When discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness and embarrassment

From food to fashion to architecture to transportation, the French take a justified pride in their country’s reputation for innovation

reports D. D. Guttenplan in the International Herald Tribune (more in Le Monde).

But when the discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness, and even a certain embarrassment. In 2006, the best any French institution could do was 46th in the influential Shanghai rankings; this year France managed 39th place in two different rankings.

Denunciations of the “Anglo-Saxon” bias and arbitrary methodology of the rating systems was a common theme last week, when representatives from some 135 grandes écoles — literally “great schools,” the specialized academies of engineering, business, science and management that form the elite of the French higher education system — gathered in Paris for their annual conference.

…Born out of the French Enlightenment, the grandes écoles have long been the cradle of the governing class. [Their graduates] occupy a place in French national life similar to Oxbridge graduates in England or the Ivy League in the United States.

Internationally, however, these institutions have far less clout than their Anglo-American counterparts.

… Pierre Tapie, who heads the Conference of Grandes Écoles while also serving as president of the business school Essec, said foreigners found it difficult to understand France’s two-track system of higher education, which distinguishes between universities and the grandes écoles.

Why I'm Depressed (a Chain E-mail)

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

Nearly 75 years ago,(when Welfare was introduced) Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Today, the government has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of camels and mortgaged the Promised Land!

I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Care Plans, the economy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc . . . called a Suicide Hotline. I had to press 1 for English. I was connected to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal.

They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck......

Shocker: Leftist Pacifist Who Ended France's Death Penalty Made Liberal Use of the Guillotine During Algerian War 25 Years Earlier

There are few things that enlightened Frenchmen enjoy more than attacking, ridiculing, and/or demonizing Americans for abhorrent features of American life, such as the death penalty and alleged wartime atrocities (along with racism and human rights violations). This is easier to do, needless to say, when their own failures are ignored and/or kept secret for an extended period of time, say, oh, 50 years or more. For example, François Mitterrand managed to win two seven-year terms to the French presidency without anybody — in the opposition, in the press, among historians — pointing out until the last year or so (and only with Mitterrand's connivance) that the proud leftist had served prominently in the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Now, 15 years (!) after the Socialist leader left the Élysée palace, it transpires that the man who famously abolished the death penalty in France (after coming to power in 1981) liberally made use of the guillotine for Algerian rebels captured during the Algerian War…

Death sentences come raining down. The guillotine, never used against a nationalist from the beginning of "the events" [the Algerian uprising], started doing its work in Paris as well as in Algiers. The heads of the Fellaghas are lopped off at a rate not seen since the German occupation: on some days, up to five.

Look Ma, No Commies!... Wow! What a Difference!

Spiegel Online has a gallery of before and after photos of buildings and places in the Former East Germany. Much as it is that the word “utopia” actually means nowhere, collectivism means “it’s no-ones’”.

Confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark: passionately democratic countries with strong creeds of tolerance, where parties of the right have now entered the political mainstream pushing anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic agendas.

That is how John Vinocur starts his International Herald Tribune article. The question that he (and it) asks — even as Chancellor Angela Merkel admits that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed" (actually, he asked it one week prior to Merkel's CDU speech) — is:

What are the chances that Germany escapes the emergence of its own version of the Sweden Democrats (who have just entered the Swedish Parliament), or Danish People’s Party (whose support props up a minority government in Denmark), or a figure like Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom now sits in third place as a Dutch vote-getter?

…confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished.

These days, when it comes to the issue that has propelled anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic parties into greater power in Northern Europe — a sense among some citizens that Muslim newcomers are encroaching on their society without regard for its laws and standards — mainstream parties in Germany are starting to acknowledge they have not dealt with the concern anywhere near adequately.

…Intolerance, unmistakably, is part of the stock in trade of the new far-right outside Germany, but in most cases it does not replicate all of the classic rant of a party like France’s National Front: anti-capitalism, anti-American, and bigotry.

See You in November…

(Thanks to Damian…)

Origins: Anti-Globalization Founded as Marxist-Leninist Propaganda

Founded on the theory that those Mexicans didn't need jobs anyway, a typical "editorial" from the golden age of self-delusion. As if these regimes weren't in fact founded on the notion of making sure their entire population was an ill-remunerated near-slave workforce.



A Radio Berlin International broadcast from 1972. The goal wasn't to "liberate" anyone, but to nag , demonize,and construct another blood libel.

How to Seduce a Rich Girl

Conseil de drague de Mister W n°5 : séduire une fille riche
envoyé par Scoflaire_video. - Cliquez pour voir plus de vidéos marrantes.

Apparently, Mister W never reads Instapundit and the problems caused by pretending to be rich…

France Condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the Police's Oppressive Treatment of the Country's Citizens

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged human rights violations (as well as for their alleged racism and for their alleged war crimes), France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (see Plantu cartoon) for the French police's heavy-handed approach towards its citizens (garde à vue)…

Hello Again, from “Cooking with Joe”

Tabbouli Salad

½ lb. medium fine burghul (crushed bulgur wheat)
2 bunches of green onions
5 bunches of parsley
2 bunches of fresh mint
2-1/2 lbs. fresh tomatoes
4 oz. olive oil or other salad oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepperWash the burghul half an hour before preparing the tabbouli. Dice the tomatoes. Chop parsley, green onions, and mint very fine. Mix all the ingredients together, adding oil and lemon juice gradually.

Serve on a platter leaving some of the chopped tomates to decorate the top of the platter, by making a one inch wide row along the circumference of the platter.
Beside this, one may also serve fresh leaves of lettuce, grape vine leaves, tender cabbage, or a combination of the three to be eaten with the tabbouli salad instead of pita bread.

Every Progressive Scion Has His Billy Carter

Jeb he ain’t.

Expect the media to suppress the hysteria that would otherwise be mandatory had a Republican been in the White House.

The Clausewitz approach

When your political/intellectual argument fails to persuade, there are always other ways to achieve your goals:

The best chance Sarkozy's opponents have of bringing down his pension bill is if strikes at oil refineries continue and start to threaten fuel supply, or if youths hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles.

