Island Passage

So what do we hear from Democratic "netroots" regarding a Southern culture? (a key to implementing the "Southern Strategey" as described by Dave "Mudcat" Saunders ) Why, let's listen in : The Peckerwood era in the south were good ole days for southerners, or at least as good as it got after Lee's crying uncle and throwing in the towel to the hated Yankees. They still had the Negroes to kick around and could freely exercise their domestic version of Apartheid, (`least till dose meddlin' hippie college boys began stickin' dere noses where day didn't belong and stirrin' up a ruckus) until that long avowed day when the south would rise again, and rising is just what it is doing in 2005 with the help of Jesus and the GOP (Good Ole Peckerwoods)... This is the reality of the situation: deep south bible belt whites, mainly poor, increasingly hostile and always Republican now own a disproportionate amount of political power in America and ...

The Constant Reader will know that I have a bone to pick with Democrats who put on Christianity like a magic hat to try and convince us dumb old fundamentalists that they, too, get this "God thing." Well, the Democrats have one national figure who "gets it." Barack Obama gave a very thoughtful speech the other day: For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest "gap" in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that relig...

If Democrats were asking me (which they are most certainly not) they'd be listening to Dave "Mudcat" Saunders . One of Mudcat's myriad cris de coeur (besides the lament that Democrats "have no testosterone" and are unable to "get through the culture" of the South) is that his party can't count. "Politics is about addition, that's all it is. It's not difficult," he says, giving me a primer on Mudcat math. "If I go get a white male," he asks, "how many votes do I get?" One, I reply. "No," he says impatiently, "I get two. Because I just took one away from Republicans." It is the most elegantly simple precept, he says, one that could end the Democratic drought, and yet they don't see it because they think targeting Bubba males alienates their base and smacks of racism. "No it doesn't," he says. "My African-American friends want to win as much as I do. . . . Democrat...

It's become a common observation among conservatives to note that Richard Hofstadter's essay, " The Paranoid Style in American Politics ," more and more closely describes what is happening among the warring factions of the Democratic party. Hofstadter's comments about conservative criticisms of the Korean war now apply to Liberal criticisms of the Global War on Terror: ...Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all. The group that was the banner carrier for the paranoid politics about which Hofstadter wrote was the unhinged John Birc...

Mona Charon muses on the reasons she is a conservative and quotes one of the finest bon mots I have ever read. ...He has reminisced about moving to Washington in the 1960s. Paraphrase: “I was a young, brash Barry Goldwater conservative. But in the intervening years, I’ve matured and grown and moved steadily to the right.”

After suffering a stoke, publisher Jim Baen has died. While I will write more later, David Drake has written a wonderful obituary . UPDATE: Just Barking Mad reminds us that Jim remembered when he was a young soldier: The final, and perhaps the most important thing to me, is that Jim never forgot the serviceman. Once a lowly private on the Bavarian border Jim would later send tens of thousands of first run books to soldiers, seaman, airmen and Marines around the globe at no expense to them. Naturally there were some who decried this a publicity stunt. I know that it was not…Jim cared. He was honored when they thanked him. Letters from service members took place of pride on his website.

It's like falling through the looking glass. Howard Dean likens 2006 to 1968 : "We're about to enter the '60s again," Dean said, but he was not referring to the Vietnam War or racial tensions. Dean said he is looking for "the age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision." . . . Baby, the last thing the Democratic Party wants is a to be led by a religious figure with a moral vision. Alternating between references to the "McCarthy era" of the 1950s, which he accused the Bush administration of reviving, the decade of the 1960s and the current era, Dean explained that he was "looking to go back to the same moral principles of the '50s and '60s." Man, are we back to that 50s "Happy Days" nostalgia again? That was a time that stressed "everybody's in it together," he said. "We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds....

Christopher Hitchens has written about the silence of the Peace Movement when it comes to actually..., you know..., doing something more that pounding drums . ...may I propose some ways in which those who don't want to be associated with Michael Moore, George Galloway, Ramsey Clark, and the rest of the Zarqawi and Saddam apologists can make themselves plain? Here are four headings under which the anti-war types could disprove the charge of bad faith. He lists the four things: Promote the ban on land mines. Human shields to protest the tageting of Iraqi civilians by terrorists. Reaffirm the condemnation of sanctions against Iraq. Re-start the drive to allow homosexuals to serve in the US armed forces. I don't have much to say about number four. This seems to be kind of tacked onto the whole Iraq thing, like a senator placing an earmark for his home state in a highway appropriations bill. But look at number one. Remember Princess Di? Patron saint of the tabloid? She was making ...

