Drive-by Media Drove Right By

If you have been paying any attention to the news at all, you must have noticed that Haiti has been hit by one storm after another. The death toll is high. Over 200 people have died. No matter what kind of disaster hits, it seems like Haitians are especially vulnerable. Right now, the disaster-prone town of Gonaives is under 12 feet of water, and they can’t get food to the area.

Here’s an AP quote:

Hungry children at three orphanages were waiting for the canvas-topped trucks, loaded with warm pots of rice and beans and towing giant tanks of drinking water.

But the food never arrived Thursday.

The odd thing is, you see little about this story on the news. Even charities seem to be paying little attention.

Luckily, World Relief has a fund you can donate to. Here is a link.

Lemme Blow Your House Down, Anna Mae

There is no reason for Miami to exist in August and early September. Either we get hit by hurricanes, or we get near-misses, and we spend the whole period wondering if we’re going to have to lie on sweaty sheets and live on warm sandwiches and hand-wash our underwear again. It’s too bad the whole town can’t just disappear on August 1 and reappear in October. In fact, that’s almost what happens. This place is empty in August. Everyone who can afford it is in North Carolina or Europe. We’ve ruined North Carolina. There are so many of us up there, it’s not worth going.

Hanna is taking a nice pounding from wind shear, and because it developed where it did, it’s facing steering currents which should curve it out to sea until it either vanishes or hits another state as a weak storm. It looks like the Bahamas got a break, which is nice, because Bahamians never shift out of first gear. Getting things done in the Bahamas is not easy. Imagine living on a Bahamian island where half of the houses need hurricane repairs.

I want to be fair. It’s true; some Bahamians are businesslike and efficient. They’re called “Americans.” They all moved here, years ago. Okay, not all. But a lot.

I remember spending time in Nassau in about 1991. Aaron was there. We were on my dad’s boat. Somehow, we had managed to dig the props into some coral, and my dad and I had to roam around the city looking for someone to true a shaft. Think about this. The town depends on the sea. It’s jam-packed with yachts and cruise ships. In Miami, which is also a bad place to be when your boat needs work, I can drive to Miami Propeller, drop the stuff off on Monday, and pick it up on Friday. Big props, little props, big shafts, little shafts; doesn’t matter. But Nassau had one guy, with a name like “Winkie.” He worked in an open shed. All he could do was heat the shaft with a torch and bang on it and then turn it in a jig to see if it was true.

I don’t know what the deal is. Maybe it’s hard to open a business over there, but I somehow doubt it, because Bahamian life does not seem highly regulated. Of course, I suppose that if I were an enterprising Bahamian with a business idea, my first move would be to buy a ticket to Florida.

Fun place, the Bahamas. Too bad it’s not a state. The economy would go insane.

Ike is looking pretty scary right now. It’s expected to be a Category 3 on the way across the Bahamas, and the current Cone of Death is suddenly centered directly over my head! Not again! How many hurricanes have hit me since 2000? Four? I can’t even remember. Katrina, Wilma, Rita…three? I am now officially competing with Ward Brewer for the title of Hurricane Magnet of the Decade.

Josephine is the only storm that really makes me happy at this point. It’s weak, it’s far away, it’s expected to go to the middle of the Atlantic, and it’s named after the world’s most famous exotic dancer.

The bizarre fact that keeps me afloat these days is this: the appearance of several simultaneous storms does not mean the rest of the season will be bad. This has happened before, and it happened during perfectly ordinary seasons. So we shouldn’t count on one storm a week for the rest of the year. I don’t think we’ll be dipping into the Greek letters again. Nonetheless, I grudgingly admit that Al Gore and the Global Warming fans are getting some nice breaks here. And I may be in for a lousy week.

When you have storms out there, it messes up your life. The weather here gets drippy and nasty, so you don’t feel like doing anything outdoors. Fishing is out of the question. Going to the range is not easy. You just feel like slumping on the couch and waiting for things to clear up. You can’t go anywhere, because while you’re gone, a storm could go crazy and make a beeline for your house. Now that I think about it, it’s odd that people feel brave enough to go on vacation in August.

Pray that Ike breaks up and heads out to sea. I would not wish an August hurricane on Michael Vick.

Go Rent 9 to 5

Is it just me, or are the PUMAs even more in love with Sarah Palin than the Republicans?

You tell me.

One of them voices a sentiment Republicans are very familiar with: McCain isn’t that bad. We would have preferred a Thompson or a Brownback or a Hunter, but we got McCain, and the alternatives are far-left-fringe Supreme Court justices and federal judges, plus the dismantling of the national security apparatus that has kept us safe since 2001. So, wow, do I suddenly love John McCain.

As for attacking Sarah Palin as a mother, and attacking her daughter for making a mistake many, many of Hillary’s supporters have made, all I can say to Obagman’s campaign staff is “thanks.” And please keep it up.

If there is one thing women love, it’s seeing a young, flashy, inexperienced man sweep in and take a job away from an older woman who has been in the trenches for decades. And the supercilious attitude of the Obagman campaign is just icing on the cake.