No doubt the media would have the same David v. Goliath positive vibe if it were Le Pen's supporters whose best chance at foisting their ethos was to, "hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles".

Hatred, Neo-Nazi Messages, and (Filmed) Koran Burnings in a Peaceful French Region

"Leur violence, leur lâcheté, leur gratuité provoquent un sentiment de consternation et de dégoût."

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged racism (as well as for their alleged human rights violations and for their alleged war crimes), Alsace erupts in an orgy of hatred, xenophobia, and racism coupled with neo-Nazi messages, car- and Koran-burning (followed by urinating on the smoldering embers of the Muslims' holy book), etc…

For some reason, French cartoonist Martin Vidberg manages to implicate John McCain ("McCain fries"?!?!) in the Koran burning! (Then again, the Arizona senator is emblematic of American conservatives…)

It’s Not a Haiku

If I could rename the “International” Geneva-based institutions to anything else, I would call it the “Fake-Crisis Emergency Management Center”

Defending Obama's Record As Compared to Bush's, NYT's Maureen Dowd Invokes… a Hollywood Movie?!

As even Maureen Dowd is forced to come to terms with the fact that larger and larger sections of America — even CNN — are asking “Was Bush Better President Than Obama?”, the indignant New York Times columnist goes on to make a colossal effort to remind Americans how the Bush White House "broke creative new ground in thuggery and skulduggery."

How does she proceed to do that? By writing …a review of …a Hollywood movie. The film about

…a respected undercover spy tracking Iraqi W.M.D. efforts … being hounded by the most powerful men on earth [Valerie Plame] … is a vivid reminder of one of the most egregious abuses of power in history, and there are deliciously diabolical turns by actors playing Scooter Libby, David Addington and Rove. Plame’s C.I.A. bosses are portraits in cravenness, cutting her loose at the moment she starts receiving death threats and her Iraqi sources become endangered.

Well, yes. Notwithstanding the fact that Fair Game is collaborative effort by leftist Bush- (and Cheney-)haters — director Doug Liman "does not use an Oliver Stone sledgehammer on history" is the best Maureen Dowd can say in the filmmakers' defense — it is the movie that Brent Bozell calls

the ridiculous Valerie Plame "docudrama" titled "Fair Game," complete with sound bites of her real-life congressional testimony. Those evil-Bush-years commercials will run in the [2010 mid-term] campaign's final weeks without a single reporter batting an eye.

Indeed. Remember that all this comes in the wake of Obama, and the Democrats, complaining about Republican propaganda and the undue influence of foreign operatives in the 2010 elections. However:

"Citizens United" is a court case that demonstrated how media and entertainment conglomerates get more power in a democracy than every other institution, and how conservative voices are often squashed and mocked by the liberal media. … By contrast, powerful Hollywood leftists had no problem getting their documentaries with political overtones widely distributed in theatres as Citizens United was being squashed.

But wait for the punchline.

And guess who's financed that "Fair Game" movie? A film company named Imagenation Abu Dhabi. The executive producer is Mohamed Khalaf al-Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Company. But [Barack] Obama won't be pounding the podium against that foreign influence.

The birthplace of de Beauvoir and Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude

Courtesy of the state, French women seem to have it all

writes Katrin Bennhold on the front page of the International Herald Tribune as the New York Times bemoans, yet again, the alleged horrors of society (needless to say, Nordic nations were as usual top candidates for eulogies):

multiple children, a job and, often, a figure to die for. What they [French women] don’t have is equality: France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report, trailing the United States, most of Europe, but also Kazakhstan and Jamaica. … A recent 22-country survey by the Pew Research Center summed it up: three in four French people believe men have a better life than women, by far the highest share in any country polled.

“French women are exhausted,” said Valérie Toranian, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in France. “We have the right to do what men do — as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman.”

The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three devastating wars.

…as the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy put it: “France is an old Gallic macho country.”

France crystallizes the paradox facing many women across the developed world in the early 21st century: They have more say over their sexuality (in France birth control and abortion are legal and subsidized), they have overtaken men in education and are catching up in the labor market, but few make it to the top of business or politics.

“Gandhi, the Satanic God of Peaceniks”

Michael Phillips discusses the idol of so many unwitting, unread buffoons who are otherwise easily distracted with fake Dreamcatchers and getting worked up over the great bee crisis just as easily.

My slight distaste for Gandhi, after reading dozens of dishonest biographies of him, comes down to the fact that he tried to win independence for parts of India, by threatening to have his followers support Hitler in WWII.

Because, y’know, he was into non-violence, and even though there would have been a lot of violence in Britain had Hitler turned the Indians on the UK, it would still be, like, non-violent.

And that’s, like, y’know, I can grok on that. Speak to us, O giant sculpture dude!

No Pasarán! Picking Up the Noble Fight Against Discrimination in Spain

In the latest battle in the age-old war against intolerable sexual discrimination, the Daily Telegraph's Barney Henderson reports that Spanish fathers have been given entitlement to breastfeeding leave from work (gracias para Duncan):

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden

The New York Times gives some space to N Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard who makes the case against higher taxes for the rich…

I have to acknowledge that the Democrats are right about one thing: I can afford to pay more in taxes. My income is not in the same league as superstar actors and hedge fund managers, but I have been very lucky nonetheless. Unlike many other Americans, I don’t have trouble making ends meet. …

Nonetheless, as Republicans emphasize, taxes influence the decisions I make. I am regularly offered opportunities to earn extra money. It could be by talking to a business group, consulting on a legal case, giving a guest lecture, teaching summer school or writing an article. I turn down most but accept a few.

The author of some popular textbooks then supposes that some editor offers him $1,000 to write an article, showing what would happen should there be no taxes of any kind as compared to should the Bush tax cuts expire (Instapundit has more).

HERE’S the bottom line: Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered?

By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working.

