IMPOTENCY

At The Study, we monitor liberal news/commentary sources. Some of them are quite responsible.
The fact that much of the nonsense coming from the libs comes from the responsible lib sources is in itself depressing and…these days, even alarming, given the fact that flaming libs now control two of the three branches of the Republic’s government.

At any rate, one example:

Security concerns/necessities have required that private firms be contracted with to provide secure environments to various personnel/places/things in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly elsewhere.
Libs consistently decry this practice. They invariably apply the adjective ‘infamous’ to the security organization known as Blackwater. This is depressing inasmuch as Blackwater has proven itself to be an outstanding enhancement of US presence wherever barbarians are at work against US interests. The operative word here is proven.

Some days ago we remarked that the flaming libs would wring their hands over what to do about the piracy problem off the African coast; that to suggest deploying private security vessels would cause the libs to go ballistic.
And now, on a ‘responsible’ lib talk venue, such has been the case. The ‘expert’ intones that no one would want a private security vessel to accompany convoys of freighters.

Really???
No one???

We at The Study think that it would be a splendid idea. Letters of Marque could be issued, as they were in days long ago, before the day of the flaming libs.

And the aforementioned pundit, w/o batting an electronic eye, further intoned that European law would forbid any summary trial of captured pirates.

GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!!!!!!!

Accoring to OLD EUROPE, a captured pirate CANNOT BE EXECUTED under current international law.
And said pundit excoriated the US for not signing on the this international impotency.

Talk about a tired, old, and IMPOTENT Europe.

I think Europe deserves a lower case e.

And reduced letter size.

ON THE SHELF

Books currently being read at The Study:

The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria explores the meaning for the US of a world growing up around American hyper power.

21 – The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, Patrick O’Brian. This remarkable volume contains the first three chapters of the 21st volume of the Aubrey/Maturin saga, complete with manuscript pages next to typewritten.
Remarkable and absorbing for all fans.

Churchill by Himself, Richard Longworth. A splendid compilation of Churchill’s quotations, complete with annotation and background. Marvelous.

RUMINATIONS

AUTO BAILOUT:

Auto CEOs testify in D.C. requesting $$ from Government.
$25 billion has already been appropriated for ‘green’ auto development. Auto execs ask for that to be diverted to a loan to keep their companies solvent.
nancy p. says NO.

you just gotta wonder what planet she thinks she is on.
She is a flaming fruit cake.

I know, I know. Name calling is childish. Silly.

She is a fruitcake.

And yes, my mind is made up on that.
I was recently told by an otherwise intelligent person, an educator, that one should keep an open mind.

Bull sh.t.

On some things, closed minds are the way to be.

b.o. PROMISED CHANGE:

b.o. promised change. And we are reading of Cabinet picks ringing with such change artists as john kerry and hillary.
And other folks out of the Clinton closet.

These are really agents of change.

Well, perhaps they are. But the change they offer might not be the kind anyone wants.

PIRACY:

The Russian Navy is sending more ships.
More ships will not do any good unless the pirates are not only interdicted, but are killed or captured.

They have to be killed or captured and then killed!

DRIVING THEM OFF WILL DO NO ONE ANY GOOD!

FNANCIAL CRISIS:

Stocks continue to fall in value. Little shooters can now buy GM and GE and this and that for next to nothing.
And the little and big shooters and the US Government were told that unheard of $$ paid into the system would save it and restore it and stave off utter ruin.

We are still on the downward spiral to ‘utter ruin’.

It would seem that the folks at the top do not know what to do. Or they are unwilling to do what has to be done, whatever that is.

What is the little or moderate shooter to think?

2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:

Conservatives voted for McCain because he was better than anything on the other side. He was not exciting, except for now and then during an exceptionally fired-up speech.
Sarah P. introduced the excitement, and not just for her looks.

She had a message.
She will do her homework.

At The Study, we liked Rudy Giuliani. He was exciting. He did not try very hard. Maybe he did not want the job badly enough.

We hear good things about the power of a Romney-Palin ticket for the future.

