Hither and thither 8/12/11

Well folks, I have a pretty passel of punditry and peculiarities for you. Let's launch!

• We begin with a shout-out to dog-lovers. We love our cats but acknowledge: no cat would do this:

• ...however, cats are endlessly helpful... in their own special way.

• Also, cats usually don't explode. Which is nice.

• Chuck Bridgland sees this free-hand line painter as a possible illustration of Proverbs 22:29, and I see his point.
• What would you pick as the best sci-fi or fantasy book, ever? I should have picked before looking; you can find out the top ten chosen by 60,000 respondents. I probably agree with their first choice. Or, if you're really really interested, you can see the top 100 over at NPR.
• Gamers! Do you have the latest thing? UMove! (Thanks Dawn Lewis.)
• Goodness, and I thought some CA teens were dim:

• American Thinker (not the name) asks and answers the question, How Stupid Is Obama? Conclusion, in part: "It has become obvious, in a sense that cannot be denied, that Obama is a fundamentally stupid man."
• Painfully true:

• Wellsir, Texas governor Rick Perry is reportedly going to become GOP Presidential Candidate #47. What do you think of him? I know he seems to be both loved and hated by conservatives. The perfectionist subset at FreeRepublic hates him and calls his names; something to do with the reported fact that Perry "signed a law making Texas the first state to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and blasted a proposed border fence as 'idiocy.'" That does sound pretty wretched. (See, if you want, the discussion in this thread to see the two sides bouncing off of each other.)
• As to who and what (Eagle Scout) Rick Perry is, there's a glowing profile in National Review online.
• Then there's Sarah Palin. Just sayin'.
• I'll also say that, with the possible exception of Mitt Romney, any one of the GOP candidates would make a better president than the current occupant of the White House.
• They share that feature in common with any one of our five cats, by the way. And most of our appliances. Except the vacuum cleaner... you don't need me to tell you why.
• Last night's debate: The Washington Examiner pulls what it considers the top five video moments. Bachmann's response to a tough question is classy, if indirect. Gingrich is prickly, and no Ronald Reagan.
• Which Presidential candidate most scares liberals?

• Some of the best good political news of the week, of course, was the failure of unions to resume their ruination of Wisconsin. Read this analysis: unions spent many times what a Presidential campaign usually spends in Wisconsin, and failed. That's good for America.
• Of course it's been good for Wisconsin, too. But all my readers could have predicted that.
• From the Things that Make You Say "Hmm" File:

• We looked previously at the fruit durians. Our spy Susan got us a picture of some fresh 'uns:

• Going through my picture album in search of non-frightening photos of myself to send at Kregel's request, I realized I have scads of really gorgeous pictures. Of the Sierra, of course; not of me. So if you're very nice, and talk about more than one thing each Friday, maybe I'll feed some through to you each week. For instance, here's my favorite wildflower, Indian Paintbrush, by McGee Creek, on a cloudy day:

• And here's what looks a bit like a glimpse of a far country, near Pine Creek.

• All right, beauty break's over. Now we turn, with regrets, from creation's beauty to man's ugliness.
• Word from Britain on the UK riots: Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters. Of the rioters, Max Hastings says, "They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others."
• Further, "The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist."
• Hastings provides a lot more apparently direct-hit analysis. What is his proposed solution? In brief, stricter laws, stricter enforcement, education.  Briefer: more law. In his own words: "Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people. ...Unless or until those who run Britain introduce incentives for decency and impose penalties for bestiality which are today entirely lacking, there will never be a shortage of young rioters and looters such as those of the past four nights, for whom their monstrous excesses were ‘a great fire, man.’"