Now you might not care if I supply less of my services to the marketplace — although, because you are reading this article, you are one of my customers. But I bet there are some high-income taxpayers whose services you enjoy.

…Like me, these individuals respond to incentives. (Indeed, some studies report that high-income taxpayers are particularly responsive to taxes.) As they face higher tax rates, their services will be in shorter supply.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether and how much the government should redistribute income. And, to be sure, the looming budget deficits require hard choices about spending and taxes. But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden.

No pop stars, no vocal show offs, just the Star Spangled Banner and the combined choirs of all four armed forces academies

(Thanks to Edy — I like the reaction of the Philadelphia Eagles' Jeremiah Trotter (#54) at 2:13…)

Just Another Lefty Gautag

Check out the leftynomics:

Solar panel operators receive a fixed tariff for every kilowatt hour of power they produce. That tariff is well above the standard market price for electricity, guaranteed for more than 20 years. The total subsidy payout over the last 10 years has been €60 to €80 billion. The yield has been modest by comparison. Solar power covers just 1.1 percent of German electricity requirements.

What’s even more hilarious, is that the author blames the Conservatives for “withholding the costs” of what the left’s fantasies of dystopic backwardness really are. Somehow, the Conservatives in power who are being buffaloed and berated into shutting down nuke plants and “transform” Germany are responsible for the fact that it might cost money, and not wishes or daisies.

That this notion would be expensive and unreliable was painfully obvious 20 years ago when households in Germany were still regularly taking delivery of oily Lignite coal. The fact that someone has waited until now to establish that their fantasies of power generation would cost 5 to 7 trillion Euro-smackeroos (2-3 YEARS for German GDP, by the way,) reveals the short term thinking of these louts so fond of telling others that they are such fantastic long term thinkers.

The Awakening of the Conservative Woman

Fire From the Heartland (thanks to Valerie)

Trying to Milk a Bull, are we?

In Spain it is now becoming increasingly difficult to show children the ways in which a man and a woman are different:

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Of course this is just a shrugged-shoulder matter of simply employing logic without any intent, rather than for judicial reasoning. Is the employed husband of an unemployed woman going to run home to attend to the wife’s nursing? Sure he is, right after he stops bitch slapping her.

The new legislation means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child.



The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on Thursday that the Spanish law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

The way to a European’s heart, and EU institutions know this, is for governments to be appearing to give people something for nothing, and this sounds like just that.

Socialism: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

This is what happens when your choices in life are socialized:

This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider.

To use a dental analogy, in East Germany crowns and fillings were not done to the degree that they would be in any civilized society. They simply pulled teeth until enough of them were gone by a certain age to justify dentures – one set – the lifetime allotment.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.

Emphasis mine. Sallow dyspepsia theirs.

Never mind the ways that they could be cut up, redistributive policies lead to degeneration of the WHOLE pie. It’s something that brings the motive and outcome of candidate Obama’s exchange with Joe the Plumber into sharp focus. Redistributive policies even shaft the people they try to help.

A European defense intellectual on Obama's resolve: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect”

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars” … tends to reinforce the questions of some of the allies about the Obama administration’s resolve to stop the mullahs’ drive

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

… in describing how the administration’s goals became fixated on finding a date when U.S. forces would begin to leave the country, and how the original objective of “defeating” the Taliban became “disrupting” them, and then “degrading” the insurgents, the book’s essential meaning for allied governments is likely to be in the indications it provides of a United States for which “winning” has become a soft notion, open to interpretation.

…a notion of nonurgency concerning Iran — while “Obama’s Wars” quotes Mr. Obama’s maxim for Afghanistan as being “Faster in, faster out” — has not gone down easily with countries like France, Britain and Israel who rely on their own estimates of a narrower time frame for confronting Tehran.

Indeed, it contrasted with a statement from a high official of a European allied nation three weeks ago that, in relation to Iran’s nuclear plans, any “further loss of time will be disastrous.”

As for the book, it goes to doubts — expressed semi-privately by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France — about the U.S. president’s basic views of the world and America’s concept in 2010 of victory and defeat.

…the author told of asking the president directly, “You can’t lose a war or be perceived to lose one, can you?”

Mr. Woodward said Mr. Obama replied: “I think about it not so much in the classic, do you lose a war on my watch? (sic) I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it?”

The remark might sound vague in relation to America’s presumed instincts. It is neither the omnipresent win or lose of American sports, nor the profit-and-loss, black-ink, red-ink ledgers of American business and American life.

I asked someone who might be called a European defense intellectual with close ties to the French government about that. The reply: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect.”

Readers of Mr. Woodward’s book will also note that it does not prophesy less ambiguity soon about the United States’ level of military determination.

From the Empty World of Leftist Propaganda

Permit me to present an excerpt from a 1981 East German publication for agitators. It was meant to give small-time propagandists who were supposed to work the barracks, the factory floor, and the like, examples of successful preaching to the imprisoned.

One choise piece provides an example of the limits of truthiness:

Italy: What are the Causes of Terrorist Actions?

The new year began in Italy as the old one had ended: with terrorist actions. On 31 December, Police General Enrico Calvaligi was shot at the front door of his home. In January, the kidnapping of Judge Giovanni D’Urso occupied public attention until he was a released. These were only the latest in a long chain of events that began on 12 December 1969 with a bomb at the Agricultural Bank in Milan and reached its high point so far on Bologna on 2 August 1980 when 85 people were killed and more than 200 injured. What are the causes of these terrorist actions, which have affected Italy in particular, but also other capitalist countries?

Bourgeois and social reformist ideologists and politicians generally, reject the claim that the roots are in the capitalist system. Explaining the causes, however, requires considering the whole interrelated complex of objective and subjective of economic, social, political, and ideological factors, and they develop from the nature of the capitalist system!

