Riehl World View

"Where losing sight of land we shall find the stars"

"For the beauty of the earth, For the Glory of the skies…" Grapefruit and lilacs for breakfast Down East early morning.

By Sissy Willis of sisu

On this Fourth of July a republication of our timeless May 25, 2008 post "Because we sailed too close to the shore": 

"I'm savoring the revealing contrast between Drake's seafaring 'reach for the stars' vision and Michelle Obama's landlocked 'audacity of whining' (Powerline's expression)," we wrote in the comments of Bird Dog's totally awesome "Annual re-post: Sir Francis Drake's Prayer (1577) at Maggie's Farm.

Sir Francis:

Disturb us Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore…

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

What we said two Mem Days back still applies, big time: "Sunrise this morning over Eastern Point across the river from Goomp's, headquarters for the family's Memorial Day salute to the awesomely brave and good and true fellow Americans who give their all so we might enjoy such natural wonders. We think you know who you are, our beloved fellow bloggers and readers who serve and love those who serve. We cannot thank you enough. God bless."

Read full post here.

Bumped: When In The Course Of Human Events

In trying to gather and post my thoughts going in to today, I remembered this post below, originally published at the height of the ObamaCare debate on March 3, 2010. America was already restive due to TARP and the so called Stimulus spending. Glenn Reynolds linked to it, observing:

RESPONDING TO RECONCILIATION: I’ve never seen Dan Riehl this angry. Is he an outlier, or a leading indicator? The Dems had better hope it’s the former. . .

We're about to find out the answer to that question. (end update)

When In The Course Of Human Events

That this inexperienced travesty of a chief executive, Obama, more a byproduct of timing and media collaboration, than his own worth, or accomplishment, is personally advocating for the so-called nuclear option is the final straw.

It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option, reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.

Reconcile this, you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk - a timely reminder of some words I never thought would have such import during my lifetime.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The cause is well known and it is just. When the alleged leader of a democratic republic places his own wishes so above those of the complete body politic, he is no longer worthy of the title, leader, no matter what office he might occupy.

Only a fool with no clear appreciation of, or for, America past and present, would dare undertake what this pustule in the White House is attempting to do. It is contingent upon the Republican Party to undertake every step, every maneuver it can to bring this government to a halt.

Tell me now how wrong Bunning was to do as he did, yesterday? Whose side are those Republicans who didn't support him really on, ours, or merely their own? If the GOP lacks the courage, or the ability to stop this pathetic power grab by the un-American, decadent Left - an ideology that has already failed over and over throughout much of the world - then it becomes not just a right, but a responsibility for the American people to take their country back from the political elites that have already bankrupted it. And after that, they now seek to do even more harm by capitalizing on a crisis.

They confessed as much via ex-ballerina Rahm Emanuel, hence, they deserve no respect, or just due, as they are self-admittedly, an unjust crew. It is time to stop this government in its tracks, take it back democratically in the fall, or it then becomes time to bring this government down.

This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.

Reconciliation for this disaster of a destructive health care bill I doubt anyone on the Hill can fully define means all out war. The only question remaining is, whose side are you on?

The Shining City: Limited government, unlimited potential

Caption from our June 2010 post "I do declare: Tweeting the Declaration of Independence for fun and profit": "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do," Slate quotes Thomas Jefferson — a man after our own less-is-more writer's heart — in "All Men Are Tweeted Equal," an invitation to fellow freedom lovers to "condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet."

By Sissy Willis of sisu

"In about two years the entire course of the nation changed," writes our dear friend Scott Ott, setting us up for a cathartic "aha" moment. His headline suggests something along the lines of how Obama & Company's governmental overreach unwittingly led to the Third Great Awakening that is today's Tea Party movement, but no. Ott has something more profound in store for us, a "Founding of the Republic" mini-course delivered in the equivalent of about seven tweets on Twitter …

Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Read full post here.

"The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

 

President Bush: Thank you all. I want you all to know -- it [bullhorn] can't go any louder --  I want you all to know that American today, American today is on bended knee, in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens

Rescue Worker: I can't hear you!

President Bush: I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!

Confederate POW Camp Found In Georgia

Perhaps not the most glorious Civil War era find, but certainly interesting, nevertheless.

They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem, and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost.

Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced Wednesday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia Southern University who set out to find Camp Lawton for his thesis project in archaeology.

He stunned experienced pros by not only pinpointing the site, but also unearthing rare artifacts from a prison camp known as little more than a historical footnote on the path of Gen. William T. Sherman's devasting march from Atlanta to Savannah.

"What makes Camp Lawton so unique is it's one of those little frozen moments in time, and you don't get those very often," said Dave Crass, Georgia's state archaeologist. "Most professional archaeologists who ever thought about Camp Lawton came to the implicit conclusion that, because people weren't there very long, there wouldn't be much to find."

Camp Lawton imprisoned more than 10,000 Union troops after it opened in October 1864 to replace the infamously hellish war prison at Andersonville. But it lasted barely six weeks before Sherman's army arrived in November and burned it.