• My response: Hastings' analysis is good as far as it goes, but his solution is no solution. Liberalism is both the cause and the effect. It perpetuates a cycle born of sinful human nature. What is stopping the "yobs" from behaving correctly now, if they wanted to? They do what they do because they are what they are; and only the saving, transforming — one might even say "world-tilting" — power of Christ in the Gospel can do what is needed.
• Recall Proverbs 29:8 — "Scoffers set a city aflame, but the wise turn away wrath." Remember: a scoffer is the last degree of folly in Proverbs. He is the fool who has gone beyond reclamation in his mockery and rejection of the things and truths of God. And such are the intelligentsia of Great Britain, as far as this distant Yank can see it.
• Therefore, the very ones who lament the flames of the rioters while at the same time mocking and dismissing the Gospel are themselves stoking and fanning those flames.
• In other words, by its rejection of the Gospel, the United Kingdom has done this to itself. And America is hastening rapidly in the exact same direction, and for the exact same reason.
• Of course, they could always send Richard Dawkins out to give them a lecture. Perhaps read from some Christopher Hitchens about how God is not great. I'm sure that'd sort them out right quick.
• QED.
• From America, J. Christian Adams weighs in on the riots also, grouping them with recent black-on-white violence in America, and the fecklessly indifferent, racially-obsessed, corrupt Obama justice department. Adams gets close to hinting at a fuller analysis and answer, but still comes down to law and order and a big stick.
• That point is not without truth, it just isn't all truth. In the absence of a converted populace, law must rule to restrain ungodliness and reward virtue (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-14), and to do it swiftly (Eccl. 8:11).
• Stratfor offers some tactical counsel for folks in riot situations. (thx Joel Griffith)
• Now, to the issues in Philadelphia. On the one hand: Rich Lowry is right — this speech by Philadelphia's mayor Michael Nutter is pretty darned good. He says some tough things that need to be said, and says them bluntly and well.
• On the other hand: it's just talk. Nutter doesn't mean a word of it. How do I know? Simple: he's a Democrat, and a supporter of Bill Clinton's wife and Hillary Clinton's boss. That means that he feeds and props up the exact kind of thinking and legislating and judging that is dead-set against personal responsibility, against the rule of law, against Constitutionalism, and against the sanctity of marriage and of the family, and against the sanctity of life itself — for starters. It's just words, that's all. Nutter is reaping his own beloved party's thinking's harvest, and he doesn't like it. But Nutter won't change, and Nutter's hearers won't change.
• Same thing as the late Senator Moynihan, who's famous for inveighing against "Defining deviancy down," but propped up the party that champions that very thing, and defended the president who embodied it. Words, not a thing but words.
• Hey, be mad if you want to. But you never wonder what I really think about something, and why, do you?
• OK: change of tone, in three... two... one...
• I've been called many things; but never, that I recall...

• My dispie readers, at minimum, will appreciate two good articles by Michael Vlach: one on Luke 17:20-21 (is the kingdom "within you"? — a verse often cited in my former cult, Religious Science, and sometimes used by amils/CTers as well); and one on Luke 21:31.
• I predict this will become an instant hit in Casa Phillips:

• Susan found a dress she'd be afraid to wear.
• Actually, two.
• Julie Garrett found us a great new board game:

• A tasing, a stabbing — just another Sunday at New Welcome Baptist Church? (thx Joel Griffith)
• Not feeling they've fouled enough in our society, homosexual activists are petitioning to force Bert and Ernie to "marry" each other on Sesame Street. (various suggesters)
• Sesame Street has responded: "Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation." There y'go.
• (Predicted obsessives' response: "Yeah, but are they gay puppets?")
• Did Robert Sakovich find the Perfect Food for this week? Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburgers.

• Want to see the last thing the mouse ever, ever sees?
• Reader MDM points us to the video Doorbell, putting the nation's mounting debt in very pointed, personal terms.
• If yachting interests you at all, Kerry Garrett found a clip of a little boat that did not get out of the way of a big'un... and should have.
• Well, our time to part has come once again. And so, as I bid you adiue... wait, was that a sound, behind you? Never mind. Probably nothing.

• But these are something:

THE USUALS WILL BE OBSERVED