In the socio-economic area, terrorism is bred complex of factors of new and old contradictions, in the backwardness of the south, and particularly the sharpness of the economic crisis and its results. The inflation rate in 1980 was above 20 percent throughout the year, at the top of the leading capitalist states, and unemployment according to official figures remained at about 1.7 million, about 50 percent of whom are young people. In a situation of general uncertainty, extremist and anarchist ideas spread among dissatisfied and politically immature young people who want revenge on the bourgeois state. In this milieu, adventurers find an audience for their calls for “direct action” and terrorist acts, which they claim are the quickest path to social change. The crisis is also hard on the middle class, and produces not only anti-monopolistic views, but also radical views to the right and the “left.” Demagogic appeals to national sentiments, or to economic and social difficulties and social problems, allow neo-fascist and “leftist” extremist groups to win supporters in various social levels — from the poorest farmers in the south to some tradesmen, businessmen, civil servants, and students.

The two were, of course, kidnapped by the Red Brigade, well known for their “right wing views” to the East German listener of this bromide, and who were trained, plosletyzed to, and funded by the intelligence agencies of the Warsaw pact,making the entire thing a “Daddy drinks because you cry” type of argument.

Texas drinks a mojito

(…although how can you enjoy a mojito if there is no alcohol inside?!)

Plantu: “I Detest You, but keep Spending your Dollars Here”

To me, Plantu brings to mind the image of a grinning idiot in a ragged suit cranking the handle of a calliope. And that's largly how he's characterizing the President if you look more closely.

It's interesting to see that he signifies the President by drawing his non-specific generic negro minstrel figure. Good work there, spanky. You'll really get somewhere with that attitude.

The Birth of Freedom

The Birth of Freedom: Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? That all deserve a voice in choosing their leaders? Why would any nation consider this a self-evident truth?

Mr. Wen’s Rendezvous with Density

Precisely Because of the Extreme Violence of France's Gangsters, French Police Will Not Intervene During a Hold-Up

It would seem that the new generation of gangsters in the Lyon area have not heard that violence only occurs in America (aka the land of the nutty gun-lovers). Indeed, the — very young — criminals, who seem to come from la banlieue and who seem to base their attacks on the video games that they play, writes Richard Schittly in Le Monde, are multiplying hold-ups with an extreme violence. It is precisely for that reason, we learn, moreover, that the police will not intervene during the hold-up of a bank or a jewelry shop.

« Dans ce genre de situation, une intervention risque de déclencher une fusillade en plein centre-ville, on choisit de ne pas les intercepter immédiatement », justifie un commissaire de police.

Today on "Cooking with Joe"

A Legacy left behind by the Red Army: Soljanka

Of which there were very few, but like that evil genius Ripley’s love of Gulasch, mine is a weakness for Soljanka, a picante soup made popular among Eastern Germans by way of contact with their Soviet military comrades / douchebags / occupiers.

I have translated the recipe from the original Klingon, to which I’ve added my personal touches:

- 200 g /7-8 oz. of Yellow onion, finely chopped (avoid the vidalias or any new-fangled mild varieties)
- 100 g /3-1/2 oz. of unsliced bacon, cubed into small pieces
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 100 g /3-1/2 oz. of Tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon of Paprika
- 2 medium sized pickles (dill or sour are best), “julienne” cut to the extent one can with a pickle
- 500 g of meat: sausage, leftovers, or trimmed tips of pork or ham (anything, really, even leftover chicken!)
- (Add a tbp. of butter, if the meats are all lean.)
- 1,5 liters/ 3 pints of Beef stock (powdered stock may also be used, but omit the salt if you do)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon of capers

For decoration:

- Thin lemon wedges (thin sliced rings cut into triangles)
- Sour crème
- Dill

Optional:

- Parsley
- A few sliced olives, or any other pickled favorites.
- Pepperoncini (one of my favorites)

Preparation:

Sauté the onions and bacon in the bottom of your soup pot, until the onions clarify. Do not let them brown.
Add all of the meats, pickles, and paprika for a few moments until they soften.
Then pour in the soup stock.
Add the lemon wedges to the stock, salt and pepper to taste.
Let it come to a boil, and then let it simmer for at least 15 minutes and up to 45 minutes.
Just prior to serving, add the capers, and all the optional faves, as well as the sour crème dollop right in the middle of the bowl.

Decorate with small lemon wedges an a small dollop of sour crème. Some prefer the sour crème “on the side”, or otherwise spoon out the amount they deem excessive prior to stirring it in. Some the dill reserved from preparation is also a good thing to drizzle on top.

Makes 4 servings, or 2 if served without any other dish. Serve with rye or black bread on the side, the gamiest smelling type that you can find.

This is one of the simpler recipes, prone to a more pickle dominated taste, but is easily tempered by using a little bit more bacon or sausage.

Click on the photo for an excellent Ukranian Soljanka recipe, which has a much fresher taste, not masked as heavily by the tomato paste. It should take on the taste of creative variations more readily.

Dear Reader, You Know the Routine

The consensus opinion takes a hit, below the water:

Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or his predecessor has performed better in the White House, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday also indicates in the battle for Congress, Republicans hold large advantages over the Democrats among independents, men and blue-collar whites. The poll also indicates that Republicans are much more enthusiastic than Democrats to vote.

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.

"Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush's name while campaigning this year," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.



No doubt the reality-based community is readying the new and updated signs. Afterall, it is a search for truth .............. right?

Why did God invent YouTube?

So we could watch Ladytron, naturally:

By an Amazing Coindidence, Muslims Built a Mosque at the Exact Place Where a Foreign Religion Treasured a Revered Spot

How incredible! It just so happens that, by an amazing coincidence, ancient Muslims in India happened to build the mosque of Barbi Masjid at Ayodhya, the birthplace of one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, Ram, where a Hindu temple seems to have existed beforehand. Jim Yardley:

Lawyers for Hindu groups … contended that a temple to Ram had existed on the site until it was demolished to make way for the Babri Masjid, constructed in the 16th century by India’s first Mughal ruler.

