How readable is your prose?
From LRC

When high heels come to boot camp
From Takimag

Romney campaign tries to nullify Paul delegates in Massachusetts
From Ad Orientem

The truth about the national debt
From Daniel Nichols

From RR

• UK: top court backs Assange extradition to Sweden.
• For once, good news from Afghanistan: civilian deaths down 36% from last year. Still, get out.
• NC and (copycat?) KS: culture-wars shark-chum non-stories for the left. An excuse for them to show off how ‘nice’ they are. (The left is a Christian heresy: values such as charity knocked off-kilter.) Name one conservative Christian you’ve met who talks like that or takes this seriously. Me neither. I’m a little scared of Christian leftists like Jim Wallis who defended Pol Pot. (Sort of like idiots with Che posters.) Anyway, religious conservatives shouldn’t give the state power because it will come back to get them (Catholics: look at what all those years voting Dem got you, a government effectively shutting the church down starting with its charitable work).
• Progress: tool-wielding robots crawl into bodies to do surgery.
• Wealth creation is not the enemy.
• Obama’s secret kill list.
• Yich, Romney. As a TAC writer put it, Bill Clinton’s mendacity and Al Gore’s charm. It’s between Gary Johnson (if he could win, I’d do it; he’s better than the main two), writing in Ron Paul or staying home a second time. Again my prediction: depression + Dinkins effect = he’ll be president.
• Justin Raimondo on heroes and villains. The military can and should be an honorable profession, and earlier in our storied history it was: that is no longer true. Instead of defending the United States from attack, military recruits in the 21st century are joining a global Praetorian Guard whose mission is to fight wars of conquest. I’m anti-war but pro-troops and pro-Second Amendment.
• 60 years a rubber stamp. Their Protestantism notwithstanding I more or less like the Queen and what she stands for (duty and other virtues that built an empire) but this writer says: the Monarchy is an ideal fig leaf for the coalition of corporate interests and cultural leftists and unaccountable bureaucracies that is our present ruling class.
• Bias against telecommuting.

Good Gary Johnson ad
From Lew Rockwell

Fulton Sheen quotation

Today as imagined in the golden age
Not quite in the ‘Jetsons’ way. From Cracked readers.

‘Crime Story’ clips
Click the poster for the tribute page

Interesting bad movie new to me: Lifeforce
Space succubus/vampire in bad British sci-fi in ’85 including ‘Dr Who’-ey special effects and a pre-fame Patrick Stewart. Whether they were serious or not, and it looks like a serious failed blockbuster, I think that, as Cracked explained Spider-Man, it’s really an overblown story about puberty: fear and awe of women and of sex. (Vampire stories are said to be disguised erotica.) The dimestore psychology that was supposed to make it serious? Very beta (which sci-fi fans often are?) as Roissy would say. It’s European (nudity) so the soft porn is amped up. Looked up the lovely lead: she’s French, Mathilda May. Catholic alert: it also has a special-effects Brompton Oratory, in real life one of the best places on earth.

The whole thing:

From Takimag

• Pat Buchanan: how Bill Kristol purged the Arabists.
• Two sides, one Cupp.
• The vegetarian personality.

A modest proposal: harnessing feminist energy
From Takimag

Mass: Spíritus Dómini replévit orbem terrárum, allelúia: et hoc quod cóntinet ómnia, sciéntiam habet vocis, allelúia, allelúia, allelúia.

May Fair car show, Collingswood, NJ











Best: ‘Christine’, a ’58 Plymouth Savoy.







A sedan like in the book. Stephen King had only the idea of a car from the time that’s not a cliché like the ’57 Chevy; the name Fury was just what he wanted of course but he admits he didn’t know much about the car so many details are wrong (Furys are coupes for example).

Where the church in America’s headed
From Ad Orientem: the Archdiocese of New York, historically the American church’s powerhouse (Cardinal Spellman’s chancery was the Powerhouse), ordained one priest this year. But his first Mass was Tridentine High. More.

Pope Benedict’s smaller, sounder, fighting-trim church, not the dominant cultural Catholicism of the New York of yore nor the ‘renewal’ nonsense that destroyed it (all the liberals are old now).

70 years ago New York got so many vocations (lots of sons of big immigrant families) that the seminary, Dunwoody, deliberately flunked out a percentage of them.

No more Novus in 20 years? Great!

Veni, creator Spiritus...

From Mark in Spokane

• Liberals, conservatives and the inability to understand the need for limits.
• Russell Kirk would have been a good headmaster.
• The EU: why defeat an evil empire and then embrace a stupid one? Peter Hitchens.

Your children will have it better
Gary North at LRC

Sung Mass: the Finding of the Relics of St Philomena
On special occasions like this, the parish I live in does the traditional Mass! I’m indifferent to the cultus of St Philomena (no proof she’s real; same rule as with all approved devotions: it’s not heretical and you can’t prove it’s a fraud so you can believe in it if you want) – not a hill I’m willing to die on – but I like the package she’s part of. Her followers tend to be sound on the important things.