Shirley Sherrod: Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism

By Sissy Willis of sisu

"Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, discrimination and the 'legacy of slavery' are complicit in the socioeconomic and moral decay," writes Walter E. Williams, quoting Booker T. Washington's  1901 autobiography Up From Slavery, where the author is describing the motivations and modus operandi of the Jesse Jacksons and Reverend Sharptons of his day:

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Booker T. Washington's homegrown grievance industry turned toxic in the last decades of the 20th century, when multiculturalism arose from the ashes of the New Left, as Linda Kimball explained in her American Thinker essay "Cultural Marxism" a couple of years back:

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups …

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

This unholy alliance of homegrown and imported grievance mongering has come home to roost in the person of Shirley Sherrod. While legacy media and fellow travelers in the blogosphere heard what they wanted to hear on those notorious NAACP videos and fashioned a narrative of Sherrod as earthly saint, our friend Dan Riehl actually sat down and listened to the whole thing. Far from the uniter portrayed by the usual suspects, Sherrod in her own words turns out to be a divider capable of accusing video promulgator Andrew Breitbart of wanting "to get us stuck back in the times of slavery." Then came the equally sainted husband Charles and Dan's latest coup this morning, videos of the former SNCC organizer declaring "We Must Stop The White Man And His Uncle Toms ..." But don't tell "former self-hating white person" Joan Walsh of Slate. She "grew up adoring black people" and let Matt Lewis know in no uncertain terms yesterday that "because Sherrod's father was murdered by a white man, she was entitled to call Fox News and Andrew Breitbart a "racist."

Crossposted at sisu and Liberty Pundits.

Happy Independence Day

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.*

In the spirit of America, I've always prided myself on my independence. As an aside, since so many have questioned my mostly independent defense of RNC Chair Michael Steele, in part, it's because Steele's RNC, most notably with the leadership of RNC New Media Director, Todd Herman, is the biggest supporter of the blogging community in DC. In fact, I've had several meetings there on the topic, including at a high level, and now we're looking at potential meetings with other orgs for discussion and education on real new media. And they don't discriminate based upon ideology, like a strong conservatism. Their feeling is, whatever the base believes, let it wail. I even think some attacks on Steele are motivated by his thinking as regards opening up the GOP orgs to outside thinking. Perhaps that's why Palin supported him as well a while back.

@danriehl -- Most notable for his willingness to call-out powerful conservatives, Dan Riehl blogs at Riehl World View. In Riehl's world, no one -- from RedState's Erick Erickson to National Review -- is above questioning.

Independence is a wonderful thing. Michelle Malkin has a lovely tribute.

So does Sissy Willis, including a Twitter exchange with NJ Gov Chris Christie.

Instapundit brings "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa - he's actually something of a music man.

Don't forget to celebrate your own independence, on this, our Independence Day. I just did! And I plan to continue to, every day. Heh!

 

Google Versus Bing On D-Day

h/t PsstEricka on Twitter, who I still follow, despite her losing the hot beachy-keen icon! Heh!

Over to Jessica's Well. Indeed.

Why I use Bing instead of Google: June 6th Version

Check out their respective pages on June 6. Bing's home page (above) shows an aerial photograph of the American Cemetery located in Normandy. Google? Nothing. Move along. Nothing to see here. Nothing of note ever happened on June 6th.

Gaza Blockade: UN interference with the natural order of things is perpetual war among tribes on steroids

Geography is destiny, and UN interference with the natural order of things is perpetual war among tribes on steroids. From our July 2006 blogpost "The Mother of All Root Causes": The partition plan for Palestine adopted by the UN in 1947 "took on a checkerboard appearance," writes Mitchell Bard in the Jewish Virtual Library. "These boundaries were based solely on demographics. The borders of the Jewish State were arranged with no consideration of security; hence, the new state's frontiers were virtually indefensible." Even then, the UN was worse than clueless.

By Sissy Willis

"Oh, blah blah blah," twitters spot the dog, our favorite AmerAussie engineer, cutting through all the politically correct, keening condemnation of Israel for pre-empting the progress of that flotilla of self-proclaimed "peace" activitists trying the other day — in Charles Krauthammer's words — "to provoke an incident and weaken Israel’s blockade of Gaza." A babel of voices are trying to get at the truth or truthiness of the incident, but not even Krauthammer said it better than spot:

Sorry, but nothing makes me want to support Israel more than endless headlines reading "UN condemns Israel …"

Tim Blair — who has floated our boat since those heady days of "fake-but-accurate" plastic-turkey glory of yore — first among equals of Aussie opinionators, has rightfully named our own spot the dog "Best of Breed" on his list of "24-carat, 140-character characters you might enjoy." We often meet the doggie on Twitter on the cusp of the International Dateline at the crack of dawn here in coastal New England as we are just getting out of bed at Tiny's nose-biting insistence and spot in Western Australia is winding down to head off for the mattresses down under. Twitter makes for strange bedfellows.

Now, having pre-emptively made up our mind about what's going on in the waters west of Gaza, we're off to sub rosa blogfriends Solomonia, Richard Landes of Augean Stables and other kahunas to bone up on what's really happening on the ground. The MSM — do they still have that? — having chowed down the Palestinian bowl of dog food in a single gulp, has nothing to offer but mischief and obfuscation.

Crossposted at sisu and Liberty Pundits.

Memorial Day Weekend

The Rolling Thunder motorcycle ride was today.

Somewhat in honor of that, Joan re-visits a childhood of bikinis and bikers. Hey, I saw that movie!

Every summer a group of bikers would descend upon the park for a weekend. My little Catholic girl/river-rat self regarded them with equal parts pious umbrage and redneck curiosity. My older sister and her friends were quite intrigued by the spectacle and would hike down to the park and laugh at all the mysterious "old guys" and their wrinkly girlfriends. My dad assured us all that most of them were businessmen and lawyers and thus upstanding citizens (my dad was full of mixed messages), but in my imagination they were Hell's Angels and one stop away from breaking bad on some unsuspecting citizenry that looked at them sideways. Bad people for sure.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin offers a tribute to Arlington and a more traditional Memorial Day weekend post.

God bless America and the wonderful men and women who sacrificed and continue to in the cause of keeping her safe and free. Let's not squander it at the ballot box come Novermber.