Quote du Jour for Ethan Bartlett

Flannery O'Connor is perhaps best when she is just writing anything, not necessarily when she is formally writing a story. A quote on Southern Writers:

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners [She speaks of the South here], we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers. In the South there are more amateur authors than there are rivers and streams. It's not an activity that waits upon talent. In almost every hamlet you'll find at least one lady writing epics in Negro dialect and probably two or three old gentlemen who have impossible historical novels on the way. The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them.

Ha! How long and deep is the list that could fit under the rubric "It's not an activity that waits upon talent"! I'm duly humbled, and you should be too. But is there really such a thing as "no manners at all"? I'm trying still to wrap my mind around that concept.

No manners at all. Would that be like "no taste"? I've been accused of that.

GLOBAL, HIGH STAKES CHESS GAMES

STRATFOR, which is an intelligence gathering, evaluating, and disseminating business organization, has put together a cogent, fascinating, and a little frightening evaluation of the mounting stakes in the Israel-Iran-Russia-USA-Germany-Planetary conflaconfusion* that is percolating based upon Israel's sense that the US no longer has its back, Iran's sense that Russia has its, Obama's sense that no major international player believes he has a spine, the problem of oil and the Hormuz Strait, and the perceived slow progress toward's Iranian nuclear weaponry. Egad. Check it out.



*I. uh, I made that up.

QUOTE DU JOUR

I'm reading--desultorily--Jude Wanniski's THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS. I ran across a quote that more than caught my eye, from the little frenchman himself:

Writing to his brother Lucien on Christmas Day, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote:

"Whilst an individual owner, with a personal interest in his property, is always wide awake, and brings his plans to fruition, communal interest is inherently sleepy and unproductive, because individual enterprise is a matter of instinct, and communal enterprise is a matter of public spirit, which is rare."

A big AMEN to that. The recurring problem I have with a massive takeover of anything by government is that gummint, by nature, is sleepy and unproductive. Its real success lies in the absolute need for its workers to be dedicated and devoted, in a way that is supplied naturally to owners and private operators by, hate to say it, the motive of profit and pride. That is difficult to sustain year after year when one has no PERSONAL interest in the stewardship to which he/she is called. When an entire bureaucracy is asked to sustain it, the results are going to be much much worse than the fettered capitalism we now enjoy.

With Apologies to Ambrose Bearce

The WSJ has a very humorous piece in its Currents section entitled:

The Devil's Dictionary--Financial Edition

Bearce published the original Devil's Dictionary as "The Cynic's Word Book" in 1906; a guide to the code language which permeated the cultural landscape of the day.

The Journal's version is an attempt to humorously update and focus on the devolution of terms during this endless financial mess we are in. A few examples:

TARP,n. acronym. 1. A synthetic device designed to cover up an unsightly mess, or to protect perishable goods (firewood, banks) from the ravages of the elements, typically costing somewhere between $12.99 and $700 billion.
2. Prime example of how governments use otherwise anodyne acronyms, abbreviations and sports metaphors to disguise matters of controversy. See also TALF, TLGP, TURF, FHFA, BACKSTOP, WRAP, OFHEO, and SPECTRE.

CREDIT-DEFAULT SWAP, n. loose translation from the original Latin "ubi mel ibi apes," or "where there's honey there are bees".
1. A complex financial instrument vital to the functioning of a modern economy in the way it spreads risk among consenting parties (Greenspan, A., pre-Sept. 2008).
2. A complex financial instrument that nearly destroyed modern capitalism (Greenspan, A., post-Sept. 2008).

GREEN SHOOTS,n. 1. The first signs of spring, often clobbered by summer's heat and autumn's rain. 2. A sign the economy is falling apart more slowly than previously tought. Related: DAISIES, PUSHING UP. See also THINKING, WISHFUL.

DEFICIT,n. For the party in power, at worst a minor irritant and at best a precondition for economic growth. For the minority, the gravest threat to the stability of the Republic.

Methinks the Journal has grown cynical in its old age.

CIA and the Justice Dept

The WSJ Saturday ran a long article by a former CIA clandestine operative, Reuel Marc Gerecht, expressing deep concern about the decision by the Obama justice department to go after CIA interrogators. He argues that this arguably unnecessary move--undertaken for political reasons alone--will completely undermine the agency's ability to do its job.

"A good case officer with Middle Eastern languages and a penchant for understanding Islamic radicalism would now have to be insane to accept an assignment that detailed him to interrogate Islamic terrorist suspects. No self-respecting case officer wants to be constantly surveilledby his boss. That's not the way the intelligence business works, which is, when it works, an idiosyncratic, intimate affair. We should be horrified by the idea that holy warriors will now be questioned by operatives who tolerate all the cover-your-trash paperwork, who don't mind being videoed when they go to work, who want to be second-guessed by their CIA bosses, let alone by FBI agents, and intelligence-committee Congressional staffers, and now White House officials."

While Obama has retained the practice of rendition, and while we are likely in a period--unlike the years 2001 to 2003--when interrogation will be less frequent, what Gerecht most deplores is the removal of the tools of the trade for interrogators.

"...With enhanced interrogation off-limits, CIA operatives could easily find themselves face-to-face with a jihadist who tells them to bugger off. What are they then to do? Will their superiors be professionally sensitive to their inability to make further progress? Could they get promoted after they pass suspected jihadists to the FBI? Would the FBI even take them, knowing that they might have to be rendered to an unsavory foreign power and thereby quite possibly compromise the bureau's more pristine image?..."

The CIA "hardly did a superlative job.." in its fight against Islamic militarism. Nevertheless, I have to believe we're back on the clock again, awaiting the next major strike. Thanks to the Obama justice department, America is once again much less safe.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS SIGN?

Wafting my way through a local Cracker Barrel store, floating on waves of perfumed candles and other inedibles, my eye caught this little hand painted plaque. It wasn't till I got out to my van and was about to start the engine that it registered, and I found myself wandering back in to take a picture. "My wife may be interested in this," I sorta lied to the lady behind the counter, "But I always take a picture first." Well, it wasn't technically a lie, although if I were to present this to Deb as a gift I'd be greeted by a disbelieving goggle, followed by a chuckle, followed by its being tossed into the recyclables.

It is the theology behind it that intrigued me, motivating me to slog back in to the C Barrel, make my excuse, and snap the picture. Have we finally found the succinct, theological summary of neo-evangelicalism? C'mon, confessional Lutherans, expound!

Or is it just too obvious?


Come to mull on it, this plaque describes the starting point of Roman Catholicism as well, doesn't it?

Quote du jour

"Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them."
- Jim Davis


Secondary quote du jour:

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
- Unknown