"India’s first Mughal ruler" is not incorrect in this case, but one wonders whether it is not a way to avoid saying "India’s first Muslim ruler". According to Hindus, furthermore, "Ram was born beneath the central dome of the destroyed structure." What an amazing coincidence is that?! Muslims just happened to build a mosque on the exact place where another, non-Muslim religion had one of their most revered spots and where the ruins of that other, non-Muslim religion's temple happened to be…

And this sort of recurring fact seems to escape the (more-intelligent-and-more-suave-than-the-average-clueless-American-clod) journalists of the New York Times (which elsewhere refers to "the Republican Party's rabble-rousing tea partiers"), when writing a hit piece on someone like Pamela Gellar…

With Mayo on the Side, Please

Eye of Pickled Newt



Or some-such. Actually, I think that thing on the left is part ibex and part squid.

Zip it! I’m Sayin’ a Sooth, Here!

This Fall in America, It will be the Tea Party Movement versus the Cocktail Party Movement.

What I See

It seems to me that Uncle Sam, the eternal multilateralist, is learning his lesson all over again – and sweating it out. The Apathetic European standing next to him seems to be enjoying watching the waifish innocent townsfolk die at the hands of tin pot dictators and insurgents, while manning his precambrian Monty Python-esque artillery.

Oh, Swell: Time to Bring Out Yet Another Stereotypical Cartoon!

A report on cyberwar in Le Monde by Yves Eudes (also an article on the worm that attacked the U.S. Army) is the occasion for Rocco to practice his evil-and-cruel-shark-toothed-Yankee-soldier cartooning…

Meanwhile, articles such as the Nathalie Guibert piece on France's defense measures or the Yves Eudes piece on NATO's Estonia defense tactics or the Jean-Pierre Stroobants piece on cybercriminality in the EU are laconically illustrated by photos like that of a gendarme at his computer…

Oh, Goody: Time to Bring Out Another Stereotypical Cartoon!

The scandal, real or alleged, of a European food agency president's belonging to the agro-alimentary lobby, as reported by Hervé Kempf in Le Monde — the information was uncovered by our old friend José Bové — allows Serguei to draw one of his typical fat-evil-cigar-smokin'-capitalist-lording-over-the-little-people cartoons.

This is what Social Progressives in the Near East Look Like

Gay Saudi prince 'murdered servant in ferocious attack'

Hey, he’s got all the right credientials... a gay ‘outsider’, aristocratic wealth that’s counteracted by the cred, a willingness to take ‘direct action’, a sense of entitlement, and, let’s face it, an unknown with political access.

On the surface, any number of towns on the west cioast of the United States would elect him to their city councils on the strength of ‘celebrating his identity’ alone.

Spaddacus! I loved you Like a Foddah!

So long Signalman SM3c Bernard Schwartz. You’ll always be first rate.

What Else Happened During the Union Donkey Show?

With an effect on the U.S. territories of the Pacific, Guam, American Samoa, etal., Congress passed a “living wage” law some years back. Phased in in stages, it’s was meant to bring “diginity” etc., etc., and such like to a population largely used as a congressional plaything most of the time.

They said it is in nobody's interest-not workers, not businesses, and not the government-for uncontrolled cost increases to lead to business closures.

But something rather interesting happened on Saturday. A bill delaying the next $0.50/hour minimum wage hike until 2012 was signed by President Social-Justice, having been the culmination of a rushed through congressional voting process.

Even Radio New Zealand International reported that Democrats feared that Republicans with a view to making people sleep in the bed that they made, would not sign on, but the measure to suppress a minimum wage hike got through with full support of the left.

Moreover, the hourly wage increase couldn't have come at the worst possible time when the CNMI government has been partially shutdown effective Oct. 1 because of a lack of a timely passed balanced budget. Among other things, the shutdown means over 1,400 government employees will be temporarily out of job, until a budget is passed and signed into law.

Why did they do it? To reduce unemployment, and protect jobs and employers at a time when the economy is so uncertain.

Let's see ... What ELSE happened that day? Hm. Not much I guess, other than a horribly contrived Union and fringe-political set-up rally at the Lincoln Memorial, supported by the whole of Leftist Flunkydom who when not adapting to the free markets in the U.S. Territories, is advocating full unionization of the U.S. workforce to levels above both the market value for that work, and the value at which those employers can viably remain in business.

The “One Nation Working Together" Donkey show was not a gathering of individuals who came on their own of their own volition, it was an amalgam of dial-a-mob operations ranging from Union organizers to Trotskyites to “Anarchists”, and all the passive-aggressive fig-leaf “cause organization” trying to make the crackpot left look like they’re involved in feeding poor waifs on the streets, housing, and whatever else they think makes their political factions indispensable to humanity.

It was many things, but it was not a spontaneous expression of individuals thinking freely and joining together to make a point. It was paid for in large part with union dues, grant money, and had paid organizers whose business is constructing the appearance of sincerity and providing lunch and portable toilets, and generally being venal for a living.

I wonder if the U.S. Overseas Territory minimum wage hike freeze issue was presented by anyone who voted for is at the “One Nation Working Together” theatrics? I sort of doubt it.

It brought together a variety of left leaning groups fighting for these themes, as well as LGBT rights, comprehensive immigration reform, peace, civil rights, environmental protection, and worker’s rights.

One wonders how their stated, if not their expanded (to include the usual rainbow umbrella) collection of issues not related to economy, and especially not related to the general population of the nation – would be treated by Samoans trying to save their jobs.

Samoans vs. Professional LGBT political agitators. Hm. Professional LGBT political agitators vs. Samoans. Seriously, are these fringe loons crash-testing America the brain-trust or what?

"In Reality", Putin and Medvedev Do Not Believe in the Obama Administration's "Reset Button" Strategy

Even if Vladimir Putin has softened his foreign policy language and even if Dimitri Medvedev has put a smile on the face's régime towards the West, says political analyst Lilia Chevtsova, interviewed by Le Monde's Piotr Smolar, "in reality" the Russian leadership doesn't believe in the Obama administration's "Reset Button" strategy…

…en matière de politique étrangère, n'y a-t-il pas un nouveau pragmatisme ?