In practice, McCain and Sarah Palin may turn out to be a fairly moderate duo most Americans can swallow without choking. Hey, it could be worse.

Extemporizing not Above Her Pay Grade

Sources now tell us that during last night’s speeches by Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, the teleprompters didn’t work. So they had to do much of their speaking extemporaneously.

How about that? They were winging it. But their speeches were so excellent, they infuriated liberal commentators.

We all know what happens when Obama has no teleprompter. They don’t call him “Uh-bama” for nothing. He rambles. He can’t collect his thoughts. He makes errors. He’s deadly dull. This shows you the difference between Giuliani the seasoned trial lawyer and Obama the ward heeler with a law degree.

I look forward to the debates.

Am I the only one who has a hard time believing “malfunction” is the right word? The teleprompters were supposed to stop during applause, and they didn’t, so the text got so far ahead of the speakers, they weren’t able to use it. I very much doubt TV production people let the machine decide when to pause. How would you program it to do that? I’m sure there’s a person making the decisions.

Is it possible this was sabotage? You can’t help but wonder. Maybe the “pause” button broke.

The wonderful thing about this week is that the landmines the Republicans have hit have turned out to be blessings for the McCain campaign. Hurricane Gustav brushed New Orleans, and it only served to showcase Bobby Jindal’s competence and the party’s willingness to put the needs of the citizens first. A filthy piece of libel forced Sarah Palin to tell the press her daughter was pregnant, and the vicious response made American hearts warm toward both of them. Now the teleprompter problem proves Sarah Palin is smart and tough, and that she has an amazing capacity to work under pressure. This was the most important moment of her political career, and the rug was yanked out from under her, and she didn’t merely survive; she conquered. She is turning out to be what Obama was supposed to be, but is not.

So often, adversity is like that. The things you fear the most turn out to be gifts from God.

More

Politico’s Jonathan Martin says the teleprompter was fine, but Fox and MSNBC confirm that it was screwed up. McCain’s people say only Sarah Palin’s speech was affected. Since Fox and MSNBC are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and they appear to agree, I believe them and not Martin.

Dirt

I got a very long, rambling comment about Sarah Palin’s negatives. Rather than publish anonymous, unauthenticated rants from anonymous web denizens, I will post a link to a more-or-less genuine news source, Salon Magazine, where you can see the dirt for yourself.

You can balance it against the clear terror of the left, and her 80% approval rating in her home state.

“Maybe That’s the First Problem With His Resume”

I don’t know what Giuliani plans to do with the rest of his life, but if he becomes a standup comic, I will be in the front row at every show.

“He was a ‘community organizer’…WHAT?”

I went back and played that a second time.

The wonderful thing about Giuliani’s speech was that he didn’t have to stray from the truth at all. Obama really was a community organizer, which means he was a ward heeler. It means he was paid to bring people into line so they would vote for his bosses. He was a professional agitator. It’s a fairly sordid profession. Those “skills” won’t work too good in the Oval Office.

It’s amazing that a Harvard-trained lawyer would do a job they used to hire legbreakers to do.

As for Sarah Palin, if the Enquirer’s story about her supposed affair turns out to be bogus, she ought to be invincible from here on out. As Fred Barnes said, she’s a natural. The one thing that beats a phenom is another, better phenom. And she’s it.

Make it Stop

Here’s a scary story about my efforts to be a better Christian.

I was tired of criticizing people all the time. I did it even in my mind. I did it automatically. I was so used to being rewarded for insulting people, it had become a habit. This is one of the things that drove me to be more religious. For example, maybe I would see some stranger taking a long time to cross the street, and a little voice inside me would start saying, “No wonder you’re so slow. Look at the size of your rear end.” Things like that. I horrified myself. I criticized people who didn’t begin to deserve it. I was impatient with old people! It’s a wonder I wasn’t struck by lightning.

I came up with what I thought was a good strategy. I’d say a little prayer for anyone I insulted in my head. Great, right? People would get the benefit of prayer, and I would be reminded of what I was doing wrong.

What a mistake. Can you imagine watching MSNBC with a rule like that? Chris Matthews? Keith Olbermann? Why did I do this during a convention week? I am so tired of praying for people, now when I look at a person, it almost scares me. That same little voice yells, “WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T THINK ANYTHING NASTY. I AM WORN OUT.”

Usually when I make a little rule for myself, I disregard it as soon as it becomes inconvenient. But how can I do that, when I know I deserve the inconvenience and aggravation it causes me?

Please don’t do anything I might find fault with.

A Lie That Would Bring a Tear to the Eye of Joseph Goebbels

I can’t believe there are Jewish Democrats who are trying to portray Sarah Palin as an anti-Semite. This is insane. The claim? She “supported Pat Buchanan” in an election bid. The truth? While working for the Steve Forbes campaign, Buchanan showed up for a visit, and she put on a Buchanan button, as a courtesy.

How can you work for the Forbes campaign and be a Buchanan supporter? You can’t. I bought a Nader shirt, as a joke. I guess that makes me a liberal.