Giuliani and Palin or Palin and Romney. Perhaps a little fire could be generated.

b.o. and nancy p. and h. reid will make a hash of things. They cannot manage or inspire confidence.
They are failures. The public knows they are losers. The public will soon discover the same about b.o. unless he can successfully blame President Bush for his own upcoming failures.
And the public seems to be … myopic regarding b.o.. At least for now.

God willing, better times are comin’.

WEATHER:

At The Study we are hearing of six and nine inches of snow Up North. And even greater falls West.
And our ground has been frozen, top layer, for over a week now. Koi pond is frozen over. At least glazed over.

And glaciers are advancing.

Skiing is beginning in lower Michigan and of course North.

NASA reveals that its facts/figures regarding October temps was all wrong.

MAN/WOMAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING???????????????

I have a bridge to sell ya.

Make me on offer.

PIRATES – AFTER ALL THEY HAVE DONE FOR THE WORLD, SHOULDN’T THE WORLD DO SOMETHING FOR THEM?

One of the ugliest and oldest professions is occurring with ever greater frequency.

Piracy!!

I cannot quote exact numbers, but they are available – and piratical events are already this year at least twice the number of such events all last year.

I think something in the area of 80+ incidents.

The ships attacked, the ones that make the msm, are freighters carrying grain, oil, and munitions.

Private yachts have been taken as well.

The motive apparently is to take the vessel and hold it and the crew and the cargo for ransom.

It appears that the ransoms are usually paid; that the cargoes are returned; the hostages are often well treated; and that usually few or none of th perps are ever caught.
Indeed, the perps are alleged to be living the good life in the coastal towns.

The British Navy has engaged a pirate vessel recently. And the Indian Navy has done so on at least two occasions, sinking one pirate 'mother ship'.

It is alleged that naval forces are spread too thinly to effectively suppress the piratical activity, and that there is some fuzziness about u.n. resolutions and what can be done with pirates when they are taken into custody.

One suggestion we find especially appealing here at The Study is to organize convoys of freighters in the high risk areas and escort the vessels through threatened waters.

If national navies cannot do the job, then there are private contractors which are reliable and capable. One which comes to mind is Blackwater Worldwide.

Blackwater is testifying as to this possibility this or next week in Washington. And Blackwater has developed an escort vessel prototype which would be just the thing to discourage barbarian attacks off the African coast – or whatever coast presented a problem.
Convoys under escort would be invulnerable to pirate attack, and the cost of the escort would be far less than the escalating ransom and insurance costs which are mounting at an alarming rate.

Flaming liberals will doubtless have a hairy at this solution – but that is to be expected and hopefully can be dealt with by responsible authorities.

Regarding what to do with the pirates?

Piracy used to be a hanging offense. I wonder when that excellent practice went by the boards.

Ideally, pirates will be prevented form taking their booty, thus denying them hostages.

Ideally, they will be killed during the interdiction.

If captured, they can be tried and executed – rapidly, tried by courts created for the purpose.

Such courts should not originate in the u.n. unless the courts are prepared to carry out the kind of traditional maritime law which will discourage/suppress the seagoing robbery, murder, and kidnapping.

That kind of law is trial and expeditions execution. No imprisonment.
No muss. No fuss.

This should be a lesson to flaming libs: crime will flourish where there is no law.

There currently is little or no law in the shipping lanes currently under pirate attack.

Those shipping lanes are vital to the security of nations, important nations.

Pirates are important too. They deserve the attention of major nations.

They should be given what they deserve.

GLOBAL WARMING...GOOD GOD!

This is just too much.
algore and the u.n. are just too much, in so many ways.

Worse, tho, is the gullibility of the public that sucks up the b.s. that they generate.
Check out the article in the link below.

Good grief!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

QUOTE(S) OF INTEREST

Does this quote make you think of anything controversial having to do with global warming?

There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as "nutty methods."

Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as "a complete waste of time."

Scott Adams quotes

A STITCH IN TIME SAVES...YOU KNOW WHAT

Yesterday we cleaned gutters.

The rain was light and the temperature was in the mid to upper fifties.

Today rain is heavier and snow is mixed in and the temp is in the low forties.

Thank God for the blessed window of yesterday to prep for the oncoming season.

There have been years when I chipped ice chunks out of the gutters to remove leaves and stuff form the summer.

Water and leaves is better.