La crise internationale a imposé la nécessité d'une diversification de l'économie. Elle a poussé le régime à arborer un sourire sur son visage à destination de l'Ouest. C'est le rôle de Medvedev. Même si Poutine, lui aussi, a adouci sa rhétorique, il ne croit pas, en réalité, au « reset button » [relance des relations] proposé par l'administration Obama.

Like, Way!

Co-op shopping, off-smelling wheat germ in yellowish plastic eating wierdos beware: Syd and Om are coming!


Elsewhere: Greenpeace are Saudi Arabia’s servile flunkies.

Saudi Arabia knows it can’t lobby against Canada, their chief competitor. That would cause a backlash, and increase demand for our oil by consumers. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to say a word, with groups like Greenpeace out and about. They’ll do all the oilsands-bashing for them.

Greenpeace is good at bashing oil — but only in very safe countries. They’ve never had a protest, or even a press conference, in Riyadh or Tehran.

"Our Time Has Come": It's Tea Time in the UK

With the British Tea Party that he launched in February, Daniel Hannan is trying to get his fellow Britons to follow in the wake of their cousins across the Pond, writes Virginie Malingre in Le Monde. In a country that has public spending increase from 38% in 2o00 to 48% today, he is joined by the likes of Matthew Elliott's Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA).

…la TPA fait évoluer le débat. A force de marteler, sans répit et exemples à l'appui, que l'argent des contribuables est gaspillé, "elle a acquis une forte influence", juge Tony Travers, politologue à la London School of Economics. D'ailleurs ni le Labour, ni les tories, ni les lib-dem n'ont fait campagne, en 2010, sur un Etat plus fort.

A SitRep from the Happiest Place on Earth

And I’m not kidding you. Your average garden variety European Ivan Ivanovich really DOES think that a certain country, population, etc., can be objectified in such a way that they will clam being the happiest people on earth, despite the stunning and enduring tradition of having a high suicide rate.

“Danish ghettos ravaged by fire,” alerts the Jyllands-Posten. Every week in troubled Danish neighbourhoods, four fires on average burn down kindergartens, trash containers, cars and motor scooters, reports the Danish daily, based on fire department reports in the country’s three biggest cities.

According to one sociologist quoted in the paper, these acts are perpetrated by a hard core of ethnic youths who want their neighbourhoods to “take on the image of a dangerous ghetto”.

Because in a life where nothing matters, your biggest complaint can be either some detached social issue, a fake crisis of some sort, or the fact that your precious, tidy, overpriced society isn’t enough like a first-person shooter game, or your image of da hood.

Magnificent

A message from Andie for Sunday (thanks to Mark)

”Caring mayor wants Roma register”

Why does their “caring” sound so much like a cross between pandering and fascism?

“Ethnic registration for Roma”, headlines De Volkskrant. Social democratic mayor Cor de Vos of Nieuwegein, a town in the central Holland, says that councils with the largest Roma populations should keep an ethnic register of the community. “We are dealing with a group of people which is not integrated in Dutch society,” he declared.

If that’s the case, why don’t they “register” gays and anyone who might haver ever practiced Islam?

“They need to be helped, for their own sake and that of their neighbourhood. But we can’t do that without knowing their situation.” Last Wednesday it was revealed that the city council of Ede has been holding police, child welfare and justice department files on the Roma since 1978. The council apologised but also said: “The law isn't in step with the issues.

And of course that was bad, and wrong. Sooooo in the interest of “caring”, there will be a lot more of it.

What next? Tattooed registration numbers to “show you care”?

Just to Tell you how Much they Care About People...

... a terror warning had to be played down because it elicited European complaints over the fear of lost travel revenue:

The Obama administration will warn U.S. citizens to be vigilant as they travel in Europe, providing updated guidance prompted by al-Qaida threats, American and European officials told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Such a move could have negative implications for European tourism, business and diplomacy if travelers fear there's a possibility of terror attacks.

Eight Germans and two British brothers are at the heart of the al-Qaida-linked terror plot against European cities.

Bauhaus and Neo-Bauhaus: a Natural but Ironic Choice

From a city that is philosophically more of a hybrid than it is European, Mediterranean, or Near Eastern, and might be one of the most substantive laboratories of Bauhaus and it’s many there-afters. It is present day Tel Aviv.

A new city, it was to make every effort to look into the future, not into the hard, class separated, hatred laden past, so the “new” style, a forward looking one, seemed a natural choice, despite the fascist use of modernism in Italy and Germany in a state-authoritarian and institutional role.

The Last Best Hope

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny — on November 2 (thanks to Mark)

Greenie Social Engineers: "Believe of Die," and Other Forced Conversions

Aren't you glad that there is a whole new generation of "social activists" willing to as "how many millions have to die to make a perfect society?"



Done hand in glove with The Guardian, (a.k.a. the provisional wing of a school of thought that makes excuses for leftist authoritarianism,) behold a campaign directed at intimidating children to do their political bidding through operant conditioning - possibly because persuading intelligent adults is just too much to be bothered with. After all, it's a lot easier to inculcate a belief in a man-emitted carbon apocalypse in children who haven't yet developed a firm grip on science and the natural world.

Attempting to access children without the consent of their parents, employing tacitly inferred threats of violence and torture, these "campaigners" are using the tactics of cultists and pedophile sexual predators. I'm sure they've invented a morality for themselves that permits them to think that THEIR issue is more important than fostering the independent thinking of children, or the authority of parents.

The Danish Art of Hygge

The Danes have a word that's hard to translate, and no foreigner can hope to pronounce, but it's as Danish as pork roast and cold beer

we read in The Danish Art of Hygge (tak til Valerie).

It's hygge, and it goes far in illuminating the Danish soul.

The closest we can come phonetically is "hooga," if we try forming our mouths for "ee" while saying "oo." It doesn’t translate directly into any other language but we can illustrate it in action.

