This article from Ralph Peters brought tears to my eyes:

LAST week, I had an inspiring conversation with a Muslim-American. An immigrant from Pakistan, he hadn’t yet been granted citizenship, but he had more faith in America than our native-born elite does.

“I write to my brothers and sisters,” he said, “And I tell them that they do not know true Islam. If you want to see true Islam, you must come to America.”

Hat tip: Outside the Beltway

Read the whole thing.

The Kingdom of God for Christians and the Promised Land for Jews and True Islam for Muslims in the only country in the Western world that hasn’t had an established church in almost two hundred years. O brave new world that has such people in it!

media girl has a very good post or rant, as she calls it, on What’s Wrong With the Democrats?. She’s getting pretty frustrated with the hemming and hawing of Democratic Party front-men on the direction of the party after the election on the 3^rd:

Why are the Dems so wimpy? Today, “equal rights for all” is not ever discussed as the moral issue it is. Graft in government is not considered a moral question. In our current political climate, lying is considered “spin” and the press signs off on it. Educating our children is not considered a moral issue. Executing innocent people is not considered a moral issue. Killing 100,000 people in Iraq is not considered a moral issue. Economic justice and relief for the growing poor population in this country is not considered a moral issue. Preserving the fiscal integrity of our government is not considered a moral issue. Preserving liberty in our own land is not considered a moral issue. None of these things are considered moral issues. No, what passes for morality today is intolerance, greed, bigotry, divisiveness—all expressed in loud voices of outraged victims.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. The first is that public morality—the actions of some faceless bureaucrat in a nameless office—is no substitute for personal morality—treating people with respect and concern in your daily life. We must have both.

The second reason is that too many of the disparate interest groups that form the backbone of today’s Democratic Party have lost their moorings. When the NOW lined up behind Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal it suggested that their agenda had ceased being better lives and decent treatment for women in society and the workplace and had become unwavering support for Democrat politicians. Now, as Q&O Blog points out, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in their failure to respond appropriately to the recent racist treatment of Condoleezza Rice by the leftist press, seems to be less about advancing colored people than about advancing the careers of sufficiently left-wing politicians:

As a matter of fact, I’m a bit astonished as well. Where is the NAACP on this? Where is Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH? I thought these organizations existed to stamp out the very sort of racist bigotry that is being used against Rice by the left.

Instead we are treated to the sound of crickets.

Apparently there’s a litmus test one has to pass before they can count on the NAACP or Rainbow/PUSH’s support.

You can’t just be the right color, you have to be of the right ideology. Otherwise, or so it seems, racism just isn’t that big of a deal to them.

When you look out and see that the Party’s most faithful union support is the public employees’ unions you begin to wonder if the Democratic Party is the party of public morality or the party of public employment.

Steve Antler of Econopundit, one of my daily reads, has a typically excellent post on the falling dollar and the role of China in all of this:

The problem over the long term is not what Alan Greenspan will or won’t do to slow or not slow the dollar’s decline. The problem is one major trading partner (1) knows how to make things we want much more cheaply than we can, and (2) saves too much and spends too little.

The Peoples Republic of China is an almost unimaginably huge market. All it would take could be a tiny fraction of a decimal point of her awesomely-low MPC to completely swamp our capacity to produce for her market.

Now let’s think about this for a moment. Hmmmm. What kind of autos do we make? Might some of these actually be more attractive to Chinese managers, professionals, and highly skilled workers than would be, say, Japanese autos? Yes? No? Maybe?

What I think Steve is missing (and what many of the experts miss) is that although China is a very large market when measured in dollars, dollar-volume does not a market make. A market requires the ability to make purchasing decisions and the number of people who are making such decisions in China is very, very small. I’ve believed for thirty years that trade with China was actually quite risky and now our chickens may be coming home to roost.

Clayton Cramer quotes an article of unknown provenance warning of an impending humanitarian disaster in Canada as a result of the flood of illegal immigrants across their southern border:

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border.

Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.

“If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,” an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

“I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “How many art-history majors does one country need?”

It’s a hoot. Check it out.

The holiday season has officially started at my house. My wife has just finished making the first batch of the twenty or so batches of her world-famous English Toffee that she makes every holiday season as Christmas presents for friends, family, and colleagues. My wife mentioned that she used to make several other treats for people as well but when the recipients began to say “Well, yes, that’s nice but how ’bout more toffee?” she abandoned the rest and concentrated on perfecting the toffee.

If you’re very, very good I may give you the recipe before the holiday season ends.

It’s gone largely unnoted but Congress has re-authorized the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA):

Congress approved and sent to the White House yesterday an update of special-education requirements that eases pressure on teachers while increasing enforcement of high standards for the disabled.

The bill would be the first major revision to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in seven years. The law promises a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment to more than 6.7 million children with special needs.

The House passed it 397 to 3, and the Senate approved it by voice vote. President Bush was expected to sign it. That would allow Congress to take credit for a significant, bipartisan schools bill before the new year, when its membership will change and a heavy agenda of education issues awaits.

Changes in the new legislation include paperwork reduction, stronger enforcement, and more flexibility for schools. In what may prove to be one of the more controversial provisions the bill allows states and school districts to recover legal fees if a parent’s complaint is deemed frivolous. In my opinion this is a needed reform to level the playing field. Since the enacting of the previous law it’s been possible for determined (and well-to-do or legally connected) parents to get pretty nearly anything they want using legal strong-arm techniques particularly threat of suit. The new law may reduce this and let districts spend their limited funds on actually teaching kids rather than paying legal fees.

Now this is my wife’s idea of a real weapon of mass destruction (hat tip: Cronaca). As she said when she saw the picture: “I’m all over it (or vice versa)”.

Over the last few months I’ve found that there’s a sort of hierarchy to the comfort level I have with reading other people’s blogs. It goes something like this (from most comfortable to least comfortable):

Moderate/Centrist blogs
Group blogs with evenly distributed bloggers and clientele
Pro-WoT libertarian blogs
Pro-WoT right leaning blogs
Pro-WoT left leaning blogs
Hard libertarian blogs
Hard right blogs
Hard left blogs

Perhaps one of the things that I like about truly moderate/centrist bloggers is that they’re inclined to be rather temperate as well. Ideas of most political stripes are given due consideration.

I’m overjoyed when I find read a good, moderate/centrist blog for the first time. I find them as comfortable as an old pair of shoes and as interesting as a bull session with old friends I haven’t seen in a long time. PurpleStater of CenterFeud is the proprietor of such a blog and I look forward to every one of his posts. I’m pretty stingy with my blogrolling, PurpleStater. Welcome!

I have tremendous admiration for Abu Aardvark and his blog is a daily (or near-daily) read for me. But sometimes rhetorical constructs are so strained that they just call out for criticism. Here’s something from the Aardvark’s most recent post:

There’s a lot of talk these days about a possible confrontation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. Leaving aside the admittedly big question of nuclear weapons for a moment, it’s pretty easy to see the reasons for concern.

I don’t object to the post as a whole. But there’s an old expression about “the dog in the manger” and it certainly applies here.

Let’s try out some comparable constructions for size:

“Leaving aside that it would kill you, wouldn’t jumping off the Empire State Building be great? Think of the view!”
“Leaving aside that it’s a terrible diet, why not eat nothing but ice cream?”
“Leaving aside the cold, why not wear a bathing suit in the snow?”

The reason that there’s a lot of talk these days about a confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the United States is Iran’s nuclear development program. Leaving aside that, the Aardvark would have had no post.