What is wrong with them?

Peggy Noonan has a new column up, wherein she asks "What is wrong with them?" She's speaking of our political representatives in Washington.

Peggy picks on several recent examples of politico self-absorption (a bit of an oxymoron, that), starting with Barack Obama's recent comparision of Abraham Lincoln to, well, himself:

Actually Lincoln's life is a lot like Mr. Obama's. Lincoln came from a lean-to in the backwoods. His mother died when he was 9. The Lincolns had no money, no standing. Lincoln educated himself, reading law on his own, working as a field hand, a store clerk and a raft hand on the Mississippi. He also split some rails. He entered politics, knew more defeat than victory, and went on to lead the nation through its greatest trauma, the Civil War, and past its greatest sin, slavery.

Barack Obama, the son of two University of Hawaii students, went to Columbia and Harvard Law after attending a private academy that taught the children of the Hawaiian royal family. He made his name in politics as an aggressive Chicago vote hustler in Bill Clinton's first campaign for the presidency.

You see the similarities.

She concludes with this:

What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water?

What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

Is she right? Is this something that most Americans feel? Trying to think of counter-examples myself, I mostly come up with more outrageous examples of her point: McCain, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Byrd all immediately come to mind as examples of precisely what Peggy is talking about. But I can think of at least a few counter-examples: Bush (G.W.), Zell Miller, Newt Gingrich (most of the time), Duncan Hunter. That's a very short list. Ok, so Peggy's at least asking a question about a real phenomenon. Is it really so mysterious what's wrong with them? Color me cynical, but I don't think it's very mysterious at all. They're corrupt...not in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. I believe that by and large, their principles are driven fairly directly by what generates campaign contributions. So...if Peggy is right, either I'm wrong, or most people haven't yet figured out that I'm right. I wonder what Peggy believes; she doesn't say...

You can read her whole column on Opinion Journal.

Mark Steyn, again

Here's how his latest column starts:

A couple of months ago, on our Letters page, Mr Tony Roberts of Cheltenham responded to my column on the Pope's death as follows: "Presumably Mr Steyn has never had casual sex, or, if he has, maybe his sensitivity to the 'splendour of truth' prevented him from deriving any pleasure from the experience."

I resisted the urge to respond, confident that within 48 hours the Daily Telegraph mailroom would be deluged by the maidenhood (if that's the appropriate term) of Britain rising to my defence, pointing out that memorable 20 minutes - well, okay, six - in the back of my second-hand Austin Princess in the lay-by on the B47932 just after the mini-roundabout for the industrial estate back in 1987.

Alas, there was only a deafening silence, as readers remained unaccountably preoccupied with war, elections and other trivia. It seemed faintly unbecoming for a Daily Telegraph columnist to protest about how much action he's getting, but, had I run into Mr Roberts in the Cheltenham singles bar, I would have endeavoured to explain that what's at issue is not which of us is getting more and better casual sex but whether it's an appropriate organising principle for society. Or at any rate whether a cult of non-procreative self-gratification is, as the eco-crazies like to say, "sustainable".

Read the rest here.

The column is about the prospects for the EU, and the money line in the conclusion is this:

A political entity hostile to the three principal building blocks of functioning societies - religion, family and wealth creation - was never a likely bet for the long term.

My own observation of Europe over the past few years, which has been very skewed simply because of where my business took me, is that the great hope for Europe lies in its east — in the new democracies, where I can see entrepreneurs hard at work building economies. Mark seems to think the hope for Europe lies in its west, with the United Kingdom. Hmmm....maybe we've got a pincer maneuver going there, and I didn't realize it!

Chuck hit, but ok

Chuck Ziegenfuss is a 'milblogger' — an active-duty soldier who was, until very recently, deployed in Iraq. He's been posting regularly from Iraq, and his blog ("From My Position... On the way!") has long been on my daily reading list. Around June 20th (I'm not sure of the exact date), Chuck was injured by an IED; badly but not life-threatening. He was evacuated immediately to Germany, and a few days later to Walter Reed, where he is now. He's started the series of surgeries to repair the damage done, and he's being visited by his family, including his wife Carren.

Though I found myself reacting very strongly to the fact of Chuck's injury (because I "know" him through his blogging), I haven't posted about it before — too many other people were saying the same things that I would have, and better. And that's largely still true. But over the past few days, Chuck's blog is still being updated — not by him (his injuries, of course, prevent that), but instead by his wife. Carren has made several posts since Chuck's injury, and they are both inspiring and interesting for their content, and for the straightforward view they provide into what happens when one of our soldiers is injured. Reading her posts, you just can't help admiring her pluck and positive attitude.

Go read Carren here and at the blog everyday.

And please don't forget to include Chuck and all our injured warriors in your thoughts, prayers, and actions (including some of Carren's suggestions)...

Patches

A dog story with a happy ending...

This past Monday morning, Jim visited us (as usual) at 4:30 am for his morning cup of coffee. But this time, he had a dog on his doorstep (and he doesn't own a dog). It was a female mutt, mostly black with a few patches of white, and appeared to have a bit of German shepard in her. She was a very sweet dog, obviously cared for. She had a collar, but no tags.

Jim loaded the dog-stranger into his pickup and drove over to our house with her. Debbie, a serial animal rescuer, then went to work on repatriating the dog while Jim and I traveled to work. I got updates during the day on Monday that went roughly like this:

— talked with the neighbors; nobody ever saw her before
— put up signs all over the neighborhood
— nobody called about the dog
— nobody called about the dog
— nobody called about the dog

Then the breakthrough: on examining her more closely, Debbie discovered that our visitor had a 'chip' (a microchip, injected under the skin, that has a code number identifying the dog). Debbie knew that one of our neighbors (a Rottweiler breeder named Paula) had a "wand" for reading 'chips', so she hauled our dogly visitor down there and got the number read. Then she called our friend and vet (Jo) to find out where to call to find out who owned the dog with that code. Then she called that number, and a little while later got a call back with the owner's name and phone number. Finally, she called the actual owner's number...and got a woman who, when she figured out why Debbie was calling, burst into tears of joy to hear that her dog was safe and sound, and that she had just a few minutes drive to be reunited. Her husband came by a few minutes later, and Debbie reports (and I wish I'd seen it) that our visiting dog was over-the-top joyful to see him. And he was very happy to see her. He told Debbie that he and his wife had steeled themselves for the worst when their dog was missing overnight and they heard the coyotes baying (as they do every night). They really didn't expect a happy outcome...

It turns out that our visitor was named "Patches", and that she had escaped by opening a patio door into an unfenced yard. The owners live a mile or so away from us, as the dog runs, but much further (perhaps 10 miles) by road, so even though they are actually quite close neighbors (by our standards out here), we don't think of them as such.

This was the first direct experience we've had with the effectiveness of those 'chips' (which we have in all our animals). It was actually pretty comforting to know that this very small piece of modern technology can make such a difference...