Russell Cobb over in Slate writes about the appearance of cracks in what is usually seen as a monolithic American Christian Nationalism. In this article he counters the alarm-crying of cultural observers such as Kevin Phillips and Michelle Goldberg . I have written about my own differences with the National Association of Evangelicals over their stance on Environmental issues. What astonishes me is that anyone who has 1) any knowledge of church history and 2) access to a newspaper would conclude that Christians--especially American Christians--would be able to form some sort of long-lasting, all-encompassing political coalition. The branch of the church that seems to have observers such as Michelle Goldberg exercised is the Fundamentalist/Evangelical branch of Protestant Christianity. Let's take a look at this unity: Christianity hasn't been monolithic since, oh...at least seven years after its founding when the Apostle Peter baptized a Roman commander , scandalizing wha...

Many on the Democratic side of the aisle seem to be hell-bent on bringing down the Bush administration--even if it takes wrecking the United State's national security to accomplish it. Taleena at Sun Comprehending Glass has intemperate words for the editors and publishers of the New York Times regarding their publishing of the details of a anti-terrorist program that tracks international funds transfers. On Fox News Sunday, the often-likable NPR commentator Juan Williams felt that it was a good thing that the news was published because, as he said, the terrorists would stop moving money around--there was no alternative to the international banking system. I weep. The First Rule of Fight Club is: You Don't Talk About Fight Club. The Second Rule of Fight Club is: You Don't Talk About Fight Club. You never, never, never expose to your opponents your intentions, capabilities or actions. Perhaps your opponent doesn't know; perhaps he suspects, but isn't sure; or perh...

A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.' Merry and tragical! tedious and brief! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord? The Seattle Times has run an unsigned editorial about the resignation of Dean Logan. For those who are not familiar with him, Mr. Logan was Elections Director for King County, Washington during the late Gubernatorial* race . Mr. Logan's department mislaid ballots, certified ballots that were in clear and open violation of state elections law, and kept finding "lost" ballots until Democrat Christine Gregoire edged ahead of Republican Dino Rossi. The ill will generated by that debacle will poison Washington state politics for a generation. Now Mr. Logan is to decamp to sunnier climes of Los Angeles County. I wish him safety, for Los Angeles is rough political scene. That kind of electoral jiggery-pokery will have Orange County rioting like South Central. But wh...

I wonder how many people start summer, or re-affirm summer, by re-reading a specific book each year. I had thought that I was the only one who did such a thing, but I have met, through the years many people who do it. Years ago, my friend Alex told me that every year since seminary he has started each summer by re-reading Dune . I completely understood. Dune is a novel that, if you are lucky, takes you in and transports you to a distant, not altogether nice, place. But the lapse of a year allows the ideas and themes of the novel to grow roots in your mind; and re-reading the novel allows new growth to experience of reading. A former boss, Bill, told me that he started every summer re-reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever . I read through that series twice, both times carried by its story and repelled by its anti-hero. I cannot imagine doing that to myself again. But for Bill, summer didn't start until he had cracked open Lord Foul's Bane . What triggers thi...

So no sooner did I post the haiku about getting flung, than it happens. Last Friday Mrs. Islander had customers to attend to, so I took off to attend aikido class alone. I arrived late (something I loathe) and thought that I would just wait out open-hand techniques and participate only in weapons class. Pierce Sensei had other ideas. He called a senior student over to show me the current technique. The attack was a ryotetori (two-hand grab) and the defense was a type of koyu nage or throw. (My ignorance is due to my late arrival.) I am still gokyu (rank beginner) , so my partner was releasing me into forward rolls. At least she was trying to. Because I had been late arriving, I had not warmed up, I had not seen the technique demonstrated, and I was being a poor uke . If you can imagine someone stepping onto the dance floor and attempting a new step for the first time, bumping into their partner, treading on their partner's feet, that was me. After a moment, Pierce Sensei came ...

What is a haiku ? five syllables, followed by seven, then five more. Pondering the cup, sitting seiza , we can see, that it is empty. Oh lowly kohai , do not correct your betters, lest  Sensei  fling you.

