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I am pleased to announce that in January, 2009 Chicagoboyz will begin hosting a roundtable discussion of the classic work of military theory, On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

Stand by for further announcements.

The Sons of Martha
by Rudyard Kipling

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary’s Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains “Be ye removèd.” They say to the lesser floods “Be dry.”
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd—they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit—then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger Death at their gloves’ end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden—under the earthline their altars are—
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city’s drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s ways may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd—they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet—they hear the Word—they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and—the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons!

Today is her feast day, perhaps the biggest day in Lex’s personal liturgical calendar.

God bless America. St. Thérèse pray for us.

Lexington Green will be posting exclusively girl-pop videos until economic and political conditions improve.

(It is my way of standing athwart history yelling “Stop”!)

A blast from the past.

Great catchy power pop with a cute girl singer.

It does not get better than that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here.

…we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Yeah. Look before you leap. A trillion here, a trillion there, you are talking real money.

Full text below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Girls doin’ T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy. Yow.

(What’s up with the midget?)

And dig Please Don’t Touch, live with Motorhead!

Yeah right? Yeah Right!

Oh man. This is how it used to be. This is how it is SUPPOSED to be.

DOA doing “The Enemy”, 1984.

I may be a washed up husk of a man, but dammit, the ROCK will never die.

How about that Barack Obama? They are saying “for the first time he’s starting to slip in the polls. But don’t worry. He’s got a plan. He’s going to go back to campaigning in Europe.”

David Letterman (via The Corner)

Or maybe Europe is too small a stage. He should go somewhere far away and run for President of the World.

The MSM has openly joined one side of this election.

They have openly chosen to do the dirty work to protect their anointed candidate, His Holiness Messiah Barack I.

I said that they would mobilize to destroy Gov. Palin.

This piece shows that the MSM is doing the opposition research that the Obama campaign — that sole demonstration of Sen. Obama’s executive competence — should have done months ago, when it was clear to anyone paying attention that Gov. Palin was a VP prospect. this radio interview gives a flavor of the “circus” going on in Wasilla, Alaska right now. Very much worth listening to.

This is the stuff that opposition researchers usually do. I would expect the Obama campaign and the DNC to go after the personal records of Palin’s family and friends like this, but the media? Did they go after Barack Obama this thoroughly on personal history?

Or even better — remember Geraldine Ferraro? She was treated like a princess. Why didn’t the news media swarm into her neighborhood digging hard to find out about her husband’s mob connections? Why was Ms. Ferraro not treated as an enemy combatant? Easy. She was a liberal Democrat. She fit the MSM’s narrative about what a woman politician looks like, what she thinks and says. Anyone who defies that stereotype is a threat that has to be destroyed.

May they all get frostbite in Alaska.

Just when we had finished chuckling over “my Muslim faith” J. Danforth Obama sets off the Quayle-O-Meter again.

Seems like a day cannot pass without the leaden-tongued messiah failing the Quayle test.

He’s gaffe-o-riffic!

That clattering and banging you hear is the MSM flinging themselves bodily in front of their darling, trying to change the subject.

Thought experiment: Imagine Obama had a female VP and John McCain had said this. What would the reaction have been from the MSM? Not too hard to imagine, is it?

If McCain and his team are smart, and they have been lately, they will say nothing about this, or just laugh it off. Barack has disdain for anyone who dares to stand in the way of Divine Destiny. This arrogance is very unattractive. And it speaks for itself. Loudly.

UPDATE: So they made an ad out of it. Maybe it is good, if it gets under the skin of some undecided voters. I notice even in a five second spot Barack says “uh”. He is not a good speaker unless reading from a script.

UPDATE 2: Heh:

∅bama has made a statement about pigs in lipstick that seems to insult Sarah Palin. In fact it seems to have insulted a lot of women.
.
If it was unintentional - ∅bama is a stupid politician.
.
If it was intentional - ∅bama is a stupid politician.

OK. OK. Let’s not get cocky. Obama is human and makes mistakes, and will no doubt land some heavy blows before this is over — however it comes out. But he does not seem to have a good “gut” when things are not going totally his way, or when his opponent goes off of his pre-programmed script.

I have been as guilty as anybody of indulging in Palin-Mania, or Palin Obsessive Disorder. Like most people, my thinking has been overly fact-lite, if not fact-free, about Gov. Palin.