GM...THE BEST COURSE

GM and Ford, the Big Two, as it were.
I will not speak here of Chrysler.
Or even of Ford.

But regarding GM.

It would appear that GM is facing a mortal situation…one that it perhaps cannot escape w/o help.

It further appears that help most likely will take the form of either a ‘bailout’ or a filing for bankruptcy.

It further appears that GM is beset with a number of unsustainable financial responsibilities to its workers, past and present.

It further appears (ifa) that a filing for bankruptcy would call for the renegotiation of such worker obligations that are unsustainable, that a bailout would perpetuate said obligations.

I wonder if it is being too simplistic to think that bankruptcy finling and renegotiation are the most sensible courses to take.

Perhaps the national dem hurry to affect a bailout is not so much to save the national economy as it is to save the financial status quo of an important national dem voter constituency.

How unfortunate that the economic crisis has occurred at such a time of national dem ascendancy, temporary though it may be.

11/11/11...LEST WE FORGET

A lifetime ago at 11:00AM on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all the students and faculty of our school would stop whatever we were doing and observe a moment of silence.

Consider doing it this 11th day of November, 2008. Consider doing it for all those who gave, as the verse says, the last full measure, and for those who were willing to give that same last full measure.

Visit the link cited below.

I shed a tear. More than one.
Make the most of this day of days.

Lest we forget.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpj2vaOP2I4&feature=related

CONFUSION…BISHOPS, BAKERS, CANDLESTICK MAKERS

What are the sheep to do when the shepherds don’t know where to go?
What is the crew to do when the captain and officers do not know what orders to give?
What is the patient to do when the doctors don’t know what is going on?

What are the faithful to do when the bishops and the priests and the elders and the well-meaning who is who of the Faith do not seem to agree on doctrine which has been acceptable for hundreds and hundreds of years by lots and lots of good folk?

And we are talking faith here, Folks. Matters of faith…not matters of test tubes and Bunsen burners.

Well-meaning clergy tell us that the Canons of the Church need not be observed; that they were meant for other times, other conditions.
Well-meaning lay persons echo the revisions.

And maybe they are right.

But maybe they are not right. Maybe they are merely the democrat party at prayer.

I do not want to have anything to do with the democrat party at prayer.

So what is one to do?

Perhaps hunker down and think a lot and talk a lot to folks who have good ideas.
How does one know what to do?

Maybe it is like it is in a lot of other contexts: buyer beware.

Leaders aka experts tell us this. They tell us that. Both sound persuasive.

But they are not responsible for what is the truth.

We are responsible for what we believe is the truth.

There is a song lyric:
You have to walk that lonesome valley,
You have to walk it by yourself.
Nobody else can walk it for you.

In matters of faith, folks should be careful about telling anyone what is and what is not.
I don’t care if they are bishops or deacons or janitors.

So what is the point of this little piece?

The point is that at this time our leaders no longer speak with one voice. Perhaps they never did, but it seemed as though they did.

Or, at least I thought they did.

Maybe they never really did.
Maybe the Early Church itself was divided, maybe more so than even we are now.
There are those scholars who have presented this apparent fact of life.

The confused among us, and I am one of those, can hunker down and take his own counsel and for the moment stay with the confused leadership.
He can leave and join no group.
He can join a breakaway group.
He can join a group which claims to hold to the ancient truths.

And I am sure there are other options.

Perhaps to be tolerant and confused is an ok way to be.
There are worse ways to be.

One worse way is to be intolerant and not to know that one is confused as well.

The pathetic fact about those revisionists who are decimating the ECUSA is that they are confused and intolerant.

And they are imposing their confused intolerance upon those of us who would be confused and tolerant.

DO UNTO OTHERS

Ann Coulter as quoted in The Mole Hole:

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president." --Ann Coulter

Thanks, Joel.

What an exquisitely tempting thought!

ECUSA – POLITICS AND PRAYER

It used to be said, a ‘lifetime’ ago, that the Episcopal Church was the Republican Party at prayer.
The ‘used to be said’ needs revision now, a ‘lifetime’ later.

Now, with the leadership of the ECUSA calling for a variety of sexual orientation and gender ‘reforms’; for reformation of US foreign policy directions; for ‘modernization’ of theological concepts; for a redefinition of rational approach to international law and international relations; for new directions in almost whatever-you-name-it, it should now be said that the ECUSA is really the democratic party at prayer.