When are American Jews going to realize that Bible-believing American Christians are their most powerful allies, and that as far as Israel is concerned, the bank accounts of American Christians are God’s purse?

Sarah Palin governs a state with very few Jews. She’s extremely popular, so she has no need to court favor with a small minority. Yet she works hard to maintain good relations with them, she decorates her office with an Israeli flag, and she wears an Israeli flag pin. This is in contrast to Barack Obama, who had to be bullied into wearing the flag of his own country, and who has a decades-long track record of close friendship with–and of absorbing religious and moral instruction from–an anti-Semitic pastor. Alaskan Jewish leaders have nothing but good things to say about her. If they knew of a problem, don’t you think they’d be complaining?

Buchanan is a disgrace, and it was a mistake to wear the button. But if wearing a Buchanan button for one day is proof of hostility to Jews, why don’t we condemn his publisher and the liberal cable network that keep him on their payrolls? Actually, condemning MNBC is a pretty good idea. Buchanan’s issues with Jews and Israel are sufficiently well documented to make the granting of regular television airtime utterly inappropriate and somewhat offensive.

How can American Jews be so blind about the intentions of conservative Christians like Sarah Palin? It has to be the result of a deliberate effort to ignore the facts. All over America, we are supporting Israel and the Jews financially and in prayer, and we even base our votes largely on Israel’s interests. More than Jews do. And we do it all gladly, with no expectation of reward or even the opportunity to proselytize. What more can we do?

Obviously, Christians are not Jews. We don’t agree on doctrine. We think Jews are mistaken about some of their beliefs. We would love to see them all wake up one day and decide Jesus is the Messiah. So what? Our money and our loyalty and our prayers have no strings attached. Aren’t benevolent Christians who help you all they can better than hostile leftists who call Israel “Palestine”?

There are Jewish leaders who do everything they can to prevent Christian money from reaching Israel. That’s beyond belief. If we can think you’re wrong and still give you hundreds of millions of dollars, can’t you think we’re wrong and take it?

“Hundreds of millions” is probably understating the case. The International Federation of Christians and Jews (Christians donating, Jews coordinating and distributing) has provided hundreds of millions, all by itself. And politicans we elect have the power to send much more.

If liberal American Jews think our money is tainted, they should be sending so much of their own, ours isn’t needed. But they aren’t. Show me a Jew other Jews aren’t helping, and then tell me a Christian shouldn’t pitch in. Tell me it’s wrong for a Christian to send money to fly an Ethiopian Jewish couple home to Israel. Take a look at the way oppressed Jews are living in filthy Ethiopian camps and then try to sell me. Tell me we shouldn’t be buying hot food for Holocaust survivors who are alone and too old to take care of themselves. I would like to hear your arguments. Christians have sent hundreds of thousands of Jews home to Israel. How many has George Soros sent? We are responsible for the existence of a substantial percentage of Israel’s population. How big a percentage? At least 5%. Imagine the US without Michigan and Minnesota.

Americans send charity money to people all over the world. How can it be possible that Jews are the only people we should not help?

You know what Jewry’s punishment will be, if American Jews don’t wake up and accept the Christian right as friends? NOTHING. We’re going to send money ANYWAY. How can you beat a deal like that? This is one of the few areas in which we begin to approach Jesus’s altruistic style. We’re doing something consistent with what we preach. Give us a break. Acknowledge it. The ancient Jews let the Gentile Cyrus build the second temple. As the Jews fled Egypt, they accepted money and treasure from their former tormentors, who feared the Jewish God. Surely my money is just as clean. Why discount one of the most beautiful developments in your history?

If we are on the side of Jews in Israel, it stands to reason that we are on the side of Jews in the US. We may differ on social issues, but in an increasingly anti-Semitic world, in which the people who agree with you politically get more hostile every year, how important is that?

If anything, Sarah Palin’s political and religious beliefs indicate she is very likely to be a diehard friend of the Jews. That ought to be obvious. Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will perceive it as the truth. Funny how that doesn’t seem to work for the truth itself.

Genius, or Plain Old Greed?

I get annoyed with the T. Boone Pickens windmill commercials. Windmills are eyesores, and it turns out they cause a lot of environmental damage, in the form of dead birds. And the low-frequency sound they emit supposedly has devastating health effects on some animals and people. Apart from that, they draw attention away from safe, clean, abundant nuclear power, which we have utterly failed to exploit. Maybe the hazards of windmills can be beaten, but right now, the people who promote them are sweeping the issue under the rug.

One thing he says seems intelligent, however. He’s pushing natural gas as a fuel. And today I saw a news story saying many people in Utah are already using it, at a cost that compares to 87-cent gasoline.

That sounds wonderful. But I seem to recall a troubling principle called “supply and demand.” Right now, almost nobody owns a gas-powered car. That means the vehicle-driven demand for natural gas is negligible. Now, what if we convert a hundred million vehicles? What happens then? The figure may be 87 cents now, but for all I know, it could rise to fifty dollars when we’re all bidding on the same cubic foot of gas. And I can’t find the information on the web. It’s such an obvious threshold question. Has T. Boone even considered it?