In the immigrant enclaves outside France’s major cities, the U.S. embassy in Paris sponsors urban renewal projects, music festivals, and conferences

The United States Embassy in Paris has formed a network of partnerships with local governments, advocacy groups, entrepreneurs, students and cultural leaders in the troubled immigrant enclaves outside France’s major cities

writes Scott Sayare from Bondy in a New York Times article sent by Duncan who adds that "I guess Obama can't resist organizing a community."

The residents of this poor, multiracial Paris suburb say they have been abandoned. For 30 years, they say, the French authorities have written off Bondy and neighborhoods like it, treating their inhabitants as terminal delinquents and ignoring their potential.

This, residents note, is not the approach taken by the United States Department of State.

…Begun in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks as part of an effort to bolster the image of the United States within Muslim communities across the globe, American outreach in these hard neighborhoods — often referred to collectively as the “banlieues,” or suburbs — has grown in scale and visibility since the election of Barack Obama.

…With an annual public affairs budget of about $3 million, the Paris embassy has sponsored urban renewal projects, music festivals and conferences. Since Mr. Obama’s election, the Americans have helped organize seminars for minority politicians, coaching them in electoral strategy, fund-raising and communications.

Oh, great! Export ACORN's "experience" to France's banlieues…
In an April meeting organized by the United States Embassy in Paris, Samuel L. Jackson meets students in Bondy

Whine, Counter-whine

Europeans in Brussels are Revolting

Unloved 'eurocrats' look on at Brussels protest

Which I suppose is just a symptom of the socialist disease of trying to find someone else to pay for your comforts.

But the image of the Brussels gravy-train ignores the fact that thousands of EU secretaries, porters and other junior staff take home just €1,400-or-so each month and work on temporary contracts with no job security.

If, that is, IF you’re a part-timer or a temp. The best job you can find, you say? That hardly sounds like it’s structurally “uncompetitive.”

Given the mobility of the workforce, and the fact that you can always resign from it, if you think it such a miserable sweatshop, would indicate that those salaries are actually at a fair market value.

Simon Coates, from the EU Council's FFPE union, said that when officials move to Brussels their spouses often have to give up work and they lose the support of their extended families in terms of child-care.

No, they didn’t HAVE to give up anything, because you didn’t HAVE to take the job that required relocation, you Candy Ass.

"EU salaries [for low- and mid-ranking officials] are no longer competitive. There are no good career prospects here, so we are finding it hard to recruit people from countries such as the UK, Sweden or Germany," he added.

And here we thought that they were the champions of all that was good and pleasant in the world – like “living wage” mandates and “rights” to all of life’s material needs.



“Austere,” is it not?

Paris sera toujours Paris!

Alas, the culture of discussion and debate...



The Techno Parade was meant to mimic Berlin's now equally violent "Love" Parade. Taken 25 September.

Researchers Trying to Discover Ape Connection to AIDS Instead Link Malaria to Gorillas

AIDS researchers doing research on the links of that disease to Africa's ape population have instead discovered the connection of malaria to the gorilla, writes Catherine Vincent in Le Monde.

They’re All into Greek

Much as Greek protesters opposed austerity of any sort, and in fact wanted MORE benefits, despite the fact that there is no-one left to suck dry to pay for them, protesters will be descending on Brussels demanding to expropriate more from the grandchildren they won’t have:

Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into Brussels, hoping to swell into a 100,000-strong march on European Union institutions later in the day and reinforce the impact of Spain’s first nationwide strike in eight years.

All the actions sought to protest the budget-slashing, tax-hiking, pension-cutting austerity plans of European governments seeking to control their debt.

In an ironic twist, the march in Brussels comes just as the EU Commission is proposing to punish member states that have run up deficits to fund social programs in a time of high unemployment across the continent. The proposal, backed by Germany, is running into opposition from France, which wants politicians to decide on sanctions, not rigid rules alone.

“It is a bizarre time for the European Commission to be proposing a regime of punishment,” said John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, which is organizing the Brussels march.

“How is that going to make the situation better? It is going to make it worse,” Monks said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

A fact rapidly disproved by Germany’s relatively low unemployment rate and the fact that they actually have some GDP growth.

Of course this only happens when you bet your entire future on the government’s social policies.

Elsewhere in the land of Greek wisdom and savoire vivre:

A new discussion space has opened where the compatibility of large Muslim and other populations with national laws and culture is being challenged

The base line in Europe for what politicians say and do about immigration and the role of Islamic communities in their countries is moving

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

It is shifting in a way that mainstream politics now permits its leaders to say flatly that immigrants, Muslims in large part, must accommodate the rules and traditions of the societies they enter, rather than vice versa.

In recent weeks, there have been paroxysms of controversy in Germany over a critical book on the place of immigrants there, which found substantial public support. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of targeting immigrants for quick political gain. In both cases, a new discussion space has opened where the compatibility — or ability to integrate — of large Muslim and other populations with national laws and culture is coming under challenge.

It is a European event, in France’s case overlapping the country’s treatment of foreign Roma, or Gypsies, who have overstayed the three-month welcome automatically accorded citizens of Bulgaria and Romania as members of the European Union.

Good, you could say, in the sense that the issue confronts an often muzzled truth about European life and a matter of genuine public concern. Unsettling, you could insist, because it has erupted at a time of limited European economic perspectives, national leaders with weak public support, and, mostly from the left, reflex rebuttals using words like Nazism or racism to condemn what is, in many respects, a new frankness.

… The European Union … has relatively little to offer when it comes to clarity on immigration issues, having no common quotas, a minimum of specific regulations, and rules that encourage free movement across borders. The Union appears not to have advanced on the question since late 2004, when the filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by a Muslim extremist; the Dutch government, chairing an E.U. summit meeting in Brussels, considered it inopportune to bring the issue of Muslim integration before its partners.

I don't know whether the figures and the conclusions in the video above
(shookhran to Mark) are true, but anyway, it is well worth seeing…

“But IMHO being right is more important than being liked.”

Reader Doug left the following prescient note in the comments on the common expatriates’ hatred of ones’ own:

I'm an ex-pat buckeye who's been living in Germany for 19 years after being stationed here for 6 years before that. and you can believe me when I say that I've lost more friends than won because of my views. And I do have a useful job.