Shared a pew with an All Saints Sister of the Poor. First time I’ve seen them since they came into the church. There are very few Episcopal nuns; this fine conservative order in full ‘penguin’ habits finally became what they were often taken to be.

Jesus saves. Mary prays. Benedict is Pope.

Oremus pro invicem.

Vintage is a way of life



Furniture.


Are you ready for the summer?

Monuments to Spain’s insolvency
From Takimag

The world’s richest woman

Five reasons not to take advice from celebrities
Unless you have a yacht and a summer home in Europe, none of it applies to you, says Cracked.

Reminds me of the wag who said Barbra Streisand’s advice to save the environment sounds like she’s leaving instructions for her maid.

P.S. So long and thanks, ‘House’.

The mainstream political parties are only different shades of liberalism
From Takimag

Another way things were better 50 years ago
From Daniel Nichols

The lessons of the Facebook IPO flop

• Ad Orientem.
• LRC.
• The Anti-Gnostic.

Is the idea behind the Air Force obsolete?
Like the Navy, is it training to refight WWII? How relevant is that in 4GW? I’m not posting to agree with the writer. Just some interesting points.

Paul backers push on in party and other races
From Ad Orientem

George Zimmerman: not guilty
Pat Buchanan at Takimag

Social movements
From Modestinus

Ron Paul gets Minnesota GOP delegates
From LRC

How’s all that hopenchange working out for you?

From Daniel Nichols.

Remind me again why you voted for Obama?

Because voting for a black-looking candidate impressed other whites. I still say the majority won’t do that again this year (the Dinkins effect).

43 dioceses, hospitals, schools and church agencies file 12 lawsuits around the nation saying the US Department of Health and Human Services mandate violates religious freedom
I read somewhere that well-meaning American churchmen have wanted nationalized health care since 1919. The way to go is liberty, not third ways/democratic socialism, or give the government power for the sake of doing good and it’ll bite you.

From RR

• When you think about it, Hollywood’s special affinity for the Democratic Party makes perfect sense. So-called “cognitive capitalism” (or “progressive” or “green capitalism”), which Progressives see as a paradigm for reindustrializing America, is utterly dependent on “intellectual property” for its business model. It’s basically the same as what economist Paul Romer calls “new growth theory”: A model of economic growth based on enclosing ideas as a source of profit.
• End the era of too big to fail.
• The rEVOLution after Paul. Rand’s not perfect but better than nothing. Ditto Johnson.
• The state has no place in marriage.
• We don’t need NATO.

Work videos

Cracked is fair to Pope Pius XII

G-1 jacket

US Navy from the ’60s. The only difference I can tell from the WWII jacket is the synthetic lining.

Will Smith perfectly normal

For the record, Will just came out in support of gay marriage.

Hollywood-liberal posturing that most blacks don’t believe in. Underneath it of course he’s normal. Catch him off-guard and you see it.

Smith was pretty nice about it, fitting his image. Didn’t even really hit him.

A bit surprising in Russia (I understand he’s a celebrity-beat reporter from the Ukraine and this is part of his act) but stereotypes are only true most of the time.

SWPLs: will being pro-black trump being homosexualist? It’s never about fairness or common sense but what they think will impress other whites more.

Did society start to go to hell in 1972?
I’ve long known, matching my first memories, the ’60s weren’t much like the Sixties of lore. The world I like largely still existed when I was born. Steve Sailer writes:

A prosperous, cheerful year, 1972 was the last point when the social decay inherent in the ’60s was still more of an elite affectation than a mass affliction.

From Rod Dreher

• Happiness versus blessedness. Brideshead Revisited.
• Goodbye, military chaplains. The push for gay marriage is anti-liberty.
• I now have the same point of view that many of my cradle Catholic friends have, and which I didn’t understand: I protect myself from being scandalized by clergy behavior by not allowing myself to trust them or the institutional church very deeply in the first place. Reminds me of Arturo Vasquez’s old blog (Mexican-American folk Catholicism), the Italians I know who like most other Latin/Mediterranean people don’t worship the clergy, and this from Modestinus:
  

  I suppose this all begs the question of why I am sympathetic to traditionalist Catholics... A lot of it comes down to the fact that I am simpleminded. I have neither the time nor the proclivity to spend my hours reading through dozens of rightfully neglected PhD dissertations; theological articles in German and French; the “Collected Works” of [Whoever]; etc. in order to artfully construct a pleasant, “intellectually defensible” Christianity which allows me to feel goody-goody about my self-chosen intellectual-lifestyle pursuits, though I try my best not to fault other people for doing so (but I’m not very good at that, am I?). I prefer my Christianity to look something like the old, fraying prayer books my grandpa left behind; it’s a Christianity which “makes sense” to me, even if it lacks the requisite degree of “sophistication” to impress approximately seven people currently alive in the world today. And as much as I know that my “brand” (if you will) of Christianity can never match the stylizations of 1950s Catholic books, it’s a useful starting point. I would rather recite the Rosary than read Communio (though sometimes I do both, although not at the same time) and if I am fuzzy on a point of Catholic doctrine, I’ll look it up in Denzinger rather than comb EWTN’s online archives.