People say Apple computers are immune to viruses and hacks. That’s a huge lie. The reason Apples are safer is that they make up a small percentage of the market, and hackers want to wreak as much havoc as possible, so they usually program for Windows. As Apples become more popular, they are proving just as vulnerable as Windows computers. Probably more vulnerable, because the Apple people think they’re safe, and they’re not trying as hard to protect themselves. The same sort of idea applies to gas-powered cars. The more of them there are, the lower the gas price advantage will probably be.

Look how the price of corn skyrocketed when we decided it was a fuel.

His site says our gas reserves are twice as big as our petroleum reserves. That’s no answer. Does he mean they contain twice the useful energy? Twice the volume? The site doesn’t say. The best scenario would be if the gas reserves contained twice the energy. But that still doesn’t tell you what the gas would cost when you pull up at a service station.

Critics point out that the same people who now sell us oil have most of the world’s gas, so we might be dependent on them even after a mass conversion. If their gas is cheaper, we’ll buy it and let ours sit in the ground. And T. Boone is up to his eyeballs in potentially profitable wind and gas investments, so he has a powerful motive to push these alternatives regardless of whether they make sense. He didn’t become a billionaire through altruism.

Oil shale and oil sand still look mighty good. The break-even point is way below the current price of oil, and we have reserves so huge they give the Saudis nightmares. And oil is a marvelous fuel, and we’re already set up to use it. Ethanol is a disgraceful CO2-belching joke. We need to think about solutions that actually work, without causing famine or grotesque environmental damage.

Maybe the answer is to use gas for fleet vehicles, which don’t have to rely on a network of stations, and to power most of our passenger cars with oil from shale. It looks like Pickens may be more interested in feathering his already-huge nest than in helping the planet.

He says he’s been an oil man all his life, and now he’s pushing windmills and gas. Doesn’t that kind of make sense, now that he’s a windmills-and-gas man?

More

If you want disturbing news, go to the Pickens site and use their handy natural-gas-station locator. The places nearest to my house are in the next county. After that, I believe you have to go to Atlanta. The locator also says what the current “gallon” price is. In Atlanta, it’s $2.54. Down here, it’s $1.50 and $1.20. So 87¢ is already optimistic. I had a gas-powered car right now, I’d have to drive sixty miles to fill up, and I’d pay a minimum of $1.20.

Nice Work

I forced myself to watch the Republican convention last night. Ordinarily, I try to minimize my exposure to political programming. Long ago, I abandoned the notion that this should be a political blog. And watching people strive with each other, competing who can tell the most damaging lies, makes my stomach hurt.

My overall impression was that Sarah Palin has electrified Republicans. A couple of weeks ago, we were listless and bored. Now we’re sending money to McCain. We’re cheering for Sarah. We’re furious at the slimy attacks on her daughter. We even like John McCain. That, in and of itself, is miraculous.

Whoever chose Sarah Palin is a political genius. He moved millions of Hillary voters into the GOP camp (check PUMA sites and see for yourself), he woke up the base, he gave hope to Christians, and he added a powerful dose of legitimacy to McCain’s “reformer” label.

The vicious efforts to humiliate her child have backfired. They make Obama’s supporters look inhuman. They exposed the diseased heart of the far left, which includes much of the mainstream media.

President Bush made a brief, polished, gracious video appearance. Vice President Cheney had the good sense to stay away, even though none of the evils the left attributes to him have been substantiated. Then we were treated to a tasteful and appropriate tribute to an American hero, Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies and three Iraqis. That was a great reminder of what Republicans are supposed to be about. Duty. Sacrifice. Service to country. National security, which is still an issue, regardless of how much Barack Obama wants it to go away.

Fred Thompson came out and gave the kind of speech he would have given last year, had he really wanted to be President. He told us things about John McCain, which most of us didn’t know. He has a total of seven children, including an adopted daughter who was an orphan in Bangladesh. John McCain had two opportunities to leave Vietnam, not one, and he refused both. When he arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, the kind, enlightened Vietnamese leftists left him on a cell floor with broken limbs and stab wounds, lying in his own waste because he could not move himself. Thompson described the torture McCain willingly submitted to by turning down a trip home. They broke his teeth out. They beat him repeatedly and used ropes to stretch his arms behind his back. He suffered more broken bones. To many liberals, this is simply the fitting and just consequence of having dropped bombs from an American airplane. To healthier minds, it is heart-wrenching.

Fred was great, but the speech I liked best came from Joe Lieberman. He’s not the orator Fred Thompson is, but he was the convincing bearer of several crucial messages which may swing this election. Some were unspoken, but they were still powerful.

Here’s what he was trying to convey. 1. Republicans are the only friends Israel and the Jews have, and it’s okay for Jews to vote for them. 2. We need a President who cares about national security, and who will terrify our enemies. 3. These issues are so important, even social liberals need to cross the line just this once. 4. The notion that John McCain is George Bush’s puppet is not only wrong, but absurd. 5. John McCain is willing to include Democrats in his administration.