[ ... ]

.The last 9 years have in many ways been the hardest in my life. But IMHO being right is more important than being liked. and from experience I can say that many useless expats love dragging the US down. Some fools enjoy ingratiating themselves with their hosts no matter what. I even went as far as to hang a picture of W in my lab just to f#&k with people.

A picture of George Bush where it can’t be avoided is also something one can truly do to test people’s ‘tolerance’ for ideas other than their own, especially those who are more interested in talking about their own breadth than actually practicing it. Are these ‘inclusive’ lefties not the ones saying how they must “get in the face” of those who don’t carry their water?

When it comes down to it, most leftists’ touted Agora of Ideas®©™, is a sullen and silent breadline where all are forced to finish off their LuRPs and are forced to profess their thanks for it.

Le communisme n'a tué que 100 millions de personnes ; Il faut lui donner une autre chance !

Following Guy Sorman's common-sense decision to refer to Phnom Penh as The Nuremburg of Communism because of the Cambodian capital's Khmer Rouge trials, Le Monde gets inundated with reactions from intellectuals and readers saying that Karl Marx and his theories should not be rejected — how dare he?! — because of "mistakes" by communist régimes…

Or, as the Protest Warrior T-shirt proclaims:

Communism has only killed 100 million people; let's give it another chance!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder...

...of somebody else. Michael Philips points out a problem with American expats: they’re a huge source of anti-American invective. A funny thing for people too detached to still genuinely understand the place and the people that they’re generalizing about.

I remember 40 continuous years of idle expat discussions, cocktail parties and dinner parties where Americans are the first and most vocal to express hate for Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh.. the list is endless and the patois is pure hate-America Liberalism.

It’s also noteworthy that virtually NONE of the sort Expat one hears spewing (out of a presumed need to be liked by strangers,) is involved in some productive job – it’s always the case of an intern for an NGO with a social goal, or a student, of a political type, but one rarely finds this with someone working full time in Finance, Engineering, Science, or even teaching.

"Infantile" is the Word Used by The Economist for Tea Partiers and Other Conservative Americans Who Place Their Trust in the 1787 Constitution

Just in case there is any doubt that The Economist has veered — massively — to the left… Following the magazine's calling Tea Partiers (and therefore people of the American heartland) bitter and brainless ("Too much anger and too few ideas"), the London weekly is back in form this week, with Lexington referring to the beliefs of "constitution–worshippers" as "infantile"…

As a thoughtfully detached reader notes,

Lexington overstates the case of “constitution–worship” in order to create a caricature of Tea Party belief, the easier to apply his extensive wit and prose in vanquishing his own straw man. Tea Party activists no more believe that the Constitution alone can solve the complex political issues of the day than a business chief executive officer believes that his vision statement provides the day to day objectives, priorities and tasks of his business. And while acknowledging the greatness of the Constitution and the visionaries who wrote it, Lexington gratuitously diminishes his own approbation by inappropriately implying a moral equivalent between the Framers non-partisan backroom deal making (for the sake of the new country and all citizens) with today’s rigidly partisan backroom deal making of the current Congress (for the political and financial advantage of the Democratic party and their supporters). All this being said, Lexington is right on one key point: the Constitution, thanks to the Tea Party, is rightfully enjoying a dramatic and much needed revival.

Another reader opines:

Another Lexington column riddled with logical fallacies. As others have noted, the Constitution was initiated as a contract which delineated the enumerated powers of the federal government, with the 10th amendment providing the explicit language to that effect. The constitution does not "provide answers to the hard questions of today's politics", nor should it--but it does provide a durable framework for participants to provide those answers. A body of law in a federal system requires a hierarchy, and the constitution is at the top of that hierarchy. Dismissing the foundational document as a "text put on paper in a bygone age" betrays a profound ignorance of the sound governing principles in that document--principles which are, in fact, timeless. The dismissal of the conservative arguments that the federal government has usurped the sound governing principles of the Constitution rings hollow. Lexington dismisses these arguments as "idolatry"--a straw-man rhetorical device worthy of Obama's worst style. The fact is, a government truly based on rule of law must adhere to the principles of a constitution--defenders of the current bloated federal state are unable to cite this basis, hence their attack on those who would pare the government down to it actual legal basis. Thus the "first principles in every political generation" may in fact be found by consulting that "text put on paper in a bygone age". The only alternative is an arbitrary and capricious rule by the whims of powerful men.

Another reader, saying what a sad, straw argument, adds:

Contrary to what was stated in your article, the Constitution was not written in 100% agreement by like-minded bigots that hated poor men, women and slaves. It was argued and fought over, tooth and nail, by some of the greatest minds in History. Many of whom came from different backgrounds, and had differing opinions on those very issues. It's amazing the thing got written, much less ratified. It’s considered one of the best compromises in history. … Lexy. Baby. Simple question: have you even read these documents you’re so quick to dismiss?

Another reader is less polite:

"Infantile" is an excellent word for yet another phoned-in Lexington column. Never one to actually examine the beliefs of those who disagree with him, Lexington broadly caricatures, then derides his opponents. Not every problem requires a solution mapped out in the Constitution- gay marriage, to use your example, being an area best left to the states (oh wait, that is in there- it's called the 10th amendment. Read it, you supercilious jackass). The whole point, if you remove your head form your posterior, is that many, many things in life do not require federal legislation, or administration, or oversight of any kind, which is why the Constitution restricts the authority of the government. True, it was not written for the purpose of restricting government, but in expanding the authority of the federal government, it was designed to be self-constricting, mainly to answer the concerns of those who worried about the kind of overreach we have today. Please refrain from opining until you learn something about the subject. Thanks.

Update: Most of the issues brought up by The Economist are not as clear-cut as leftists would like and, in any event, were settled already, over 150 years ago: Abraham Lincoln and the Founding Fathers' Supposed Embrace of Slavery Along with Their Alleged Rejection of Women's Rights