baldilocks

What I'm Reading (This Month)

In preparation for a momentous Independence Day...

An excerpt, page 47:

The judiciary today behaves in the manner of an ongoing constitutional convention, unilaterally amending the Constitution almost at will. A majority of Supreme Court justices have, on occasion, even justified the use of foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.The application of customs, traditions and values that attach to foreign cultures and laws provides no legitimate insight into America’s Constitution and diminishes the contemporary role of the state and federal representative branches in writing America’s laws and amending (or not) the Constitution.The arbitrary application of foreign law—which provides and activist justice with an infinite smorgasbord of legal options—is a rejection of the predicate for America’s governmental system.And it lasts only as long as the next opinion.

As the wind blows sand, the basis for these opinions and the opinions themselves will shift in relation to whomever is wielding power and how coercive that power is. That is what will become the law's basis: a person or persons.

Aren't the Iranian people battling their government over such an arrangement at this very moment?

What I'm Reading

Subtitle: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam. Not a terribly scintillating read considering the subject matter, but it is indeed the subject matter keeps me interested, for obvious reasons.

Hair-raising? Yes. But not nearly as hair-raising as the goings-on of the last seventy or so days. I'd like to jump back into real blogging but I barely know where to begin.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

BTW, I don't know how the non-praying can keep sane in the midst of national (world?) insanity. Judging by the news of late, I guess some of them don't.

Presents From Home

For the intellectual and the physical; birthday presents from my mom and my American dad.

Thanks, Parental Units!

'Know Your Power' Bombs (UPDATED)

When I said that Nancy Pelosi's book would probably not make any bestseller lists, I was just going by the few posted Amazon ratings. Turns out that the there have been only 2,737 copies of the book sold anywhere. I can smell *that* stinker from here.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

UPDATE: The Speaker can't even console herself with her advance money.

The sad part for Pelosi is that the practice by which publishers bestow massive donations on their favored politicians via utterly unrecoverable publishing “advances” was barred by the House of Representatives. Therefore she could not get even a fraction of the phenomenal sweetheart advance paid to then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton for her various scribblings — which, while they were bought by many, still did not come close to earning out the advance paid by a publishing industry supposedly beset by economic crisis.

I hear you laughing. That's not very nice. :-)

(Thanks to Instapundit)

Nancy's Book

Timing is everything: Michelle Malkin entertainingly reviews Nancy Pelosi’s cliché laden “Know Your Power,” which the Speaker designated as a message to “America’s daughters.” The Malkin verdict? Guess.

With congressional approval ratings at an all-time low and the Democratic Congress under fire for taking a five-week vacation instead of working on energy policy, perhaps this wasn't the best time to send Nancy Pelosi jetting from coast to coast to tell our daughters how to save the planet, manage our households and run our government.

Sorry, Nan. There aren't enough carbon offsets to compensate for this tree-wasting dud and its accompanying gas-guzzling, hot air-emitting publicity tour.

The Speaker is holding an online book discussion today at 3PM EDT/12PM PDT. We'll see how long that gathering lasts.

One thing about the book's Amazon reviews: last week there were over 400, with the average rating being one star. Well, for whatever reason, the vast majority of them have been purged.

I'm less than willing, however, to ascribe sinister motives to Amazon's actions; it's their site and we all know how persistent the bum-rushers can be. At any rate, there are only 48 reviews as of this moment and 37 of the reviewers have given the Speaker's advice to our country's young women but a single star, so it's doubtful that the Speaker will make any entity's bestseller list. Just a hunch.

But now we have a clearer view as to what the Speaker's priorities are for the month of August, don't we?

School for Kogelo Update and Book Gift

Don't worry, my little project is still on the move. Your donations designated to 'Save Senator Obama Kogelo School' amount to over $3000. The two issues--the non-profit corporation and the website are in the works and should be finished by the end of this week. Of course I will post any new information here each day. [Button deleted; see update below.]