That’s not demagoguery. Those things are all true. And the man who delivered the speech has zero credibility problems.

Lieberman also pointed out that Obama is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He claims to be his own man, but he has never been involved in any kind of reform. That’s saying something, for a politician who worked in corrupt Chicago and then went on to the US Senate. He never crossed swords with his leaders. He never questioned the status quo. In fact, he did exactly as he was told. And in the Senate, he did virtually nothing, aside from showing up to vote once in a while.

“Change”? For Obama, the biggest change would be change itself. When it comes to change, he can’t carry Sarah Palin’s purse.

Lieberman spoke against his own best interests, which is a powerful indicator that he was sincere. It may be true that he’s expecting a Cabinet post from McCain, but right now, he’s a Senate bigwig who can use his majority-completing status to make the Democrats crawl. And he knows he may lose leverage in November, if the Democrat margin is expanded. Commentators sometimes call Lieberman “shrewd,” which is often anti-Semitic for “tricky Jew,” and they claim he’s doing all these things purely to advance his career. That would only make sense if Obama were a weak candidate, or if Republicans were expected to maintain their numbers in the Senate. Even if GOP Senate seats were safe, it would be risky, because now Lieberman has to answer to the liberal base that elected him. He may well be ousted.

I like what I’m seeing. Convention attendees seemed energetic and full of confidence, and the liberal pundits are lashing out with as much venom as they can muster, which proves they’re scared. Debates are coming up, and we already know Obama and Biden are very weak debaters. I wish we had had another Reagan up our sleeve last year, but we didn’t. And Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter without the experience. John McCain will do. Maybe he’ll get his chance.

Sad News

Jerry Reed is dead.

I am going to be up-front and admit that I never bought his albums, but I really enjoyed his acting. He was wonderful in The Survivors. And he was one of those celebrities you just can’t help but like.

I have a cousin who is probably mourning tonight.

Here is proof that the man could play the guitar:

Damn cigarettes.

Francine Rescued

Get Belafonte on the Line

Usually when I start blogging, I come up with a topic to talk about. Today I think I’ll just wander around.

First of all, bananas. My plantain trees are producing bananas. Which makes them banana trees. I gave some away, and I have been informed that they make excellent chips, if you slice them thin and fry them. This doesn’t make them plantains. Some bananas stand up to cooking, and some plantains can be eaten raw. It’s confusing. I’m pretty sure these are bananas. They’re easy to peel, and they taste great raw.

I’m trying to understand bananas. If I am even close to getting it right, the first bananas humans ate had big hard seeds in them. We bred the seeds out, so bananas are now sterile and have to be propagated by shoots. Before about 1960, Americans used to buy a banana variety called Gros Michel. “Fat Mike.” The bananas we now buy are Cavendish bananas. They used to be considered junk, and they were not exported. But Gros Michel bananas succumbed to a blight.

I’ll tell you right away, some of this information may be wrong. I found a site for a company that sells little banana trees by mail, and they gave another name for the bananas we see at stores. The site says this type of banana is excellent, but only if you grow them yourself. Store bananas are picked green, and they’re not as good. Now maybe the other name means the same thing as “Cavendish.” I don’t know. But it’s hard to believe that the fairly tasty bananas we see in stores were ever considered junk.

Here is more news. A blight has hit the Cavendish banana. It’s a fungus. And because Cavendish banana trees are genetically identical, there is no hope that we’ll find a resistant cultivar. So if the blight ever gets to the Americas, we will have no bananas today, forever. Yes, that’s right. Scientists are claiming it’s the end of the banana world.

I find this hard to believe. First of all, plants mutate, so I doubt all Cavendish trees are the same. Second, predictions like this almost never come true. Third, it’s not clear to me that all edible bananas come from this line. There are hundreds of different types of bananas. Some are huge. Some are small. Some are purple. The taste varies. I can’t believe they’re all going to be hit by the blight. Surely they’re not that closely related. Fourth, if we bred tasty seedless bananas once, why can’t we do it again? You see what I’m saying.

Here in Miami, we have approximately nine billion varieties of banana and plantain (different plant, but similar). If you go to a fruit market, you may see some very odd bananas. And all of them are better than regular store bananas. Are they all going to become extinct? Can you buy into that?

Here’s the proposed solution to the banana blight: genetic modification. And of course, the greenies are scared that modified bananas will give us tumors or make us explode or something. So my best guess is, poor, backward countries will get modified bananas, and we’ll do without, just like we do without Corvairs and DDT.

I tried to identify my bananas online. It’s impossible. They’re about seven inches long and 2 1/2″ thick. The flesh is very white. They’re stubby. The closest match I can find is a Hawaiian cultivar called Hua Moa, but they’re smaller.

Whatever. I’ll still eat them.