Last Wednesday, Mrs. Islander and I attended our usual akido/kenjutsu class. After the aikido class, Pierce Sensei held the weapons class two doors down the street in a room with mirrors lining one wall. It was unnerving but helpful to work out in front of the mirrors. It's great to be able to keep an eye on your posture as you move through an awase . When the class ended, the students trooped back down the street to our usual classroom. I grabbed a vacuum cleaner and went back to the mirror room and began vacuuming it out. I was alone for 10 or 15 minutes, pushing the machine back and forth, up and down the long room. Alone with the whirring sound of the vacuum, focusing on the threads and lint that had fallen from people's dogi while they practiced, I reflected on the practice of cleaning the dojo . When I was a child, one of my teachers told us that Japanese children spent the last 10 minutes of each school day cleaning up the classroom. We were all aghast. Couldn't the...

Taleena posts about a Connecticut school district that has instituted a rule that no high school football team shall win a game by more than 50 points. In a comment to that post I reminded her of Torvill and Dean and their run-ins with the ISC over their interpretations of the rules. I found this on Wikipedia : Getting around Olympic rules Ravel's original Boléro composition is over 17 minutes long. Olympics rules clearly state that the free dance must be four minutes long (plus or minus 10 seconds). Torvill and Dean went to a music arranger to condense Boléro down to a "skatable" version. However, they were told that the minimum time that Boléro could be condensed down to was 4 minutes 28 seconds. This is still 18 seconds in excess of the Olympics rules. Torvill and Dean reviewed the Olympic rule book and found that it stated that actual timing of a skating routine began when the skaters started skating. Therefore they could arguably use Boléro if they did not pla...

The early markers are being laid down for the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections. This promises to be an very interesting contest--the best since 2000, perhaps since 1980. Neither side has an heir-apparent. Let the tournament begin! Hillary Rodham Clinton (I am never sure whether to use her maiden name, so she ends up with the assasin's three-name moniker*) has oodles of cash, which she has not been hoarding, Midas-like. She has built up a reputation as a hard-working senator and a good and generous campaigner. When the day comes, she will have I.O.U.s from all over the country to collect. That old comedy team of Kerry and Edwards have broken up and are going solo. Edwards is the Tab Hunter of the Democratic party--a pretty face, but eventually he'll wind up opposite Devine in some John Waters production. In modern times Vice Presidents are often an Administration's heir-apparent, but Dick Cheney has said that he won't run; and his behavior as Vice President ha...

This week Democratic members of Congress and other elected officials unveil their "New Direction for America," the party's declaration of its reason for being. It's symbol? Two arrows pointing in opposite directions. By the way, the phrase "New Direction for America" has been used. Check out this John K. King listing of rare books: THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION: A NEW DIRECTION FOR AMERICA. N.p. (The Republican National Committee) n.d. (1972?). Photos, 12.5x11", stapled wraps, page numbered 9-16, stples rusty, pages a bit worn and soiled. SIGNED ON THE COVER BY THEN-VICE PRESIDENT SPIRO T. AGNEW. Book Id: 94-0378 Price: $95.00 Are you guys even trying?

Taleena over at Sun Comprehending Glass posts about the problem of suicides at the Guantanamo detention faclity. Her take is to compare the suicide rate at Gitmo against the suicide rate at other American prisons and jails. I wonder though, what is the suicide rate in a prision in the Middle East or Persia? Those who read the book or saw the movie Midnight Express back in the late 1970s must suspect that the rate is much higher than anything that exists at Gitmo. But I think that we should realize that war is never sanitary and nobody fights in a war without violating the norms of civilized conduct. Wretchard at The Belmont Club writes about the likely possibility that Jordan tortured Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly to gain information of the whereabouts of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; and that Jordan passed that information onto Coalition forces who used the fruits of torture to carry out a "targeted assasination" of a opponent. Both actions are roundly condemned by the in...

Maybe it's the changing season. Maybe it's that Taleena over at Sun Comprehending Glass is changing her look. I just got tired of the dark black. This green is more my current mood.

This weekend was a perfect example of Puget Sound weather. Saturday, which had been predicted to be rainy, was sunny and blue. A perfect opportunity to get out and mow the backyard. The temperature was in the mid sixties (Fahrenheit) and humidity was above 70%. Warm and just slightly muggy. I know my Los Angeles siblings will smirk to read mid-60's as "warm," but I have become acclimated to the Sound and I was sweating freely by the time I was finished. I spent an idle hour on the front deck, reading some technical manuals, waving at the neighbors as they walked by, and listening to the dive-bombing buzz of the hummingbirds as they chased each other from the feeders that Mrs. Islander has hung on the eaves. Sunday I woke to the sound of soft dripping. I stepped into the backyard with my cup of coffee and sat at the patio table, underneath the umbrella, and watched the heavy mist fall from the air. Too quite to be heard itself, only it's collection in eaves, leaves, an...