On a person note, thanks to HT for the gift of

As is so for most books of length borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library, I never have enough time to finish them before giving them back if they are in high demand and short supply. LF is one such book, so this gift is especially appreciated.

UPDATE: Fixing the donation button...

UPDATE: For now, the HTML buttons won't work for the School cause. If you have a Paypal account you can donate by using the email address: obamaschool-at-gmail-dot-com.

PREVIOUSLY:

Save Obama School: The Funding

Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

What I'm Reading

It was written by Hog on Ice's Steve H. who is an Internet friend and a good guy who links to me and who enjoys it takes it with good humor when I beat up on him rhetorically.

Actually I bought the book a few years back but Steve is asking people to promote it again for whatever reason and I'm happy to do it.

I'm not reading it like one would read some other piece of non-fiction, of course. What I'm probably going to do, however, is pick some dish out of it and cook it for my great-aunt's eighty-seventh birthday tomorrow.

As you can imagine, Aunt A. pretty much eats what she wants at this point, allowing for salt content and dentures. As for me, I will be making my pilgrimage to a base gym tomorrow morning, as I have been doing every morning for the last three weeks, Sundays excepted. So we're throwin' down on Auntie's and the USA's birthday tomorrow.

Any suggestions, Steve?

What I'm Reading, May 7, 2008

I hope that I don't have to explain who James Cone is again.

The copy of the book I have is the only one in the Los Angeles Public Library system and I was surprised to be able to get ahold of it so quickly. One might have thought that, after Jeremiah Wright's publicity tour last weekend people, would want to know more about Black Liberation Theology. But again I have overestimated human curiosity.

The book was originally published in 1969 but has a 1989 preface for that year's edition. In it, the author contends that the language used in the original version would be different than twenty years hence (and one assumes, an additional twenty years after that) to address contemporaneous problems faced by blacks--and to remedy perceived sexism of the author. One also assumes, however, that the basic ideas remain the same: that God is a partisan on the side of the "victims"--in this case, blacks--and that He will ensure that these victims have victory over the white oppressor.

We'll see.

One thing: a very interesting quote attributed to Cone and found on the web is said to appear in this book: "Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology." If it is in this book, the proper references, however, are improper--meaning they're wrong. Anyone have a page number?

Fallen King Wallows in Ignorance

Stephen King tells Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard to shut up about the former's insult to the troops--while reiterating the same exact insult.

From King's site:

That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt. Noel Sheppard says, “Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen.” I guess he feels ignorance and illiteracy are OK when the country needs cannon-fodder. I guess he also feels that the war in Iraq has nationwide approval. Well, it doesn’t have mine. It is a waste of national resources. . . and that includes the youth and blood of the 4,000 American troops who have lost their lives there and for the tens of thousands who have been wounded. I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise. If you agree, find Sheppard on the internet, and send him an email:

“Hi, Noel—Stephen King says to shut up and I agree.”

Steve

(Emphasis mine.)

King's upshot is that these phantom "educational policies" cause illiteracy in young men and women and that these illiterate young men and women are limited to a singular career--the military.

Keep talking, Steve. You've lost this "illiterate" veteran for good and I'm sure that I'm not alone.

BACKGROUND: King Falls From Throne

UPDATE: I was going to leave a comment on the message boards at King's site, but they're shut down for some reason. Heh.

King Falls From Throne (UPDATED)

Stephen King:

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

Should I burn my copies of The Stand and It? After all, Mr. King thinks that people like me cannot read them. :::cough:::ASVAB:::cough::::

Did that car accident do something to him or was he always this idiotic? Being a Leftist is one thing, but claiming that persons in the military can't read? I became hooked on his books while stationed in Germany--because my fellow GIs were telling me how great they were.

One would assume that King hasn't read his marketing reports over the years, else he would have known better than to alienate a large portion of his fan-base.

(Thanks to Lucianne)

UPDATE: Apparently Mr. King never learned the First Rule of Holes: stop digging.