Last night I felt I needed some Haagen-Dazs. And I noticed the twenty-plus pounds of bananas on the counter. I sliced one into chunks, added strawberry Haagen-Dazs, added chocolate syrup, and went to town. These bananas are excellent with ice cream. Store bananas tend to be mealy and flavorless, by yard-banana standards. These are firm and smooth-textured, and they have a lemony kind of taste. Very nice.

I still need a plantain tree. Maybe Home Depot has one.

If you’re worried about hard times, and you live in an area where these things will grow, get yourself a couple of banana and plantain trees. You’ll have an endless supply of starch and fiber, from a very small piece of land. And they’re good for you. And boy, are they versatile. You can even make flour out of them.

Without being gross, let me assure you that fiber from bananas or plantains has fine qualities you will appreciate. You will understand what I mean, if you’ve ever made the mistake of eating two bowls of All-Bran.

What else is happening? Let’s see. The Palin kerfuffle.

I can’t believe we’re still hearing about this. You would think liberal pundits would be smart enough to tread lightly, and some are, but last night, I saw a female comedian on Larry King, gloating about the pregnancy. She was openly thrilled that Sarah Palin’s daughter had made this devastating, humiliating mistake. She made fun of teaching abstinence, saying it was clearly a great success in Wasilla. I could not believe it. Imagine being a pregnant 17-year-old and watching adults make fun of you on national TV. What ever happened to decency and compassion? Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the mean ones? We’re pretty good about things like this. We may shoot you in the face from time to time, but we won’t humiliate your children.

I’m disgusted to see TV personalities harping on the story. They hide behind the claim that it’s legitimate news. It was legitimate news when a vice presidential candidate’s wife admitted she drank rubbing alcohol, but I don’t recall panels being convened to discuss it. For that matter, I don’t recall anyone seizing on Betty Ford’s addiction to belittle Gerald Ford. And Ford was a Republican. I suppose that if Ford were in office today, and Betty admitted her problem, we’d see the same kind of cruelty. After all, we saw a lot of Steve Irwin “humor” right after he died. You can’t sink much lower than that.

Is this how desperate McCain’s enemies are? Are they so scared of a lady from Wasilla that they’re willing to torment her child in front of tens of millions of people? Is it really that hard to stay on the issues? This is like skipping diplomacy and going straight for the H-bomb. If Obama is right on the issues, and he’s capable of being a good President, he shouldn’t need this kind of help. And it has to be counterproductive. He’s smart enough to know that. He discouraged these attacks.

People will say Republicans picked on Obama’s wife. Sorry, that won’t fly. She’s an adult. She chose to inject herself into the debate. No one forced a microphone into her hand. Notice how the pundits are less interested in Cindy McCain? That’s because she doesn’t make provocative remarks, the way Michelle Obama does. If she starts, the Democrats have every right to respond. Someone show me how Sarah Palin’s daughter provoked a response.

It makes me think about things I’ve written, which I should have kept to myself.

I wonder what the teen pregnancy rate in Wasilla is, compared to New York City, where teachers pass out condoms and probably hold counseling sessions for girls who have failed to get pregnant. The sky-high AIDS rate in New York ought to tell you all you need to know about the effectiveness of the liberal approach.

I still can’t believe educators hand out condoms to children. It’s one of those things that make you wonder if you’re living in a lucid dream. In a few years, they’ll be passing out beers and buying spray paint for vandals.

Let’s move on. To sea monsters. It looks like Sweden is competing with Loch Ness. Some Swedes in need of a hobby set up a camera, trying to catch their version of Nessie, which lives in a lake the name of which I can’t identify, because the website, Storsjöodjuret (“More state-subsidized vodka, please”), is in Swedish. They have footage of something that looks like a blob of mucus caught in turbulence. The site asks the compelling question: “Vad händer just nu?” To which I gamely reply, “Clap it up, my hammies.” That’s my stock response to everything.

It sure looks fake. Maybe it’s an angry lutefisk. Never get between a lutefisk and its cubs.

I predict that this will turn out to be just as genuine as the beer-cooler Sasquatch that turned up in Georgia. It’s too bad that was a fake. Think of the beer endorsements. “Hey, Bigfoot! WASSSUUPPPPPPP!”

I’m so glad people stopped saying that. I’m pretty sure there was a point where preachers were using it to start their sermons. “WASSSUUPPPPPPP, sinners! Open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter three, verse seven…”

I got a lot of responses to my last post on religion. I want to thank everyone. I feel a lot of relief, even though I have improved to a pretty limited extent. Sometimes I feel myself about to say or do something of the sort that used to weary me in the past, and something stops me, and it makes me very glad. It’s like rejecting delivery of a time bomb. I hope that in the future, I’ll be able to do it more consistently.

I got an email from a friend yesterday, asking about another friend, who has gotten a divorce. I managed to catch myself and provide only limited details, for fear of gossiping. I know the inquiry was well-intended. But I thought it was best not to start down that road. In the past, I would have blabbed whatever I knew. I know the divorced friend wouldn’t care, but still, it’s best not to function as a local version of TMZ.

