A great lady decries the loss of her civilisation

here.

There but for the grace of God.....

Interestin piece from Larry Elder

here.

Wonder what he'd make of this.

Bravo to Bill Buckley

for having the guts to say the unsayable.

It would be very surprising ever to see Larry Kudlow, Bruce Bartlett and all the other free-market worshippers ever criticise excessive executive compensation as anti-capitalist - these guys are just earning what the market says they're worth, right?

Wrong, dead wrong. Excessive executive compensation pushes up the prices the public must pay for access to goods and services. It causes inflation. It widens the gap between rich and poor, helping to remove the cement of society by destroying the middle class. It's a con game perpetrated by magic circles of executives sitting on each others' remuneration committees, without adequate executive or regulatory oversight.

And governments love excessive executive compensation because it bloats the income tax revenues.

Mr. Buckley, Sir, I will gladly quote Willi Schlamm in your memory.

A new Sinologist shares his insight

God help us all.

The sublime Roberts hammers outsourcing again

here.

Why an intelligent, thoughtful and deeply patriotic man like Dr. Roberts hangs out with Bwana is anyone's guess, but I suppose he has his reasons.

Benny and Bolt?

In the mid-70's the late Bob Monkhouse, God rest his soul, presented a game show on British TV called 'The Golden Shot'. Bob's sidekick was a guy called 'Bernie the Bolt'.

Cliff May's observations on the nominations of prominent conservatives to vacant public offices deserves to go down as headed just - Benny and Bolt.

One is not altogether sure whether the election of a new spiritual leader for a billion Catholics and a short-term political appointment to an institution that the nominee purports to despise are both of the same gravity. But that's neoconservatives for you.

K-Lo's perpetually twisted knickers must have achieved an exceptional degree of torque

to derive this from this.

1. The Sun says Benedict XVI was a Hitler Youth - and? He was, it's not in dispute. It was mandatory. He had no say in the matter, and neither did anyone else of his generation. His membership is non-controversial.
2. Where does 'The Sun' say 'Former Nazi Joseph Ratzinger' or 'Ratzinger, 77, was a member of the Nazi Party between (Date X) and (Date Y)? ' Of course, they do not say these things, because they would be patently untrue. Why, then, write a stupid, hysterical blog entry entitled 'Nazi!' ?
3. The Sun is not a newspaper, but a comic. Its publisher, Keith Rupert Murdoch, is a Papal knight. Front pages like that, and the exposed mammaries just inside, are the rock on which the Murdoch empire was built. Have a think about that next time Rich Lowry lets us all know he's going to be on Fox.

A Pope For All Seasons

has just been elected; one can draw this conclusion from the fact that he is already being hailed by all sides as their champion; here , here and here.

Long life and good health to the Holy Father.

He'll need it. And our prayers.

Kudlow on China and trade on Townhall

here, and not a single word about how many dollars the Chinese and Japanese buy every day just to keep the US government going.

We are all likely to be queuing for bread if the situation between those two gets any worse, because of the sheer volume of worthless dollars that will be floating around and the deliberate sabotage of what is laughingly called 'the global economy', to concentrate the holding of personal capital in fewer and fewer hands. Kudlow is a sharp guy, but with him it always seems to be the interests of free trade and big money all the way down the line.

How did the song go - Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Christ is conservative?

Hmm. not so sure. He was a bit too keen on all that 'driving the money changers from the Temple' stuff to be a neocon. And all that 'love your neighbour as yourself' sort of disqualifies from being a paleo by default.

The identification of the person of God with political movements might be thought by some to be blasphemous - but what do they know?

At last a neocon gets it

about China and Japan.

Interesting foreign policy round up from Justin Raimondo

here.

Something about the first six letters of the Kyrgyz faith healer's name makes me feel very uneasy.

The High Priest of Empire

is now up on Antiwar.

Had a letter on blogging in the 'Sunday Herald' today...

It was just a pity they didn't print the third paragraph. Well, here it is in its entirety:


Date:
Tue, 12 Apr 2005 21:19:13 +0100 (BST)
From:
"Martin Kelly" Add to Address Book
Subject:
STEVEN VASS, BLOGGERS, MEDIA, APRIL 10
To:
letters@sundayherald.com
CC:
steven.vass@sundayherald.com

Letters Editor
THE SUNDAY HERALD

12/4/2005

Dear Sirs,

As the operator of three blogs and a contributor to a fourth, Steven Vass's article was slightly skewed (Media, April 10).

A blog is any kind of online diary, although the most widely read are the political. It is correct that the 'market share', of blogs is lower in the UK than the USA, although this is more likely to be due to two factors unrelated to the quality of the blogs; firstly, a lower relative number of households connected to the Internet in the UK than the USA; and secondly, that there has so far been no 'breakthrough' story, where a scandal has been exposed in the UK by a blog breaking it first.

A blog is a very easy thing to do, and a very difficult thing to do well. However, they do throw up some interesting results, such as how friends and associates of the dismissed Edinburgh University psychology lecturer and self styled 'scientific racist' Chris Brand may have been manipulating Amazon.com in order to further an extreme anti-black, anti-homosexual agenda.

Yours faithfully,

Martin Kelly, LL.B., Dip.L.P."

Now they know.

Another bad taste award for Michael Novak

for this tattle.

Maybe I'm just too Celtic, but I think this sort of thing is - sinful, know what I mean?