  Walked to Mass for Ascension. The priest’s a Pope Benedict man. He celebrates the old Mass but not where I go on Sundays. It’s all good. But I’m glad holy days of obligation are the only times I see Novus.

Gavin McInnes versus egalitarianism
From Takimag

The unemployment rate is really 22%
From LRC

The Occupy kids six months ago got what they said they wanted: more government

The left makes a point: Romney’s a dick
Which explains the campaign commercial with the man crying because Romney helped him find his missing daughter. Whatever. Macht nichts since I’d never vote for him. Again if I were his Karl Rove I’d play up his business acumen as qualifying him as the country’s CEO. From Daniel Nichols.

From LRC

• A modest foreign-policy proposal. In light of the recent nearly unanimous vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to “enhance” our already incestuously close relationship with the government of Israel, I would like to make a modest proposal: move the entire U.S. military establishment, Pentagon and all, along with the U.S. Congress, to Israel and let the Israelis pay for it.
• Some historical perspective for Ron Paul activists. Seth MacFarlane recently made fun of the Tea Party. Actually a good sign the establishment is on the run?
• Are the good times really over for good?

Political potpourri

• We’re broke so we’re done campaigning. It’s official: now it’s all about delegates.
• Gary Johnson would have to earn my vote.
• The war among women. Sailer’s got the mommy-war non-story sussed. Like with the beautiful Sarah Palin, lots of women are jealous of Ann Romney and were gunning for her.
• Yes, I’m with the church on contraception but that’s not the point here. Roissy shoots and scores. Feminism is about power. Over you. Not liberty for women. Often again envy. In praise of feminine women.
• Affordable family formation.
• Dr Fleming takes apart Obama’s gay-marriage statement.

European nationalism: Golden Dawn or old and gone?
From Takimag

Religious liberty: understanding the opposition
From Modestinus

‘Mad Men’ facts

• Using one Beatles recording cost $250,000.
• The Francises’ house.

Mormonism isn’t Christian

The confusion is understandable: Mormonism has its roots in the Protestant revivalism of the 19th century and claims to worship the Trinity. Mormons use all the familiar Christian terminology. Mitt Romney, no doubt, can look you in the eye without mental reservation and tell you that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Saviour.

The problem is that when a Mormon says such things he means something entirely different from what the broadest Christian orthodoxy means. His “Trinity” consists of three separate physical beings, who are highly evolved men. There is no Supreme Being, no Creator who made all things out of nothing. What are eternal in Mormonism are matter and intelligences (souls), which are uncreated.

While using familiar Christian language, Mormonism teaches an entirely different worldview. It worships a different god, or rather, gods. This materialist gnosticism is so foreign to historic Christianity that no Christian church or ecclesial body recognizes Mormon baptism as valid.

Islam, on the other hand, preaches the God of Abraham, Who exists from all eternity, a perfect Spirit, Who created the world from nothing, Who will judge all humanity at the end of the age, Who spoke through the familiar Jewish prophets. It teaches, further, that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin, that He was the greatest prophet and will return at the end of the world. Of course, Islam denies His divinity, but only the ignorant deny that Muslims worship the One God. Indeed, when you consider the traditional Jewish hostility to Christ and His Mother, and the blasphemies that have been uttered through the ages by Jews, it is apparent that Islam has far more in common with Christianity than does Judaism. (I do understand that many modern Jewish scholars approach Christ with a far more benign attitude.)

From Daniel Nichols via Joshua.

From Steve Sailer

• IQ and the wealth of nations.
• Different business cultures: public or private infighting. Sports and the movies.

Five things most people don’t know are Catholic
Pretty good. My readers know the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not Eastern Orthodox, but very close to them, and like Rome and the Orthodox has apostolic succession. Like the Orthodox it doesn’t recognize the supremacy of the Pope.

Photos

A May day.

So nice that Aslan the crazy cat enjoys it.
How I would have voted, based on what most people thought they knew. Cardinal Spellman knew better about Kennedy. On the right, only smart outliers like Murray Rothbard knew better, and my problems with Nixon – his taking away the last of the dollar’s backing and starting affirmative action – are nothing to do with his getting caught trying to fix an election (which Kennedy got away with, probably why Nixon did it). The left didn’t and doesn’t care about the Constitution.

A Goldwater campaign button is on the desk where I’m typing this.