Looks like Hurricane Gustav is all washed up, which is an answer to prayer. The storm caused a number of deaths, and it damaged a great deal of property, but it also highlighted the persistent vulnerability of New Orleans, without flooding the city again. I know people who were affected by the storm aren’t feeling grateful for that, but maybe it will move the government to speed up improvements.

The GOP needs to go ahead with the convention. The usual cranks will criticize them, but the streets are dry, the Superdome is empty, the winds are gone, and it’s okay to resume normal life.

I hope Hanna continues to disappoint. The projected path is promising, in that it takes the storm away from areas that have already been pounded, and it keeps it offshore and headed into cooler water for quite some time. The farther north it goes before it makes landfall, the better. Ike is disconcerting. I hope Haiti and the DR and Cuba don’t take any more blows. The historical data suggests it will go north and vanish. That would be nice.

I’m annoyed to see weather people calling the next wave “Josephine,” when it’s still nothing but a bunch of wobbly clouds. There are some kinds of optimism we really don’t need.

What tires me is the endless sensation that hurricanes are nearby. The weather has a certain feel to it when tropical activity is going on within a few hundred miles. It feels ominous. And we get a lot of drizzle and clouds. It’s like being held at gunpoint for weeks.

Supposedly, we’re in a period where sunspots are infrequent, and that may mean the planet will cool for a number of years. If cooling means fewer hurricanes, I’m all for it.

My coffee is cold. I better publish this.

I Think It’s Possible

Sometimes I like to write about my experiences as I pursue my faith, to see how they compare to what happens to others. This is one of those times.

Aaron is an Orthodox Jew. He doesn’t allow broadcast or cable television in his house. And he has…boy, I hope I get the number right…six well-mannered kids with wonderful personalities. He’s glad he kept TV out of their lives. He says there is no way to restore lost innocence.

I think what he has done is smart. Feeding your mind television is like giving your body a diet of Skittles and vodka, and his kids lost nothing of value. But I suspect that innocence can be restored.

Over the course of my life, I’ve become jaded and cynical to shut out the pain of feeling things. It’s a defense I worked at deliberately. The world is a challenging place when you let yourself feel, and growing a thick skin can save you a lot of suffering. On the other hand, you lose the ability to gauge the effects of the things you say and do. Your empathy becomes masked. You find yourself saying and doing things which, on reflection, seem hard or trashy or cruel. It becomes hard to avoid offending people, and you find that you’re often embarrassed by the memory of your actions. How many times have I crossed the line here? More than I can remember.

It’s perverse. You develop the defense because you’re innately sensitive, and therefore vulnerable. compared to other people. You do it in response to behavior which you perceive as wrong. Then what happens? You find yourself behaving like the people you wanted to protect yourself from. Your sense of humor turns dark. You laugh at suffering. And people reward you for it. They laugh, too. They approve. The unspoken excuse is that everyone knows you’re joking. But sometimes you may find that you’re not joking. Or you’re not sure whether you’re joking.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Since the late Seventies, American humor has been very cruel. It seems like there was a turning point in that era. Maybe it happened with Kentucky Fried Movie or The Groove Tube, or maybe it came later, with Animal House. I was a pretty nice kid, but after I was exposed to cruel humor on TV and at the movies, I developed the ability to make people laugh by saying things that were extremely vile. Worse than anything I’ve put in my writing. And even while I’ve been blogging and thinking of myself as a Christian, in private, I’ve said things that would curl your hair. And as I’ve said before, I’ve gotten tired of myself. And it wasn’t something I could quit on my own. It’s one of the things I ask God for help with. It may not seem important, but it is. If you can become convinced that everything you do or say is okay, because deep inside you don’t mean it, you may sink deeper and deeper into the behavior, until you reach a point where you do mean it, and you still think it’s okay. Then you’re a jerk. A bad person.

You may think I’m a nice person, even after all the things you’ve read here, but before you say it in a comment, ask yourself if you might have the same problem I do. You’ve been exposed to our sick culture, too. I may be nice by current standards, but that’s not a high bar to clear. Especially on the Internet.

Since I’ve been trying to correct my backslidden ways, I’ve noticed some changes in myself. I feel as if my emotions are being brought back to life. I think more about other people’s feelings. Things that wouldn’t have stirred me at all three years ago make my eyes mist up. I get much more pleasure out of doing things for people. And I become more and more aware of the things I’ve been doing wrong. I was trying to be a moral person already, but my compass was rusty.

I feel lighter. I feel less comfortable watching and reading things I know are bad for me. I’m not reformed, but I’ve improved a lot. Sometimes I’m a little shocked, when I think about the things I thought were acceptable. I was crazy.

My hope is that this is what is referred to in the Bible as “the fruit of the Spirit.” When I was a churchgoer, we heard a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, which means things like prophecy and discerning of spirits and so on. But those things don’t make you a good person. They don’t bring happiness or repair your life. The fruit are more important. Things like love and patience and generosity. And empathy. How can you have love, if you don’t empathize?

