When Qila came to us eight years ago he did not howl. His vocal repertoire was, and is, astonishing. He’s such a great communicator my wife sometimes calls him Ronnie. He barked, yipped, growled, whined, whimpered, and even screamed but he did not howl.
When Tally came to us almost six years ago, she occasionally barked but her preferred vocalization was the howl. Her howl is a remarkable, beautiful rrrroooooooo.
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In homage to Joe Katzman over at Winds of Change why don’t I reserve my Sunday posts for stories of good people and good deeds?
I’ve always been fond of the Analects of Confucius. Here’s a little sample.
Yen Huei and Tselu were sitting together with Confucius, and Confucius said “Why don’t you each tell me your ambitions in life?” Tselu replied, “It is my ambition to go about with a horse and carriage and a light fur coat and share them with my good friends until they are all worn out without any regret.” Yen Huei said, “It is my ambition never to show off and never to brag about myself.” Then Tselu said, “May I hear what is your ambition?” And Confucius replied, “It is my ambition that the old people should be able to live in peace, all friends should be loyal, and all young people should love their elders.”
For those of us who believe that the War on Terror is a war for our very survival and the survival of those we hold dear and who also believe that the war in Iraq is a battle in that war, there is a need, from time to time, to sharpen our remembrance and bring our blood to the boil again.
David Gelemter’s article The Holocaust Shrug in The Weekly Standard did it for me.
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This is my version of a soup I enjoyed at
The Blue Owl in Kimmswick, Missouri just outside of St. Louis. Kimmswick is a lovely little town where time has stood still for 150 years.
Right now the forsythia must be blooming, as well as the crocuses, and there must be buds on the tulip trees. If you’re within striking distance, go spend the morning in Kimmswick, eat lunch at The Blue Owl, and say hello to Mary Hostetter for me. Save room for the pie.
Donald Sensing has yet another fabulous post, Close, but no cigar. In this post he comments on an article by an Australian journalist:
Christopher Kremmer, writing on Australia’s SMH.com.au almost gets the root causes argument about terrorism right. He correctly discounts the Islamist cause as “fantasy hogwash,” which seems to align pretty well with Lee Harris’ exposition of Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology.
But after a promising beginning, Kremmer falls back on the tried-and-true “blame the West” theme attributing the problems in the Islamic world to “lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement” without examining why these problems are endemic in that world.
This post really needs to be read in conjunction with Ralph Peters’s essential article Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States.
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Lileks is on the case. Here’s a sample:
September Eleventh was the bright red gash that separated the Now from the La-la Then, and we’ve been living in the hot spiky Now ever since. I am interested in the Now and the What Next.
He agrees with me. There are better things to do.
Meanwhile Donald Sensing has an excellent post on the same issue.
The “it was a diversion” side wants to do nothing, really, except kill alligators, as long as they appear. The other side says that killing alligators must be done, but it’s urgent to remove the gators’ nesting places unless you want to fight alligators down to the fortieth generation.
As they say, read it all.
So the EU is trying to stick it to Microsoft. Anyone who feels sympathy for Microsoft should consider that their sentiments may be misplaced. First, that Microsoft is a monopoly and has used its monopoly powers illegally to expand its monopoly into other areas would appear to be, at this point, settled. They are and they did. Second, all monopolies are creations of government. Read von Mises. So not only is it not inappropriate for government to seek remedy from a misbehaving monopoly, it’s an obligation.
The problem here is that Microsoft is a creature of the U. S. government not the EU. The U. S. is the target of this suit and the U. S. government (as Microsoft’s biggest customer), the U. S. consumer, and Microsoft stockholdhers (mostly Americans) will be the losers.
A lot has been written in recent days about Richard Clarke’s book, his interview on 60 Minutes and elsewhere, and his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. His introductory statement in testifying before that commission is here.
I think the most telling and certainly the most moving part of his statement is when he says: “Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you.”
First, I think that all of us, regardless of political persuasion and position on whether or how we should be fighting the War on Terror, should acknowledge that this statement is objectively true. Our government failed in its most basic obligation to its citizens and it did so over a long period of time and under administrations of both political parties. There is so much room for the assignment of blame that the very act of attempting to assign blame is frivolous.
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I live in Chicago and my mother lives in St. Louis where I grew up. Christmas 2002 I gave my mother a calendar on which I’d marked one date each month as a dinner date.
So once each month I made airline reservations, flew down to St. Louis, had dinner with mom, stayed overnight, and flew back the next morning.
I came pretty close to making all of my dates.
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Lileks muses:
One thought after hearing much of the 9/11 committee testimony. Eventually the 1993 bombing of the WTC was revealed as an act of Islamicist terrorism. Let’s imagine the effect of the following scenario: President William J. Clinton invites the Saudi ambassador to the White House. Ushers him into a room with several TV monitors, clicks the remotes. There are four TV s with labels: Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh. President Clinton turns on the first three monitors, and as he’s talking with the ambassador the monitors light up with huge explosions. Government buildings and leadership HQ s evaporate. The President turns to the Saudi ambassador and says “this here is just a taste. Now you need to stop it, and stop it now.” The Riyadh monitor remains blank. The President sets out terms and conditions for the cessation of all terrorist activities against the United States, and takes his sweet time – because the dark monitor is doing all the talking.
I’ve been vocally advocating something like this since 9/11 sans explosions.
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