susie Q

Well, say that you'll be mine
Well, say that you'll be mine,
Well, say that you'll be mine, baby all the time, Susie Q

Uh uh
Uh uh
Uh uh
Uh uh

Oh Susie Q, oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q, baby I love you, Susie Q

I like the way you walk
I like the way you talk
I like the way you walk I like the way you talk, Susie Q

Oh Susie Q, oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q, baby I love you, Susie Q

Love (I) by George Herbert

Love (I)
by George Herbert

Immortal Love, author of this great frame,
Sprung from that beauty which can never fade,
How hath man parcel'd out Thy glorious name,
And thrown it on that dust which Thou hast made,
While mortal love doth all the title gain!
Which siding with Invention, they together
Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain,
(Thy workmanship) and give Thee share in neither.
Wit fancies beauty, beauty raiseth wit;
The world is theirs, they two play out the game,
Thou standing by: and though Thy glorious name
Wrought our deliverance from th' infernal pit,
Who sings Thy praise? Only a scarf or glove
Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love.

Nasser’s mere survival was construed as a victory

From Small Wars, Faraway Places by Michael Burleigh. Page 302.

The British, inevitably, take a solipsistic view of the Suez Crisis, viewing it in terms of end of empire. The wider ramifications of Eden’s decisions in 1956 were much more serious than that. The first reform Communist government to declare formally that it was leaving the Warsaw Pact would have been crushed anyway, but Suez so reduced the cost the Soviets paid for the violence they inflicted on Hungary, for the Americans had to deal with this totally unwanted distraction in Egypt. British and French influence in the Arab world was destroyed and, save for Jordan and some minor autocratic Gulf states, trust has never recovered; nor has it been between France and Britain, not that there was much in the first place. France threw its influence behind Israel, equipping it in 1957 with its Dimona nuclear reactor, which it would use to produce an arsenal of atomic bombs it pretends it might not possess. In Arab eyes Israel would be indelibly identified with Western imperialism – a latter-day crusader state – and Nasser’s mere survival was construed as a victory, which became a wider impediment to political realism in the Middle East.

A foolish fit of former colonial muscle flexing, insignificant in itself but with decades of consequences.

"Embrace the image. Wander the minefield."

Well, that's a bold move.

A few days ago I noted the tragedy of Joe Biden and how his first run for President foundered on a lie - specifically his plagiarism of another politician's autobiographical speech. I mentioned:

My first awareness of him as a national figure was in the Democratic primaries for the 1988 presidential nomination when it was revealed he had a history of plagiarism and fabrication. The precipitating event was his plagiarism of aspects of an autobiographical speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. That he was plagiarizing aspects of an autobiographical speech was mystifying. That he was plagiarizing a hard left socialist from Britain was mystifying. That he was plagiarizing a socialist politician with a track record of failed leadership was mystifying.

[snip]

He has never been ready for prime time.

Nice guy but not up to the standards of our times, then or now.

He announced his third, and presumably final, run for President today. Given his history of plagiarism and untruthfulness, one had to wonder how he was going to position himself, how he was going to navigate that particular minefield. You had to imagine dozens, if not hundreds of ferociously intelligent people thinking about how best to tackle this.

What they apparently came up with was "Embrace the image. Wander the minefield."

From Anne Althouse, doing the unpleasant work most of us shirk.

Biden's announcement video is anchored in a demonstrable lie.

I'm blogging this morning in a public place, so although I've put up 2 posts about Biden's announcement video, I had not yet listened to it. I finally got out my headphones out so I could listen, but I could not get through to the end, because I became so angry at the LIE and the continued music and montage became torture to me.

In the part that I did see, we were shown images from the Charlottesville march — replete with the "Jews will not replace us chant" and swastikas — and then Biden's blandly earnest face asserted that Trump said some of them "are fine people." But Trump did not say that! It's absolutely established that Trump excluded those people explicitly before saying that there were some fine people on both sides of the question of keeping Confederate statues. (At the time of the fine people remark, Trump said, "I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.")