The leadership of ECUSA appears to be way ‘ahead’ of the ECUSA ‘followers’.

What can I say?

That which was taken as given for hundreds of years, hundreds and hundreds, is now held up, or down, as wrong-headed, ignorant, prejudiced, biased.

Doctrines which were matters of faith are now labeled as superstition.

The denomination is declining in numbers, much as is the stock of GM and Ford.

Inane resolutions are passed by national church leadership and diocesan leadership which further alienate longtime members.

It has been said elsewhere by others: when the unwise and undefendable becomes the norm, the acceptable, that which was the norm will become the undefendable.
The two will not exist together.

And there will be consequences.

There was wisdom in the world before the revisions of these days.

Let our lessons be learned with the least cost possible.

THE FINER THINGS

The year is hurrying on toward conclusion.

Today, Thursday is wife’s volunteer day at Granddaughters’ school. She assists in three classrooms: classrooms of Granddaughter One and Two, and in the room of a good friend from her days of active teaching.

Here at The Study we did ‘homefront’ things, The Study things: we wrote and filed papers; made phone calls; monitored tv, radio, and ‘net’ info sources; read newspaper(s); and then progressed on to provisioning The Study; feeding feathered ‘friends’; working in the ‘back forty’; cooking; making cocktails for ‘the hour’; and on it went.

In the course of this most pleasant day, a respite day from the depressing news of politics, we are reminded of the finer things as referenced by Gus McCrea in that splendid Lonesome Dove:

The smile of a beautiful woman; the taste of good whisky; and a beautiful sunrise or sunset.

The glass is not half empty. It is half full.

The Republic is resilient.

We have all sorts of reasons to be confident.

Smile at your wife or significant other. Or, for that matter, at any fellow human you feel like smiling at. Pour a finger or two of a single malt. Get out and enjoy the rising or setting sun.

This is the day Our Lord hast made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Don't substitute 'she' for 'he'. Don't substitute 'God' for 'He' in a prayer.

Recite the prayer: Lord, I may be busy this day and forget Thee.
Please do not forget me.

PUTTY, BRASS, 'N PAINT

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about England which went something like:

If England was what England seems,
‘n not the England of our dreams…
But only putty, brass, ‘n paint,
‘ow quick we’d drop ‘er,
But we ain’t.

I paraphrased these lines some years ago to:

If the Episcopal Church was what the Episcopal Church seems,
‘n not the Church of our dreams…
Etc., etc….

Now, having watched and read and thought about what is going on in the leadership of the ECUSA and the Diocese of Michigan, I am thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, the ECUSA is really NOT the Church of my dreams. Perhaps the leadership is really “…only putty, brass, ‘n paint.”

Not a happy thought.

KEEP THE FAITH

It is late.
We have filed papers and watched the returns.

We voted this AM. It took ca. an hour. It was a pleasure.
Had a number of conversations, all pleasant.

We had a bad feeling.

A sense of what was about to happen.

And it did happen.

Our day was pleasant. We voted. We took car in for service. We ate an upscale lunch at the dealership. The dealership is 'green'...and there is a hair salon...
It is superb.

It is a GM dealership.

We have owned GM for over 40 years.

We buy American.

We must not lose GM.

These days, anyone who buys any car other than a Ford or a GM product needs their heads examined...

Chrysler is ok...but not as good.

Anyway, we did the car thing and came home and washed windows; caulked cracks; fed the birds - woodpeckers of all kinds are frequenting our feeder - and we were cheerful.

And we declared a cocktail hour for evening watching of the returns.
We do not normally imbibe on Tue PM.

We needed the drinks tonite.

The Republic is resilient.

It has been.

It is now.

It has to be.

More later.

It is late.

Keep the faith.

This United States has been thru some tuff times.
This is one of them.

But there have been others.

More later.

FROM THE GOOD BOOK

When we at The Study look out at the hopping and chanting crowd in Chicago, we think of many things.
But one thing that occurs to all of us is a quote from the Good Book, paraphrased:

Forgive them, for they know not what they have done.

MUDVILLE

There is no joy in Mudville tonight.