Brilliance from RedState.com . . .

 I will try to live-blog it as I read it.

 

 An absolutely gorgeous day in North Texas today. Clear blue skies and the mildest temps we’ve had in months. Perfect really. Identical to the day we were having six years ago.

 I’ll have some deep thoughts about big things late tonight when I can spare some time. But in the meantime:

• James Lileks has posted the video he put together six years ago.

• Here’s a two-year-old Bill Bennet essay that still rings with relevance after yesterday’s Abomination of Defamation by Move-On/Code Pink . Here’s an excerpt, but please do read the whole thing.

It is not just the terrorist threat that we have to deal with now, but the grievance culture under it, that has taken such a strong hold in the West. It may, in fact, prove the greater threat because it takes away our greatest protection against terrorism: moral clarity. Where once our law and culture were based on assigning blame on a perpetrator of wrong, and personal responsibility was a commonplace (as well as commonsense), a new psychology has taken hold in Western culture. Where once we punished and fought, we now psychologize and debate the causes of anger and terror. We, to borrow from Shakespeare, have made the wrong medicines of our great revenge.

This guy thinks the Bin Laden video is fishy. Apparently the video freezes for long periods of time in two places. And it is in those places that the voice heard on audio makes all the references to current events.

But then a new OBL video is supposedly about to be released.  It will be interesting to see if there are any current references in which both video and audio are synced.

A couple of posts below, I made some comments about the growing number of wild-eyed 9/11 conspiracy mongers. Along those lines, here’s Mark Steyn in full satiric cry today:

 Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime which thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors — or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract . . .According to a poll in May, 35 percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.

Apparently, 39 percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses.

Please read the whole thing.

Hugh Hewitt has a good roundup of links to analysis and thoughts about the latest YouTube audition of “He Whose Beard Is Like the Raven That Flies Away in the Night Breezes.” 

 . . .here.

 

 In this forum in the past I may have sublty implied a belief that Bin Laden is dead. Oh, like, say in this post headlined, “Bin Laden is Dead.”

A three-year span without any video pronouncements or any audio that was conclusively of recent vintage certainly suggested that he was either dead or incapacitated. But now we have this.

As James S. Robbins, senior fellow for national security affairs at the American Foriegn Policy Council points out in this piece, Bin Laden seems to be monitoring the Democratic debates and/or perhaps Bill Maher’s television program to harvest his talking points.

Others have speculated that if the beard is indeed fake, Bin Laden may be hiding out in a place where Muslim men do not typically have beards, such as Indonesia or Malaysia.

It is also noteworthy that according to the leaked transcript, Bin Laden once again affirms that he is responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This, of course, won’t have any impact whatsoever on the weak-minded conspiratorialists who are convinced that the brilliantly-evil, yet-stupid Bushhitlerburton was behind the attacks.

That’s right, after only eight months in office Bush was able to engineer a global conspiracy that arranged for planes to be hijacked and flown into buildings AND explosives placed in those buildings to assure they fell down AND to have another airliner shot down by military jets over Pennsylvania, all in the same hour AND make it all look like Al Qaeda terrorist did it—all in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq for some oil and some Halliburton contracts.

And yet, in the four years following this all-powerful criminal mastermind couldn’t arrange to have a few WMDs planted in Iraq to legitimize the whole operation. Right. Got it.

For a frightening microcosmic glimpse into the dark fever swamps of conspiratorial thinking, just check out the comment thread under this article over at ABCNews.com. Scroll down a bit to find the nuts and flakes.

Keep in mind, those comments are actually a model of of sanity and reason compared to what you will typically find in the comment threads over at The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post and the Democratic Underground.

Abandon your grip on reality on ye who enter there.

I’m not sure why I got to thinking about it, but there are a handful of books I’ve read over the years that had a significant impact on the way I think and the way I live. They sit on my home office bookshelf amid hundreds of others, but they, for various reasons, changed me.

The Bible, of course, sits in a class all by itself. I’m reluctant to even call it a “book.” It’s alive. And though I’ve read it all my life, it still speaks to me in fresh ways. But to be honest, I don’t read it. It reads me.

