No, All Cultures are Not Equal

I once read a cogent remark by the great Mark Steyn that "By pretending that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism doesn’t preserve traditional cultures so much as sustain them in an artificial state that ensures they’ll develop bizarre pathologies and mutate into some freakish hybrid of the worst of both worlds."

Now this, from Joel Brinkley, professor of journalism at Stanford University:

Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."

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"Reality in Your Cup"

BETSY NEWMARK:
"Michelle Malkin has a devastating list of all the ways in which the Obama administration, at all levels, has been avoiding transparency. It's quite an ominous list even if Obama hadn't made one of the hallmarks of his campaign about how he was going to bring back honesty and transparency to government while avoiding the dire influence of special interests. Yeah, right. THIS latest story about how White House aides are evading transparency by meeting lobbyists at coffee houses so that their names won't appear on White House visitor logs is just one more tear in the veil of honesty in which Obama tries to cloak his administration."
A MALKIN jewel: "The best part of waking up is reality in your cup."

Hope-n-Change, Baby!

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Amateur Hour 2010

I figure this video is gonna leave a mark. One Gulf resident lady opines, "It's never gonna be the same." Well, Dear, he did promise CHANGE, didn't he? Well, there ya go! This is what happens when you (not me, I'm proud to say) send amateurs to Washington D.C. (a/k/a the "empty suit" syndrome)

Oil Spill Timeline from RightChange on Vimeo.

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Today's Message from Chief Forked-Tongue

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And Now for Some Clarity

On the 15th anniversary of the OK-city bombing, Bill Clinton appeared at a symposium sponsored by a left-wing think tank and linked the mad bomber to those Tea Party loons. HERE is a great blog post from professor Reynolds in which he offers his typical cogent thoughts and great related links. This is very educational stuff -- which is why I read/watch little of the "traditional" media and opt for reputable blogs like Instapundit [Reynolds]. You're welcome.

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Planter Wall Repair

A few days ago I completed 24+ hours trenching/backfilling, building and installing two stabilizing walls perpendicular to the the long planter wall I built four years ago. [See HERE, then HERE, then HERE for that saga.]

Above is the 23ft-long front planter wall I constructed in May '06 using 2-1/2” x 3-1/2” Interlocking Landscape Ties from XPotential Products [Winnipeg, Canada].

Above shows cross-section of the ties. An 8-ft length of this material weighs 37 Lb! Company out-of-commission since Oct '06 due to destruction of factory via fire. Supposedly will produce again around Sept '10. [So retail inventory is VERY limited. Closest outlet with stock is 30m North -- so I drove there last week to buy 7 pieces, although only needed 5.]
Above shows the tilt-out of that long wall over four years. Unrelated to soil pressure, but rather that the material flexes fairly easily [no wood!]. I noticed modest flex-out at top at installation, but discounted it as a problem. Evidently gravity felt otherwise. You can rest one end of this stuff on a step, for example, then step on it... and material will remain curved..... unless you straighten via same method.

Above shows that flex-out moved that angled wall at right end, pulling apart the joint!
Above shows that wall is now vertical. Note that I had to raise the downspout 12-inches. It's directly above the NEW WALL [54-inches-long, 103 Lb]. New wall [5-layers-high] sits on four lengths of 1/2-inch "rebar" driven into the ground to [hopefully] inhibit movement toward driveway.
Installed two triple-galv straight mending straps to connect NEW WALL to long wall.
Above shows NEW WALL #2 at right end. Used two L-shaped triple-galv mending straps to hold new wall to long wall AND two 6-inch exterior lag bolts to fix angled wall to new wall. [Three "rebar" up inside lowest layer of NEW WALL material.]
I had to remove the spiral spruce tree shown in top photo -- not for planter repair, but because it was dying. Apparently not enough sun. Only got about 3-4 hours-per-day, and then only in Summer. Shoulda read the label more carefully before purchasing in June '06. Oops.

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Tea Party Rally Today in Joliet, IL

... at the Will County courthouse. I estimate that the middle photo shows about 1/4 of the crowd.

"a wartime felony violation"

In today's Wall Street Journal there's a great column -- "Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers" -- that notes "Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients", then rightly asks, "Doesn't the public have a right to know?"
Also, former "blind shiek" prosecutor ['93 WTC bombing] Andrew McCarthy deems the sharing of photos of CIA interrogators with Gitmo detainees BY LEGAL COUNSEL [as discussed in the above article] "a wartime felony violation". As I read the above article this morning in the dead-tree version of the Journal I quickly came to the same ... conclusion -- and I'm not even an attorney. The whole saga just wreaks. And what would the reaction have been had John Ashcroft staffed the Civil Rights Division with a lot of folks who had represented white supremacists?

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Remembering the 1960 Chile Quake....

the most-powerful ever recorded...

Athens on the Potomac... Dupage... Hudson... Sacramento...

Neal Boortz links to an important observation from Forbes Magazine and its likely link to the financial disaster that is Greece.

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