I think this is a good thing to write about. It’s easy to feel that the world is a certain way now, and that you have to conform to it or go live in a cave. It may seem that the baseness of modern life is inescapable. But it’s not. A lot of people manage to live on this planet without getting too dirty. A lot of them are actually successful and popular. The fear that tells you you have to fit in is an illusion. Maybe someone who reads this blog will read this and be encouraged. It’s good to change your behavior, but it’s better to be re-made, so the behavior isn’t natural to you any more. That’s what I think.

We’ll see how I do in the long run. If it works out, you’ll have no excuse not to try it yourself.

I Almost Miss Cronkite

I am thinking about the new Palin pregnancy kerfuffle. Trying to figure out where I stand.

Let’s see.

First of all, it was despicable for left-wing bloggers to attack Sarah Palin’s daughter, who is a minor. I don’t know why they always have to act like this. It doesn’t help their cause. But you can always count on them to do it, and it’s not just little-known, sparsely-read blogs. This time, once again, it’s The Daily Kos. Last time I checked, Kos was five times as big as Instapundit. The DNC invites these people to their convention. The Kos Kidz have a big annual meeting, and Democrat politicians show up, hat in hand, to beg their approval. Like Roman Senators who had to respond to invitations to have dinner with Caligula’s horse.

They claimed, with absolutely no evidence, that Palin’s daughter (whose name I am not going to use) had a baby, and that Sarah claimed it as hers, to avoid scandal. Simultaneously, other left-wing bloggers were asking whether Sarah Palin caused her son to have Down’s Syndrome, by maintaining a busy schedule as governor. Don’t worry about the inconsistency; they were just hoping something would stick.

Mrs. Palin got fed up and announced that her daughter was pregnant. Great. We have succeeded in intruding on the privacy of a young girl, at a very difficult time in her life. Her shame is now reality TV. That’s the big achievement here. She could have delivered quietly, a few months down the road, and things would have gone much easier for her. But the ruthless fringe kooks couldn’t leave her mother’s baby alone, so an announcement had to be made.

People say it’s fair to expose the daughter, because her decisions reflect on her mother’s character. That’s strange, coming from the political left. But then they criticized Mrs. Palin–the ultimate actualization of feminism’s best hopes–for not staying at home with her son, so I suppose there is no argument too hollow for them. This isn’t about Sarah Palin’s character. It’s a grotesque attempt to embarrass her, and the humiliation of her innocent daughter is acceptable collateral damage. Strangers with blogs are calling this child a whore. That’s okay, if it helps Obama.

We have no idea why the daughter allowed this pregnancy to happen. We don’t know how her mother raised her, or what kind of person the daughter is, or whether she listens to her parents. We do know that kids don’t always do what they’re brought up to do.

Maybe Sarah Palin failed her daughter. Do we really want to get into that, as a country? Should we put her on the witness stand and make her answer questions under oath? Do we ask her how much time they spend together, or whether she makes the daughter go to church, or what kind of sexual counseling the daughter received at home? None of that is going to happen, unless the liberal press is farther gone than I realize. Everyone realizes that teenagers do disappointing things. They’re not robots. You do your best; you can’t program them.

Here’s what we’re expected to conclude: Sarah Palin is a hypocrite because she goes to an Assemblies of God church, and her daughter is pregnant. I grant you, it would be easier for the daughter of a person who attends church to get pregnant, if the parent was a hypocrite. No doubt about that. But modern children don’t live in Petri dishes. They’re exposed to bad values all the time, regardless of whether their parents are good people. And sometimes those bad values win out. I would be happier if I somehow knew that all of Sarah Palin’s kids would remain virgins until they got married, but I can’t conclude that the daughter’s mistake says anything about her mother. If the rest of her daughters end up in the same boat, okay, something is wrong. But that’s not where we are right now.

From a practical standpoint, which is a little sordid, I see this as a tar baby leftists won’t be able to resist playing with. They’re going to alienate the PUMAs even more, by saying this happened because Sarah Palin went to work instead of staying home with her kids. Liberals with no sense of shame are going to make this child suffer, and the PUMAs are all women, and many of them have been where this girl is now, and they’re not going to like seeing Obama’s supporters abuse her.

Will it hurt McCain with conservatives? Hard to say. It makes you wonder about his judgment. But it doesn’t make me see Sarah Palin as less qualified. I’m just sorry this happened to her and her family. And I’m impressed that they’re confronting it, and that they’re going to support the daughter in her decision to have the baby. Leftists will say they’re forcing her to carry the baby to term, of course. And the evidence will be? Nonexistent, as usual.

There’s no doubt about it. It can’t be a good sign, when your underage daughter gets pregnant. We shouldn’t whitewash it. But smoke isn’t fire, and there is no excuse for tormenting a candidate’s minor daughter to score poll points. This story tells us very little about Sarah Palin, but it speaks volumes about the character of some of the people who oppose her. I guess that sums up how I feel.

So…

Just heard from a friend. He and his wife are looking for better jobs, and he asked me to keep them in my prayers. I can do better than that. I’ll keep them in YOUR prayers.

Put in a word for them, if you have a minute.