But I’m talking about traditional books that have had a powerful and lasting effect on me. Books that I quote, cite, refer to, and mention in conversation year after year. Books that I go back to every few years for a renewal of the relationship and a freshening of the revelation I found there.

Here are a few of them and what makes them special to me.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe

This book is my first love, not so much for what it says but for what it represents. You see, I was always the youngest kid in my class. I started First Grade as a five-year-old when everyone else was already six (some were almost seven!) This caused me to start out with pretty low self-esteem. On the last day of my Second Grade year, Mrs. Garner called me up to her desk and  handed me a thick hardcover copy of Robinson Crusoe. She said it was a special award for being an outstanding reader. An award! And it was a grown up, chapter book, too. I treasured it. It represented the first time I could recall being told I was really good at something. And it began my lifelong love affair with books. (God bless you Mrs. Garner.)

Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard

This is the book that made me want to be a writer. I first read it in college and was captivated by both its story and the prose with which it was told. “Oh, to write like that,” I wished and vowed at the time. Later in life, I read it aloud to each of our girls when they were little, especially when they got to the age where they began to battle fear. Timeless. Beautiful. Perfect in every way.

Idols for Descruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture by Herbert Schlossberg

Ponderous. Weighty. Frequently danged hard to read. Yet this book, more than any other book I’ve read, has served to form my worldview and political philosophy. Herbert Schlossberg may have been the smartest, most well-read man you’ve never heard of. Now, you can go ahead and read the combined works of Plato, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx and the other influential minds of Western Civilization if you want. Or you can just read Schlossberg, who has done it for you. I recommend Schlossberg.

True Success: A New Philosphy of Excellence by Tom Morris

I grabbed this book back in the mid-nineties as I was preparing to do a talk on leadership and success for a group of business people. Then this book grabbed me. And it has never let go. In it Morris lays out an alternative paradigm for “success.” There are concepts and ideas in this book that have simply been integrated into who I am and how I make key decisions. Now that I think about it, I think I’m due to revisit it.

 The Four Pillars of a Man’s Heart by Stu Weber

King. Warrior. Mentor. Friend. Weber’s profound, moving and deeply masculine exploration of what God created a man to be, did for me what Helen Hunt’s character did for Jack Nicholson’s character in “As Good as it Gets.” It “made me want to be a better man.” And showed me what he looked like.  

Intra Muros (Within the Walls) by Rebecca Springer

Written in the late 19th Century by an extraordinarily gifted and sensitive writer, this book gives us a vivid look at Heaven. I don’t know if Heaven will really be like Springer’s vision, but I hope it is. What I do know, is that I come away from every reading with a heart bursting with gratitude for Jesus and love for God. And that’s pretty good fruit for any book.

That’s all for now. I’ll post part 2 at a later opportunity.

In the second season of “Leave it to Beaver” there is a scene in which Ward reads a note from The Beav’s principle. It is only on screen for a couple of seconds and it is only now, in the digital age of screen grabs, that it is possible to read what that letter says.

The enterprising folks over shorpy.com, the wonderful site for vintage photography, have transcribed the entire letter. After 50 years shrouded in mystery, we now know precisely what the letter says:

Mr. Ward Cleaver 
485 Mapleton Dr
Mayfield, State

My Dear Mr. Cleaver: 

This paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
It is here merely to fill up space. Still, it is words,
rather than repeated letters, since the latter might not
give the proper appearance, namely, that of an actual note.

For that matter, all of this is nonsense, and the only
part of this that is to be read is the last paragraph,
which part is the inspired creation of the producers of
this very fine series.

Another paragraph of stuff. Now is the time for all good
men to come to the aid of their party. The quick brown
fox jumped over the lazy dog. My typing is lousy, but the
typewriter isn’t so hot either. After all, why should I
take the blame for these mechanical imperfections, with
which all of us must contend. Lew Burdette just hit a
home run and Milwaukee leads seven to one in the series.
This is the last line of the filler material of the note.
No, my mistake, that was only the next to last. This is last.

I hope you can find a suitable explanation for Theodore’s
unusual conduct.

Yours truly,
Cornelia Rayburn

Read the whole analysis, including details about Lew Burdette’s homer for Milwaukee in the ’58 World Series, over at Shorpy.