How dare Biden rest his campaign on a blatant lie — a lie that has been used to stir up fear and racial discord?! The hypocrisy of offering to bring us together and embrace lofty values when he is either repulsively ignorant or just plain lying!

Professor Althouse is a career law professor and I think it accurate to describe her as a moderate Democrat by inclination and history. But she does love language and accuracy. For probably the most electible candidate in the field so far to lead with such a manifest lie is kind of a slap in the face of every centrist, Democrat or Republican, who is seeking someone who will unite and who will work within some framework that is reasonably (or even recognizably) truthful.

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

There has been a kerfuffle recently in bibliophilic circles when a social justice librarian wrote up an incindendiary view in her blog, Whiteness As Collections by Sophia Leung (it always astonishes me how blatantly racist social justice theorists are without them realizing it.) Her key observation -

Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc. Libraries filled with mostly white collections indicates that we don’t care about what POC think, we don’t care to hear from POC themselves, we don’t consider POC to be scholars, we don’t think POC are as valuable, knowledgeable, or as important as white people.

As usual, as innumerate and historically ignorant as they are passionate and arrogant.

Such a negative attitude about libraries by a librarian is rather shocking. It brings immediately to mind the cautions of earlier observers about the tyranny of totalitarians. From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823), by Heinrich Heine as translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

And of course, the magnificent Ray Bradbury in his coda to Fahrenheit 451.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

And then there is Kurt Vonnegut, speaking as one who had his books literally fed into a furnace by a school. From his letter to Charles McCarthy, head of the Drake, North Dakota School Board which sponsored the burning of 32 copies of his Slaughterhouse-Five. Emphasis added.

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

There is a sad corollary, given Sophia Leung's profession. From one of his later books, A Man Without a Country,

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

That was fourteen years ago. There now sits Sophia Leung. Matches in hand.

There is a particular irony matching the great thinkers in the stacks behind her and the small-minded hate of Leung. Vonnegut suggests above

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

Most Americans, given our admirable tradition of first amendment fundamentalism, would endorse this view.

But such open hearted liberalism (classical liberalism) is not in Sophia Leung's compass. From the concluding lines of her post.

I still have some thinking to do around this topic, but curious to hear what others think. I’m less interested in hearing that you don’t buy it, so don’t bother with those types of comments.

The heart of a totalitarian barbarian. It might be summarized as "I have a hate-based racist agenda and I would be interested in hearing from anyone who supports that and I don't want to hear from anyone who doesn't agree."

I suppose it is too much to hope that, as a librarian, she might read from the great thinkers of the past on these topics. I could even recommend some titles. Even if some of them are old dead white males.

His ravings about an elitist mob out to get him look justified

Not much to disagree with here. From The Press Will Learn Nothing From the Russiagate Fiasco by Matt Taibbi. Actually, his core argument is slightly different from that suggested in the headline. His argument is that the mainstream media betrayed their readers with intentionally biased reporting and that intentional bias has now been exposed. The mainstream media has sacrificed their long term credibility (and therefore, perhaps, their viability) for short term ideological expediency.

More than anything, reporters should be furious at the many sources close to the various investigations who (it now seems clear) must have known pretty early there were serious holes in many areas of this story, and that a lot of these “dots” were dead ends, but didn’t warn their press counterparts. For instance, the papers should be mad those who supposedly had misgivings about the Steele report didn’t warn them earlier.

But they’re not mad, which makes it look like a case of intentional blindness, in which eyes and ears were shut among other things because the Trump-Russia conspiracy tale made a ton of money. Media companies earned boffo ratings while the Mueller probe still carried the drama of a potential spectacular ending, with blue-state audiences eating up all those “walls are closing in” hot takes.

This fiasco will surely end up being a net plus for Trump. The obstruction parts of the report make him look like a brainless goon and thug, but the absence of what Mueller repeatedly calls “underlying crime” make his ravings about an elitist mob out to get him look justified. This is not an easy thing to achieve, but we’re there, and the press is a big part of that picture.

News audiences were betrayed, and sooner or later, even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize it and tune us out. The only way to reverse the damage is to own how big of a screw-up this was, but after the last three years, who would hold their breath waiting for that?