So, as the need to think about other things asserts itself, it is a relief to read a brilliant summary from Jim Bennett based on facts and history, which presents Gov. Palin’s story as a coherent narrative.

Bennett’s article in the Telegraph is the single best thing yet written by anybody about who Sarah Palin is and what she has accomplished.

Most news reports and other commentary, both fair and foul, have dwelt on “exotica - the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband” without comprehending or explaining how “a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a few years.”

Bennett explains how Palin worked her way up in a rugged political environment, how she built her political base, and how she came to realize “that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics.”

As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table.
 
Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.

She proceeded to execute this strategy, as chairman of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and as Governor.

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.
 
The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska’s energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes - the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having “no international experience” particularly absurd.

The prospect of Palin in Washington has caused “her enemies in Alaska” to break out in a cold sweat, according to Bennett, “at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network.”

Obama would not be the first person who has gone down to defeat underestimating Mrs. Palin.

Read Bennett’s piece for the rest of the details.

UPDATE: Two responses by Helen Szameuly, here and here are very much worth reading.

UPDATE 2: A balanced, fair, unemotional assessment of Palin’s track record as mayor and governor, on economic issues. (Via The Right Coast.) See also this equally good one contrasting Palin and Obama on ethics and reform. Both from CATO. Both are nice companion pieces to Bennett’s article.

UPDATE 3: Michael Barone weighs in with a capsule history of Obama’s career as a community organizer, and his initial entry into politics. His conclusion, we need not treat this part of Obama’s career with “reverence”.

Barone is also astute to observe that community organizing only makes sense, if it ever does, where the political process does not work. A one-party machine-run city is the perfect example, and Chicago is the epitome of that. Alinsky was the doppelganger of the first Mayor Daley, for a reason. Most places, if there are rotten services or whatever, that is an invitation to a political challenge by the “out” party. Only where that political option is foreclosed does it make sense to resort to guerilla activity on the Alinsky model, a/k/a “organizing”.

When Obama says he’ll “restore America’s reputation” what it really means is that people who hate America will be delighted by his election. Why so many Americans don’t see it that way astounds me.

Via Mark Steyn.

Ha. Of course it is just a slip. Whatever. Not worth writing about. Dum de dum. No. Of course not.

The black helicopter crowd will say, “ah ha! see! I told you so!” But I shun such silliness. Even though he has two Muslm fathers and his middle name is Hussein, I believe he is actually a Christian, just like Jeremiah Wright, the Pastor who meant so much to him for so many years until political expediency required Obama to fling his spiritual father under the bus.

Nonetheless, even though it is not really important, the Quayle-O-Meter is setting off bells, whistles, sirens, circus calliopes, flashing lights, disco balls, strobes and rotating police-car beacons. It always does that for a jackpot-sized gaffe.

No need to ask what would happen if McCain or Palin had said this.

Though it is pretty funny to think about.

Obama fails the Quayle Test almost every day.

And the MSM, by definition, fails it too.

As I described during the last election, we are witnessing an abusive and unprincipled monopoly hacking out its last, dying coughs.

Faster, please.

(Meanwhile, of course, the MSM is committed to its primary task: Trying to find a way to destroy Gov. Palin.)

Obama is proposing one of the greatest tax increases in world history, entirely on the wealthiest 40% of the U.S. population — who already contribute more than 100% (yes, you read that correctly) of the U.S. government’s personal income tax revenue. He is disguising it behind a welter of largely fictitious refundable tax credits. The increased tax on people of substantial income will be paid out to people who pay small amounts of tax or none at all.
 
No part of this familiar process is a “tax-cut,” which is how it has been presented.
 
The top tax-rate and the tax on capital gains and dividends would all rise by a full third, estate taxes would be raised to 45% and social-security payroll taxes would be raised for families earning over $250,000 a year. The Obama claims that all this would keep taxes at 18.2% of GDP, and would cover his vast spending plans, are nonsense.

From this. RTWT. Good to see Mr. Black is able to write from prison. He is a good writer and a smart guy.

(Incidentally, I have a friend who worked on the trial and was there every day, on behalf of another party in the case. His conclusion: Black was guilty and the jury got it right. Black, like everyone who I have ever met or worked with who was convicted of a crime says he was not guilty.)